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Turkish Studies Vol. 11, No. 2, 251–268, June 2010 ISSN 1468-3849 Print/1743-9663 Online/10/020251-18 © 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14683849.2010.483866 Homegrown Sounds of Istanbul: World Music, Place, and Authenticity KORAY DE [ GBREVE ] [ I DOT ] RMENC [ I DOT ] Department of Sociology, Erciyes University, Kayseri, Turkey Taylor and Francis FTUR_A_483866.sgm 10.1080/14683849.2010.483866 Turkish Studies 1468-3849 (print)/1743-9663 (online) Original Article 2010 Taylor & Francis 11 2 0000002010 KorayDegirmenci [email protected] ABSTRACT This study broadly examines the relationship between “world music” and the production of place and locality in the cultural economy of late capitalism by looking at the Turkish case, focusing specifically on how Doublemoon, an internationally well-known Istan- bul-based label, constructs an “Istanbul sound” under the label of “world music” or “world fusion.” It investigates how the image of Istanbul produced through the category of world music is a reproduction of the stereotypical identity of the city—the meeting place of ethni- cized and essentialized East and West. The investigation shows how global discourses of world music are incorporated and “indigenized” in the production of “Turkish world music” as created by Doublemoon. Introduction: The Rise of World Music in Istanbul Music markets throw sounds into the air, blending them all so as to render them indistinguishable from one another. A clarinet taksim (improvisation) gives way to a piece that begins with a woman’s voice heavily processed with a synthesizer and accompanied by a ney 1 improvisation. This is followed by the rapping of the famous Turkish hip-hop artist, Ceza, in which Sufi philosophy is praised. An oyun havası (dance tune) particular to Roma (gypsy) weddings in Turkey gradually surpasses these sounds along [ I DOT ] stiklal Avenue, located in the Pera (Beyo[ GBREVE ] lu) district of Istanbul, where important symbols of the city such as Galatasaray Square, Çiçek Pasajı (Flower Passage), Balık Pazarı (the fish market), Tünel (the tunnel), and several churches, synagogues, and academic institutions are found. As late as 2000 it was still rather unusual to hear such voices there; the inhabit- ants of the avenue used to listen to popular (Western) classical music pieces, French chansons, or Hollywood soundtracks. Undoubtedly, the avenue, starting from around Galata Tower and leading up to Taksim Square, has a cosmopolitan outlook, attracting about 3 million people on weekends. Just three kilometers long, [ I DOT ] stiklal Avenue has three Starbucks cafes that are always full, even on week- days and off-hours. One afternoon, for example, a Starbucks served Turkish coffee in traditional Turkish coffee cups imprinted with the Starbucks logo while Correspondence Address: Koray De[ GBREVE ] irmenci, Erciyes University, Department of Sociology, 38209, Kayseri, Turkey. Email: [email protected]. G ˘ I ˙ I ˙ g ˘ I ˙ g ˘ I ˙

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This study broadly examines the relationship between “world music” and the production of place and locality in the cultural economy of late capitalism by looking at the Turkish case, focusing specifically on how Doublemoon, an internationally well-known Istan- bul-based label, constructs an “Istanbul sound” under the label of “world music” or “world fusion.” It investigates how the image of Istanbul produced through the category of world music is a reproduction of the stereotypical identity of the city—the meeting place of ethni- cized and essentialized East and West. The investigation shows how global discourses of world music are incorporated and “indigenized” in the production of “Turkish world music” as created by Doublemoon.

Citation preview

Page 1: Homegrown Sounds of Istanbul

Turkish StudiesVol. 11, No. 2, 251–268, June 2010

ISSN 1468-3849 Print/1743-9663 Online/10/020251-18 © 2010 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14683849.2010.483866

Homegrown Sounds of Istanbul: World Music, Place, and Authenticity

KORAY DE

[GBREVE][IDOT ]

RMENC

[IDOT ]

Department of Sociology, Erciyes University, Kayseri, Turkey

Taylor and FrancisFTUR_A_483866.sgm10.1080/14683849.2010.483866Turkish Studies1468-3849 (print)/1743-9663 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & [email protected]

A

BSTRACT

This study broadly examines the relationship between “world music” and theproduction of place and locality in the cultural economy of late capitalism by looking at theTurkish case, focusing specifically on how Doublemoon, an internationally well-known Istan-bul-based label, constructs an “Istanbul sound” under the label of “world music” or “worldfusion.” It investigates how the image of Istanbul produced through the category of worldmusic is a reproduction of the stereotypical identity of the city—the meeting place of ethni-cized and essentialized East and West. The investigation shows how global discourses ofworld music are incorporated and “indigenized” in the production of “Turkish world music”as created by Doublemoon.

Introduction: The Rise of World Music in Istanbul

Music markets throw sounds into the air, blending them all so as to render themindistinguishable from one another. A clarinet

taksim

(improvisation) gives way toa piece that begins with a woman’s voice heavily processed with a synthesizerand accompanied by a

ney

1

improvisation. This is followed by the rapping of thefamous Turkish hip-hop artist, Ceza, in which Sufi philosophy is praised. An

oyunhavası

(dance tune) particular to Roma (gypsy) weddings in Turkey graduallysurpasses these sounds along

[IDOT ]

stiklal Avenue, located in the Pera (Beyo

[GBREVE]

lu)district of Istanbul, where important symbols of the city such as GalatasaraySquare,

Çiçek Pasajı

(Flower Passage),

Balık Pazarı

(the fish market),

Tünel

(thetunnel), and several churches, synagogues, and academic institutions are found.As late as 2000 it was still rather unusual to hear such voices there; the inhabit-ants of the avenue used to listen to popular (Western) classical music pieces,French

chansons

, or Hollywood soundtracks. Undoubtedly, the avenue, startingfrom around Galata Tower and leading up to Taksim Square, has a cosmopolitanoutlook, attracting about 3 million people on weekends. Just three kilometerslong,

[IDOT ]

stiklal Avenue has three Starbucks cafes that are always full, even on week-days and off-hours. One afternoon, for example, a Starbucks served Turkishcoffee in traditional Turkish coffee cups imprinted with the Starbucks logo while

Correspondence Address:

Koray De

[GBREVE]

irmenci, Erciyes University, Department of Sociology, 38209,Kayseri, Turkey. Email: [email protected].

