selim sesler, fatih akin, and the sound of istanbul

If you've followed my advice and seen Fatih Akın's remarkable film Gegen die Wand (Head On), then you've already heard Selim Selser--he's the leader & clarinetist of the small musical group that appears at sudden intervals throughout the film, standing on a quay on the Golden Horn, playing riotous, sad traditional music to the singing of the lovely Turkish-German actress İdil Üner. If not, then you must go read this Guardian profile by Fiachra Gibbons, which begins:

It was a Wednesday night down the alley in Badehane's, one of Istanbul's hidden soup kitchens for the soul, where a generation of artists and musicians have found refuge from the harsh political and crueller economic realities of Turkey. Istanbul does conspiratorial like London does damp. And the dark, smoky corners of Badehane's that night held a street acrobat, a writer who had spent time in jail for his beliefs, a couple of skint film-makers, and a moderately famous bellydancer slumming it with a man who wasn't her husband.

Just after 9pm, three men who looked like the last survivors of Al Capone's gang walked in with instrument cases, followed a few minutes later by a small smiling man in a bobble hat. This was Selim Sesler, one of the greatest clarinettists in the world, and he was playing for his supper.
[....]

He played through a kaleidoscope of styles that embraced Turkish, Greek, Jewish, Bulgarian, Armenian and Arabian music, and went off on a few jazz riffs just for fun. This man was the Coltrane of the clarinet, and he was dying of cancer unrecognised at 45. I left that night cursing every god in heaven.

I am made particularly nostalgic by this little story, because Badehane is particularly a soup kitchen for my soul; my former flatmate Alev is a close friend of the owner's, so our little household spent many a night there, in the smoky indoor din when the weather was cold, or on the tables crowded outside in that narrow cobblestoned lane in Tünel that leads to Asmalımescit sokak, just around the corner from Eren bookstore and Refik's restaurant. Gibbon's review also mentions the film Crossing the Bridge, Akin's recent documentary about the music of contemporary İstanbul-- from the rising hiphop scene (I've been meaning for some time to write a post on Turkish hiphop) and Sufi electronica to cheesy, beloved arabesk pop, or Sesler's rollicking, Romany traditional music, legacy of the crossroads cosmopolitanism of the Ottoman past. I still haven't seen the thing in full--it was mostly gone from theaters when I arrived, and in any case I am waiting for a non-German subtitled version. You can watch the trailer here. Anyway, if you haven't heard Selim Sesler, you damn well should.