THE AESTHETICS OF MOTION IN MUSICS FOR THE MEVLANA CELAL ED-DIN RUMI

ABSTRACT

Title of Dissertation:

THE AESTHETICS OF MOTION IN MUSICS

FOR THE MEVLANA CELAL ED-DIN RUMI

Victor A. Vicente, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007

Dissertation directed by:     

Professor Robert C. Provine

Division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology School of Music, University of Maryland

This dissertation investigates the concept of motion as a fundamental aesthetic element in the devotional music, dance, and rituals performed in honor of the celebrated thirteenth-century Persian mystic poet and saint, the Mevlana Celal ed-Din Muhammad Rumi. The main focus of the study is threefold. First, it investigates the prevalence of the notion of movement in Islamic music and culture, specifically within the Sufi communities of Turkey, in order to arrive at a broader understanding of the relationship between music, aesthetics, and worldview. Secondly, it explores how musical performance functions as a form of devotion or religious worship by focusing on the musical repertories performed in honor of a single holy figure, the Mevlana Rumi. Finally, it provides an ethnographic account of contemporary developments in Sufi musical culture in Turkey and across the world by describing the recent activities of the Mevlana's devotees, which includes members of the Mevlevi Order of Islamic mystics as well as adherents of other Sufi brotherhoods and followers of so-called New Religions or New Age.

The primary research for this study involved two short one-month field trips to Turkey and India in 2002 and 2003, respectively, and a longer one year expedition to Turkey in 2004 and 2005, which also included shorter stays in Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt. Additionally, the dissertation draws directly from critical theories advanced in the fields of ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology, and ethnochoreology and focuses on the kinesthetic parameters of music, dance, trance, and ritual as well as on broader forms of socio-cultural movement including pilgrimage, cultural tourism, and globalization. These forms of movement are analyzed in four broad categories of music used in worship, including classical Mevlevi music, music of the zikr ceremony, popular musics, and non-Turkish musics.

THE AESTHETICS OF MOTION IN MUSICS FOR THE MEVLANA CELAL ED-DIN RUMI

by Victor Amaro Vicente

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School

of the University of Maryland in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

2007

Advisory Committee:

Professor Robert C. Provine,

Chair Professor Emeritus Józef M. Pacholczyk

Professor Barbara Haggh-Huglo

Professor Adrienne L. Kaeppler

Professor Madeline C. Zilfi

! Copyright by

Victor Amaro Vicente

2007

DEDICATION

To

The Mevlana Celel ed-Din Rumi,

His devotees,

and

All who helped me in this journey.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Like all similar projects, this dissertation comes as the last step of a long journey of discovery that has taken me to worlds I could never have imagined. Although some find the path of researching, writing, and editing to be so grueling that they sometimes lose their way, I have enjoyed nothing but happy trails thanks to the guidance of a great many kind souls. Whatever faults or discrepancies afflict this study, none is greater than my failure to properly acknowledge all those who have helped and encouraged me at every step. My deepest apologies and most sincere gratitude, therefore, to all those whose names do not appear in print here.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Józef M. Pacholczyk and Dr. Robert C. Provine for their wisdom and sage advice. Both served as my advisors at various stages of this project and it is doubtful that it would have ever come to light without their support, insight, and magical abilities to change deadlines and sign rule waivers. It was Dr. Pacholczyk who recommended this topic to me and who enthusiastically encouraged my first ventures into the musics of the Middle East through his detailed lectures and expansive conversations. Meanwhile, Dr. Provine was not only gracious enough to serve as my final advisor and give of his own time freely to work through my drafts, but he also offered me numerous opportunities to lecture and teach in his classes, which helped me refine my approaches and thoughts on this topic.

Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Barbara Haggh-Huglo, Dr. Adrienne L. Kaeppler, and Dr. Madeline C. Zilfi for their enlightening seminars and for agreeing to serve on my advisory committee. Their attention to detail and suggestions have been enormously helpful in producing the final version of this dissertation. For help with early drafts, I also thank Christina Taylor Gibson, whose support and counsel kept me going and kept me on schedule.