GI I

g

I g

I

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K. De irmencig

playing an Ibrahim Ferrer CD, followed by several Latin American pieces. Theposters on the walls were reminiscent of the album covers of the famous worldmusic label Putumayo.

Gradually, since 2000, there has been a revival or rediscovery of traditional andlocal musical cultures in Turkey that has been relegated to the commercial cate-gory of “world music.” Such a rediscovery and its implications for the Turkishmusic industry are conspicuous in Istanbul, the center of Turkey’s music industry.The incorporation of supposedly local and traditional musical forms, such asRoma (gypsy), Sufi, or Turkish folk music, into the world music category is avery recent phenomenon in Turkey. However, this is not to say there were noprevious attempts at reviving those musical forms. Indeed, they date back to theearly 1970s but within the categories of ethnic jazz (

etnocaz

) or free jazz. Thoseattempts were generally the result of works by the expatriated musicians (such asMuvaffak Falay, alias Maffy; Okay Temiz; and Burhan Öçal), Western musiciansabroad who were highly interested in Turkish musical forms (such as DonCherry), and some particular producers. The motivation behind those workslargely reflected the general craze among Western musicians in the 1960s and1970s to head towards the East. Those works were mainly the outcome of thesemusicians’ personal quests for alternative ways of making music. The end resultof those attempts included performances within festivals, albums published inrelatively small numbers, and projects with seriously limited financial and organi-zational inputs. Thus, those works were not promoted a great deal by the musicmarket; they usually remained marginal, having gained a very limited nichemarket, if any. This situation has persisted in the later period as well. Sonia T.Seeman is correct in asserting that “in the 1990s, jazz terminology predominatedamong Turkish jazz, rock and Roman world music practitioners. What jazz meansand what is possible under jazz, then, has been interpreted from a locally-grounded cosmopolitan tradition.”

2

Seeman continues by explaining that a conflict emerged from such a “locally-grounded understanding of jazz”; some Turkish practitioners of

etnocaz

generated adichotomy between the Westernness intrinsic to jazz and Turkish identity. However,this “locally-grounded cosmopolitan tradition” was still confined within the concep-tual boundaries that were defined by the very term of jazz itself. Thus, jazz can beseen as having an intermediary function in the redefinition and relocation of thoselocal and traditional musical forms within the world music category (that meansthey are firstly jazz or

etnocaz

and then world music). This is a symptom of thelong-standing East-West dichotomy that is mostly embodied in the polyphony-monophony discussions in Turkish music.

3

What makes the transformation withinthe last decade distinct from the earlier period is that there is no longer any need todefine the emerging forms within the general classification of jazz in order to incor-porate them into the category of world music.

Okay Temiz, the most prominent jazz percussionist in Turkey and among the firstto engage in experimenting with ethnic or folk jazz, illustrates how world music asdefined in the 2000s differs from world music as ethnic music in the 1970s:

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253

A musician should have a multicultural attitude. S/he should combine variousdifferent traditions of music in the stage … we used to use the term “worldmusic” for such musics in the early 1970s … one day I heard a world musictalk. Where? In England. They have brought Nusrat Fateh who performs sacredmusic from Pakistan and similar others performing such kinds of music. Theseare musicians from different cultures; but they don’t know anything aboutother cultures different from their own … these are fanatic musicians going ontheir own ways.

4

For Temiz, the category of world music is obviously closely associated withcosmopolitanism and is defined within the boundaries of jazz. Furthermore, in thisdiscursive schema, performing any traditional or folk music alone without incorpo-rating it in synthesis or fusion works (within Western musical structures) is notworth attention; it is falsely called world music. Indeed, such a perspective is stillcommon among jazz musicians, and it largely implies that jazz is the most propergenre in which to experiment with “other” musical forms. This jazz perspectiverepudiates the category of world music as a totally commercial and degeneratedphenomenon; it refuses to discuss the category in terms of aesthetics. It is safe toassert that what is called world music cannot be conceptualized within the (once)general category of jazz. This fact is true as much for the global music industry asfor the music industry in Turkey. What has happened, especially during the lastdecade, is the complete annihilation of such a perspective of ethnic jazz in favor ofthe growing popularity of world music in the Turkish music industry.

Much more than being an independent category of its own, in Istanbul worldmusic has increasingly become an umbrella term for not only the musical projectsbroadly defined as fusion or synthesis by musicians and the market but also for localand traditional music. Moreover, the category is almost a black hole into which eventhe most traditional or local musical forms have imploded. For example, a success-ful Roma musician increasingly prefers to call himself a world musician, being wellaware of the market’s rewarding response to such a label. Before 2000, he wouldonly perform at taverns, weddings, or other special events in the community, butnow he is a world musician in demand at Istanbul’s most popular music halls, suchas Babylon.

5

The City as “Place” and World Music

The fact that world music as a commercial category has gained popularity in Istan-bul is closely related to transformations taking place in the city. Istanbul has notbeen merely the place where multifarious musical traditions have combined histori-cally; it also constitutes a space where some particular processes of globalizationcan be clearly observed. That said, Istanbul has been the subject of intensivediscussions regarding its status as a global city. Using the definition of global citiesas the controlling centers of capital and productive forces,

6

various studies havelabeled Istanbul as on the verge of becoming a global city.

7

Istanbul has witnessed

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K. De irmencig

tremendous growth in segments such as entertainment, international media, foreigninvestment, and communication technology. New service sectors have emerged,and transnational corporations have an increased presence in the city, making it acultural and economic center not only for Turkey but also for the rest of the world.A comprehensive account of discussions about the “global city” is not within thescope of this paper. However, the world music phenomenon should be seen as partof the process of the cultural (re)construction of the city, which indeed is acomponent of a more comprehensive global mechanism.

Many of the complicated ways in which the global economy channels culturalforms in the spaces of economic practice take place mainly in urban landscapes.Cities have assumed significant roles in the global economy as nodes where theheadquarters of transnational companies reside and from which capital flows.

