purchase Robert Johnson "Istanbul Grey"
purchase Ella Fitzgerald "Istanbul ..." (somewhere in this link)
I can lay claim to having swum from Europe
to Asia and vice versa – several times. But that’s only one of the many, many
perks of living in Istanbul. Istanbul is a city that straddles two continents,
and the swim from one continent to the other is less than a mile in most
places. My folks used to tell a story about a dowager who claimed to her
Atlantic ocean-going companion (with her nose in the air), “I have crossed the Atlantic 5 times “, to
which her deck-mate replied, “and I cross from Asia to Europe every day”. She lived in Istanbul.
I grew up with a fortress built in 1452
literally in my back yard – well … across the street from our house (that’s the
castle in the video that accompanies this earlier SMM post). This
disconnect made it kind of hard for me to
relate – or maybe for my classmates to relate to me – when I began high school
in the US: I wasn’t particularly in tune with popular US culture (TV shows,
sports statistics …) partly because TV didn’t come to Turkey until around 1970,
by which time I was 15. My historical time frame was millennia, not the decades
of US history (think: Neolithic, Helenistic ….)
Until 1973, the only way to get from the
European to the Asian half of the city was to swim or to take a boat. Crossing the
straits meant waiting in interminable lines for a car ferry. Today, there are two 6 lane bridges spanning
the Bosphorus and another one under construction. Yes, it can still take hours
to get across the water, but that’s because Istanbul has just about the worst
traffic in the world. On the other hand, Istanbul has been rated
(more than once) as one of the best places for events/action.
Ella and Bing
A
partial list of Istanbul events for March 2015 includes many local talents
whose names would mean little to you as well as others you would know: Hugh
Jackman, Bobby McFarrin, the London Philharmonic, Julio Iglesias – but this
winter-season list doesn’t really predict the general trend. I watched Eric
Clapton and Steve Winwood a few years
back (and that’s merely my choice).
As far back as Ella Fitzgerald and Bing
Crosby, the city was attracting attention
- granted, not likely the kind of attention today’s local media-rati would
prefer, but hey … they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. (Belly
dancers are not Turkish – they are Persian). While, on the one hand, there is a
major disconnect between the cultural perceptions of 21st century Turkish
youth and those of their fathers/mothers, there is also the realization that
local culture is irreplaceable and probably worth preserving – at least in a
bell jar. Something to point to, but not necessarily to aspire to. We’d rather
wear yoga pants than baggy (shalvar)pants.
Turkish popular music, for the most part
(IMHO) is formulaic: pseudo pop tinged with arabesque. That said, there are
rare examples of artists working outside the mainstream and creating melanges
of East-West synthesis: as on some of Robert Johnsons’s recordings. There is a
definite potential for cultural melange where East and West mix, and that is
the major part of the attraction of Istanbul.
As we said in "our" attempt to win the 2000
Olympics bid: “Let’s meet where the continents meet.”