A struggle between the rural and the urban, a struggle between reason and dogma, a struggle between Jacobien heathenize and blind Islamisation… Throughout the history, Istanbul has always been the center of major conflicts and it still is.
Quite naturally, the conflicts of ideas and politic spill over into the area of arts, too. The architecture, the painting, and especially the music becomes an area where these dichotomies come together. But this time, not to fight. They come together in such a harmonious way that shows us the possibility of coexistence of the conflicting sides. They talk to each other in such a beautiful way that reminds us the possibility of solving the conflict by “keep talking”, as Stephen Hawking said years and years ago and Pink Floyd honored those words with a great song titled “Keep Talking”.
To better indicate the musical pillars in the contemporary Turkish music, we started the list with a very traditional song played by the Turkish guitarist who invented his own microtonal guitar to better perform Turkish music with a guitar and we ended the list with the Turkish classical music virtuoso and composer Fazıl Say’s homonym classical opus that is inspired by the same traditional song. Among the two, we tried to show you the cohabitation of electronic music and traditional harmonies: The music that is often listened in the bars and nightclubs by young people and especially by students.
We want to dedicate our little playlist to 70.000 students who are imprisoned in Turkey just because they kept talking.
Article written & music chosen by Serkan Menekşe
