The Grooves of the Bağlama

A large collection of bağlamas lined one wall of the living room of Derya Takkali’s apartment on a quiet, leafy side street in Berlin’s Schöneberg neighbourhood. Around twenty bağlamas of different sizes hung from hooks on the wall. They ranged from simple, well-worn student models to professional-quality instruments with mother-of-pearl ornamenting the fingerboards. Takkali described to me the unique qualities of some of these instruments, which he had started collecting while a young student in the 1980s. He pointed to one very simple and unassuming bağlama. It had deep grooves on the soundboard, the kind of damage that might be caused from the repetitive striking of a plectrum against the wood over many years. Smiling as he took the instrument down from the wall and showed me the grooves, Takkali told me this was the very first bağlama he had ever played as a child. His father had bought it for him as they were returning to Germany from a summer holiday in Turkey. Takkali had been so captivated by the bağlama during his stay in Turkey that he insisted his father buy him one before they returned. Just before reaching the Turkish border with Bulgaria on their way back to Germany by car, Takkali’s father stopped at a small instrument shop and bought the bağlama which now hung on his living room wall. Takkali said he quickly became obsessed with this bağlama. He developed the deep grooves in the soundboard by practising every day for long periods of time to improve his technique and reach his goal of becoming a professional musician (pers. comm., 14 June Reference Takkali2011, Berlin).

The grooves on Derya Takkali’s bağlama are not unusual among the thousands of musicians in Berlin who perform, teach, and learn this Anatolian instrument. Throughout Berlin’s Alevi, Kurdish, and Turkish diasporas, the bağlama inspires a deep passion among young students and musicians. On any day in Berlin neighbourhoods such as Kreuzberg or Neukölln, young people can be seen carrying their bağlamas through the crowded sidewalks or the subway, making their way to lessons at music schools like the Konservatorium für türkische Musik Berlin (Berlin Conservatory for Turkish Music) or the Deutsch-Türkische Musikakademie (German–Turkish Music Academy). Throughout the city, posters advertising concerts of bağlama players from Turkey are pasted to countless walls and bulletin boards next to humbler flyers advertising student recitals and bağlama teachers in search of new students.

The popularity of the bağlama in Berlin is due in part to its central role in the formation of collective identities in both Turkey and its diasporas. Martin Stokes has argued that the bağlama in Turkey “has come to represent the very soul (gönül) of the musician; it is held to weep, to sob, to lament” (Reference Stokes1992:70). This evocative description concisely emphasises that the bağlama represents both the individuality of the musician playing it and the collective identity that can be established through the sharing of musical affect. Eliot Bates has also drawn attention to the significance of the bağlama in shaping collective and national identities in Turkey. Describing competing claims about the bağlama’s origins in either Central Asia or Mesopotamia, Bates argues that what is revealing about the debate is that the bağlama “is described in terms that would typically be used to historicize an entire nation—it has a history and a prehistory, a stake to a territorial claim, and a social identity” (Reference Bates2012:377). Bates also highlights the significant role of bağlama pedagogy in Turkey, both in the dissemination of a national music culture in the early decades of the Turkish Republic as well as in contemporary efforts to define and shape a Turkish body politic. Bağlama pedagogy in Turkey, Bates provocatively argues, “continues to transform the bodies and sensoriums of much of the country’s population, perhaps to an even greater extent than compulsory military service and other rituals of the state” (ibid:387).

The signification of the bağlama in both Turkey and its diasporas is complex and multifaceted. Before the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the bağlama and related instruments were associated with a variety of regional and religious repertories. Since at least the fifteenth century, for example, the bağlama has been the primary instrument of musicians known as aşık or ozan, who compose epic songs on a wide variety of themes including love, struggle, and political injustice (Reinhard Reference Reinhard1989:12). In the first decades of the Turkish Republic, musicians and government officials in the newly formed national broadcasting system sought to transform the bağlama from a regional instrument into the standard bearer for a new form of national folk music referred to as Türk halk müziği, or “Turkish folk music” (Stokes Reference Stokes1992:40). Variations in the construction and tuning of the bağlama were standardised and regional differences in performing techniques were codified into a system of tavır, or regional styles. The tavır system not only distilled a diverse set of local practices into rules and guidelines for a handful of regional styles. Its aim was also to make these regional styles newly accessible to students and teachers on a nation-wide level (ibid:76).