For their insights into Turkish culture, I thank especially Dr. Ahmet Yürür and his wife Carol Stevens Yürür, who not only generously housed and fed this peripatetic researcher-backpacker, but also unreservedly shared their wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm. My stay in Turkey would have been far less rich without them, and I cherish the times we spent together. Likewise, I am also indebted to all the wonderful people I met in Konya as well as to Kerem Atalay for his unique perspectives on Turkish culture, for his endless help with translations, and for agreeing to give me that house in Urla. For their insights and help with my Turkish, I also owe a deep sense of gratitude to Dr. Naime Yaramanoglu, Ugur Aybar, Serap Davaz, and Kursad Albayraktaroglu as well as to Nilgün, Ömer, and Onur for being my tutors and translaters in Izmir and for the boundless geyik etmek.

I am also indebted to Dr. Natalie Sarrazin and Anand Kumar Dwivedi not only for their help with Urdu and Hindi translations, but also for their friendship and for having introduced me to the wonders of South Asia. Along with them, I would like to thank Debbie Kuckuda and Virginia Wyant for their guidance and all of my teachers and students from whom I am still learning.

In addition, I am deeply grateful to all my friends and colleagues who have supported me throughout the years. In the U.S., I would like to thank Dr. Stuart Cheney, Katie Curtis, Olivia Hauser, Dr. Benjamin Levy, Dr. Jonathan McCollum, Dr. Heather Miller, who waited patiently with me in #zmir for the arrival of my spiritual package, Rachel Muehrer, Dr. Kenneth Schweitzer, Mary Scott, Xóchitl Tafoya, Cheryl Tobler, Aja Burrell Wood, and Sunmin Yoon. Of my friends in Turkey and elsewhere around the world, I would like to single out Malin Brodin, Anne Buijtenhek, Amanda Chreptowich, Florian Henning, Demet Kaygusuz, Antonio Leite de Castro, Carlos Martins, Sebastian Mehling, Nora Oertel, Jóhanna Rúnarsdóttir, and Gözde Sütçü for all the wonderful memories. I hope we can all meet again at Cosmo for çay and then saunter over to Köz for dinner and more çay soon.

Finally, I would like to express my deep thanks and love to my whole family, especially my father Mario, my mother Maria, my brother Helder, his wife Laura, and their beautiful baby boy Samuel.

Sizi çooooook seviyorum! Çok te"ekkür ederim!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ORTHOGRAPHY AND CONVENTIONS  LIST OF FIGURES

CHAPTER I   Introduction:

                    From Plurality to Unity

! Starting in the Middle

! Bearings, Directions, and a Roadmap: Introduction
! The Journeys of the Mevlana Celal ed-Din Muhammad al-Balkhi al-Rumi

! Advancing after Annihilation: The Cult of the Mevlana

! The Mevlevi and Music for the Mevlana

! Paths Well Trodden: Previous Scholarship

! Fieldwork in Multiple Field Sites

! Itineraries to Enlightenment: Structure of the Dissertation

CHAPTER II        The Geometries of Belief:

                          Toward an Understanding of the Aesthetics of Motion

! At the Shrine of the Mevlana

! Music as Culture : Worldview in the Study of Music and Culture

! Haram as Aesthetic: The Legality of Music and the Arts

! Motion as Devotion: Motion in Sufi Cosmology

! Music as Devotion: The Music of the Spheres

CHAPTER III      Modes of Motion:

                         The Spirit of Motion in Musics for the Mevlana

! The Konya Otogar, A Modern Caravanserai

! Global Movement and the World of Islam

! Theoretical Wanderings on Pilgrimage and Tourism

! Music, Trance, and the Inner Journey

! Dance, Musical Motion, and Structured Movement Systems

CHAPTER IV    In Perfect Proportion:

                       The Sacred Sounds of a Secular State

! Reviving Rumi: The Mevlana Cultural Center

! The Political Economy of the Soul:

The Mevlana in Politics, Tourism, and Ziyaret

! The Ottoman-Classical Musical Tradition of the Mevlevi

o The Concept of Makam

o The Concept of Usul

o The Concept of Suite

o Performing Forces and Performance Practice

o Mevlevi Composers and the History of the Ayin-i Şerif

! Ethnography of a Whirling Show

! Musical Movement in Mustafa Nakşi Dede's Şedaraban Ayin-i Şerif

CHAPTER V      Arcs of Ascent and Descent:

