Cem Yıldız - the Modern-Day Aşık

jukebox

Nov 16

Cem Yıldız's story with the Psychedelic Music Explosion series takes us back to Friday, April 29, 2022: yes, to the first edition!

We learned from Daniel Spicer's book reading in April 2022 about Aşıks. Derived from the Turkish word for «one who is in love», Aşık refers to troubadours and bards in the Anatolian culture. For centuries, Aşıks wandered between cities and regions, expressing their feelings, emotions, observations, and social commentary through poetry and music.

Inspired by poets and folk musicians, such as Yunus Emre or Ali Ekber Çiçek, Cem has been fearlessly pushing the boundaries of modern Anatolian music. Graduating from the Musical Conservatory at the Technical University of Istanbul, he oversaw the production of Hü; an album that paved the way for his daring and courageous interpretation and reinvention of Anatolian folk music. Continuing his journey with Orient Expressions and the İstanbul underground band İnsanlar, his idiosyncratic style would earn him his current title: the modern-day Aşık.

An experimental spirit, free improvisation, traditional instrumentation such as the saz, evocative and spiritual lyrics, seemingly never-ending and hypnotizing vocal loops, contemporary electronic beats, and modern production techniques scream for progressive masterpieces. Spiritual lyrics describing feelings of eternity seem to almost become real with Cem's signature touch. This is where he captivates his audiences, transcending his listeners to another realm.

Kime Ne

This piece of art was one of the main inspirations to create the Psychedelic Music Explosion series. Listening to it for 23 minutes, I can almost hear the motives of the Face/Off (1997) movie soundtrack, resemblances from the Prodigy's No Good drum sets, popular Anatolian songs such as Kime Ne or Ötme Bülbül, downtempo techno beats combined with hypnotizing and looping vocals, and the essential saz, that defines the entire song. You can feel the musicians taking a break from the live-impro session only to come back with more energetic, accelerating vocals and saz tunes, persuading listeners to readily embark on an otherworldly journey.

I always felt the saz in combination with techno beats to be transformative. It is no coincidence that within the Alevi-Bektaşi traditions, the Semah (a set of mystical and aesthetic body movements in rhythmic harmony) is performed as part of the meditation and prayer practice. Semah rituals are founded upon the concept of unity with God as part of a natural cycle: people come from God and return to God.

A curious explorer and passionate improviser, Cem often records his songs in one take (Kime Ne, Demedim Mi Part I and II, Âhir Benem, etc.). For the techno aficionados among our guests, there's a Ricardo Villalobos remix version of Kime Ne here and here.

Haydar Haydar

Haydar Haydar, composed by Ali Ekber Çiçek in the 1970s and known to be one of the most complicated pieces written for the bağlama has inspired many a muscian over the past decades.
It takes talent and hard work to learn and master the song on any instrument. The fast pace and the changing irregular rhythms can set the listener into a trance-like ecstatic state. Beyond talent, it takes courage to reinvent the most complicated song ever written for the bağlama for the 21st century: a 17-minute progressive and hypnotic masterpiece and tour de force. The looping vocals in combination with the perfectly played bağlama make the poem all the more powerful as if you could feel the writer's journey to achieve eternal and sacred knowledge.