A mystic journey

UNESCO Courier, May, 1996 by Kudsi Erguner

Silence is the spring from which the Sufi musician draws his music. In that he is akin to the earth in labour. The musician does not know what will emerge, or when, but he cannot let the moment go by; he must be there when the seed sprouts.

Likewise, no one can know in advance what will come from the seed buried within them. Only the sound of the ney - a reed flute - can reveal the face of this other person who is one's real self. The sound of the ney re-opens in us a wound from a past time when we were totally at one with plants, stones, water and stars. The memory of this union vanishes at our birth. But when, in silence, we hear the first notes of the ney, memories rise up in us, and we remember this lost homeland.

"We have all heard this music in Paradise," wrote the thirteenth-century mystic poet Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi. "Although the water and clay of our bodies have cast doubt over us, something of this music drifts back into our memory."

According to Islamic tradition, the ney has this power to command memory because "the reed quill was the first thing created by God". Like humankind, the hey was cut from its roots, the reed-bed by the pond's edge. "Ever since then," complains the ney in Rumi's words, "my dirge makes men and women lament. I call to a heart torn by separation to show it the pain of desire."

The ney is thus man's double. Both have wounds on their chests and are enwrapped in bonds. Both are empty and desiccated because the earth no longer nourishes them. Each is voiceless without the other. The reed flute is made to sing; it only comes to life at the musician's lips. Hearing its notes, the musician glimpses the inaudible vibration of the celestial vault and remembers the time when he was wedded to its movements. The time when, unveiled, he contemplated the shining face of God. "We are the flute," sings Rumi. "Our music comes from Thee."

The sama is the spiritual concert where the hey is accompanied by the daf (a frame-mounted drum), the tanbur (a long-necked lute), the kanun (zither), the ud (short lute) and the kemence (violin). It takes place in the evening in a tekke (a large room in half-light). The musicians, who are gathered on one side and surrounded by an audience on carpets and couches, only begin to play after several hours have elapsed, when a long silence has settled in.

Listening

Sama means "listening". During the sama the musicians play compositions from one of the modes (maqam) in the repertoire or improvise on this mode. Some maqam belong to a tradition that may go back to the fourteenth century. They vary little in their form and are well known to the audience. But they are never played or listened to twice in the same way.

During a sama, the listeners are invited to embark on a journey of the soul. The route is spiral-shaped, and each stage of it is marked by a silence, as if wishing to test the solidity of the foothold reached before continuing the ascent. The musician, said Rumi, provides the footprints. The ney player indicates a direction and creates a favourable environment for the journey. A specific atmosphere goes with each musical mode.

No one at the beginning of a sama can guess how the journey will end. Perhaps in a joyful meeting with the Beloved? Perhaps it will not be long, or the traveller will have to turn back. . . . Everything depends on the hal (state of mind) of the audience and the musician. But the two are so intertwined that it is impossible to know which influences which.

The word hal does not denote a vague feeling caused by a vagrant mood but the degree of elevation which a person with a "pure heart" achieves at the end of a period of inner asceticism. If he aspires to the divine, he must control his instincts without repressing them. The horseman who listens to his mount rather than guiding it has little chance of going far. In the same way, we must silence our inner sounds - our carnal passions - and concentrate our listening powers so that they become sharper and more watchful, sensitive to the slightest change of tone.

Sometimes the silence of the audience may be so complete that it feeds the silence from which the hey player draws the force and softness of his notes. At these moments the miracle of breathing becomes palpable for everyone, musician and listener alike. Inhaling and exhaling seem virtually automatic. In an almost unreal silence, the sound of the ney is a reminder that an instant of life is won with each breath. The musician's ear is schooled in the harmony of the celestial vault. By filling the reed's tube, his breath prolongs the continuous rhythm of the universe. He becomes the echo of its unending movement.

KUDSI ERGUNER is a Turkish architect and musicologist who himself plays and teaches the ney. He founded the Mewlana Association in Paris (France) where he teaches the Sufi tradition and classical music. Among his many recordings is The Turkish Ney (Traditional Musics of Today Collection, Auvidis/UNESCO, 1990).