Unfamiliar Sounds in Familiar Settings Hartley V1.0
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© 2017 Paul Hartley UNFAMILIAR SOUNDS IN FAMILIAR SETTINGS: ON THE COSMOPOLITAN LABOUR OF FILM COMPOSERS IN ISTANBUL BY PAUL DERRICK GEORGE HARTLEY DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Donna A. Buchanan, Chair Professor Emeritus Bruno Nettl Assistant Professor Michael Silvers Assistant Professor John P. Meyers Dr. Ulrike Präger ABSTRACT Filmmaking in Turkey has long, convoluted history. The Turkish film industry developed, flowered, and declined before being nearly obliterated altogether by a military coup in 1980. Following the nearly total disappearance of a coherent studio system, a new approach to filmmaking, the New Turkish Cinema, developed during a time of economic and cultural resurgence. Now in a mature phase, Turkish films and television programs are rapidly becoming a focus of local and global interest, as Turkey grows as a consumer marketplace and as a player in global affairs. Films and television programs have become key players in Turkey’s economic, cultural, and diplomatic resurgence. Despite film’s reemergence, film music has not been a focus of scholarly inquiry until recently because critics and scholars have not seen it as a contributing factor to the development of the new Turkish cinema. This dissertation examines the creative labor of film composers working in the Turkish film industry from 2010-2016. It focuses on the socio-cultural contexts that facilitate the work of filmmakers as they create films suitable for the Turkish market while working from within a much more globalized, cosmopolitan framework. Through a detailed assessment of film composers’ creative processes, it demonstrates that their work is that of a “first interpreter,” a role that makes them the conduit between the filmmaking team and the audiences. The initial chapters develop a technological and social history of Turkish filmmaking. They identify the conditions under which diasporic Turks have come to dominate the role of film composer. These individuals brought new technologies and practices in the form of digital music composition and the use of DAWs (digital audio workstations) to create almost exclusively synthesized film scores. Their working methods are connected to a larger filmmaking context because of the unifying presence of these new tools. Consequently, they have brought new ii practices and methods by participating globalized filmmaking praxisscape enabled by computerized technologies and fundamentally changed the way Turkish films are made. Later chapters investigate the details of Turkish filmmakers’ work and demonstrate how their disinterest in identity politics has made them excellent conduits for importation and experimentation of outside influences. Their role as first interpreter grounds their work as they experiment with a combination of Turkish topics, global topics, and many different genres of music. Following a close analysis of how new technologies have influenced the practicalities of film music composition and cinematic interpretation, the final chapter closes with a description of the “return to home” trope. This cine-musical construction is found in a number of films of the New Turkish Cinema. Its construction and use is a significant manifestation of contemporary debates trying to locate Turkish social and cultural identity between old/new, eastern/western, rural/urban, and traditional/modern dyads. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has taken a long time to develop and finish. I began writing several passages in the last weeks of my fieldwork in Turkey in late 2011. It took me nearly six years to complete. This is largely because I have been a practicing applied anthropologist since 2011. Writing a dissertation while also writing papers, books, and detailed reports for private and public clients required more energy that I usually had available. As a result, I owe its completion to several people. First of all, I want to thank Dr. Donna Buchanan. Without her patience, perseverance, and help, I would not have managed to complete it at all. I have always appreciated her counsel and I feel very lucky to have had her as an advisor. I want to thank my parents for also having patience with me and for helping me to stay focused on what really matters. Additionally, I owe special thanks to Dr. Morgan Gerard and Idris Mootee. Morgan gave me my break as an applied anthropologist. Without his belief that “ethnomusicologists are the best anthropologists” I would not have the life I have now. Idris has provided me the space and the time to grow into a researcher that can span the gulf between academia and applied work, and I am grateful for the generosity he has shown me in supporting me as I finish my dissertation. I, of course, owe a huge debt of gratitude to Yildiray Gürgen, Mustafa Yazıcıoğlu, Tamer Çiray, and Faruk Çeviz. It is your work that I am discussing here and without your friendship, patience, and candor, I would have nothing to talk about. Also, without the assistance of the Turkish Fulbright Commission, Seçil Hanım, Surreya Bey, Mev, and Ülkü, I would not have been able to do the work I was able to do. Finally, my biggest thanks go to my wife Dr. Hannah Chan-Hartley. We met at the beginning of this degree, and I am so glad to be able to share the end of it. Words cannot convey exactly how much you have helped me. