View Basket Tweet Tweet Good Vibrations OTTOMAN INSTRUMENTS BY CATERINA SCARAMELLI Thanks to the musicologist and luthier Fikret Karakaya, our 21st-century ears can now enjoy the long-lost sounds of early Ottoman music. His quest to revive these authentic sounds has been lengthy and painstaking – not least because he had to reinvent the instruments, then learn to play them. By Caterina Scaramelli. Photographs by Fritz von der Schulenburg Fikret Karakaya on the şehrûd, a deep-voiced lute tuned to one octave below the normal ud Buzzing sounds and a smell of warm glue filter through the grey metal door of the luthier’s workshop and down a narrow Göztepe side street. My nostrils full of wood dust, I follow Faruk Türünz, a scientist of lutherie, from one room to the other as he guides me through the secrets of his craft – the physics of acoustics. The strangely shaped tools of his trade hang in orderly ranks on the walls, standing guard over skeletons of dismembered musical instruments. Five men are absorbed in their delicate work. Fikret Karakaya – kemençe performer, philosopher, encyclopaedist, musicologist, historian and, above all, luthier and organologist – worked here alongside Faruk Bey for nearly a decade before moving to smaller, quieter premises. There, in a studio bursting at the seams with old books, instruments and records, Fikret Bey recounts how he came to realise his dream of playing Ottoman music of the 16th to the 18th centuries on immaculate reconstructions of the original instruments. And a great and arduous enterprise it was, for not only were these instruments constantly changing – falling out of fashion, then regaining popularity – but no original instruments from before the 18th century have survived to the present day. CLASSICAL OTTOMAN MUSIC The Emirğan Ensemble £ 8.50 Add to Basket KEMENCE £ 12.99 Add to Basket UD £ 12.99 Add to Basket BEZMÂRÂ: SAZ VE SÖZ FROM MECMÛA Bezmärä Ensemble £ 11.99 Add to Basket BUY THE ISSUE Issue 43, 2010 Shrines and Sanctuaries £ 10.00 Add to Basket AVAILABLE FROM THE CORNUCOPIA STORE MORE ARTICLES BY CATERINA SCARAMELLI The sound of trance Istanbul Ballads Vibrant Voyages ARCHIVE > ISSUE 43 > GOOD VIBRATIONS Home Archive Bookshop Offers Blog Travel What’s On Marketplace About Subscribe 14 Like Like Share Share Cornucopia Magazine Good Vibrations http://www.cornucopia.net/magazine/articles/good-vibrations/ 1 of 5 07/10/2015 08:40