On church bells and the call to prayer

The season was still summer, albeit late september, and the circus was escaping Montenegro which had all extremes of welcome, from putting us on national television to chasing us down threatening cops and face bashing if we did not stay at threatener's house. Even the 'hippy beach' which somehow everyone in Europe talks about, had a funny sort of welcome, once we got past the feral street dogs, the hippies also grouped together in the packs they had come in and somehow treated this like any other beach resort- with umbrella drinks and sunglasses, just this one was free- so no beach chairs and no 5am garbage collectors. Sometimes a newbie would come to the beach, dazzled by the beauty and saddened by all the trash and would spend hours picking up the offensive bottles and bags, and would lie satisfied and self-righteous before the setting sun, only to wake up the next morning to find the beach once again buried in the plastic floating in from last night's tide, and oh how the locals would laugh! But this was not our fate, we decided internally that Montenegro was a country of insanity and Albania, with the calming force of Islam, with the emphasis on hospitality and giving to the poor, Albania would have peace for us.
And indeed, crossing the boarder was magical. The scenery abruptly changed from coastal mountains to middle eastern looking hills, dry rocky riverbanks with spindly twisted trees and bright pink flowers, and as we biked, wide-eyed at this new kind of beauty, we heard a voice floating toward us from upstream, a voice that tasted of dark flavorful stews, an arabic maqam which leaned into the tension of the melody, the tension of life, and resolved it with a sigh, come to pray. It was the first time I had heard the call to prayer, and I dismounted my steed and stood by the river to properly soak it up. And soon later as we biked into town we saw in a restaurant a wedding party dancing to some turkish beat, and I was so excited to be surrounded by this kind of music, the original reason for my trip.
I was not successful in collecting traditional songs with the big group, nor really as a solo cyclist. For some reason even in eastern europe every guitarist you meet still just wants to play obnoxious western rock covers, or maybe the covers are from a balkan band, but they follow the same formula bands do back in the states. And in all the cafes, western european radio stations would be playing euro trash techno, and I'd hear oh so comforting german coming in reporting the weather in Hamburg while I sat in Belgrade. But not in Albania! Here the stations were all albanian and the music was so much more influenced by the east. The ottomans were rampart through all the balkans, until croatia, austro/hungary, but in Albania they embraced Islam and the Eastern values, probably first due to tax or violence, but the slavic peoples had Orthodoxy or Catholicism so strong, they rejected the Islam, and thus didn't take on the culture or not nearly as much, which the music reflects. All balkan music was influenced by the Turks for sure, but in the rest of the balkans I heard a distinction from Turkish music, here there is more tempered tuning (necessitated by the accordion) and different beats and tempo. Of course, the standard circle dances you can use the same basic step everywhere, from serbia to albania, bulgaria to turkey and all the surrounding countries. But there was such a clear difference even just in what was blasting out of cars as they drove by. In Serbia it was pretty western sounding, and there was a mix of what you heard. But in Albania it was just these middle eastern beats, maybe fused with techno, but never would you hear officious english or german stammering out of the speakers, never the shredding of an electric guitar. At first I was so glad of this, I thought that here in these lands, their music is so steeped, traditional music so ubiquitous, so uniform, I will have no choice but to learn it, that's all people will play on the street and I'll meet tons of musicians in no time to teach me their folk music!
But what I failed to realize was that really the music was my first warning sign. If eyes are the window to the soul, I find traditional music is the eye of a culture's soul. If the music is solo based, or if everyone plays at the same time, if the dancing is a private or public event, if there are "masters" or just teachers, if women and men dance together or separate, all these things and many more are reflections of a society. And the complete absence of any other musical styles was a warning sign to their disinterest in foreign sounds, ideas, people. But I blamed the coldness I felt as a reaction to being in a big group and I made plans to set off on my own for Istanbul, reputedly a musical hot spring.
