While I as a single person with a limited reach, can not change people's realities in a moment, I however CAN have influence over my immediate circles and groups. I believe change, solutions need many, not just one. We never work and exist in isolation.
For me specifically music carries a potential we sometimes forget about, and ignore: music can directly affect human emotion, it has the ability to create a sense of connection and release distress. It can help to process emotions and speak to us on a way more fundamental level forgoeing our intellect and mind. If I can manage, as an artist, a musician, to make people feel something, to be receptive, to be open, to touch them emotionally and also direct their attention towards things beyond themselves, I already have worked - within my own little boundaries - to spread and create awareness for things, I deem important in our world. In this moment I am not a passive follower and supporter of a status quo, but my activity - making music and performing - becomes an active force to create direction and to contribute in a wider context. I became an 'activist'.
I would sum up for me personally and anyone I'd meet and be in a conversation in: It is important not to overestimate one's personal importance in the world and not to conflate art, wishful thinking and people's realities. Not to overestimate our imediate reach and influence.
But it is equally important, in a world in which we feel powerless, NEVER to underestimate the power we carry, the power of sound, of words, of education, of community, and the power Art can hold.
The reality of activism is - that it needs all of us, from all different parts of life. By what Gülsün Karamustafa understands as activism alone, NOTHING would be changed either. Ultimately, what constitutes change is the change of minds and a will-full not participation in structures of oppression, discrimination, racism and an active participation in constructive forms of life. Be it the abolishment of slavery, achieving gender equality, the end of Apartheid in South Africa - these are all long processes, which rely on more, than only physical force and presence.
The Palestinian Struggle, which life has connected me with on so many levels at once, too, needs all of us: the historians, the poets, the researchers, the singers, the Levantine dishes and chefs, receipts, dances, the old lady embroidering and telling her stories to her grandchildren, the person choosing to consume responsibly, the activists blocking a weapons factory with their bodies and the person sharing information on the internet. We do not exist in a vacuum, we can not fight alone. Everything we can do, contributes to wider dynamics in which living on the cost and expenses of other people, animals or our planet won't be profitable anymore. None of it exists in a vacuum and my form of activism consists of the things I chose and try and can implement in my daily life and within the spaces I exist and can have a presence in.
I believe, that, if we as artists reoccupy art again and shift it away from simple economic, business and capitalist boundaries and expectations, we have actually a very strong TOOL at our disposal, which we can use to heal our communities and mend people's hearts and minds. I think especially MUSIC, if understood as more, than 'entertainment' only, a product to sell and surrender people, always has been POWERFUL indeed. And history and life is full of examples of it.
For a very long time you could find this quote on most of my social media. It is a sentence, which resonates with me deeply.
Having gone through more than one turbulence in my life, I experienced first hand how harsh realities of life can be threatening to ones existence and how essential a wakeful, clear approach to them needs to be and how little people around of me are willing to face these consciously.
The quote also helps addressing the overestimation in self importance I encountered amongst musicians and artists more than once in my life.
In early music circles there is the habit of creating 'programs for peace' - and bathing ones conscience in a completely delusional impression to have contributed to world harmony in some significant manner - while oftentimes completely ignoring the actual political, historical and geoeconomics realities of cultures and peoples 'represented' in these programs. I discussed this issue with a black percussionist and activist colleague of mine. Our conclusion was, that more often than not, these type of programs help to feed into existent structures of inequality and invisibility and do not address REAL concerns of people. In a way, they delude the existential matter by putting a blanket of a shiny and privileged white saviour-ism on top of it and in this way can do more harm than good.
In this way I do agree with Gülsün Karamustafa very much. I think it is very healthy and important to understand the limitations we have as humans, artists, individuals and professionals in a specific context and not to overestimate ones role in the wider dynamic of things. It is always healthy to not overestimate oneself and ones place and importance in life, history and society.
