Kushtepe Blues

What is the significance of the “Mannheimer School” in music? And how did the Enlightenment Period affect contemporary music?

7 to 9-year-kids can answer such questions in Kushtepe, a “Merry Gypsy” suburb of Istanbul. Their parents come from the Black Sea, Eastern Anatolia and Thrace. The children take instrument lessons, learn music theory and solfege in Bilgi University, which is situated in the middle of the neighbourhood. The university’s music teachers who took up this work are in the process of learning new things too. The pensioner Nazmi Zurnaci, a Romani clarinetist from Corlu who used to accompany superstar Bülent Ersoy for example, proves to them, that it is not always correct to interpret the Rast Makam as a major chord. Customers of the local barber point out another bitter reality: the people of Kushtepe surely love music more than all, but before any musical education comes, they have to survive the struggle for daily life. 

Renown in Turkey through musical documentaries like Burhan Öçal & Trakya All Stars – A Musical Homecoming“ and „A Voyage With Mercan Dede“, Nedim Hazar and his team invite audiences to the world of the children of Kushtepe. The young Gypsy fiddler, whose father “plays behind the solo singer” in a restaurant at the Bosporus and his friends; young girls whose mothers clean the corridors of the university where they are being taught music; girls who long for the green and the trees of their parents’ homeland and cannot visit it due to financial reasons; they all want to become musicians. Some prefer to be studio musicians, some want to compose symphonies. However, their favourite music is “slow” music, ie. “Kushtepe Blues”.