The standardisation and nationalisation of the bağlama over the course of the twentieth century, as well as its near ubiquity in recordings and broadcasts of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, has invested it with a variety of independent, often contradictory meanings. On the one hand, the bağlama has become the central instrument and standard bearer of Türk halk müziği, a music repertory whose development is closely linked with the secularising and nationalising forces of the early Turkish Republic. On the other hand, the bağlama has continued to play an important role among Alevi, Kurdish, and Turkish musicians as a symbol of resistance to nationalist ideologies and as a means for asserting the political rights of cultural, ethnic, and religious minorities in both Turkey and its diasporas.

Of central importance in the bağlama’s signification as a symbol of opposition is the centrality of the bağlama for Alevi communities in both Turkey and the diaspora. For Alevis the bağlama is a central component of religious ritual and is considered to be a sacred instrument described as a telli Kuran, or “Quran with strings” (Sökefeld Reference Sökefeld2008:78). Alevi musicians such as Arif Sağ and Musa Eroğlu, both of whom have performed often in Berlin, have popularised the bağlama as a symbol both of Alevi identity and of resistance to nationalist ideologies. Drawing on the example of the sixteenth century Alevi poet and revolutionary Pir Sultan Abdal, who is invariably depicted hoisting a bağlama over his head, Alevi musicians have carried on a long tradition of investing the bağlama and its music with the force of both sacred resonance and political resistance.

Learning the Bağlama in Berlin

Opportunities for learning the bağlama in Berlin are as varied as the many meanings that it possesses for its players. These opportunities range from learning a few songs on the bağlama from a family member or friend to taking a full-time course of study at a large private music school such as the Berlin Conservatory for Turkish Music. The bağlama is taught at several of Berlin’s public music schools, as well as dozens of private music schools throughout the city. It is taught at a type of private association, known in German as Verein and in Turkish as dernek, which are formed for mutual aid and sociability and are often affiliated with specific ethnic, regional, or religious identities. It is taught by one family member to another, or from one friend to another during the informal social and musical gatherings known as muhabbet, where individuals gather together to enjoy conversation, music, and the pleasures of listening (Gill Reference Gill2018:171). And finally, the bağlama is an instrument that many musicians have taught themselves to play, through devotedly listening to and imitating recordings and other musicians.

The development and institutionalisation of bağlama education in Berlin can be broadly divided into three phases: the introduction of bağlama classes at publicly funded Volkshochschulen (community schools) and Musikschulen (music schools) in the late 1970s through the 1980s; the establishment of private music schools offering a wider range of more specialised instruction in the 1990s; and since the early 2000s, a period of diversification and expansion in which music educators have attempted to situate the bağlama within a broader context of Weltmusik (world music) education in Berlin. This latter phase has corresponded with efforts to expand interest in learning and appreciating the bağlama beyond diasporic communities, and to situate the bağlama as an integral aspect of the musical diversity and cosmopolitan identity of contemporary Berlin.

The first bağlama courses in Berlin were offered in Volkshochschulen in the late 1970s, during a period in which the demographics of the Turkish immigrant population in Berlin were rapidly changing (Greve Reference Greve2003:43). While the period of temporary labour recruitment from Turkey ended in 1973, family reunification policies were subsequently enacted in order to allow former Gastarbeiter (guestworkers) the opportunity to invite family members to Germany to establish more permanent residence. Turkish citizens living in Germany could invite spouses and children from Turkey, and although they were still excluded from a path to German citizenship, they could begin to raise their families within the educational and social structures of the West German state. The first generation of Turkish citizens born in Germany started to attend local primary schools. Musicians, social workers, and families began to recognise a growing demand for bağlama courses.

Contemporaneous ethnographic accounts of the first bağlama courses offered at Volkshochschulen in Berlin emphasise that demand for the courses far outweighed the number of available teachers and classes (Baumann Reference Baumann1985; Minden Reference Minden and Baumann1985). Mary Ruhnke and Ulrich Wegner (Reference Ruhnke, Wegner and Baumann1985) described a bağlama course taught in 1976/1977 at the Volkshochschule in Neukölln, a West Berlin district that included a high proportion of immigrants from Turkey. In this course, the teacher divided a single class of almost forty students into two groups of different skill levels, switching back and forth between the two groups during the class session. Comparing this class with others offered in Berlin at the time, Ruhnke and Wegner noted the prevalence of learning songs by repeating phrases performed by the teacher, a pedagogical model that is typical of a dershane in Turkey, a common type of private music school (Stokes Reference Stokes1992:6). They also noted the prevalence of large classes of mixed skill levels, ages, and gender; and an emphasis on learning by ear and memory with the help of solmisation syllables but minimal reference to notation.