8

Moreover, cities have come to represent the “unique” and “traditional” culture ofparticular localities; in a globalizing world, culture-related activities have becomesignificant sources of competition in global markets. Cities have become globalbrands, and culture has been considered the main mediator of processes of urbanredevelopment and revitalization. The revival of “culture” has emerged as a centralconsideration at each stage of the restructuration of the urban space. This includesthe rediscovery and renovation of historic sites, marketing the “authenticity” anduniqueness of local arts and crafts as being redefined in opposition to standardizedgoods in an age of mass production (promoting and selling local artisanship as agenuine form of artistic practice), and the so-called “ethnic” food industry (re-labeled regional food for “local” tourists). These are embodiments of the largerprocess called “urban renaissance” as discussed in the literature of contemporaryurban space, in which “mobilizing urban cultural resources for economic revitaliza-tion and making money out of culture, consumption and spectacle” are centralelements.

9

Thus, the city emerges as a center of economic activities in the globalsystem and culture emerges as the “business of cities.”

10

Furthermore, these processes are closely related to the deterritorializing effects ofglobalization, which, in this context, refer to the “loss of the ‘natural’ relation ofculture to geographical and social territories.”

11

One might see culture and place ascompanions in this context, the boundaries of which are defined in relation to eachother. Thus, while culture is detached from the place that offers the very possibilityof its existence and definition, the place can no longer be defined in terms of thatparticular (mostly constructed) culture. Moreover, places are “no longer the clearsupports of our identity.”

12

Indeed, as Doreen Massey aptly observes, such anassociation between places and homogeneous culture or community represents anidealized notion of an era.

13

The so-called organic relationship between place andculture, which globalization was supposed to have eradicated, has been reestab-lished discursively within urban spaces through the revival of “culture.” The redefi-nition or rediscovery of the “place” within urban “space,” or, in other words, thereconstruction of “place-myth,” is truly related to the so-called localization processin which “cultural authenticity is constructed, reproduced, or maintained through avariety of practices.”

14

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Therefore, in this process places are constructed in such a way as to constitute the“very locality” of a particular city. Locality might refer to the imagined localitieswithin any particular territory, or a notion of locality that is the direct result of the“place-making” processes of globalization.

15

Place, in this context, refers to an inti-mate and “affective locality” whose pleasures “have now become unified with thestructuring force of global space in contemporary cities.”

16

This means global forcesdemand cultural products and practices to be embedded with the symbolic contentpurportedly once belonging to the “place.” Thus, what is emerging is the relation-ship between localities generally shaped by globalization and the “very locality”(mostly constructed and fictional but meaningful nevertheless) that has been calledimaginary in this context.

17

To apply this idea to a music context, Martin Stokes’idea that the contemporary musical experience exists within the contestationbetween the globalizing media cultures and creative “positioning” as a response toglobalization processes is utilized.

18

It broadly means that there is a contestationbetween “localities” (or rather, discourses of locality) that are products of globaliza-tion processes and the “real” or “very” localities of music as conceived withinimaginary communities.

Moreover, the world music phenomenon is a global cultural form paradoxicallyclaiming to represent the very locality and the “place” itself. World music is amedium through which “discourses of the “global” and “local” are produced anddisseminated”, and the term itself “relies on its being perceived as both global and“distant,” with connections to specific places.”

19

Thus, it is not accidental that themajor reference in liner notes and on album covers of most world music albums is togeographical places and to some spatial contexts in general. Distant (and thusexotic) places and their various mysterious traditions are portrayed on album coversand in liner notes, addressed mostly to Western audiences.

20

Exoticness goes handin hand with authenticity as well. If one of the aims of world music discourse is tomake audiences feel they are traveling to the place from which the sounds originate,the other is to invoke the authenticity of those sounds by means of the placesconstructed. World music pieces are presented in a way to invoke “the timeless, theancient, the primal, the pure, the chthonic,”

21

and the notion of place plays a majorrole in such an association. Furthermore, the emergence of world music is associ-ated with the “entanglement of commerce and culture in the production of ethni-cized commodities” within a commodity culture in which “ethnicized difference isboth a matter of symbolic creativity and political economy.”

22

It is safe to assert thatthe discursive usage of place is the most convenient way to provoke the notion ofethnicity. Thus, the increasing currency of world music “perfectly exemplifies themultiple ways in which places are constructed, commodified and contested.”

23

The term “world music” first emerged in academia in the mid 1950s as an alterna-tive term for ethnomusicology “to oppose the dominant tendency of music institu-tions and publics to assume the synonymy of

music

with Western European artmusic.”

24

When the music forms outside the Western classical tradition wereconsidered as

musics

they had usually been categorized “as being either ‘Oriental’(Asian art music), ‘primitive’ (preliterate cultures) or ‘folk’ (‘the internal primitives

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K. De irmencig

of Euro-America’).”

25

However, this academic meaning of world music has gradu-ally disappeared and been replaced with a commercial meaning of world music. In1987, some independent record labels coined the term “world music” as a categoryfor particular genres in the music industry.

26

The music forms previously calledethnic, international, pop, folk, ethnopop, tribal, exotic, ambient, and the like havegradually been gathered together under the label “world music,” and the term hasbecome an inclusive category that has gained currency in the music industry. Thiscommercial meaning of the term has became further entrenched with two events:billboards began to publish top album charts in the world music category in 1990,and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) started givingGrammy Music Awards in the category of world music in 1991.

27

The phenomenon of world music has attracted significant attention in the litera-ture. As P. G. Toner and Stephen Wild state, the theoretical approaches to worldmusic can be understood as the outcomes of two different but interrelated levels ofanalysis.

28

While some approaches consider world music as part of an overarchingglobal system and analyze it by focusing on the mechanisms of this system, otherstend to focus on localities and attempt to understand the specifities of variouscontexts. Moreover, various approaches to world music can also be seen as celebra-tory or anxious narratives of the phenomenon.

29

The earliest versions of the anxiousnarratives were mostly inspired by the cultural imperialism thesis; they haveinvestigated how the non-Western and “indigeneous” music forms have becomeappropriated, packaged, and exploited in the name of world music and how thisprocess exemplified a form of “cultural imperialism.”

