c/o Aaron Bittel

Graduate music students Ridvan Aydinli MA ’22 and Mohammad Geldi Geldi Nejad MA ’23 filled Memorial Chapel with music from Turkey and Turkmenistan during the late evening of Monday, April 25. The recital, “Turkish makam to Turkmen mukam,” cohesively merged the musical worlds of Turkey and Turkmenistan. The first half of the recital focused on Aydinli’s Turkish musical tradition, and Geldi Nejad joined him in the second half to explore the synthesizing of their two cultures.

A native of Turkey, Aydinli is known internationally as both an accomplished performer and researcher of Ottoman/Turkish classical music. The recital began with this expertise on full display as Aydinli performed a rhythmically free opening improvisation on his primary instrument: the Turkish ney. The ney can be thought of as an ancient flute-recorder hybrid instrument made primarily from a reed. Each ney has an open hole near the head of the instrument where the performer blows across a sharp edge to activate its sound, while keyholes can be used to change the resulting pitch much further down the ney’s body. 

The materiality and body of the instrument emerged in full force in the opening improvisation. An airy brilliance from the ney filled the pews as Aydinli played around the opening melodic mode, creating bright musical patterns that conjured to the image of birds soaring in the sky. The deep pitch bends that emerged throughout the latter half of the improvisation accentuated the atmosphere. Each bend brought an immense sense of weight and motion to Aydinli’s musical phrases and commanded the full attention of the audience. 

After the trance-like opening, the expert ney player performed a lengthy piece that comprised the rest of the first half of the recital. This began with a much more somber musical prelude that provided a dark, contemplative ambiance. Now in a new makam (Turkish musical mode), Aydinli’s playing ebbed and flowed from the entire range of the ney and washed over the audience. The ney’s airy tone now evoked a deep intensity that starkly contrasted the radiance of the previous piece, spreading a tone of meditative reverence throughout the chapel. 

Near the end of this prelude, Aydinli seamlessly transitioned into a composed work that utilizes usul (rhythmic cycles) that deviates greatly from the common four-beat groupings we find in most western popular music. The first usul of the night, titled Dev-i kebir, focused on 28-beat cycles and represented this style. Emerging from its somber tone, Aydinli’s ney became much more rhythmically accented to provide a greater emphasis on the shape of each musical line. A variety of twisting and turning melodic phrases filled the chapel with energy that was at once meditative and captivating.

After the piece finished, Geldi Nejad joined Aydinli on stage to begin the second portion of the recital. Geldi Nejad, known in Turkmenistan as Oghlan Bakshi (loosely translated as “epic child bard”), is perhaps the most prominent performer of traditional Turkmen dutar playing and singing in the world. The Turkmen dutar is a two-stringed lute-like instrument that dominates the traditional and popular music landscape of Turkmenistan and is often played with the fingers in specific rhythmic cycles unique to the country. 

Although Turkey and Turkmenistan are only separated by the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, their traditional musical cultures have not interacted in a public capacity, to the best of the performers’ knowledge

“It’s very interesting because they’re two different worlds [now],” Geldi Nejad said. “Of course, if we look in depth at the history of those two peoples, they’re traced back to the same tribe: the Oghuz. But [over] time the context of the music changed.”

These differences would become apparent as Geldi Nejad began accompanying Aydinli for the second half. Almost immediately upon starting, the chapel was filled with the sound of quick melodic pulses in a complicated musical meter. One string of the dutar would ring out in a drone-like lower pitch while the other would outline a melodic phrase that changed much faster than Ridvan’s previous playing. This small difference in tone and mood could perhaps be attributed to the functional differences between the traditions. 

“The music Ridvan plays…is a kind of ritual [music], but the big [musical] context in Turkmenistan is playing for events [that celebrate life], such as weddings or birthdays,” Geldi Nejad said. 

Whereas Aydinli’s musical practice is firmly rooted in a type of sacred praise, Geldi Nejad’s musical culture has traditionally been one of human function and celebration. However, this difference did not hold either performer back from exploring the musical merging of their practices. In fact, it seemed to make their synthesis even stronger. After the short introduction of the dutar, Aydinli broke out into singing that felt half improvised and half planned. Aydinli expanded on the growing musical texture by introducing a large hand drum to offer more rhythmic support, ultimately transforming the two-person group’s sound into that of a full ensemble. 

This balancing of ney, dutar, Turkish and Turkmen vocals, hand drum, and their respective musical traditions was the dominant focus of the second half. A number of composed and improvised pieces were traded off, with both musicians meeting each other in the middle depending on the piece’s culture of origin. The somber and more minor-sounding melodies of the sacred Turkish tradition were not only supported by the brighter dutar playing, but also expanded the expressive possibilities of the ney’s brilliant colors by bringing the quicker musical motion of the Turkmen tradition into the conversation. The same could be said for Geldi Nejad’s practice, as the ney added a smooth, airy ambiance to the extremely active rhythmic cycles played on the dutar.

After trading pieces back and forth, the concert ended with a longer joint improvisation in various Turkmen mukams, the analog of the Turkish makam. This final piece was much more rhythmically active than the previous works, and each musician brought their own expertise to the forefront. Aydinli’s ney playing brilliantly complimented the increasingly complex dutar patterns, and Geldi Nejad’s melodic phrasing brought out new melodies in the upper range of the ney. This successful blending of musical cultures offered an exciting conclusion to the enriching, multicultural recital.

Manuel Perez III can be reached at mjperez@wesleyan.edu.