The backgrounds of the bağlama teachers in the Volkshochschulen in the 1970s and early 1980s were not necessarily those of professional musicians with a formal training in music pedagogy, but more frequently those of amateur musicians who had acquired enough skill to be able to teach basic techniques and several türkü, or folk songs, that were in most demand among students.Footnote ⁶ The motivations for offering these classes also went beyond simply providing people with an opportunity to improve their musical skills. Not only did the group classes provide an opportunity for young men and women to socialise in an acceptable setting but they also provided social workers at youth centres with a tool for developing the self-confidence of young immigrants from Turkey.

Around the same time that musicians began to offer bağlama courses in Berlin’s public music schools, ethnomusicologists in Germany also began to draw their attention to the music of diaspora communities from Turkey and advocated for the incorporation of Turkish music into Berlin’s educational institutions. Kurt and Ursula Reinhard, based at the Free University of Berlin, had been studying the musical cultures of Turkey since the 1950s and were instrumental in establishing the Free University as a hub for the ethnomusicological study of Anatolian music traditions.Footnote ⁷ In the 1970s, Ursula Reinhard in particular turned her attention to studying the music of Turkish immigrants in Berlin, exploring continuities and transformations in the practices of Anatolian music performance and transmission in the diaspora. At a time when Turkish musical culture in the diaspora was often represented as less authentic or less valuable than its counterpart in Turkey, Reinhard emphasised the creativity of diasporic musicians in bringing together previously separate regional styles, genres, and instruments in a new urban context (1987). In addition to her work as an ethnomusicologist, Reinhard also played an important role in providing support to Turkish musicians in Berlin, connecting musicians with performance opportunities at German musical institutions, training musicians in recording techniques, and advocating for greater public support of Turkish music education in Berlin.

In the early 1980s, ethnomusicologists in Berlin were also drawing attention to the important role of music education in providing younger generations in Berlin’s Turkish diaspora a sense of cultural, linguistic, and musical connection to Turkey. Max Peter Baumann led a team of researchers exploring various facets of Turkish musical life in Germany, from the development of the Türkischer Arbeiterchor (Turkish Workers’ Choir), a choir led by the violinist and composer Tahsin İncirci, to the introduction of bağlama classes at public music schools in Berlin. Many of the contributions to Baumann’s edited volume Musik der Türken in Deutschland (Reference Baumann1985) point to the development of a vibrant Turkish music scene in several urban centres of Germany, but indicate that there was still relatively little interaction with audiences outside of the Turkish community or collaborations with musicians from other music scenes and traditions. Dorit Klebe, an ethnomusicologist and music pedagogue, sought to bridge this gap by spearheading an effort to train public music school teachers in Germany in the basic principles, instruments, and genres of Turkish music. In 1983, Klebe published the first manual on Turkish music aimed at public music school teachers, an important step in broadening the scope and audience of Turkish music education in Germany, with the goal of enabling these teachers to incorporate Turkish songs and musical techniques into their instruction (Klebe Reference Klebe, Clausen, Hemetek and Sæther2009:303).

Hasan Kuzu: “Nothing happened without music”

Hasan Kuzu was one of the first musicians to offer bağlama courses at a youth centre in Berlin in the early 1980s. Like many of his counterparts, Kuzu was neither a professional musician nor someone trained as a teacher when he began offering group classes. Rather, it was his role as a social worker that motivated him to learn bağlama well enough to be able to offer group classes to the young immigrants with whom he worked.Footnote ⁸

Kuzu grew up in a Kurdish Alevi village near Malatya before emigrating to Berlin in 1971 at the age of eleven. The bağlama was “the only instrument in the village,” Kuzu explained to me in an interview, and it was central to his cultural heritage as an Alevi. In his village, Kuzu had learned to play a few songs by ear from a few of the older musicians, and he had listened to dedeler, Alevi spiritual leaders, playing bağlama at the religious ceremony known as cem. When he moved to Berlin, he brought a bağlama with him, but he did not know how to read musical notation. He also did not know how to tune the instrument, though he had a general idea of how the strings should sound. Eventually he noticed a German man in his apartment building who frequently carried around a guitar. Kuzu asked him to help tune his bağlama. Although neither of them knew the exact tuning, they worked on it together and eventually came upon the tuning that Kuzu remembered as the right one.

