RUHI SU
(1912-1985)RUHI SU
(1912-1985)Ruhi SU has brought a new life to Turkish music with his unique compilation, selection and performance of folk songs for more than forty years He was a virtuoso of the Turkish folk instrument, saz; a hard working folklorist compiling folk music; a pioneer at Turkish opera; a gifted Turkish composer and poet; and a beloved teacher of young intellectuals for decades. Naturally, these features dissolved into his charismatic personality that has affected the whole nation and even many people abroad who listen to his music.
He was born in Van, an Eastern district of Turkey and grew up in Adana, in the Southern region. He started playing violin at the age of ten. In 1936 he graduated from the Teachers School of Music and in 1942 from the Opera Department of State Conservatory in Ankara. For ten years he performed at the State Opera in Ankara as a celebrated bass baritone, appealing in operas such as Madame Butterfly, Fidelio, Tosca and Rigoletto. During his contemporary music education he also studied Turkish folk music and consequently made regular radio programs, playing saz and singing folk songs, while he worked at the opera. A political arrest in 1952 and imprisonment for five years ended his career in the opera. After serving his "sentence for thought" he dedicated himself to folk music in his unique way.
He compiled numerous folk songs while he roamed all over Anatolia from one village to another, and then he rearranged and performed them using western techniques His western music career formed the basis of his approach to interpreting and performing traditional Turkish music. He argued that the authentic music should not be imitated as it is found locally but rather elaborated into a national music with the enriching support of the international music. That is why the international audience would feel closer to and more familiar with his music, perceiving it as a contemporary of Atahualpa Yupanqui's and Pete Seeger’s.
Su combined his efforts of creating a national musicality from the folk songs with his compositions based on poems by famous Turkish poets, as well as his own poems. He has a rich folk song repertory with more then ten LPs on Traditional Turkish Folk Music, including Yunus Emre and Pir Sultan Abdal. He also established and trained a choir in the 70's and conducted them in many concerts and recordings His approach in bringing forth the sufferance, rebel and love of people in his musical work has gained a great respect and support from his audience and had a deep effect on many musicians who still follow his path.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has proclaimed 1991 as the "International Yunus Emre Year ." This resolution was adopted or the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the great Anatolian poet of the 13th century.
Yunus Emre is one of the first and most influential of the Turkish poets and Sufi philosophers. He was considered as the founder of the Anatolian Turkish literature and, in that sense, was compared with Dante of Italy. However, the element that has made h in immortal in Turkey is his philosophy and vision of humanistic concepts His Sufi approach has been effective on many Islamic sects; his hymns have been recited, chanted and handed down by mouth from one generation to the next since late 13th century
Many poets who lived after his death acquired his name and contributed 10 the major pool of hymns bearing his name. There exists numerous biographies and tombs attributed to him all over Anatolia. This made it difficult for the literary historians and researchers to obtain a correct biography of Yunus Emre. Information about his life has been derived from the events and personalities that were cited in his verses. A total of 357 poems attributed directly to him as a result of the literary analyses
Yunus was from a poor peasant family and he was initiated into a mystic sect of Islam. He a said to have met Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, poet and founder of Mevlevi sect, and lamented to his death. According to -Velayetname- (Book of the Saints of Bektasi order), Yunus was a student of Tapduk Emre, a dervish who belonged to a school of Turkish intellectuals coming from Asia in front of the Mongol flood towards Anatolia. Yunus Emre lived in a most unstable, chaotic period of Anatolia; a time when the Mongolian invaders abolished the Anatolian Seljuk State and persuaded to dodge the attacks and resistance of Turkomans while severe opportunists were trying to establish their local sovereignties. In these conditions of persistent injustice, robbery and murder, Yunus Emre advised love of God, love of people, love of peace, endurance and forgiving together with Mevlana.
Unlike Mevlana who wrote in Persian, the literary language of the era, Yunus expressed himself in his native tongue Turkish. His language is a direct, easy-to-understand one, while his style is rich with Sufi metaphors and philanthropic similes and descriptions. His verses are full of penetrating, humane and enthusiastic feelings and ideas. According to his approach, God and man are the same; everyone has a piece of God in him; only the body dies and the soul reaches to God. But only if he loved the mankind: if he forgave the faults; if he endured the pains; if he tried to learn the secrets, the reasons and the forms of being.
Pir Sultan Abdal is also a legendary Sufi poet, like Yunus Emre, with the same direct and clear language, the same richness of imagination, and the same high level sensitivity. Yunus Emre and Pir Sultan Abdal both reflected the social, cultural and religious life of their people; they were both humanists, and wrote about love, peace, death and God. However, Pir Sultan's verses are not as peaceful, because they voice the life of the Anatolian people of the 16th century, suffering under the Ottoman rule.
Pir Sultan Abdal was a Turkoman whose nomadic ancestors migrated from Azerbaijan to Syria and from there, possibly in his childhood, to Sivas district in mid-eastern Anatolia. Most of the information about him and his era we find in his verses, which reveal a cultivated well educated intellectual. The Mongolian attacks and star the conflicts among the Turkish states created social and political unrest in the Eastern Anatolia, and forced many Turkoman tribes to migrate further west to inner Anatolia. There, the severe taxation and of the Ottoman governors led to several consecutive uprisings among those tribes. Since their faith was different orders of the Alevi sect (Anatolian Shiite), the uprisings were labeled as 'religious' by the Sunnite Ottoman rulers who disregarded the underlying social and economic discontent. Of course, the moral and material support of Alevi Turcomans to Shah Ismail's Safavi State contributed to the claims of 'religious uprising.' During the period of successive wars by the Ottoman Sultans against Shahs of Iran from 1510 to 1550, the Ottoman oppression on the Turkomans of the region stepped up. Some muftis of the local governors even announced that the Alevis were heretics and so it was approved by religion to kill them and take their properties.
In such a period, Pir Sultan Abdal, who belonged to the Alevi sect, waged his struggle against the injustice and tyranny with his verses in which he previously dedicated to lyrical and pastoral themes and to the Sufi approach he had adopted. He criticized the Ottoman governors, Hizir Pasha in particular who ruled the region and their unjust officers such as the judges and muftis. His verses turned out to be an outrageous call for the rights and for freedom. He was hung by Hizir Pasha. But the tradition of his poesy and his struggle have remained alive for ages. His poetry was sung accompanied by saz through the ages by folk singers. Many poets acquired his name to keep 'Pir Sultan's voice' singing more verses. According to literary historians, there were at least six other poets bearing the same name.
Pir Sultan followed the traditional style of folk literature The outstanding characteristic of his poems, the use of vernacular language, keen and clear style still prevail in folkloric poetry. He also had a great influence on the poets of young Turkey in the republican era.
Saz is the generic name of the traditional Turkish instrument resembling the lute with a long neck. It may be called Divan Sazi, Baglama or Cura according to its size and the number of its strings.
For more information read "Introduction to Saz and other Middle Eastern Long-neck Lutes".