30

These perspectives havebeen criticized for the simplicity of the binaries of the cultural imperialism thesis,such as local/authentic versus global/commodified. Moreover, the culturalimperialism perspectives were blind to the “complex interplays of interculturalcross-fertilizations” and failed to grasp the complicated nature of the cultural appro-priation processes.

31

However, as Arjun Appadurai states, the global discourses, forms, and practicesare “indigenized” in one way or another in the “local,” and this process of indigeni-zation cannot be understood in terms of simple binaries, such as periphery or centeror the local and the global.

32

In this process, the elements supposedly belonging tothe center/periphery or global/local are constantly contested, reshaped, and appro-priated. Globalization creates points of encounter between the local and the globalcultural forms, the nature of which can no longer be explicated by means of one-way determination models that are based on a presumed binary between the localand the global. Thus, the complicated nature of the transnational flows makes itincreasingly harder to define such separate terrains and to give the determinativerole solely to the abstract and fictional spaces of the global.

The “anxious” narratives also include analyses that do not depend on simple bina-ries commonly observed in the versions of the cultural imperialism thesis. Forexample, Veit Erlmann draws from Fredric Jameson’s account of the production ofdifference to directly relate the emergence of world music to the “aesthetic produc-tion of difference,” which is further dependent on two aspects of global culture:

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“commodity production and the way in which differentiation is written in to the verystructural logic of late capitalism.”

33

Thus, commodity production involves bothdifferentiation and homogenization that “now comfortably reside as members of thesame family.”

34

In contrast to this perspective, Mark Slobin sees no reason tobelieve in a hidden mechanism controlling the flow of culture in a global world.

35

By giving more importance to the deterritorialization and redrawing of boundariesin a globalizing world, he investigates local projects in which the musicians andlisteners formed micromusical scenes in global contexts. Similarly, Jocelyne Guil-bault focuses on the emergence of new possibilities created by the world musicphenomenon by looking at the “configurations” within which these music formsgain new meanings.

36

She prefers to focus on the configurations rather than the“structure”; the latter is supposedly based on definite and stable relations ofcorrespondence.

Rather than giving an account of the world music phenomenon in terms of gener-alizing narratives, looking at specific patterns of articulation between the local andthe global in particular local contexts is more fruitful. This, in a way, means whatFeld describes as a shift from “world music as a discourse to world music as acontact zone of activities and representations.”

37

Investigating the incorporation orindigenization of global discourses of world music in the local is a challenging taskthat requires both understanding the power of global discourses in the local and thespecific features and particular conditions of the local. Mitchell competently pointsout that the production of “global” music forms in the local both manifests localspecificity and character but at the same time inevitably takes place in the globalmarket.

38

The investigation of the local responses, first of all, entails the recognitionthat the present global system is “the most ramified, all-encompassing environmentever in the history of artistic production, independent of the continued creativity ofindividual artists.”

39

Erlmann continues by explaining that the investigation of thelocal with respect to these dynamics requires a new understanding wherebyethnographic studies should think in terms of the “global musical production” thatgenerates “border-zone relations that allow performers to constantly evaluate theirposition within the system” rather than in terms of simple binaries like “the Westand the Rest.”

40

The case of world music perfectly exemplifies the perplexing ways in which thelocalities and places are discursively reconstructed and rediscovered; it also showshow the global system increasingly depends on the commodification and fetishiza-tion of the locality. Moreover, the category of world music also implies multifariousdiscursive topographies in which actors position themselves and their musicbetween various poles, such as traditional/modern, authentic/fusion (modern), local/global, etc. Thus it is both a marketing term that operates through the commodifica-tion and reconstruction of ethnicity, spirituality, and the “traditions” and a “cultural”space where the discursive construction of place and locality creates new resourcesfor music-making and music production on behalf of the musicians, producers, andrecording labels. Therefore, the category implies the rediscovery of place, locality,and “tradition” through the lens of the global—a discursive space existing on the

yaakov leibovitch
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fictional continuum from the local to the global. The term “world music” operatesthrough the marketing discourses of genuine, spiritual, exotic, authentic, and pris-tine; it constantly redefines the space in terms of these attributes that supposedlycreate the sounds.

41

Doublemoon’s case illustrates how particular world musicdiscourses define Istanbul and how historical and geographical features of the cityare used to constitute such discourses. It also shows how marketing discourses ofworld music are formed through the rediscovery or reconstruction of the variousidentities of the city.

“Selling Istanbul”

42

: Doublemoon and Constructing the Sounds of the City

The role of Doublemoon in the emergence and increasing popularity of world musicin Turkey cannot be exaggerated. Doublemoon was founded in 1998 as a subsidiaryof Pozitif Music Productions in order to release recordings of jazz performances atBabylon. However, it became a record label dedicated to releasing world musicalbums. Such a transformation reflects the evolution of Pozitif from a producer ofjazz to a producer of world music. On its website, the company states:

Pozitif has established local and international projects and partnerships,continuing to start up new ventures connecting East to West, the familiar to thenew and unexpected. With music as both its journey and destination, Pozitifhas managed to create its own dedicated audience who is always eager to crossboundaries.

43

This mission statement echoes the typical discourse used in world music marketing.In addition to buzzwords such as East, West, boundary, and crossing, the statementevokes the idea of travel, a common theme in world music marketing. The mostembodied form of this discourse can be found at Doublemoon. The label has beenmore than able to capture the interest of international audiences; indeed it hassucceeded in becoming one of the most prominent independent world music labelsin the world. Doublemoon was given the Top Label award by the World MusicExpo (WOMEX) and was ranked eighth among the 20 top labels in the world in2007. The label has agreements with the most prominent international labels anddistributors in the global music industry, such as Atlantic Records, BMG Germany,and Musidisc. It is the first Turkish record label, and its catalog has appeared in digi-tal music stores such as Apple’s iTunes and Napster.

