And then there was one...

Well, let me tell you....many things have happened since my last blog entry - I caught a cold, I've explored the city a great deal, my dad has gone back to Canada, and my cousin from Holland came for a visit, just to name a few! And now I am on my own, feeling awesomely inspired and geared up for the next half of my stay here in Turkey!

So yeah, I caught a cold. CRAPPIEST TIMING OF LIFE. My dad and I had plans to ferry over to the Princes' Islands with Raquy to see one of her friends (a clarinet player) play a gig, but alas, my throat got scratchy and I began running a temperature, so my dad and I had to pass on our island excursion. :(

I was supposed to have a lesson the next day but I just wasn't feeling close enough to 100% to do that, so I took another day off and my dad and I crossed the Galata Bridge and ventured into the Old City to do some hardcore tourism! We checked out the Basilica Cistern, Aya Sofya, and also got to eat our fresh mackerel sandwiches (wayyy at the top of our "to-do" list for this trip haha).

Happy Sultanahmet face!

Standing outside Aya Sofya.

Happy Aya Sofya faces?

Overjoyed mackerel sandwich face!

I was able to get back to my regular practice/lesson schedule the following day, which was awesome. I find it hard to take even one day off here. I'm in GO mode and want to be as productive as possible. Clearly though, I was pushing myself a lot and the cold was my body's way of telling me to cool it a bit! But now I am fine and my body needs to just suck it up and deal with whatever I feel like putting it through the next three weeks! Hahaha yeah, I don't learn...

A couple of weeks ago my dad and I found a much nicer route to get to Raquy's ofis. The fear of getting squashed by a vehicle was getting to be a bit of a burden to me, so we checked our map and set out on a route that looked about right to us. Turns out, it's soooo much nicer than our previous route! There aren't nearly as many cars going up and down and exploding out of sidestreets AND bonus- it meets up with Istiklal at a much earlier point so that I spend more time on Istiklal and less time on a sidestreet. Fantastic! The name of that street is Kumbaraci and there are so many nice things to look at when I walk it.

Another highlight of the last while is that I got to experience a hamam (Turkish bath)! What a very interesting experience! I went with Raquy and her friend and an American saxophone player. We went to a "tourist-free" hamam in a cute little neighbourhood behind Tarlabasi and afterwards we went to Raquy's former neighbour's place for a DELICIOUS supper. It was so nice to be welcomed like that into the home of someone I don't know and on top of that, fed until I could barely move!

A few days after that my cousin arrived in Istanbul for a weekend of fun times and catching up! We went out for dinner under the Galata Bridge before seeing my dad off (he decided to taxi to the airport the night before because he had such an early flight to catch the next day). 

Dad and I enjoying a two hour Bosphorus cruise on one of his last days in Istanbul.

Then the next two days after that, my cousin and I partook in some touristy things and a LOT of good food and coffee! Twas a good time. He left in the early evening on the Sunday and voila - I am now on my own!

My cousin Terry and I!

My schedule is about the same as when my dad was here, only I probably stay up later and sleep in longer haha. I wasn't overly concerned about being on my own, but at the same time I didn't really know exactly how well I would handle it. Turns out, things are JUST FINE. I'm really buckling down this week...practicing like a crazy person and trying to apply myself ten times more in my lessons, when I had already been applying myself 100% haha. So that's what this week is all about, as well as preparing for my trip next week! That's right! I am going to Fethiye, Turkey for a week-long darbuka retreat, led by Raquy with guest teacher, Ali Kil from Ankara. It's going to be amazing! We're staying in bamboo huts, and because it's right on the coast there's a beach across from where we're staying and there are hiking trails and stuff. Very much looking forward to that.

I'm already halfway done this trip! Hard to believe! One thing I know for sure - even after finishing this trip and learning soooooo much, I will have BARELY scratched the surface in terms of where this project can go and just how far my skills can progress within this new, exciting art form. The future's looking pretty bright to say the least...

My incredible teacher Raquy and I, playing some rhythms in 12!

"The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, 'Thus far and no farther!'  - Ludwig van Beethoven

Greetings from Istanbul!

Wow, where do I begin! I am now in Istanbul! Feels like a dream, but it's reality!

After a day and a half of flights combined with a fairly lengthy layover at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, while running on a grand total of two hours of sleep we arrived in Istanbul at around 12:30am local time on Friday the 13th!