During Kuzu’s first years in Berlin, it was hard for him to find someone to teach him more about the bağlama. He taught himself slowly. By the late 1970s he had developed his skills well enough to perform as a singer at demonstrations protesting the political conditions in Turkey leading up to and following the 1980 military coup. Influenced by American protest singers such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, as well as reggae singers such as Bob Marley, Kuzu became very active as a musician in the protest scene where, he argued, “nothing happened without music.” At the same time, he followed what was going on in German popular music by playing the jukeboxes in local Kneipen, or corner bars, developing a special interest in “old Volkslieder (folk songs) about Berlin.”

Learning the bağlama offered Kuzu an anchor that helped him to navigate the experiences of moving to Berlin at an early age. “Berlin was my first big city,” he said, and “my generation, the second generation…we wanted to find something to hold on to.” When Hasan began a career as a Sozialarbeiter (social worker) in 1980, he was not surprised that many of the young immigrants he mentored had a strong desire to learn bağlama. He began offering group lessons at the Jugendfreizeitzentrum (youth recreational centre) where he was working, teaching as many as thirty students at a time. Kuzu pointed out that several of the bağlama players in his first few years of teaching have gone on to establish their own careers as bağlama performers and educators in Berlin.

Kuzu no longer performs on stage or teaches formally, but music continues to play an important role in his social work as a Familienhelfer (family aide). Kuzu works in tandem with schools to counsel Turkish German students and their families on resolving educational and social problems. He often encourages students to start learning bağlama and he sends them to bağlama courses offered by some of the musicians that he himself has taught. He frequently sees improvement among the students he counsels after they start music lessons, where they can make new friendships and develop what he calls their “soziale Kompetenz” (social competence). He described the bağlama as a tool for positive transformation among the students that he has mentored. “If you make music your own,” he argued, “you won’t become a bad person,” highlighting his view of bağlama education as encompassing both moral and musical dimensions.

Haydar Kutluer: “Traditional music is who we are”

One of Hasan Kuzu’s students in the early 1980s was a young bağlama player named Haydar Kutluer. In the years since participating in Kuzu’s bağlama classes, Kutluer has gone on to a successful career as a musician and teacher in Berlin. In 2005, Kutluer joined together with Kuzu and Nevzat Akpınar, a composer and bağlama player, to open a private music school for bağlama. Bağlama Müzik, located in a working-class, multiethnic neighbourhood in the district of Wedding, operated until 2011, when Kutluer decided to focus more energies on his own career as a performer and recording artist.Footnote ⁹

Kutluer’s experiences first as a student in the 1980s and then as a teacher in the 2000s highlight some of the transformations that have occurred in the opportunities for learning bağlama in Berlin. When Kutluer moved to Berlin from Ankara with his family in 1978 at the age of five, the opportunities for learning bağlama were limited. He and his friends looked for any opportunity they could find to learn bağlama, creatively drawing inspiration and instruction from a variety of sources. Kutluer’s first outlet for learning bağlama was his family, where the bağlama held a special importance as a central aspect of their Alevi faith: “Among my family it’s a tradition. My grandfather played bağlama, my father plays bağlama, my uncle plays bağlama. Bağlama was always around in our house.”

Kutluer started learning bağlama from his family at the age of nine. Not long afterwards he started attending Hasan Kuzu’s group classes. He described the classes as a difficult environment in which to learn bağlama, with as many as thirty people learning at the same time, ranging in age from six to sixty and of vastly different skill levels. He was committed to improving, however, and made frequent trips from his home in Spandau, on the western edge of West Berlin, to Kreuzberg on the eastern edge, to meet with other young musicians, attend concerts, and practise bağlama. “I grew up in Kreuzberg, but I slept in Spandau,” he told me as we talked about his early experiences growing up in Berlin.