The firm owes this international esteem to its successful attempts at (re)inventingthe “sounds of Istanbul” and to promoting the city as a brand. The ways the recordlabel defines itself and its mission on its website is striking:

Doublemoon Records is an independent pioneering label based in

[IDOT ]

stanbul,Turkey dedicated to spreading

the cultural tapestry that is the city’s sound

around the world. Doublemoon has made a name for itself that is synonymouswith world fusion where global souls bring together jazz & world, acoustic &

I

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electronic, and occidental & oriental music … Doublemoon’s artists spread thesound of

[IDOT ]

stanbul around the world … [author’s emphasis].

44

The construction of the “sounds of Istanbul” is a steady project for Doublemoon thatcan be observed throughout its releases. The “East 2 West” series perfectly exempli-fies the textual and visual ways in which Istanbul as a place is embedded in thelabel’s releases. In the liner notes of the series’ first album,

Global Departures fromIstanbul

(2003), Doublemoon announces the aim of these compilations:

“East 2 West” is a compilation that brings together the tracks from theDoublemoon catalogue offering some of the most daring and bold statementsout of

[IDOT ]

stanbul … “A brand new sound” has been our vision from the begin-ning; from sufi-electronica to groove alla turca, from jazz to gypsy funk fromoriental hip-hop to Anatolian blues.

45

The series continued with

Ethno-Electronic Tales from Istanbul

(2003), whichdefines its purpose as revealing “beautiful sonic rainbows of the crossroads of civili-zations,” while

Istanbul Strait Up

(2005) “aims to remove from the map the wholeborderline of the probable realm between the East and the West.” Finally,

CrossingContinents

(2006) represents “where the enchantingly strange and eerily familiarsounds of

[IDOT ]

Istanbul are sent out into the Universe.” The album covers of the seriesare designed accordingly. Apart from the cover of

Crossing Continents

, whichdepicts different panoramas and important symbols of the city,

Istanbul Strait Up

constitutes an interesting example in the way it invokes the “authenticity” of theplace. The cover shows images of the fish market, an important symbol of the city(see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The front cover of

East 2 West—Istanbul Strait U

p by various artists (Doublemoon, 2005).

The various images of the same place are combined with images representing aso-called typical Turkish dinner table at which people drink

rakı

(the unofficial“national” alcoholic beverage). The cover invokes an association between fish and

rakı

, which indeed means to say “

rakı

goes best with fish,” a cultural saying. Theinside of the album also depicts a glass of rakı, not immediately recognizable, whichstrengthens this theme. The design of the images exaggeratedly invokes culturalauthenticity, in contrast to the overt “inauthenticity” of the tracks on the album,which range from what Doublemoon calls “sufi-electronica” to “gypsy funk,” fromhip-hop to “oriental dub.” Other album covers in the series establish various rela-tionships between the repertoire and the places represented on the covers. For exam-ple, the album cover of Global Departures from Istanbul combines visual details offerries (similar to the cover of Istanbul Strait Up), which are also significantsymbols of the city (see Figure 2).Figure 2. The front cover of the album East 2 West: Global Departures from Istanbul (Doublemoon, 2007).Despite the nostalgia and authenticity that such imagery evokes, the repertoireagain is inauthentic, ranging from “sufi-electronica” to “oriental hip-hop” (theexception is the Laço Tayfa and Hüsnü [SCEDIL] enlendirici’s performance of an “authen-tic” piece of Roma music). What is invoked is a part of the cultural history ofthe city.

I

I

S

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The visual representation of Istanbul on the releases was in a way designed tocomplement the emotions evoked by music. Moreover, almost all the artists ofDoublemoon are defined in relation to Istanbul in one way or another. In the caseof Baba Zula, for example, the website states that the group’s album, Kökler(literally Roots, 2007), “is full of fun, excitement, vigor, eccentricities, odditiesand tradition…just like [IDOT ] stanbul, Baba Zula’s hometown.” The album Wonder-land (2002) is described as the “reflection and expression” of [IDOT ] lhan Er[SCEDIL] ahin’s tiesto Istanbul. Moreover, some artists have produced new collaborations, the namesof which directly connote Istanbul. An example is the Taksim Trio, formed in2007. The Doublemoon website describes them as “making music inspired by theheart of Istanbul.” The term taksim means improvisation and is also the name ofIstanbul’s most famous neighborhood. It is also the “heart of Istanbul” in spatialterms, where Pera (Beyo[GBREVE] lu) and many other important symbols of the city arelocated. What the company defines as “world fusion” takes its most interestingform in the album Istanbul (2003) by Craig Harris and the Nation of Imagina-tion. The album consists of tracks that can hardly be called hybrids but rathereclectic juxtapositions of traditional Turkish music themes with jazz motifs, or asthe liner notes assert, “gypsy music, soul, rap, reggae, hard rock, folk music, youname it.”

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Figure 1. The front cover of East 2 West—Istanbul Strait Up by various artists (Doublemoon, 2005).

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The embedding of the imagery of Istanbul in and on music albums takes anextreme form in the compilation Istanbul Twilight (2007). This is an audio-visualproject consisting of “music, videos and photographs from a big, crazy, sleeplesscity,” as stated on the album cover. The vagueness of Istanbul constitutes themain theme, as the title infers, and it also perfectly exemplifies the personifica-tion of Istanbul, another pattern of the affective construction of Istanbul as aplace. In the notes to the photograph album, such personification of Istanbul isevident:

The story of an unpredictable city … Safe and risky, Joyful and sad… A friend?An enemy? You love it, you hate it… Sometimes dark, sometimes light. Neverinnocent… And yet…unidentified. Does she really care? This is IstanbulTwilight.

The photographs depict the people of Istanbul: the homeless, soldiers, rockers,crowds, lovers, a man in a hamam (bath house), and so on. The repertoire strength-ens the idea of vagueness with the metaphor of twilight—the pieces are almostimpossible to categorize without using Doublemoon’s preferred term, “worldfusion.” The video, “Istanbul,” praises the city, portraying it as undergoing a

Figure 2. The front cover of the album East 2 West: Global Departures from Istanbul (Doublemoon, 2007).

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transformation. The soundtrack is a “sufi-electronica” piece, “Engewal,” by MercanDede.