Following a very easy visa stamping and baggage claim we hailed a taxi to take us to our apartment in Karakoy, Istanbul. I can't even describe how overwhelming and surreal that taxi ride was, as we got closer to the city and the different smells and ancient landmarks revealed themselves. That's something I'll never forget! I don't even know what was going through my mind at that time. The taxi driver drove like a crazy person but we arrived at the apartment in one piece around 1am. We got settled as quickly as possible, Skyped with our people back home and then CRASHED...which was short-lived because the call to prayer woke me up at 5am! I knew it would be loud but wow, it was very loud... very beautiful to listen to though! It didn't wake my dad up at all. Bizarre. Anyways, I was able to fall asleep again after that until almost 11am. We got out the door shortly after waking up, with the intention of eating breakfast at a particular cafe recommended to us by the landlord. We didn't find the cafe, but had a very nice walk-about, getting familiarized with the neighbourhood. 

View from the apartment window. We're on the fifth floor!

A bit more of the view....

After that we decided to map out our route to Raquy's office, where I was to have my first lesson that afternoon. We stood on the corner of the main road parallel to ours with a Lonely Planet map, looking like hardcore tourists! We found a straightforward route (which is, unavoidably, entirely uphill....like mega steep uphill) and followed it all the way to Istiklal Caddesi. Raquy's office is just off of Istiklal, so once we knew we could get there no problem, we turned around and picked up just a few groceries on our way back to the apartment. I won't lie, I really like going to get my groceries for an apartment that's mine! I feel like such a legit adult right now. :P So after bringing our groceries back and hanging out for a bit, it was time to make our way to my first lesson with Raquy! AHH, so exciting! I'm so glad we planned to get started the day of my arrival! Better to dive right in, right away. My first impression of Raquy was that she is such a welcoming and open person. The fact that she's been so accepting of my strange project has made things so easy and relaxed. We met, chatted for a bit and then got started! It was so much fun, playing one of her compositions WITH her in person, she on the darbuka and me with my feet on my "drum". It was pretty hilarious and awkward walking through the streets with that wooden box under my arm. I'm sure some people were wondering what in the world that thing was. Anyways, Raquy was totally okay with me leaving my "drum" at her office so I won't have to lug that thing uphill every day for 6 weeks! 

Bogazkesen Caddesi

Istiklal Caddesi - Istanbul's famous  pedestrian walkway, lined with shops and vendors.

So, there's been an exciting twist in my adventure. I am now also studying the darbuka! Like...with my hands! :O Raquy feels that it can only help my understanding of the technique and rhythms so that I can better transfer them over to feet and I couldn't agree with her more! It makes perfect sense and I'm loving every minute of it! So exciting! And very challenging, which is great.

So for my first lesson, we did a lot of question/answering where Raquy would play something on the darbuka in 8 and I would repeat it back to her with my feet. It's a really great exercise! And then for the darbuka portion of the lesson we covered three different hits - the dum, tek, and 1st finger hit on the left hand.

For my second lesson we did more question/answering and also playing together, but this time we worked on some stuff in a beat cycle of ten. That was challenging because I'm not super comfortable with ten, but now after just a couple of days I feel like I'm starting to get settled into that cycle. Also, during my second lesson, I learned the 3rd finger hit on the darbuka for the left hand and then we combined all four basic hits to create different rhythms in 9, as well as 10 and 3. And THEN my third lesson was just nuts! Raquy's teacher Bunyamin was at the office. We played Dokuz together for him so he could see what it is I'm doing with this project. He enjoyed it and also had some great suggestions for exercises that I could do! And then he started showing me with his feet some things that I could do! Hahaha! That was so great. Then he picked up the darbuka and he and Raquy just went crazy for a while! It nearly brought me to tears. I couldn't believe I was witnessing these two masters playing together! And then Raquy told me to pick up a darbuka and hold a rhythm in 10. The two of them went crazy again. It was such good practice and experience for me to be able to hold rhythms for drummers like them. Then we switched to 5...and if I recall correctly we did 9 as well. Crazy! That must have gone on for well over an hour! Wowwww. I am honestly still on a high from that! As if this is real!

Great food! This cute little place is on the route I take to my lessons. :)

Skeeter bites. Okay, I know they don't look that bad in the picture, but trust me, they're awful!

Aside from my lessons and practicing, we've done a bit of sight-seeing and certainly a lot of eating! Raquy has taken us to Taksim square and a farmers market in Tarlabasi (where I bought a kilo of fresh figs and a kilo of olives for about 5 Canadian dollars! Ha!). We definitely have tons of plans to sight-see and do the whole "tourist" thing. It is hard to find time though, with my project stuff going on. I came to the realisation the other day that it just isn't practical to eat out for every meal (not that I was planning on doing that). Budget-wise it's not a big deal, but time-wise it makes no sense at all. I really do prefer to have a fully stocked kitchen so I can cook meals, anyway. Also, I'm trying to wake up early-ish in the morning but I'm still jet-lagged and can't seem to get to bed early enough, and then when I do get to bed I don't feel like sleeping! Arghhhh. I think that once I'm 100% flipped over, time management will become much easier and more efficient. I drank coffee at 9:30 two nights ago, which was a BAD IDEA. Had a terrible sleep. On top of that, the mosquitoes here apparently really enjoy Canadian blood. I'm covered in the itchiest bites on my wrists and behind my ears! So I'm not enjoying that at all. But aside from that, my first 4 full days in Istanbul have been amazing and I really look forward to what the next 40 days have in store! :D

Big news!

