Has anybody had any success playing typical saz music (like the instrumental parts of asik songs) on the oud or cumbus?
I can't imagine it working very well, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong if someone can find a link to a demo.hartun - 1-8-2015 at 07:19 PM
i hadn't listened to a lot of modern asik music before so i youtubed asik veysel. i cant imagine that sounding good on an oud.
but most of the folk songs from anatolia that are often played on saz can very easily be played on oud. ones that come to mind are gesi baglari,
ilimon ektim tasa, baglamamin dugumu......i know them from the oud side so maybe these are not as well known in the "saz" world but i've heard them
played on saz....richard hagopian plays these types of songs all the time....
quite a difference in tempo between the two, but the same song nonetheless.Amos - 2-2-2015 at 05:51 PM
I made a whole album of aşık music played on oud. It works but of course you have to accept a different aesthetic. pvk - 2-2-2015 at 08:52 PM
Your question raises other questions like what do you mean by 'success' and what do you mean by 'aşık' songs. To take the last point first,
there are Alevi aşık-s and then there are the eastern Anatolian aşık-s of Erzurum and Kars - the music of these traditions being
quite different. And by success do you mean 'is it technically possible' or do you mean does it 'successfully convey the meaning of the music'? And
there are not doubt other interpretations.
Many of the tunes from these traditions, particularly the Alevi tradition, are playable on the oud technically. The range is usually less than an
octave and often only a 6th. So I would say, of course you can successfully play them from a technical point of view. Indeed you can play them on lots
of instruments and I'm certainly aware of jazz versions of some Alevi songs.
However, the distinct tuning of the saz (bağlama) particularly in the Alevi tradition gives a tonality to the accompaniment of the songs that is
integral to those songs and conveys immanent and associative meanings through the specific sound produced. The bağlama what's more is considered
sacred in Alevi tradition, so playing this music on another instrument such as the oud is a statement in itself. That's ok, but you need to understand
this. You will very rarely hear Alevis playing their ritual or social music on anything other than bağlama. The association of the oud with the
urban Ottoman culture also necessarily has political implications. So you would have to just the 'success' of playing Alevi aşık songs on
the oud in that sort of context and on the context of your audience of course.
Similarly the eastern aşık tradition of song contests uses the saz in a particular way as they improvise couplets of verse in competition.
They specifically use the large divan saz to create a forceful full sound - this is an artistic combat - strumming all the strings of their large
bodied instruments. Can't see this being successfully done on oud, but you'd get something else I suppose by trying to play the melodies, which,
however, tend to be short repetitive phrases and probably not that interesting on the oud.
There are areas in Turkey where the oud is certainly more prominent in folk music, particularly in the Elazığ region and also in Urfa and
Niğde where it is sometimes played alongside the saz. Folk songs from those areas obviously do work very well on oud - usually better than on
bağlama in my experience.
I'm not necessarily standing up for being a purist, but rather to point out the implications of meanings associated with instruments and the sounds
they produce. Which I always think we should at least be aware of as we experiment, adapt, fuse and appropriate musics. Chris_Stephens - 2-3-2015 at 07:26 PM