He supplemented his group classes by listening to music recordings and video cassettes of concerts which his family members in Turkey and Germany sent to him by mail. “My whole extended family knew that I was enthusiastic,” he said, “and they sent me video cassettes from everywhere.” Kutluer immersed himself especially in the recordings of Arif Sağ, a bağlama performer who came to prominence in Turkey in the 1980s. Sağ was particularly influential in popularising the bağlama tuning, techniques, and repertory of the eastern Anatolian aşık tradition, linking this tradition with an oppositional politics rooted in Alevi identity (Markoff Reference Markoff, Danielson, Marcus and Reynolds2001; Stokes Reference Stokes1992:79). Kutluer described himself as “belonging to the lucky generation when Arif Sağ was in his prime.”

Kutluer first performed publicly at a family wedding when he was thirteen. While a teenager, he continued to develop his musical skills by performing at weddings of family members and friends. Usually playing for free, he viewed the opportunity to perform at weddings as a chance to improve his skills as a musician and as a performer. “When someone plays a dance tune,” he said, “you can immediately tell if that person has never played at weddings. It sounds different than someone who comes from that scene. They play dance tunes with more passion and with more emphasis.”

After several years of playing informally at weddings, Kutluer formed a group that started performing in türkü bars around Berlin, a type of entertainment venue where musicians perform popular folk songs and dance tunes and are expected to perform requests from the audience. This was Kutluer’s first experience earning income as a musician. His group would play from the time the bar opened around ten in the evening to the time it closed at one or two in the morning, splitting the proceeds of the modest cover charge. Kutluer described his initial experiences playing in bars favourably, describing an attentive public who sang along to the songs and treated the musicians with respect. After several years of performing regularly in türkü bars, however, he decided he would no longer do so. Kutluer felt the public had changed to a younger audience less interested in the contemplative types of songs he favoured and more interested in dancing than listening to music. “The music that I make no longer had that many fans in the türkü bars. At half past nine I would start my program and at ten the audience already wanted to hear dance songs. At some point that just didn’t work anymore.”

A significant turning point for Kutluer was his decision to begin learning Turkish music theory intensively in the late 1990s. Kutluer was twenty-five and had already established himself as a bağlama performer when Nuri Karademirli, a virtuoso oud (or ‘ud, plucked lute) and bağlama player, opened the Berlin Conservatory for Turkish Music in 1998. Kutluer spent three years taking intensive theory lessons with Karademirli, supplementing his knowledge of the folk music tradition by learning makam and usul, the melodic and rhythmic foundations of Ottoman and Turkish classical music. “Karademirli was one of my most important teachers. Because he taught me Türk sanat müziği (Turkish art music), I could gain an insight into the modal system of makam.” The knowledge of makam that Kutluer gained from his studies with Karademirli broadened his understanding of Turkish music and gave him the theoretical foundation in music theory that he needed to begin teaching bağlama on his own.

In 2005, Kutluer joined together with two of his former teachers, Hasan Kuzu and Nevzat Akpınar, to open the music school Bağlama Müzik. When I visited Bağlama Müzik in 2010, it was located in the back courtyard of an office complex in the working-class neighbourhood of Wedding. The school’s location near Leopoldplatz, a busy main square and commercial hub for the neighbourhood, as well as the location of several Turkish grocery stores and restaurants, gave it an advantage in recruiting students in its early years. At the time of my visit Bağlama Müzik had about forty students, evenly divided between genders with most students between the ages of ten and thirty. Bağlama Müzik differentiated itself from other private music schools in Berlin offering Turkish music by positioning itself as the only school to focus specifically on the bağlama. Kutluer offered both individual and group lessons, as well as an ensemble for bağlama players and vocalists.

Kutluer viewed his role at Bağlama Müzik as more than simply instructing people in bağlama performance. When I first visited him at the school, he pointed to the bağlama hanging on the wall of his office. He described it in German as a Strohhalm (straw) for transmitting the Turkish language to younger generations and for introducing young people in Berlin to the music and culture of Anatolia. “Through the bağlama, my child will learn the culture,” he told me, referring to his own young daughter who had started taking lessons. Kutluer described the bağlama as an embodiment of a culture that can be transmitted through music, and the medium by which young Turkish Germans can be opened up to what he described as “ihre eigene Kultur” (their own culture). For Kutluer, “culture” represented a body of expressive forms and practices, including musical texts and song repertories, that are inherited from one’s family and ancestors. Culture, as Kutluer described it, is discovered through the process of learning these expressive forms, including playing the bağlama.

