The Resistance of the Turkish Makam and the Habitus of a Performer. Reflections on a Collaborative CD-Project with Erdem Helvacioǧlu

• Published in: Contemporary music review Vol. 32; no. 2-3; pp. 201 - 213
• Main Author: Östersjö, Stefan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 01-06-2013; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Composers; Electronic music; Habitus; Helvacioglu, Erdem; Instrument; Musical Experiment; Musical recordings; Musical Tradition; Musicians & conductors; Istanbul Turkey
• ISSN: 0749-4467; 1477-2256
• DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2013.775812

I will take a recent CD-project as point of departure, a collaboration with the Turkish composer and electronic musician Erdem Helvacioǧlu. We did a series of recording sessions in Istanbul in December 2009 for which we agreed to use the Turkish 'makam' as common point of departure in all the pieces. In this paper I will discuss the resistance of this material and specifically the relation between the resistance and the 'habitus' of a performer. In the sessions we agreed to approach the different 'makam' by applying different scordaturas to the instruments. I will develop on the resistance of the instrument with regard to this phase, also looking back at Kent Olofsson's 'Il Liuto d'Orfeo'. The text is supported by video clips which appear as supplementary material accessible online via the article's Supplementary tab on the Taylor & Francis website (
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr
).