Despite the “inauthenticity” of the Doublemoon repertoire, particular cultural orreligious Turkish traditions are repeatedly depicted in visual or textual materials indirect relationship to the city, which invokes cultural authenticity. However, thiscultural authenticity that primarily is seen through city images occurs in ambivalentways. A perfect example is Mercan Dede’s album 800 (2007), dedicated to MevlanaRumi in celebration of his 800th birthday. Mercan Dede relates the main theme offlying in the visual narrative of the album (see Figure 3) with the Sufi philosophy.His statements emphasize the ambivalent character of the “creatures” in their rela-tion to Istanbul:

Flying means rising above the reality of this material world … The flying crea-tures in the pictures of the album cover only look like the whirling dervishes.However, some of them have skirts different from the whirling dervishes’ inrespect to their colors. They are above Istanbul; it is not certain whether theyare landing or rising to the sky. One is faceless; a faceless whirling dervish!Another is more traditional.46

Figure 3. The front and back cover of 800 by Mercan Dede (Doublemoon, 2007).Whirling dervishes have always been the most well-known images of Sufism inthe West.47 The ambivalence of Istanbul contributes to the ambivalence of thewhirling dervishes. The discursive structure here actually constructs a similarMevlevi image as to the ambivalence of the genre of sufi-electronica. In contrastto the philosophical connotations of the tracks in general, the track entitled “Istan-bul” exhibits the most overt form of commodification of the city. It is a rear-rangement of a famous traditional Istanbul song, “Üsküdar’a Giderken”(translated as “While Going to Üsküdar,” a famous historical district), with anelectronic background. The final lyrics almost resemble the jargon of tourism inthe ways it describes the city: “Istanbul … incredibly romantic … there is every-thing here, there is beautiful arts and culture and music, and beautiful marketsand beautiful food and lots of energy.” The piece perfectly exemplifies the waysin which the city is commodified within a setting of religious and spatialauthenticity.

The theme of the Bosporus Bridge is worth specific attention since it is the mostcommon metaphor for expressing the idea of “bridging East and West,” “crossingcontinents,” and hybridity or fusion in general terms. Apart from the album coversand liner notes using the bridge to evoke those notions and an album entitledBosporus Bridge by Orientation (2001), musicians use the symbol discursively tolocate themselves in respect to their aesthetic positions. As a remarkable example,Doublemoon’s Roman clarinet virtuoso Hüsnü [SCEDIL] enlendirici, one of the most popularmusicians in Turkey, states that:

Nobody could force you to play in this or that way if you define yourself asperforming world music. I mean you are free to do something with different

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instruments and arrangements. I am neither a Westerner nor an Easterner, butin-between. I mean this Bridge does not exist in vain here, joining Asia andEurope. So, we are very lucky to be here in Istanbul as musicians.48

Figure 3. The front and back cover of 800 by Mercan Dede (Doublemoon, 2007).

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The in-betweenness or liminality (and indeed the very materiality) that the bridgeinvokes is a recurring theme in both visual and textual materials. Fatih Akın’saward-winning film Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005) constitutesan interesting example of how Istanbul with its geographical features is used inorder to create a conception of the “sound of Istanbul.” Doublemoon (and thusPozitif) contributed a great deal to the project by serving as music advisor, and withthe founders of Pozitif and their musicians, taking major roles in the documentary.The soundtrack of the film was also released by Doublemoon in Turkey (2005).

The film journeys through the soundscape of Istanbul through the eyes ofEinstürzende Neubauten bassist Alexander Hacke, who comes to Istanbul to capturethe sounds of the city. He states that for him the city itself is a mystery and that hehopes to unfold Istanbul’s secrets by capturing its sounds. The film continues withsequences showing the protagonist listening to the everyday sounds of Istanbul:calls to prayer, car horns, the hum of the crowds on the streets, car alarms, the voicesof the street vendors coming in through the windows of the Grand Hotel de Londreswhere he stays (another important symbol of the city). Those everyday soundsmerge with the music (of Doublemoon artists in many cases) in the film and areaccompanied by sequences showing Istanbul street scenes and helicopter shotsfocusing on the bridge to invoke the feeling of liminality. The first group, BabaZula, performs “oriental dub” in a boat journeying across the Bosporus Strait, whichagain conjures up the notion of in-betweenness in both musical and spatial terms.The voices coming from the meyhanes (taverns), the fish market, and from peoplesitting on their balconies are followed by images and sometimes sounds from thestreets, regional restaurants, people dancing in clubs, transvestites on the streets, andhomeless people. The protagonist discovers Pera (Beyo[GBREVE] lu) in particular: the darkbackstreets and the people there, clubs, discos, and underground bars. The musi-cians often interrupt their musical performance by explaining different aspects ofthe city, the bridge, and also the Western and Eastern elements in their music bygiving some technical information. The founders of Pozitif appear at the very startof the film and reappear again several times in order to explain this is Istanbul’s in-betweenness in both spatial and musical terms. The notion of transgressing anddecomposing the geographical and cultural boundaries specific to Fatih Akın’sfilms, previously thematized in the film Head-On (2004), is also a recurring themein the film. The film thus goes beyond the simple idea of the meeting of West andEast symbolized by the bridge. It aims at invoking a complicated and an ambivalentnotion of the “sound of Istanbul,” which is seen as a product of the very nature ofglobalization and post-modernity.

Conclusion

What is defined as the sound of Istanbul by Doublemoon is actually more than theoutcome of diverse musical traditions, such as Roma, Kurdish, Sufi, Balkan, andGreek music, pulled out from various “localities.” The sound of Istanbul is ratherwhat the record label prefers to call “world fusion.” The construction of the

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“sound of Istanbul” primarily involves a notion of “locality” that makes Istanbul aplace spreading its “own” sounds to the world. Furthermore, the concept of fusionhere does not entail the intermingling of West and East in musical terms, althoughthe duality surrounds almost every textual and visual material produced by thecompany. Rather, the notion of fusion here refers to the idea of playing with theroots or revitalizing the sources on a ground that primarily implies amalgamationor hybridity, which does not necessarily mean the combination of Western andEastern music forms. Various other formulations of hybridity exist within therepertoire of Doublemoon that do not necessitate the inclusion of Western music.Such a “localization” of music standing for the musical imagery of Istanbul (rathermaking the sounds city’s own) and constructed mostly by reference to particular“geographies” of the city does not operate through the notion of authenticity inmusical terms.