Kutluer’s students, he admitted, listened to a wide range of popular musics and he did not expect his students to listen exclusively to Anatolian folk music. He did expect that the process of learning bağlama and engaging with the texts of traditional songs could transform the self-perceptions of his students and broaden their horizons beyond the limits of Berlin. He emphasised that his aim was not simply to teach music, but to “convey to the students what art is.” He taught bağlama with the goal that his students not simply learn an instrument, but a philosophy of music: “In Germany we learn certain values but only the most necessary ones from our culture,” he argued. “Through traditional music I was able to rediscover my own culture. I was able to rediscover it for myself. That’s why traditional music is very, very important for me. It has shaped my entire way of doing things…It shapes our entire way of life. Because of that traditional music is who we are.”

Kutluer’s experiences first as a student and then as a teacher highlight the significance of personal networks in the institutionalisation of bağlama pedagogy in Berlin. As one of Hasan Kuzu’s first students in the early 1980s, Kutluer established a personal connection with Kuzu that eventually led to their founding of Bağlama Müzik together in 2005. Several musicians in Berlin’s tightly knit community of bağlama musicians maintain close links with their former teachers and emphasise the important role of their teachers in their musical and professional development. Students who have gone on to active musical careers frequently perform together at concerts with their former teachers, or become teachers themselves at the same music schools where they were once students. These personal networks are both musically and professionally significant, since established teachers can help their former students find employment as teachers and performers. Since the closing of Bağlama Müzik in 2011, for example, Kutluer has been hired by another of his former teachers, Nuri Karademirli, to teach bağlama and direct the Türk halk müziği korosu (Turkish folk music choir) at the Berlin Conservatory for Turkish Music.

Kutluer’s experiences also highlight the changing opportunities for learning the bağlama in Berlin and the increasing institutionalisation and professionalisation of Turkish music education in the 1990s and 2000s. As a member of the second generation of Turkish Germans growing up in Berlin in the late 1970s, Haydar could take advantage of the bağlama courses that began to be offered during that time at community schools and youth centres. His desire to become a professional musician, however, necessitated that he seek out other and more varied opportunities for learning bağlama. He described this process as a difficult one:

When Kutluer compared his own experiences to that of students in Berlin today, he emphasised the greater ease with which students can now find ways to improve their musical skills. Kutluer himself has been instrumental in expanding these opportunities available to younger bağlama students in Berlin.

Nuri Karademirli: “They’ll become more feelingful”

The 1990s were a period of dramatic political, economic, and cultural transformations in Berlin. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of East and West Berlin in 1990 had profound effects not only on the city as a whole but also on immigrants from Turkey and their descendants. Many of these immigrants had settled in neighbourhoods directly adjacent to the Wall, such as Kreuzberg, which had become the commercial and cultural heart of Turkish Berlin. With the fall of the Wall, Kreuzberg shed its formerly peripheral status and regained its centrality in the geography of the reunited city. Amid these political transformations, the status of Germany as an Einwanderungsland (immigration country), a characterisation strongly rejected by politicians such as reunification-era Chancellor Helmut Kohl, also became a new-found focus of attention. Xenophobic violence against immigrants and asylum seekers in Germany increased in the early 1990s, forcing politicians to confront the precarious situation of immigrants and begin to address their demands for greater political rights and access to German citizenship. In the absence of effective political change before the reform of German citizenship laws in 2000, a broad array of cultural and musical institutions were founded in the 1990s to address the marginalisation of immigrant communities (Vertovec Reference Vertovec1996).

The urban transformations following the fall of the Wall also initiated a period of institutionalisation and expansion of bağlama pedagogy and Turkish music education in Berlin. In the late 1990s, several musicians who had spent years teaching privately took advantage of the favourable conditions for acquiring property and opened the first large-scale music schools for bağlama and Turkish music in Berlin. The most ambitious of these musicians was the bağlama and oud virtuoso Nuri Karademirli. Before his untimely death in 2013, Karademirli had performed and taught bağlama and oud in Berlin since the 1970s. In 1998, Karademirli and his wife Halime founded the Berlin Conservatory for Turkish Music, known in Turkish as the Berlin Türk Musikisi Konservatuarı (BTMK). Today the BTMK is the largest private music school offering both Turkish and European music instruction in Berlin. Students entering the BTMK can choose between a European music division offering piano, guitar, and violin; and a Turkish music division offering instruction in bağlama, oud, kanun (zither), and voice, among others. In addition to individual lessons, students can participate in a weekly theory class as well as one of the school’s two ensembles: the Türk halk müziği korosu (Turkish folk music choir) and the Türk sanat müziği korosu (Turkish art music choir). Students are predominantly of Turkish descent and instruction is primarily in Turkish, with the aim of improving the Turkish language skills of the younger students. The BTMK also includes a luthier workshop for the production of bağlamas and ouds, with an apprentice programme for students interested in careers as luthiers.