Hey people!!

So, I know I said I was going to blog monthly or every other week which hasn't happened thus far. My apologies for that. I really am going to try and get disciplined with this though, because there's so much happening all the time that's worth sharing with people!

My lack of discipline with blogging reminds me of when I was little and relatives would buy me journals. Most of the time, I would try to write something, decide I didn't like it and then rip the page out. The end result of it all was a bunch of really decrepit journals with three quarters of their pages torn out and doodles on the pages that were still intact. I probably went through over a dozen journals this way. One of my journals turned into a fruit sticker collection book, which has gone missing and I'm very upset about it. I had well over a hundred stickers in that thing...no duplicates. Quite the accomplishment!

Anyways, enough of my journal failures and onto some updates of things that matter!

Number 1: Big big BIG news! The Canada Council for the Arts has awarded me the grant!!!!! AHHHHHHH!! This project is really, seriously happening now and I'm so excited and nervous at the same time. Things are getting real and for the next few months I'm going to be working my butt off... in preparation for working my butt off in Turkey. By the way, big shout-out to my big sister who helped me tremendously with my grant application. She helped me organize my thoughts and write them out in a clear and professional way, which is something I definitely could not have done alone.

So far my flight and apartment are booked. My dad has also booked his flight, as he will be joining me for the first two weeks in Istanbul. Thank goodness for that. It'll be good to have him around while I get my bearings, settle in, and recover from jet lag!

Karakoy. My soon-to-be neighbourhood for a month and a half!

Number 2: About two months ago, I finished translating one of Raquy Danziger's darbuka compositions to the percussive dance medium! The piece is called Dokuz and it's in a beat cycle of nine. For all you trad people out there, I'm not talking about a slip-jig hehe. Here's a video of Raquy and Liron Peled playing Dokuz. I videotaped myself doing it, sent it to Raquy, and hoorah! She liked it! And she had some really great pointers on improving the sound quality of my hits, which is good, because sound means everything in this project.  I'm already starting to feel that teacher-student bond developing between Raquy and I, and I am just so thrilled about it. 

So right now, I practice everything with a metronome at a tempo that is slow enough so that I am able to get in all of the hits and focus on making each hit sound beautiful and have presence. Not an easy thing to do, even after all of my experience as a percussive dancer. This is so different from anything I've ever done. I'm learning how to be patient and focused like never before. The level of ankle control and strength that I'm going to have to develop is unreal. For different hits my feet have to come down at various angles to get the sounds like teks, slaps, and pops. Practicing can be extremely painful. The other day I had the most unbelievable shin splints. Most of the time though, I really feel it in my arches. Like, crazy burning pain! My muscles are learning to do things that they're unaccustomed to. I can definitely feel myself getting stronger by the day, so that's encouraging. 

Because I'm trying to get as exact of a translation as possible, each foot takes on a very specific role, just as each hand would for drumming. As a result, most of my weight stays on my left foot, which provides the bass, as well as a couple higher pitched hits (this is typically the right hand's role on the darbuka). Because of this, however, I really have no option but to develop crazy kung-fu balance. My right foot takes on the "split hand" role (typically the left hand on the darbuka) -my sole and heel do what the first and third fingers would in the split-hand style. Splitting the one hand into 1 and 3 has allowed the Turkish drummers to do crazy fast rolls and other intricate things. The triplets are a big part of this style and they're extremely challenging. Getting three beats evenly spaced, evenly pitched, clear and fast is so much harder than it sounds. I really do think I can do it though. I just need some time!

The key is to go slow and gradually speed up but never go at a speed that's too fast and jeopardizes the quality of sound. Again, this sounds much easier than it is and most of the time, going slower is the greater challenge.

"Drum", shoes, metronome. Three of my dearest friends. :)

Number 3: There's been some really crazy stuff going on in Turkey this last week! Just in case you've been living under a rock here's some info: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334284/Turkey-riots-Britons-warned-steer-clear-unrest-demonstrations-rock-Istanbul.html

My Gramma is feeling a little nervous about my trip now because of the unrest in Turkey, which is, of course, a very normal grandmother-y thing to do hehe. I'm not taking it lightly at all, but I'm certainly not on the brink of cancelling my plans either, because I really feel that this project is supposed to happen at this time...