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: SCORING REAL, IMAGINARY, AND CINEMATIC TURKEYS…………………………………………………………………………………..……………..1 CHAPTER 2: THE COSMOPOLITAN AND THE COMPOSER IN ISTANBUL………...………...35 CHAPTER 3: ADAPTATION: A HISTORY OF FILMMAKING IN TURKEY….............................90 CHAPTER 4: A VIEW OF FILM COMPOSERS IN TURKEY……………………...………...…...149 CHAPTER 5: SCENES OF COMPOSING…………………...………………………………….….184 CHAPTER 6: THE COMPUTERIZED MUSICIAN AS FIRST INTERPRETER…….………...…250 CHAPTER 7: THE INTERPRETIVE LABOR THAT CREATES A CINEMATIC TURKEY: OR, SCORING THE “RETURN TO HOME”……………………………………………………………...281 CHAPTER 8: EPILOGUE……………………………………………………………………………. 322 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………………334 v Chapter 1 Introduction: Scoring Real, Imaginary, and Cinematic Turkeys One interesting aspect of new Turkish cinema is Istanbul’s fading out of the screen. New wave Turkish films concentrate not so much on Istanbul, but on provincial towns. In those instances when the story is set in Istanbul, the geographical, historical, and cultural characteristics of the city are often erased so that Istanbul turns into an oversized provincial town. In contrast to the privileged position of Istanbul in Turkish film history, the majority of the new wave films seem to have lost interest in the city. However, this does not mean that Istanbul has disappeared from contemporary films altogether. Instead, we can talk about a new transnational genre of ‘Istanbul films’ that offer alternative ways of seeing the city (Suner 20, 2008). There are many Turkeys in Istanbul. Some are worldly, some aren’t real. – Yildiray Gürgen Asuman Suner’s statement identifies a shift in contemporary filmmaking. Current Turkish films differ strikingly from the work of previous filmmakers. The films produced since the 1990s look from the city out into the Anatolian countryside while tackling the influx of influences from outside Turkey. They are now simultaneously global and local, urban and rural, Anatolian, foreign, and Istanbul’lu (of Istanbul). Suner’s observation is important because it captures perhaps the most important feature of the New Turkish Cinema, a loose body of films created by filmmakers working in Turkey during the past 30 years. She has exposed the fact that these films are constantly under a creative tension, and that filmmakers are exploring what it means to exist on the boundaries of several binaries as well as what it means to be Turkish. Istanbul’s relationship with the Anatolian interior is a core feature of the nature of Turkishness. It is the lynchpin in a cluster of dyads (East/West, Ottoman/Turkish, secular/Muslim, modern/backward) that Turks use to define themselves in the contemporary world. In recent years, filmmakers have investigated the meaning of Turkishness by looking for its origin—following the post-Ottoman reconstructions of the concept in the early part of the twentieth century. They have created a cinematic and musical body of work that is looking for Turks’ true home, or at least to offer a perspective on where that home may be. But far from creating a copy of the real world, or a Turkey that is entirely fictional, filmmakers have 1 created a cinematic Turkey that interpenetrates the lived experiences of their audiences, initiating a soft statement of what Turkey is and how difficult topics can be broached and interpreted. Yavuz Turgul’s film Gonül Yarası (2005) exemplifies this well. Gonül Yarası is a tragic story that confronts numerous issues that both define and plague contemporary Turkey. It begins by showing a committed republican believer, Nazim, packing up his life as a teacher in the dusty, sun-drenched Kurdish regions in eastern Anatolia and returning to his first home in Istanbul. He has spent his life educating underprivileged and marginalized people in the east and is leaving after having retired as the village’s schoolmaster. As the opening credits roll we see Nazim say good-bye to the villagers and the children he has taught over the years. He bids them all farewell, shaking their hands and saying something personally significant to each of them in well-groomed Kurdish. We also see him collecting his belongings in preparation for the trip back to Istanbul. As he is packing the camera lingers over old, worn photos of children that indicate he gave up a happy family to follow his political and social convictions to bring education and a sense of Turkish belonging to the wilder and more untamed regions of the country. After the opening titles stop rolling, we see Nazim finally settle into his new apartment in the city.