“I’m very proud of what I do,” Karademirli told me as we sat in the small office where he taught lessons:

Karademirli not only argued for the inherent significance of teaching Turkish music to young students in Berlin. He also argued that it has something to give to students that “harmonic music”—namely, European classical music—cannot offer. Karademirli invested the practice of learning Turkish music with both an affective dimension (to “become more feelingful”) and a moral dimension (to “become more humane”). Both of these dimensions arose from the same source, he argued, an underlying conception that monophonic music is “more imbued with feeling than harmonic music.” When Karademirli argued that by teaching Turkish music to his students he was also teaching them to “become more feelingful,” he highlighted the significant role that music educators can play in transmitting ideas about the practice of musicianship and the role of the musician in society. Through teaching the monophonic practice of Turkish music to young students in Berlin, Karademirli argued, he can help his students not only to become better musicians but also to become better human beings.

When Karademirli opened the BTMK in 1998, it was for him the culmination of decades of involvement in the Turkish music scene of Berlin as a performer, teacher, choir director, and advocate for the music of Turkey. He first came to Berlin in 1969 as a member of the orchestra for a concert performance by Zeki Müren, one of Turkey’s most beloved and well-known singers of the Turkish art music tradition (Stokes Reference Stokes2010). Karademirli felt compelled to stay in Berlin when his mother, who was travelling with him, fell ill during the trip. An electronics engineer by training, Karademirli gave private music lessons and performed in Turkish night clubs to earn money while learning German. He eventually became a salesperson and then retail manager at Kaufhaus des Westens, West Berlin’s famous shopping centre and capitalist showcase.

Karademirli first had the idea of forming a school for Turkish music in the mid-1980s, when more immigrants from Turkey began raising families in Berlin and the demand for private music lessons increased. He recognised the need for an institution that could offer Turkish music instruction at a level that was comparable to the opportunities available at music conservatories in Turkey. Not only was there a new generation of young Turkish Germans growing up in Berlin and beginning to develop as skilled musicians, but there was also a growing interest in the West Berlin city government to create new institutions and educational opportunities for the city’s immigrant communities. In 1981, for example, Berlin became the first federal state in West Germany to establish an Ausländerbeauftragte, or office for immigrant affairs (Vertovec Reference Vertovec1996:388). This was around the same time that publicly funded music schools in Berlin began to offer bağlama classes, and bağlama performers such as Adil Arslan and Sıddık Doğan began to receive public grants for compositions and performances.

It was not until 1996, however, after the reunification of Berlin had led to a dramatic altering of the political and cultural landscape, that Karademirli was able to find a suitable location for the school in the courtyard of an apartment building in Kreuzberg. After two years of renovation, Karademirli opened the BTMK in 1998 with the goal of being accredited as a Hochschule, an official German institution for post-secondary education. Karademirli’s aim was to be able to award diplomas that would be officially recognised both in Germany and in Turkey. Karademirli believed that students studying Turkish music in Germany should have the same official recognition as students studying European music, who were able to receive diplomas officially recognised by the state. He also wanted his students to be able to graduate from the BTMK with a diploma that would be recognised by Turkish state music conservatories, allowing his students to pursue more advanced music degrees in Turkey.

Karademirli worked closely with colleagues in Turkey to plan a curriculum that would prepare his students for further study at music conservatories in Turkey. He also recruited recent graduates of Turkish conservatories to join the BTMK teaching faculty. When the BTMK celebrated its opening on 23 September 1998, the ceremony was attended by local politicians as well as Karademirli’s colleagues from Turkey. Despite this showing of support, however, Karademirli was not able to gain official accreditation for the BTMK as a Hochschule. Nor was he able, despite the involvement of his colleagues from Turkey, to establish an official relationship with state music conservatories in Turkey.

