root salad Fulya Özlem
She tells Elizabeth Kinder of her voyage from Ottoman roots to Britfolk and back again.
heritage, that it’s hard at first to imagine her singing along to Planxty. Or, as she says, that “Jacqui McShee is my singing teacher, though she doesn’t know it.” But her latest album Manidar Bosluk, featuring “songs with music and ghazals rooted in traditional styles, but with a post-modern twist,” marks a return to her Ottoman roots. You heard a track on last issue’s fRoots 70 compilation.
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For Özlem – born and brought up in Istanbul – started learning English at thir- teen, and got into Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell by the time she was sixteen. Then aged eighteen, on entering Bospho- rous University to read philosophy (in English), she went out to buy some new music. “I bought two albums,” she says. “One was called The Music Of Israel and the other The Music Of Ireland. The music of Ire- land, it turned out, “was Pentangle!” This started a spree of shopping for “tape cas- settes” that included all the Pentangle albums, Steeleye Span and Fairport Conven- tion. On hearing Sandy Denny and “becom- ing emotional,” Özlem was moved to start singing English, Scottish and Irish ballads and so discovered Planxty.
Throughout her four years at university, she played fiddle and sang in Irish pubs in Istanbul, where (having studied Turkish clas- sical music on the violin from the age of eight), she picked up the tunes by ear from her friend John who’d opened a place called ‘The Shebeen’.
Having formed a duo with her boyfriend, after graduation the pair trav- elled the world for two years, playing British folk music. After a brief stint in Lon- don, they pitched up in Edinburgh, gigging and busking. Here they became popular and started selling CDs. Further success blos- somed in Galway and Dublin, with appear- ances on RTE.
She says, “I have an affinity for Renais- sance and folk, I like Elizabethan songs and as a soprano I like pure voices that sing like angels. I like how in folk the news from that epoch spread. It’s nobody’s composition and you can make it your own.”
When Ireland got too damp and chilly they decamped to Australia and the Far East, before travelling back to Turkey over- land. Back in Istanbul, Özlem took her mas- ter’s in philosophy and “fell in love with Wittgenstein.” And so went to live for a
ulya Özlem’s crystal-clear soprano voice is so utterly at one with the maqam with which she creates her remarkable take on her rich cultural
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while in Berlin. It was here that she heard an old gramophone recording and “redis- covered maqam.”
This was the music that she’d turned away from aged twelve in favour of Ger- man techno pop and Michael Jackson. And then Slayer, Iron Maiden, Metallica and punk, before finding folk. For by the age of eight, Özlem was travelling with her mother (a music and singing teacher) across Turkey to learn “Turkish classical music. I loved it. Me and my mum belonged to a Turkish clas- sical music association. You enrolled to learn the tradition and prepare for concerts,” she says. “And now I am doing maqam in a way that it’s no longer done.”
She’s inspired by “Early twentieth-cen- tury women who sing like birds, with a play- ful theatrical touch, with elaborate and detailed melismas, each note painted with vibrant colours.” And inspired too by “the way the bands played, heterophonically, the sound created by how each instrument realises the ornaments.”
In Berlin, she says, “I suddenly found I could compose my own maqam. I know Turkish poetry and traditional poetry in other cultures.” In 2014 she recorded cantos (and foxtrots) with a six-piece band and wanted to see how she could “mix my love of ghazals and philosophy and music together. Knowing the ghazal form I decon- struct it to make something new.”
Back in Istanbul (where she’s taking a PhD in the interconnection between ghaz- als and maqam and Ottoman culture) she asked friends, female musicians with whom she’d gigged in Istanbul, to join her. She says that with Asineth Fotini Kokkala
(qanun) and Marina Liontou-Mohament (oud), the making of Manidir Bosluk –The Conspicuous Abyss has “felt very organic”. And the recording, featuring additional strings and traditional percussion, sounds organic too.
ntil recently, when she took a job as a translator, Özlem supported herself writing for newspapers and performing. On playing live, she says, “I like telling stories, I’m influ- enced by philosophy and I make jokes. I talk about the concepts that inspired me and make up stories around them, it’s like a musical stand-up.” She’s an exhilarating and engaging conversationalist. Funny, clever and self-deprecating, you can see how her shows would work.
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She says, “I am reaching people who sit and listen to the music, from beginning to end. It’s intimate and they don’t have a short attention span. I want to try this in other countries as well.”
Language will not be a barrier. Aside from her native Turkish, Özlem speaks “six and a half fluently”: English, German, French, Spanish, Greek, “The half one is Portuguese.” I love them all for different reasons. Lately I sing in Spanish and Greek a lot. I learn a lan- guage because it inspires me to sing.”
“We are living in a post-postmodern world,” she says, “and suddenly reality is more interesting than fiction.” If we want that world to be a wonderful exciting place, full of humour, intelligence and cross-cultur- al understanding, then Özlem is the change we want to see.
facebook.com/FulyaOzlemBand F
Photo: Mihriban Demicran
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