Doublemoon manufactures an Istanbul sound that supposedly symbolizes thecity. Doublemoon’s “world music” is already hybrid; its hybridity identifies it asworld music that is particularly of Istanbul. One might safely argue that what wasdefined as inauthentic in Doublemoon’s case can also be defined as authentic. Thecosmopolitan fusion sound is billed as authentic to Istanbul—in that Istanbul is“authentically” a place of fusion, hybridity, and bridging. While cover images capi-talize on “authentic” and immediately recognizable scenes from Istanbul, the linernotes as well as the music underscore stylistic “fusion,” reproducing Istanbul’sstereotypical portrayal as the meeting place or the bridge between East and West.This “world fusion” corresponds to the ambivalent position Istanbul occupies—thiscity’s spatial and cultural in-betweenness. The “Istanbul” that is produced by thismusic seems to be a cosmopolitan Istanbul, the meeting place of East and West asthe cliché goes.49 Moreover, Doublemoon’s world music is somewhat differentfrom that in the US and Western Europe in the sense that it is much more aboutfusion than authenticity—through the process of this fusion local and traditionalsounds are reinvented and made palatable to a wider urban middle class audience. Ina similar manner, Fatih Akın’s film, Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (inwhich Doublemoon’s artists played major roles) also creates an image of Istanbul asan in-between and cosmopolitan city. This cosmopolitanism and in-betweennessmostly depend on essentialized and ethnicized notions of East and West.

Being neither familiar nor strange, Istanbul stands for in-betweenness in thediscourses of world music, where even cultural and spatial authenticity isconstructed in ambivalent terms, the consequence of the logic of fusion or amalgam-ation that forms the core of musical inauthenticity. The imagery of cultural andspatial symbols of Istanbul, accompanied by discovery of the “sound of Istanbul,”work to promote the city as a brand. The city, in such a discourse, becomes an entityin itself, operating almost independently from the geographical space it occupies incultural and economic terms. Doublemoon perfectly exemplifies the perplexed waysin which Istanbul is constructed and commodified as a place through and within thecontestation and combination of musical inauthenticity with an ambivalent authen-ticity of culture and geography.

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Notes1. An ancient, end-blown flute that is commonly used in Middle Eastern music.2. Sonia T. Seeman, “You are Roman!”: Music and Identity in Turkish Roman Communities, Univer-

sity of California, Los Angeles, Department of Ethnomusicology, Unpublished PhD Dissertation,2002, p. 326.

3. That discussion can hardly be understood without looking at the attempts in the founding years of theTurkish Republic (1923–1940s) to modernize (Westernize) Turkish folk music and to characterizeOttoman classical music as a “backward” form that was considered as not complying with the “civi-lization” that Turkish people deserve. For further information see Bülent Aksoy, “CumhuriyetDönemi Musikisinde Farklıla[SCEDIL] ma Olgusu,” [The Phenomenon of Differentiation in Music of the Otto-man Era] in Gönül Paçacı (ed.), Cumhuriyetin Sesleri [The Sounds of the Republic] (Istanbul: TürkiyeEkonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, 1999), pp. 30–35; Bülent Aksoy, “Tanzimat’tanCumhuriyet’e Musiki ve Batılıla[SCEDIL] ma,” [Music and Westernization from Tanzimat to the Republic] inTanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi [Turkish Encyclopedia from Tanizmat to theRepublic] (Istanbul: [IDOT ] leti[SCEDIL] im Yayınları, 1986), pp. 1212–1236; Koray De[GBREVE] irmenci, “On the Pursuit ofa Nation: The Construction of Folk and Folk Music in the Founding Decades of the Turkish Repub-lic,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2006), pp. 47–65;and Orhan Tekelio[GBREVE] lu, “Modernizing Reforms and Turkish Music in the 1930s,” Turkish Studies,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2001), pp. 93–109. For a recent history of Turkish popular music see Feza Tansu[GBREVE] ,Turkish Popular Music: The Political Economy of Change, The University of Maryland, Departmentof Music, unpublished PhD Dissertation, 1999 and Martin Stokes, The Arabesk Debate: Music andMusicians in Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

4. Personal interview with the author, Istanbul, December 3, 2007.5. Babylon was founded by Pozitif Music Production, which also owns the Doublemoon record label. It

was twice voted among the best 100 jazz clubs of the world (2002 and 2004) by the music magazineDown Beat.

6. John Friedmann, “The World City Hypothesis,” Development and Change, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1986),pp. 69–83; Saskia Sassen, The Global City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).

7. Ça[GBREVE] lar Keyder, “The Setting,” in Ça[GBREVE] lar Keyder (ed.), Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), pp. 3–28; Ça[GBREVE] lar Keyder and Ay[SCEDIL] e Öncü, Istanbuland the Concept of World Cities (Istanbul: Freidrich Ebert Foundation, 1997).

8. Sassen, The Global City.9. Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift, “Cultural-economy and Cities,” Progress in Human Geography,

Vol. 31, No. 2 (2007), pp. 143–161, p. 151.10. Sharon Zukin, The Cultures of Cities (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995), p. 1.11. Garcia Canclini, Hybrid cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis, MN:

University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 229.12. David Morley and Kevin Robins, Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries

(London: Routledge, 1995), p. 87.13. Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Kayseri: Polity Press, 1994).14. Victor Roudometof, “Glocalization, Space, and Modernity,” The European Legacy, Vol. 8, No. 1

(2003), pp. 37–60, p. 47.15. In this conception, the author carefully avoids Anthony Smith’s categorical distinction between the

cultural formations of the nation-building process and the cultural constructions of globality. On thebasis of this distinction he believes that global culture is essentially artificial, shapeless, ahistorical,and timeless. What is defined as global here is meaningful only in its ability to construct “localities.”See Anthony Smith, “Towards a Global Culture,” in Mike Featherstone (ed.), Global Culture:Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1990), pp. 171–191. ArjunAppadurai’s definition of the local is central in such a conception. For him, locality is not a fact but aproject that “has always had to be produced, maintained and nurtured deliberately.” See Arjun Appa-durai, “Globalization and the Research Imagination,” International Social Science Journal, Vol. 51,No. 2 (1999), pp. 229–38, p. 231.