When the school opened, Karademirli argued, some people outside of the Turkish community in Berlin either ignored it or questioned its significance, despite the support of many German music educators and ethnomusicologists. Karademirli felt that the BTMK was perceived as an institution whose impact did not extend beyond the Turkish diaspora itself, a perception which he felt he needed to counter. Karademirli’s goal was to transform the BTMK into a significant bridge-building institution in the cultural and musical life of Berlin. With the BTMK, Karademirli hoped to provide an institutional foothold for Turkish music education within the broader musical landscape of Berlin, and to stress the significance of Turkish music not just for immigrants from Turkey but for the city as a whole.

By the time of his death in 2013, Karademirli had developed the BTMK into one of the most important institutions for Turkish music in Berlin. A significant factor in this success was Karademirli’s efforts to bring Turkish music into dialogue with other music scenes in Berlin. Karademirli achieved this through collaborative concerts with other music schools and choirs as well as outreach to non-Turkish musicians and audiences. Karademirli envisioned the BTMK as an institution not just for Turkish communities in Berlin, but for anyone interested in Turkish music and its connections to other musical traditions. Karademirli preferred performing at concerts that included performers from multiple traditions and that attracted a mixed Turkish and German audience, introducing Turkish music to audiences previously unfamiliar with it.

Karademirli attributed the growing acceptance of the BTMK since its opening to the school’s commitment to collaborating with other music schools and ensembles throughout Berlin and Germany. He described the BTMK as an institution “that is not just for Turks by Turks, but Turkish international.” As a result, the BTMK developed a reputation as an institution that could mediate between local Turkish music scenes and established music institutions such as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of the World’s Cultures) and the Berlin Philharmonic. Rather than being viewed as an institution that represents Turkish musical life in Berlin to a Turkish audience, Karademirli instead envisioned the BTMK as an institution that represents the cosmopolitan identity of Berlin as a whole to an international audience that values collaboration and intercultural musical exchange.

Karademirli’s vision for Turkish music education has been an important step in broadening public awareness of the bağlama in Berlin as well as expanding the role of music education in the struggle for greater political and cultural recognition of Turkish diasporic communities. Through forging collaborations with a diverse group of music schools and institutions, Karademirli helped to bring the bağlama and Turkish music into dialogue with other music scenes and to establish Turkish music as a central component in the institutionalised musical landscape of Berlin. Karademirli’s search for recognition, however, has not been fully realised. The BTMK continues to operate privately without having achieved Karademirli’s goal of being accredited as a Hochschule. While the BTMK has been lauded by many politicians in Berlin as an important institution in the musical life of the city, its failure to be recognised as a Hochschule highlights the difficulties facing Turkish music educators in a landscape dominated by music education based on the German classical music tradition.

In the early 2000s, Karademirli and a group of other musicians and pedagogues began to develop the idea for a Global Music Academy in Berlin. Karademirli described the Global Music Academy as an outgrowth of the openness that he cultivated at the BTMK and as an institution that would foster cross-genre musical collaboration and experimentation. Envisioned as an institution bringing together students and performers of Middle Eastern, South Asian, West African, and other global music styles, the Global Music Academy represents an important development in the teaching of bağlama and Turkish music in Berlin. With the Global Music Academy, Karademirli’s goal was to expand the reach of Turkish music education in Berlin beyond the Turkish diaspora. By situating Turkish music education within the larger framework of a global music curriculum, Karademirli hoped not only to place Turkish music into dialogue with other global music styles. He also hoped to encourage musicians outside of the Turkish community to learn Turkish music, and in so doing to bring the bağlama and other instruments of Turkey out of the enclave of “immigrant culture” and into the realm of “Berlin culture.”

The Global Music Academy officially opened its doors in September 2011, with courses in bağlama and other instruments from Turkey offered alongside instruction in a wide range of global music traditions. The development of the Global Music Academy since its opening has drawn attention to a recent and ongoing shift in the politics of multiculturalism in Berlin. There has been a movement away from cultural projects promoting music of one particular ethnic or religious community and towards projects that emphasise interaction and collaboration between multiple communities. The Global Music Academy also highlighted Karademirli’s skill in navigating this multicultural politics to his own advantage. Through his role in helping to develop the Global Music Academy, he moved closer to establishing a model in which Turkish music education can be part of an officially recognised degree programme within the German educational system.