Rewind- Konya

From Izmir, I happily took the slow train, not the bus, for 15 good hours through the dry Turkish countryside. I arrived in Ankara, thinking I’d be able to take another train to Konya- that wasn’t the case. After 2 uneventful- but of course food filled- days and nights in Ankara, I hopped a coach at the ultra modern bus station en route to Konya, just 6 hours or so.

Immediately upon arriving in Konya, I liked the feel. I think because it was night, it was calm, and the brightly lit tomb of Mevlana, or Rumi, was shining in the night as I traversed through the town and made my way through a peaceful graveyard. Konya is a conservative town, and I saw some interesting sights outside of the camii adjacent to the Rumi tomb. One evening during service, the crowd was so big that they filed in rows outside of the mosque. There was at least a thousand people on the grounds of the mosque, all facing towards the entrance as the Imam proceeded through the service. A powerful and sublime sight. At other times the camii was a nexus of activity, usually in the dusk hours and after evening prayers. As it was leading up to the Eid holiday when I was there, people were apt to be concentrating on the religious proceedings there.

I didn’t find the musical depth I had expected in Konya. It seems the music of the Sufi is still a source of pride, but it wasn’t widespread as I thought it’d be. I found a CD shop, but was hard pressed to find any instrument shops, even after many questions and trips out. One time I did stumble upon a small shop with a man making neys, the all important and expressive musical voice of Sufi music. A really lucky find, and I watched him whittle away and fit pieces on the flutes for a few minutes. I should have shot a video of him, but oh well, it didn‘t occur to me in that moment. As I was leaving, I asked him where I could find a kabak kemane, kemence, or rabab. He shrugged his shoulders.

But the next day, I ran into the right person- after finishing my breakfast lentil soup at a small restaurant, I asked the owner where I might find a particular address I had been told about. It was, however, another customer that dropped what he was doing to walk me to that store. It was over a mile away, and we passed his camera store on the way, where he was to be at work that day. When we arrived, he explained to the man working there my intention to find a kabak kemane. I thanked him profusely- it was an extremely generous act.

At that shop I met Mustafa, the worker there. He showed me the kabak kemanes that they had, but they weren’t made well and didn’t work properly, the strings not having enough action to produce notes. So we looked at baglamas, which they had dozens of, and he explained the differences in the types of wood, emphasizing-as had a man in a shop in Istanbul- the importance of dut wood in the body of the instrument for a better sound. Dut, I found out, is apparently a very dense hardwood found in the region. I played a little, and so did another helper in the store. It was interesting that he picked a song in 5/4 to play right off the bat. It reinforced to me the command that many Turkish people have of different rhythms, ones often foreign or hard to grasp to western ears.

After we had finished looking at instruments, Mustafa asked where I was going after Konya. I told him Cappadocia, then the black sea coast, and parts of eastern Turkey, where I didn’t know exactly yet. He took the next hour to tell me of different towns I should go to, and he looked every one up on the computer to show me pictures of the towns and the highlights that I should go for. It was fun hanging out there, as well as being educational, and it was all made possible by the nice man who didn’t ignore my helplessness and took an extraordinary amount of time to show me to that store.
So the next day I was ready to leave, but I left Konya with good experiences in mind.