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16. Adam Krims, Music and Urban Geography (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), p. 54.17. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

(London and New York: Verso, 1991).18. Martin Stokes, “Sounding Out: The Culture Industries and the Globalization of Istanbul,” in Ça[GBREVE] lar

Keyder (ed.), Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,1999), pp. 121–142.

19. John Connel and Chris Gibson, “World Music: Deterritorializing Place and Identity,” Progress inHuman Geography, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2004), pp. 342–61, p. 344.

20. This point can be observed best by looking at compilations. To give an example from the Bar de Lunerecord label dedicated to releasing compilation albums such as Destination: Cape Town (2007), Desti-nation: Tokyo (2007), Destination: Havana (2006), Destination: Istanbul (2006), and so on. Some ofPutumayo’s releases, such as the Odyssey series, emphasize the theme of travel in the liner notes andthrough the pieces that were compiled in the series. For a detailed discussion on this issue see JohnConnel and Chris Gibson, “Vicarious Journeys: Travels in Music,” Tourism Geographies, Vol. 6, No.1 (2004), pp. 2–25. Moreover, some authors conceptualize world music by primarily using notionssuch as “aural tourism” [Tony Mitchell, Popular Music and Local Identity (London and New York:Leicester University Press, 1996)] or “commercial aural travel-consumption” [John Hutnyk, Critiqueof Exotica: Music, Politics and Culture Industry (London: Pluto Press, 2000)].

21. Timothy Taylor, Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (New York and London: Routledge,1997), p. 26.

22. Claire Dwyer and Philip Crang, “Fashioning Ethnicities: The Commercial Spaces of Multiculture,”Ethnicities, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2002), pp. 410–30, p. 412.

23. Connell and Gibson, “World Music: Deterritorializing Place and Identity,” p. 342.24. Steven Feld, “A Sweet Lullaby for World Music,” Public Culture, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2000),

pp. 145–171, p. 147.25. Mark Slobin, Subcultural Sounds, Micromusics of the West (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press,

1993), p. 4.26. Mitchell, Popular Music and Local Identity, p. 53.27. Taylor, Global Pop: World Music, World Markets.28. P. G. Toner and Stephen A. Wild, “Introduction-World Music: Politics, Production and Pedagogy,”

Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2004), pp. 95–112, p. 98.29. Feld, “A Sweet Lullaby for World Music.”30. For a good example, see Reebe Garofalo, “Whose World, What Beat: The Transnational Music

Industry, Identity and Cultural Imperialism,” The World of Music, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1993), pp. 16–32.31. Mitchell, Popular Music and Local Identity, p. 51.32. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN:

University of Minnesota Press, 1996).33. Veit Erlmann, “Africa Civilized, Africa Uncivilized: Local Culture, World System and South

African Music,” Journal of South African Studies, Vol. 20, No. 7 (1994), pp. 165–179, p. 166;Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press, 1991). See also Veit Erlmann, “The Politics and Aesthetics of TransnationalMusics,” The World of Music, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1993), pp. 3–15.

34. Veit Erlmann, “The Aesthetics of the Global Imagination: Reflections on World Music in the1990s,” Public Culture, Vol. 8 (1996), pp. 467–487, p. 473.

35. Slobin, Subcultural Sounds, Micromusics of the West.36. Jocelyne Guilbault, “Interpreting World Music: A Challenge in Theory and Practice,” Popular

Music, Vol. 16 (1997), pp. 31–44.37. Feld, “A Sweet Lullaby for World Music,” p. 154.38. Mitchell, Popular Music and Local Identity.39. Veit Erlmann, Music Modernity and Global Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),

p. 473.40. Ibid.

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41. Simon Frith and Timothy Taylor illustrate aptly how these marketing discourses replace each otherin various contexts. For example, Frith shows how “‘the authentic’ worked in retail terms as a rede-scription of the exotic.” See Simon Frith, “The Discourse of World Music,” in Georgia Born andDavid Hesmondhalgh (eds), Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation and Appro-priation in Music (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 305–322, p. 308; Taylor,Global Pop: World Music, World Markets.

42. Here the term “Selling Istanbul” directly refers to Ça[GBREVE] lar Keyder’s very influential article which waspart of the global city discussions in Turkey. The term implies the infrastructural and superstructuralprojects of the government to transform Istanbul into a commodity, thereby gaining the status of aglobal city. See Ça[GBREVE] lar Keyder, “[IDOT ] stanbul’u Nasıl Satmalı?” [How to Sell Istanbul?] [IDOT ] stanbul, Vol. 3(1992), pp. 80–85.

43. http://www.pozitif.info/2004/en/pozitif/pozitif.asp.44. http://www.pozitif.info/2004/en/pozitif/pozitif.asp.45. Taken from the liner notes of the album, “East 2 West: Global Departures from Istanbul/ Flight 001”

(Doublemoon, 2003).46. Personal interview with the author, Istanbul, December 28, 2007.47. Feldman states that even in Ottoman times participating in the ayin (ceremony) of the “whirling

dervishes” (a buzzword that is still used to depict Mevlevis) and visiting the Mevlevi cloisters(mevlevihane) in Istanbul were musts for tourists. See Walter Feldman, “Music in Performance: Whoare the Whirling Dervishes?” in Virginia Danielson (ed.), The Garland Encyclopedia of WorldMusic: The Middle East, Vol. 6 (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 107–111.

48. Personal interview with the author, Istanbul, December 26, 2007.49. Amy Mills describes how Istanbul has historically been defined in terms of cosmopolitanism and

how cosmopolitanism has always been an inseparable part of the city’s identity. She also showsthe contemporary efforts to reconstruct the cosmopolitan identity of the city. See Amy Mills,“Narratives in City Landscapes: Cultural Identity in Istanbul,” The Geographical Review, Vol. 95,No. 3 (2005), pp. 441–462; Amy Mills, “The Place of Locality for Identity in the Nation: Minor-ity Narratives of Cosmopolitan Istanbul,” The International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.40 (2008), pp. 383–401.

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