Dealing with Early European music also always was for me to face our mortality. Listening to our past, finding an essence of who we are - within voices of people, who lived before of us, making connection to today. What we think, how we feel, how we interact - who we are as human beings in the wider scheme of things beyond our short individual existence. Each piece being a short window into our essence, as each painting iconographically stylised, is too.
I have been part of a group, (consistent of mainly BiPoc) which aim was to support each other, creating a safe space, while dealing specifically with political restrictions in expressing dissent about the genocide in Gaza in the German context and simultaneously navigating individual experiences as a person of colour or otherwise marginalised person or potential alienation from family, partners or friends over one’s perspectives and understanding. Many ideas, thoughts, experiences and inspirations have been shared and expressed in the span of a year in our group chat and on regular video calls. I am very thankful for all the different impressions and things I have learned in this time, though ultimately I had to leave the group, as my personal capacities were at a low point.
The group was filled with very different people with various background, from different contexts. Yet each one's aim was to live a life in which they can represent their values and fight for these to be heard and implemented. The understanding amongst us was, that ACTIVISM CAN SHOW THROUGH DIFFERENT THINGS. It is not one single thing and not one simple action. For some it was to create awareness amongst their friends and families. For others it meant to participate in demonstrations or join specific movement and groups. For someone else it meant to directly interact with people in Gaza on the ground and trying to find first hand solutions in single situations. There was a social scientist amongst us, who was researching specific topic important to her, whilst also creating a data bank for information access. A visual artist with Asian/Norwegian background, a Polish Oud player too.
I think, as artists we enjoy certain privileges, other parts of society do not necessarily have, especially our visibility. The visibility alone, if one has the mentality of a justice 'warrior' and is senstivie to the inequalities in our world, puts us in a position of responsibility. Of course each of us can decide for ourselves how much we would like to involve ourselves with certain topics or movements, but I think if we are socially conscious people, it is almost unavoidable to use this visibility for what I too regard as 'activism'. Although I have been at conflict with this word - maybe exactly because of my understanding of what constitues 'activism' - actively working for a greater good, with the tools and methods at one's disposal.
I do not need to become someone else, than who I already am, to contribute to what I - as a human being strongly believe in - but rather, let every part of my life be an expression and force of this believes. In the context of art and music I very much resonated with a statement Efva Lilja made in a seminar at the Academy of Music:
Se lamentar augelli, o verdi fronde
mover soavemente a l’aura estiva,
o roco mormorar di lucide onde
s’ode d’una fiorita et fresca riva
là ’v’ io seggia d’amor pensoso et scriva,
lei che ’l Ciel ne mostrò, terra n’asconde
veggio et odo et intend, ch’ancor viva
di sì lontano a’ sospir miei risponde.
‘Deh, perché inanzi ’l tempo ti consume?’
mi dice con pietate. ‘A che pur versi
degli occhi tristi un doloroso fiume?
Di me non pianger tu, ch’ e’ miei dì fersi,
morendo, eterni; et ne l’interno lume,
quando mostrai de chiuder, gli occhi apersi.’
An excerpt of a lecture by the Palestinian Professor and Poet Refaat Alareer (23 September 1979 – 6 December 2023) - about the power of words and poetry.
The paintings of Yu Hong being inspired by religious renaissance iconography reminded me of my connection to them as well as 15th and 16th century polyphony. Her exhibition being held in an old church, a place in which I often performed made the connection and memory even stronger.
I originally was planning to work on an Oud composition of mine, I started two years ago, where I use small phrases to create a faint interweaved semi polyphonic sound. I even had a Viola da Gamba player colleague of mine being ready to record with me from Brussels. Unfortunately I failed to find the recording on my hard drive during autumn. I am sure, once I find the recording again, I can still make use of it later on.
During past two years I had several discussions with a Portuguese friend of mine, whom I studied medieval music with, in which we always come to the conclusions how difficult it is to communicate our understanding and being in the world within a world which still mostly draws upon a Cartesian understanding of itself - a way of thinking, which dominates our educational system, yet can not be complete. We always conclude how there are different approaches of understanding and gathering knowledge.
