Cello Invocations

By Serkan Kara, "Uğur Işık brings together world religions on Anatolian soil" - Today's Zaman - Istanbul, Turkey
Sunday, July 20, 2008

Cellist Uğur Işık is an internationally acclaimed Turkish musician not yet recognized by the Turkish audience as he engages in no political rhetoric

The most prominent quality of his music is his performing instrumental and sometimes vocal pieces from Turkish culture using his cello, a Western instrument.

Having reached a considerably large European audience with his first album, in which he performs Anatolian folk songs with his cello, Işık appears to be continuing the upward trajectory in his career with his recently released second album, "Cello Invocations," with which he says he has "gathered world religions on Anatolian soil," also bitterly complaining that people are predisposed to pigeonholing his albums only by looking at the origin of the pieces he performs.

He says some branded him an Alevi after his first album and as religious following the second one, though he does not consider himself religious.

We spoke with Işık, who says, "My album dwells on religious music, not the religion itself," about his art, well received in the world but disregarded in his homeland. We also spoke about criticism that has been directed at his style and finally spoke about the things he wants to achieve.

We first heard Anatolian music from your cello. How did the idea of delving into religious music originate? Was it already present during the making of the first album, or did it develop afterwards?
You should begin learning the religious music of whatever society you are researching. If you are studying Western music, you cannot become a classical music performer without learning Bach. Eventually Bach, too, performs religious music.

If you are training to be a classical Turkish music performer, you have to learn the musical compositions of the Mevlevi whirling rite, Sufi hymns, qasidahs (Sufi poems spontaneously sung in a certain maqam [mode], mostly to accompany a Sufi remembrance ceremony) and the maqams (the hundreds of modal structures that characterize the art of Turkish classic music).

I'm not a practicing Muslim, but I have learned the Mevlevi rites and have also learned how to whirl. Unless you go deep down into music, as deep as its roots, you can't build anything on top. This is music.

We live with religious music, but when the word "religion" is mentioned, people start looking at the whole thing unfavorably because of prevalent prejudices.

My latest album is a grand invocation of all religions. When you mention the word "invocation" ("dhikr" in Turkish and Arabic), people are scared, whereas invocation, that is, remembrance ceremonies, makes for an outstanding musical show.

They portray invocation as something bad in films and series: They employ people who perform the audible dhikr as if fighting or making love. These people have nothing to do with invocation; the divine remembrance is completely something else.

Who performs the audible dhikr in the album?
It is performed by, so to say, real "invokers" who have grown up in a real Sufi environment and culture. They perform it the way it should be performed and use their bodies like a musical instrument.

I have played the cello to fill the background of the remembrance music, and I did that according to the authentic structure of remembrance ceremonies. I did not use "free-style" music, pushing the dhikr into the background; I never thought, "Hey, I could improvise on that one…"

What were your standards in choosing the pieces you have included in your album? What in those pieces attracted you?
The actual number I had considered was far higher. For instance, the tekbir, which pronounces the oneness of God, (composed in the segah maqam by the legendary Turkish music composer Mustafa Itri) had to be on the album.

When I perform the tekbir with the cello during my concerts in Europe, I see that the European people in my audience are spiritually moved to a great extent; they almost enter into a state of trance.

After I got the idea of the cello praying using the tekbir, I then tried the salawat -- asking God to shower his blessings and peace upon the Prophet Mohammed -- (again composed by Itri in the segah maqam).

Approaches to religion in the world are very different; that is why I have combined the differences on this album. If I had used (music composed by the followers of) Sunni Islam only, the album would have had a melancholy tone to it because in the country we live in there is gloom as well as fear, whereas the religion is only a means to reach God, the only Holy One.

When you perform a piece by Ellayl Zahi Fas with tambourines apart from religious pieces, the audience stands up and starts dancing along. I have mixed the strict Islam and the cheerful Islam together. When they all transcend one another, what comes out is a totally different combination.

Are there pieces which you left out at the last moment?
I thought of a very mournful and sorrow-inspiring sala [a kind of salawat, recited in certain maqams from the minaret to tell the neighborhood that somebody has died and his funeral prayer will be performed after the normal prescribed daily prayer], which I was to improvise over a Sufi hymn (ilahi).

Two religious musicians were to perform the sala. This project is ready and I will carry it out. It will not appear on my CDs, but it may end up being used as part of a soundtrack. The pieces I had to take out, even though I had deemed them suitable with the concept, will definitely get recorded.

(...)

The most important quality of the album is that the pieces that belong to different religions have similar sounds. Why did you perform them in the same style?
I memorized a Catholic piece from Italy like an Italian, but did not play it like an Italian. If I had played like them, a disconnect would have occured in the album.

In that case, "Lamento di Tristano," which comes after a Turkish folk song, would sound like a piece being played from some other CD. But in its current state, the listeners cannot differentiate the transitions between the tracks.

All the religious pieces on the album belong to the same sincere feelings. They are all music composed for God.

The album contains Greek Orthodox sounds, African hymns or Italian Catholic hymns, and I feel all of them are the same. Ultimately, the target of all of them is the same.

That you have performed the music of different religions with the culture of Anatolia as a backdrop makes Muslim listeners think that they are all Islamic melodies. Do your audiences abroad feel the same, that what you play belongs to their religion? In what way do they react?
When I perform the pieces that contain invocation, European listeners close their eyes and automatically start swaying. They are mostly the followers of another religion and also know that dhikr is a type of religious music that belongs to Islam; but knowing this doesn't prevent them from enjoying this music.

Respectively, I perform a Spanish Catholic hymn Jezebel, the Mevlevi rite in the hijaz maqam, followed by the Jewish hymn Yad Anuga.

Even if the people who listen to these back to back are Jews, Christians or Muslims, they all say that all the pieces belong to them. When a Christian listens to the ezan, the Muslim call to prayer, he says it belongs to him. The ezan awakens religious feelings in them.

Did anyone react negatively to you for making religious music?
People from my immediate surroundings showed a few negative reactions… What I feared most about this project was to be seen as "trying to appeal to a certain segment" and to be branded accordingly.

No segments exist for me! These are pretty ugly things to say. I'm a person who looks at everything with an open mind. An invocation performed by the most devoted Muslim or a Christian hymn sung by a most radical Catholic are both the same to me. All of them are the same in essence.

You keep insistently saying in your statements that you are not religious…
Some called me "religious" after the release of this album. And I said, or rather was forced to say, that I was not a religious man; this is not something good.

I'm not an atheist, I'm a believer; but I was forced to make that statement. Why the pressure? To me, everyone is equal, everything is the same; at least, that's how I see things.

Some people are proud to declare that they are atheists, whereas I'm indirectly coerced into stating that I'm not a religious person. I would have included pieces only from the Islamic culture, and it would have had a greater appeal to the European ear, but I couldn't.

(...)

You had one particular bad concert experience in Turkey. Will you be giving concerts as part of this album?
Oh, yes! I played to an audience of 5,000 people in Greece and the other day I played the same pieces to only 50 people in İstanbul, which put me off music.

I'm not pushing for it, but people have been demanding concerts from me. I might organize concerts by combining the two albums and by employing some visual aids.

For instance, I may have scenery from our country displayed or I might use dancers, but definitely not a big group of instrumentalists. It should always be elegantly simple -- maybe a couple of percussions and some sufis for the invocation parts.

I'm planning to open up to African countries and Muslim countries. I'd like to work on some projects with the people there also.