Bard

Lev and I sat at Corelli’s, outside on the street under two big umbrellas with black canopies that met above us. He wanted to meet at a cafe that was open late; he tells me that his parents have a mental map of all the cafes across Sydney that are open past 5pm, gesturing at his head where this map now resides too. It is dark and drizzling and veils of rain and smoke are lit up by the headlights of cars that are passing by. We lean in and share stories about our ancestors and a slice of orange and almond cake. Lev asks me, “have you asked your grandparents who their grandparents were?”

Levent Can Kaya curates, writes and makes media art on Darug country. He investigates dissident and subcultural production practices in the context of global capitalism across history. Kaya took part in last year’s Kudos Live, a one-evening showcase of performance, poetry, readings, and dance held at Paddington arts space Cement Fondu. Kudos Live responded to the exhibition ‘Cosmic Beings’ which looked to ancient wisdoms, ancestral connections, and enlightenments beyond earthly limitations for futuring.

Kaya reads from a document:

“Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez”

The sound in liturgy, in church, in choir

“Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez”

– harmonic and divine, growing louder.

“Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez”

The single voice echoes, 

“Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez”

seeping into organ.

“Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez”

“Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez”

Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez is the title of the work and first line of the performance. It is spoken in old Turkish and translates to “those who cannot transcend their existence will never understand their annihilation”. The line comes from a series of poems spoken by Kaya’s great grandfather, Aşık Cemali who received the word of Allah and recited them to a devoted audience. His followers were villagers, townsfolk, and city dwellers who had travelled to his village in the north east Black Sea region of Turkey. Aşık Cemali was a bard; a transmitter of religious and cultural traditions through poetry and music. The bard is a continuation of a long pagan tradition of shamanism (healers and seers who negotiate with spirits) that connects Turkish culture to its Central Asian roots. The artist reads the line slowly and clearly, once, and loops it, crouching over his laptop. We hear this moment repeated into deterioration. 

“Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez”

Dissolving, glitching,

“Varlığından Geçmeyen Yokluğunu Bilemez”

splintering.

Aşık Cemali didn’t know how to read or write. A young, school-aged relative was forced to transcribe his oral poetry. Many years later, another relative of Kaya’s had these transcriptions professionally typed for a master’s thesis, compiling them into a collection of loose pages. The artist saw this document for the first time at his grandmother’s house in Turkey in 2022 and his uncle scanned each page into a PDF file that is 192 pages. Kaya held a physical copy of the scanned document and read from it during his performance. The document was printed on white A4 paper and bound into a thickset object that looked cumbersome to hold. The artist held it with both hands, occasionally gripping it with only his left and using his right to track the rhythm of the words in quick and repetitive movements between the page and his mouth. He had chosen certain lines and passages because he liked the rhythm of them spoken, or thought they were meaningful from what he could understand. Kaya had been reading the poetry intuitively over the 6 month process of making the work, a process that was both laborious and alienating, and beautiful and intimate.  

They hiss and snarl,

Insidious.

Circling, encroaching

To retract and dissipate–

The organ now boundless.

Kaya’s performance continues a lineage of translation– the word of Allah was received and translated into poetry spoken in old Turkish by Aşık Cemali, these words were then transcribed into various notebooks in the cursive handwriting of a village school girl, these transcriptions were then deciphered, typed, and formatted on a typewriter into an academic paper created within and for an institution, 192 pages of this paper were then digitally scanned into a PDF file which was emailed to the artist and printed, selected excerpts of this document were then read into a microphone to an English-speaking audience by the artist who speaks Turkish as someone who is part of the diaspora.

Through dark soundscapes and noisy textures and warps, we hear the artist’s voice tearing and distorting into multiple, different voices– we hear the artist, we hear the academic, we hear the school girl, we hear the bard, we hear the divine, we hear others. It is an intrusion across time, space, and realms, and through minds and bodies. We experience the dark and disorderly mind of the bard and feel the many labours of translation. If the task of the translator is to “facilitate this love between the original and its shadow, a love that permits fraying”¹, then the love facilitated by Kaya’s lineage is one of labour, servitude, pain, suffering, and intimacy. Due to the artist’s refusal to be made legible both linguistically and sonically, the poetry is obscured out of any decipherable meaning and the audience is left with the “slimy saliva” left behind by the tongue of the translator “that has licked and groomed every word and punctuation”². The poetry and the artist’s family history remain sacred to both the artist and the audience. The artist’s voice and Aşık Cemali’s poetry splinters into new meanings that must be imagined and reimagined by the English speaking audience.

Palm spread on chest, 

Holding ancient rage

In teeth and in throat.

Kaya’s voice dissolves into the dark soundscapes which, over a few minutes, eventually surrender to the lightness of the organ. The bass drum starts slow against the organ, like an earth shattering heartbeat, quickening and pulsating as the artist stands tall and begins to shout lines of poetry down the microphone. Kaya’s voice is fighting against the static of the noisy textures and we can see the struggle in his face– in between his eyebrows and in his teeth that are bared– and in the way he is standing with his right hand on his chest. We begin to feel as if we’re losing signal or we’re not tuned in properly– the voice relinquishing itself to the primordial forces of time, space, and realms. Kaya loops these lines of poetry and we hear the sound of the darbuka (drums indigenous to Anatolia and the Middle East), upbeat and fast, layered in between. The darbuka is energetic and varied, emulating both dance and ceremony. Through the darbuka, we hear the social– we hear the devoted followers gathering in the village, we hear the ties to ancestors, to land, and to family history, and we hear the density and potency of spoken word.

Seneler sürer her günüm 

Yalnız gitmekten yorgunum 

Zannetme sana dargınım

Ben gene sana vurgunum

Ben gene sana vurgunum

Ben gene sana vurgunum, hey 

In the final two minutes of the 15-minute performance, Kaya samples Ben Sana Vurgunum by Nükhet Duru. The lyrics of Ben Sana Vurgunum are a poem written by Turkish poet Sabahattin Ali. The song is playing in the background, beneath the noise and static, and it sounds like a radio picking up on the frequency of another station. We switch back and forth between the two frequencies, warped and glitching, haunting each other, and, eventually, surrender to Ben Sana Vurgunum. In an archive of projects that sample Ben Sana Vurgunum, Kaya places himself alongside Canadian singer-songwriter Abel Tesfaye, professionally known as The Weeknd, who sampled the song in his 2014 hit, Often. Kaya finds humour in The Weeknd sampling a Turkish song that he does not understand, meanwhile Kaya understands the song and samples it in a project about his great grandfather’s poetry that is beyond his understanding. Kaya understands both Ben Sana Vurgunum and Often at the intersection of being Turkish-Australian, but feels more connected to Often due to these layers of cultural and generational understanding. Ben Sana Vurgunum sounds quintessentially Turkish, referencing the type of music played and sung at a meyhane. A meyhane is a traditional place of gathering where people drink rakı, eat mezze, play music, and dance. Through music, song, and sound about love, longing, and desire, the meyhane becomes a site of confession.

From the bonfire to the gatho, the meyhane is just one of the many sites, modes, and histories of gathering that the artist considers within his work and wider practice. It is through these sites, modes, and histories that we are able to continue to reimagine the afterlife of those that gathered before us.