To be honest, revisiting my old bachelor research and looking at the ‘result’ section of my presentation, I am dazzled myself how closely related my conclusions were to what I find in Rui Penha’s extract. None of the knowledge and understanding, neither the vocabulary, I have put in words back then were acquired through reading. They were rather intuitive, instinctive reflections and conclusions of my artistic process and doing. A result of trying to get at the bottom of what I do, how I do it, gained through looking at it more closely and deeply.
In the academic day to day I have big trouble conveying my actual practice and what is at its core, even though it is so dear, close and significant to me. I was positively surprised at first read, to recognise patterns, which so directly and essentially resonate with my own thoughts and understanding.
Admittedly, Penha’s text is structured and expressed more eloquently, than I potentially ever could, while being undermined with quotes from different sources. There is a sense of real relieve to read someone putting ‘relational knowledge’ at the very centre and at the core of ‘Artistic Research’ and our doing.
I think that one of the reasons I might be struggling with conveying my practice and understanding is exactly the fact, that we are little to no trained to receive relational knowledge within an academic and educational setting, and frankly also: European context. It oftentimes feels to me as if I put my actual reasoning and thoughts into words and name things, yet the person receiving it, doing the reading for example, pays attention to other aspects, expressions and levels of what I say… almost, as if our attention was unable to shift towards the layer, that seems most important and significant to me.
The actual core of my process and knowledge being produced through it, defies Cartesian categorisation and division, while the idea of a Rhizome seems still to be more of an anecdotally entertaining construct to some - yet to me, in my doing and in the ways I experience what I do, is so real and instantaneously unraveling, as the sound of a boiling kettle. In language, all I can make use of, is descriptive vocabulary, which never seem to do my practice any justice… unless maybe I’d use poetry - yet I am only a rather humble poet.
What I am interested in is NOT something ‘about’ a ‘Quartertone’, or ‘about’ ‘Arabic repertoire’. It’s not ‘about’ the Oud either or none of these ‘abouts’ at all. It is my own interaction and relation WITH all of that and the process of ‘building a connection and relation’ which interests me - meaning however, that ‘relation’ also means, that I am changing. And for me the interesting thing is how I internally change and shift as a result or consequence of said relationship.
I have described aspects of it on a few occasions, but still it seems to me, that this layer is not being paid attention to enough. The extract of Rui Penha’s presentation describes in big parts what I am doing and the things he mentions are the actually interesting parts of my practice to me.
I can try to bring in a rather simple example: Arabic Maqam has, what we today call ‘Quartertones’ - which to a (trained, yet untrained) European ear at first might seem ‘out of tune’, then exotic, then different, then interesting… all of it. The exact intonation - (measured in cents) often enough attempted by European scholars and failed just as often - is of no particular interest to me. Also the fact, that nowadays, after years of listing to the music, imitating and playing it, I am (more or less) successful in ‘reproducing’ the mood of a phrase or a mode and present a somewhat ‘correct’ intonation, brings me no satisfaction either… all these are mere byproducts, lucky and necessary effects of my doing.
What really triggers and occupies my curiosity, passion and aspiration immensely is the actual (very real psychoacoustic) fact, that the way I now hear changed profoundly. I could say, my ears today, are different, than what they were in 2012. I have integrated sounds into my very being in a way, that affected and reinterpreted the world of sound around of me. And this is such a profound change, which I now can never undo and which I carry with me anywhere from day to day. And the way my ears shaped themselves according to some formerly ‘foreign’ quarter tones is not a hearing restricted to quarter tones only, but rather now affect all the former and new sounds, which used to be or are more or less familiar to me.
This of course, though complex in how it came to be, is only a simple example of the actual thing I take interest in and it affects many more aspect of my practice - over the span of years I see myself changing and shifting by having put the Oud at the centre of my being in the world and embracing all, which it was capable of revealing to me.
