It's not often one gets to visit the crossroads of western civilization. This June, I took the opportunity of a lifetime to visit Istanbul.
I am a troubador of sorts; a wandering musician. I have played in Brasil, Cuba, Argentina, Spain, England, and Ireland. I have a free spirit, and I listen to my heart. I am a classical guitarist
enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I play music from all over the world, in many styles, and I have the fortune of finding a great teacher that believes in me.
Larry Ferrara is a teacher in the SF area, and in March, he heard through the grapevine of a particular couple, Bei Bei, and Jim Hawley, that were being married in Santorini, Greece. They needed a classical guitarist, and flautist, to travel with them and perform a variety of music, outside the realm of the classical musician. There would be no pay, but man, I knew I was going the moment he told me about it. I contacted them about the job, they gave me the music, and I had it arranged in one day. After hearing my demo, and watching us play together, we were welcomed to the party!
I had told everyone I knew about this dream gig, and I told my students that I would be in Greece for the month of May. Everything was set, but I had a sense that Greece would not have enough musical and cultural diversity to contain me for a month. So, I spoke to a close musician friend that I played North Indian classical music with. He suggested going to Istanbul to seek out the Sufis, a mystic order of Islam, founded in 13th century by followers of Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi. He stood for Love and ecstatic flight into the infinite. Rumi was one of the world's great spiritual masters and poetical geniuses of mankind. He was the founder of the Mawlawi Sufi order, a leading mystical brotherhood of Islam. Before there were spinning bling-bling hubcaps, there were the whirling dervishes, mystic followers of Rumi that devoted their lives to spiritual searching through song, dance and poetry.
My goal, of this entire trip had become to see the dervishes perform, to watch their cosmic dance, one hand pointed towards heaven, the other towards earth. The music would echo from centuries past, on flutes , saz, oud, and other instruments of the Silk Road. Here I could trace a direct path to Hindustani music and come to understand another source of my divine inspiration. More than that, I needed to be in the presence of this order, to feel the energy they were a part of.
I had spent that Sunday walking in Pera, meaning 'opposite shore' enjoying the distinctly European thoroughfair of Taksim on the Rue de Pera. A double wide street filled with all types of Turks, tourists, and hagglers. As I watched the men selling their ice cream I noticed the showmanship, skill and pride they desplayed as they twirled taffy like ice cream from a long iron bar out into the street, above their head, ringing bells and showing off to the other ice cream hawkers. They were stealing tourists from eachother, and the best showman had a sizeable crowd around him.
I couldn't stop thinking that these moves, this panache, had been a part of this eastern culture for thousands of years. Every mosque, every palace, the mosaics from Justinian's Byzantine empire, the Aya Sofia, these landmarks were living history, and this city was blowing my mind back and forth from Theodosius, to Ataturk at every taste and turn.
I marveled at the Art Deco buildings, and savored every taste of 'lokum' or Turkish Delight from a candy store that had opened in the year of our independence. Created in the Ottoman empire, to appease the girls of Sultan's Harem , the chewy, nut filled sugar laden squares were unforgettable, and addictive.
In Galata, on the "new side" of Istanbul, there was a monastery, now called the Galata Mevlevi Lodge. Constructed in 1491 on the hunting grounds of Iskender Pasha, a governer/ general during the reign of Sultan Bayezid II 'the just'. Without knowing it, one passes easily by this hidden treasure walking the winding merchant filled streets.
Every other Sunday the 'Sema' or dance ritual takes place. I did not want to miss it. At 4pm I had decided to go to Taksim Park, and catch a municipal bus to find this Mevlevi lodge. I asked about 5 bus attendants, about 'Sufi, Mevlevi, and Dervish', and no one could help. I finally was directed to a bus to take, and felt assured that I would be headed straight to the ceremony. I found myself the alone, on a bus filled with staring turks, and as we made way for the Bosphorus Bridge, the ticket collector began asking me for another ticket. Hadn't I given him his ticket when I boarded? Yes, but now this red headed and bearded giant wasn't getting anywhere with the Yanki, and someone kindly told him I was lost. A gentleman next to me spoke in plain english, " You are going to Asia". I said to him, No, I am going to see the dervishes, near Taksim. We started laughing together when I realized I was completely opposite from where I needed to be. He gave me some bus tickets, and i got off at the Bosphorus Bridge, and quickly hailed a cab back to Taksim. 4:40. I had 20 minutes to find this hidden temple. Luckily, the cabbie picked up on my sense of urgency, and by luck, I found myself on a street, very close to where i had been earlier. As I asked for directions, I began retracing the very steps i took that day, and when I found it, i realized I had walked past the lodge, without even noticing it. I went hurriedly to a guard station, where behind the window, a disinterested ticket seller was wrapping up the days profits into a faded green metal box. I was 15 minutes late, and there was no way he was letting me in for free, or for a student discount, or for a standing room only price. NO. YOU PAY, 25 LIRA. I agreed and walked through courtyard patrolled by some well fed cats, past the tombs of Sufi Mystics that had inscriptions in arabic upon white, thin granite. Resting upon the top of each one, was a sculpture of the sikke worn by each holy man, a symbol of his ego's tombstone.
I entered the lodge, around me, there was an air of dignity, piety, and awe.
I saw before me an octoganal wooden floor, with railing, around which sat 100 gazing tourists. I relaxed in one of the few wooden chairs left, and remembered how uncomfortable sitting in church on early mornings had been as a child, yet i never found it difficult to doze off during the priests sermons. Now I was spellbound by this ritual. These 13 men between the ages of 16 and 30 we covered in black cloaks to the floor, wearing long, tan elegant wool hats extending an arm's length above them. As their elder read passages from the Koran aloud, an unseen band in the rafters above began their music. First the lonely call of the Ney, the turkish wooden flute rose from the silence, representing the longing of the soul for union with God. The other instruments joined slowly, darbuka, saz, oud, and a chorus of men singing. As each layer was added, the dervishes began to slowly cast off their cloaks revealing an austere white jacket and long skirt which would eventually billow out. The members slowly walked around the floor, deliberately, self embracing themselves, hands to opposite shoulders. They past the elder leader four times, and as the interplay between instruments grew, the scene on the dance floor became more active. The players turned to face each other, and one by one they bowed, kissed the hand of the elder, and he bowed too, as they kissed his hand, he whispered into their ears.