I arrived, after what was indisputably the worst ride of the trip- an endless highway over endless rolling hilled desert, next to endless trucks blaring their horns at me, against an endless headwind into a city that rose up on a hill and I thought, finally I've arrived! as I saw the 20 story buildings shimmering above me, but when I got there, I just saw more stretched out before me, and more, and more. I stopped thinking and merely rode flabbergasted at this endless jungle of buildings until dazed and battered, I stumbled into an irish pub, the James Joyce, I had cycled over 700km just in time for the jam! I must have been a sight to see.. and smell..
There at the table sat my to be most gracious and generous host that I could have imagined, who besides making my stay so comfortable and easy, did the ultimate miracle for my soul- he played banjo with my to my heart's content! How wonderful to hear that good old-timey stompin, how I missed the perfect combo of the twang of the banjo with the wail of my fiddle!
He was, however, the bearer of bad news. He who has been living in Turkey the last 15 years, fluent in Turkish, an amazing all around musician, including Turkish Saz player, came here for the sole purpose of learning Turkish music, had not yet found a traditional turkish music scene, or people to play traditional music with. He said that he has met more people to play Turkish music with in the states than in Turkey. I think this is because of the tradition of the music. It is a solo based one, with a master to teach all the proper maqams. According to Bob, my host, most people study Turkish music in the university and it is treated like classical music in the states. Ensembles are arranged at school or between professionals hired for weddings or other private events. There isn't a jam or session culture like there is for old time or irish, and it seems there isn't as much even a culture of amateurs that just get together to play for fun.. this too is a little like what I know of the western classical scene. So there was all that standing between me and my desire to learn this music, which was wasn't prepared to let stop me at first, and I got books and CDs of the maqams and started practicing. But what really ended it for me, or let me be convinced to leave Istanbul, was a different part of the musical tradition, was was of course a reflection of the culture- that women don't play.
It was in varying degrees of discomfort that I went about a couple months of life in a muslim country. I know that there are so many perspectives on Islam and its oppression vs liberation of women, that Istanbul is a very mild case anyway, that I really wasn't there long enough even to make any definitive statements about my feelings that will hold for any set amount of time, but I do know that it was hard for me. It was hard for me to walk down the street lined with cafes where dice clacked melodiously against wooden tavla boards, where I so desperately wanted to play too, but there were only men who filled the chairs, and I knew to sit down would be breaking cultural rules. It was hard to see every cafe this way, not a woman in sight, and not think of what women do to have fun and socialize? It can't be only shopping and the movies! And it was with difficulty that I rationalized that the home is the woman's domain, that it was her strength and authority that forced husbands out of the house, out of the way and into the cafes. I got myself to understand this. But it is hard for me with a superhero mother, with her hand in a million projects, as my role model, and with my western ideals of challenging conventional gender roles, and of course being a street rat with nowhere to go when it is cold but into a cafe. It was hard to be uncovered in a colorful sea of hijab, so I covered. It was hard to perform as a solo woman, so I just performed in groups. It was hard to walk alone in some parts, so I stayed with a man. It was hard to speak out against that man in public, so I stayed silent. But slowly, I found that I was assuming the role of house keeper. I found that I started to be afraid of being alone.. and the worst, I found that more and more even privately I was keeping silent. I found that I was stepping into a role, into a mentality that isn't mine, that I was assimilating to a culture that I didn't want inside of me. I could have stayed. I did find people to play with, all westerners, but it was certainly the most thriving musical scene since Berlin. I could have made a life for myself, I could had fiddled my way maybe even into a traditional music scene.. but that act in itself is of course breaking tradition, the very thing I am seeking to learn. And, had I stayed, five times a day I would hear a voice commanding me to come pray, and reinforcing my subconscious acceptance of my subordinance.
And so I silently turned around and followed a man back the way I had come, back west.. and when we crossed into Bulgaria and heard the calm distant chiming of church bells, I think I cried. It was like coming home.