One of the reasons why scholars, especially western scholars, have had troubles in the past, to grasp and describe different expressions of Maqam for instance is, because the system of Maqam already is (as formerly presented in my Bachelor work) a relational one. None of its parts and elements are isolable and exist without their different contexts and relations.
Maybe my biggest gain from having lived with and through the Oud is, having had a better access and gaining more understanding about a relational being in and understanding of the world. It is a perspectival shift deeper into a connected being. My place and understanding of the world, not music only, changed profoundly and significantly through the intense and specific relationship I have built and am building with and through the instrument. And it directly or indirectly affected every area of my life. You can not change, and remain the same. Change is a vehicle, a motion. It is impossible for meaningful shift and change to not affect all of you, once you change positions, you look out unto the world differently. And this very clearly is at the centre of my interest: to see the world with new eyes, or maybe: to hear it with different ears. To listen differently.
My biggest challenge in the coming months to be will be the question of how to adequately communicate the knowledge produced through my research. How to make my knowledge accessible. An assumption, idea, thesis - which remains to be tested:
How best to communicate ‘relational knowledge’?
By creating and forming a relationship with the people you communicate with.
If I hear birds lamenting, or green leaves
shift softly at the press of summer air,
or catch the murmured splash of shining waves
from this cool, flowering bank, then I see her
as I sit here and write, thinking of love,
whom Heaven showed us, hidden now in clay;
I see, hear, understand her; she’s alive,
attentive to my sighs from far away.
‘Why be consumed with grief?’ she kindly says.
‘Your time’s not yet. From your sad eyes why flows
this stream of sorrows that impairs your sight?
Don’t weep for me. After I died, my days
became eternal; when I seemed to close
my eyes, they opened on the inner light.’
For this recording I used old live recording of mine from a concert on the viella. The program I created was about 'Love & Death' in early compositions and poetry. The singer recites a poem by Francesco Petrarca: "Se lamentar augelli, o verdi fronde" written about and partly from the perspective of an early deceased Laura - Petrarca's subject of his Amour Courtois Poetry.
The composition is taken from a German manuscript written around 1480: "Glogauer Liederbuch". It describes a morning scenery in which lovers must part.
"Ich sahs eins mal den lichten Morgensterne, bei meinem Buhlen. So wär' ich alltzeit gerne, es kann und mag doch leider nicht gesein."
"I once saw the bright morning star, with my lover. I would always like to be like that, unfortunately, it cannot and may not be."
It is one of the most peaceful and transcedent compositions of that era I know of and always makes me reflect about the impermanence of life.
To the original recording I added the sound of Oud, which in the form of medieval and renaissance lute would have been heard in this music. In the song I play exactly the same voice as I do on the recording: the counter tenor - a voice connecting the main melody with the tenor. And here I connect my past and my presence, the Viella and the Oud.
- about the lynching of a black man, a strong expression of Black Voices at the time and contribution to social awareness - people were sending this composition in to politicians in order to fight for the criminalisation of lynchings.
I would like to mention, that reading especially through the last chapter of Rui Penha's excerpt, has given me valuable inspiration about my own process, particularly about questions of how to best present my artistic research at the end of this semester. It was a very fruitful read and interaction.
I believe there are very different circumstances and contexts in which art exists, which are defining how effective it is in fighting and addressing questions of inequality or injustice. The more oppression there is, the heavier weighs any expression of what is being suppressed. Be it embroidery, language itself, a song, a dish, dance - all this can constitute a form of activism given a specific context.
Music and Art can be both: expression of a struggle of a group and a vehicle for the liberation of the group. It goes in both directions. This type of dynamic should not be ignored. Or as Refaat Alareer stated in his lecture: "Art imitates Life. Life imitates Art. Life creates/shapes Art. Art creates/shapes Life.”