All of this revolution stuff is making me think of a couple of really good Bollywood films - "Rang De Basanti" and "Yuva". Both films are centered around youth uprisings. If you have any stereotypical views towards the Indian film industry, I highly recommend watching these movies! Plus they have great soundtracks. Both are by A.R. Rahman, pre-Slumdog (which, by the way, is not a Bollywood movie)...

And so, in the spirit of revolution, I leave you with a very powerful Urdu poem, used in Rang De Basanti, that was written by Ram Prasad Bismil as an ode to young freedom fighters of the Indian independence movement: Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna. Here is a rough translation.

Here we go!

February 2013 

Greetings! And welcome to my blog! I have created this page with the purpose of documenting the progress of my current project. Let me give you the rundown on what I've been up to......

Presently, I am working on adapting Turkish darbuka rhythms for the percussive dance medium. This sounds really random but it's not! This project has been a few years in the making now. It has developed in stages, but the actual idea for it came to me a little over a year ago. I'll explain everything...

After retiring from stepdance competitions in 2009, I started experimenting with tap dance. I had been watching some videos of tappers on Youtube and wanted so badly to be able to do what they did. So one day I decided that I would just teach myself. I got to experience the freedom of improvisation and for two years, all I did was improv, mostly A capella but sometimes with jazz or old school hip-hop and rap. I was amazed by the crazy stuff my feet were able to do and I was finally getting a taste of the creative and rhythmic fulfillment that had been lacking when I was stepdancing exclusively. I have always had a passion for rhythm, ever since I was a wee one. Apparently, when I was little and would cry in the night, my mom rocked me back and forth in my cradle next to where she was sleeping. The cradle was close to the wall and would bang into it when she rocked it one way and make a knocking sound went it rocked the other way, but it turned out that these sounds actually calmed me down. To amuse herself and keep me happy at the same time, my mom would play around with syncopated rhythms. I am convinced that this started it all! When I was 5 or 6, I got my hands on one of our tambourines and absolutely loved making driving 4/4 rhythms with it. That was also around the time that I first saw Riverdance on TV. That was what sparked my interest in percussive dance. I was totally obsessed with it and watched it all the time. 

Jean Butler and Colin Dunne in Riverdance: The New Show, 1996

A few years later, my family and I moved to India for 10 months. There I got to be exposed to the amazing music of that country. Indian percussion is so moving and infectious. There's nothing like it. In India we met some incredible people, including a guy named Santhosh, who is a good friend of ours and a very gifted drummer. He showed me how to do a few things on the congas and before we flew back to Canada my parents surprised me with my own set of congas to bring home. :D I almost cried! Anyways, shortly after we got back, I began taking Ottawa Valley stepdance lessons with Chad Wolfe in North Bay. I was so fortunate to have had a teacher that was 15 minutes away, as many stepdancers in Ontario have to travel long distances for lessons. Chad always encouraged me to experiment and push boundaries - to try anything and everything. I sometimes wonder, if Chad hadn't been so encouraging in that way, would I feel the same sort of sense of creative freedom that I do today? After about a year or so under his tutelage, I began competing in the Ontario circuit. Competitions really pushed me technically and provided some good incentive to strive for improvement. With competitions, I developed a good work ethic and focused my attention on musicality and executing clean, precise footwork. I was ecstatic when I moved up into the Open category and had to choreograph my own routines to whatever tunes I wanted! I invested all I could, emotionally and creatively, into my competition routines, but by September 2009, after 9 years of competing, I knew I had gotten everything I could out of the circuit and had to accept that it was TIME TO MOVE ON and keep growing. 

Competition in Bobcaygeon, Ontario.

So that brings me to the tap dancing stuff, which I already covered so I'll just skip that and continue....

After a couple of years of doing tap improv and being super rebellious (in terms of percussive dance) and not choreographing ANYTHING at all, I was starting to get a craving for set pieces again. I should mention that half-way through my rebellious tap dance phase I began listening to a lot of world percussion, believing that exposure to it would really influence the rhythms of my feet, which it absolutely did by the way. I discovered and was fascinated by the world of frame drumming. I was so inspired by it, in fact, that I took up the frame drum, learning how to play via Layne Redmond's tutorials and David Kuckhermann's video podcasts, all of which are available on Youtube. While browsing videos of percussionists on Youtube one day I came across a video of a Turkish drummer. His name is Onur Il and he was playing the darbuka. The stuff that he was doing just freaked the heck out of me (in a good way!) and I was so blown away and thrilled to have found videos of his playing. He was SO FAST and clean and his rhythms were so clever. I bookmarked every video I could find of him. Here's a video of Onur Il playing darbuka. With that in mind, back to choreographed pieces we go now....

So I began choreographing again. This time however, things were different and I was viewing my pieces more as musical compositions. I started throwing in Eastern rhythms, accessorizing with Indian ghungroo (ankle bells) and experimenting with funky time signatures. Looking back, it's amazing to me that my style had changed so drastically from my competitive stepdancing days in just a couple of years. Crazy!

I also joined a networking site for percussionists, which provided me with more info on drummers that I look up on the web. :) I was happy as could be at that point. I figured that was it and I had discovered my calling as a stepdance/tap/world percussion fusion artist. Yay! I had performed at festivals with my bandmates, debuting my new pieces for receptive audiences. Things were looking up in the summer and fall of 2011! 

Ciccone and Hyatt at Celtic Colours 2011

 But winter rolled around and I was beginning to feel something lacking again. This was frustrating. My work STILL wasn't percussive enough to satisfy me. Darn it! "What is it?!", I thought. "What am I missing here?" During the Christmas holidays, I had been listening obsessively to Misirli Ahmet. Here's a video of Misirli Ahmet performing.

He is the father of the Turkish split-hand technique for playing the darbuka (goblet drum). This is the very technique that Onur Il was using in those videos I found of him.

Misirli Ahmet

Misirli Ahmet's incredible work inspired me to take a shot at making another piece. So I did, shortly after Christmas 2011. I recorded a track of myself holding a Saidi rhythm on the frame drum and then I soloed percussive dance on top of it with phrases greatly influenced by Ahmet's split-hand drumming. It was neat, and probably the most rhythmically intricate thing I had thus far cranked out, but the excitement of that piece quickly wore off for me. Just as I was beginning to veer off in totally wrong and irrelevant directions out of desperation, I took a step back to Misirli Ahmet and thought, "Man, that Turkish stuff is amazing. I just wish I could do that with my feet!"..................Oh my goodness........... DING DING DING DING DING. That was my "Aha" moment. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. What if I was able to translate every hit and sound so it could be done with my feet? I remember going to my little brother's hockey practice and talking with my dad about it and pretty much yelling the whole time because I was so excited! I began learning rhythms by ear and listening to as much Turkish darbuka as I could get my hands on. I knew though that I would never be able to accomplish what I wanted to without actually working intensively with a darbuka master. So when the summer came, I felt that I knew my project well enough to take it a step further, contact someone and get really serious about it. I wrote Raquy Danziger, who is a darbuka master and teacher living in Istanbul, Turkey. Here's a video of Raquy playing a duet with her teacher, Bunyamin Olguncan.  And one of her solo work...

Thankfully, she didn't think I was a big weirdo due to the far-out nature of my project. I hoped that she would be able to point me in the right direction and offer some tips. Her advice was simple: "Come to Istanbul!". I think that deep down I was secretly wanting to hear those words! She also recommended getting a copy of her instructional book and DVD for learning the Turkish split-hand technique. I ordered it right away and it arrived just before Christmas of 2012. 

Now things were getting serious. Once I cracked the book open and mulled things over, everything got much more technical. I had learned rhythms by ear up until then, but my footwork was kind of all over the place and in terms of efficiency didn't make much sense. I had to reconfigure pretty much everything. I decided that the best, most authentic and accurate way to do this was to match my feet to the corresponding hand that is required for each hit on the darbuka. For instance, I simply cannot do the split-finger thing with my toes. That's ridiculous. But I CAN use the ball of my foot and heel in place of the first finger and third finger. And for dums and teks I can use the heel and ball of my other foot. I'll post some video samples or a diagram somewhere down the road to better explain this.

At present, my plan is to travel to Istanbul in September of this year for a 6 week duration. I am awaiting the results of a professional development grant that I have applied for through the Canada Council for the Arts. I should find out mid-May what the verdict is there, but in the meantime, I'm going to be working as hard as I can at this project and trying to scrape together funds so I can still make the trip if I don't get the grant. I've set up this blog so I can document/monitor my progress in this journey. It'll be very handy for me and also... I don't know, maybe somebody else will get a kick out of it as well! I'm going to try to commit to monthly updates (or bi-weekly if I can swing it), which will include video footage of what I've been working on as well as other tidbits. I can't wait to share the "goings-on" as they come with anyone who's interested in hearing about it. So without further delay, I declare this blog....officially up and running! HERE WE GO!

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Laozi