                         Music, Trance, and Ritual in Zikr Ceremony

! “Always Remember God”

! Modes of Remembrance: On the Various Types of Zikr

! Music, Ecstasy, and the Zikr Ceremony

! Ethnography of a Zikr Gathering

! Arcs of Ascent and Descent: Analysis of a Zikr Ceremony

CHAPTER VI     Sounds Like Sufi Spirit:

                         The Mevlana in Popular Music and Culture

! Sufi Spirituality at the Supermarket

! Towards a Sufi Popular Music in Turkey

! The Mevlana in the New Age

! Our Lady of Mysticism: Madonna and the Mevlana

! Sufism and Popular Music in South Asia

! Mevlevi Sufism and Rock and Roll Music in Turkey

! Mercan Dede, Sufi Traveler

! Spinning in Circles: Intentionality and the Polemics of Authenticity

CHAPTER VII     Songs from Other Spheres:

                         Non-Turkish Music in the Worship of the Mevlana

! “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus…. It Means Allahu Akbar”

! The Mevlana and Western Music
! The Pyrotechnics of Piety:

Music at the First Annual International Mystic Music Festival

! Returning to Rumi's Roots: Music from Iran and Afghanistan

CHAPTER VIII       Caught in Motion: Conclusion

! “Welcome Home” — Caught in Motion

! Music and the Mevlevi in the Year of the Mevlana

! Moving Beyond Static States: An Offering to Ethnomusicology

! Coming Full Circle: An Offering to the Mevlana

APPENDIX: List of Makam-s Used in the !edaraban Ayin of Mustafa Nakşi Dede

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ONLINE CITATIONS

ORTHOGRAPHY AND CONVENTIONS

In 1928 the parliament of the newly formed Republic of Turkey oversaw a series of sweeping reforms regarding the Turkish language. Turkish was systematically purged of foreign influence, especially of Arabic and Farsi vocabulary and grammar, and the Arabic script used during the Ottoman period was replaced with a modified Latin script and a phonetic orthography. Thus, modern Turkish is now written in a manner that is both more suiting to the nature of the language and more accessible to speakers of European languages. The modern Turkish alphabet contains twenty-nine letters, only six of which (ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş, ü) will seem unfamiliar to an English reader:

A a	“a” in art	L l	“l” in look
B b	“b” in book	M m	“m” in music
C c	“j” in judge	N n	“n” in noise
Ç ç	“ch” in check	O o	“o” in or
D d	“d” in dog	Ö ö	“u” in fur
E e	“e” in empty	P p	“p” in pilgrim
F f	“f” in foot	R r	“r” in red (slightly rolled)
G g	“g” in go	S s	“s” in song
Ğ ğ	not pronounced	Ş ş	“sh” in shake
	(lengthens preceding vowel)	T t	“t” in top
H h	“h” in heavy	U u	“u” in rule
I ı	“e” in number	Ü ü	exaggerated “u” in nude
İ i	“i” in if or “ee” in eel	V v	“v” in van
J j	“s” in Asia	Y y	“y” in yes
K k	“k” in kiss	Z z	“z” in zero

Despite the best efforts of the Turkish Language Society, however, many Arabic, Farsi, and even French words are in official use in modern Turkish. This is largely due to the fact that Central Asiam Turkic languages, with their generally limited indigenous vocabularies, are used as primary sources. Consequently, Arabic and, to some extent,

Farsi remain important particularly with respect to religious terminology, which is central to this study. The Turkish solution to the dilemma of Arabic and Farsi orthography is to respell all vocabulary phonetically according to the Turkish alphabet. For the sake of consistency and owing to the great difficulty of transliterating the Arabic script, I have opted to employ Turkish over Arabic and Farsi spellings whenever possible. Thus, al-Qur'&n (Quran, etc.) is rendered as Koran, Jal&l-ad-D'n (Djalal al-Din, Jelaluddin, etc.) as Celal ed-Din, and Mawl&n& (Maulana, Mulana, etc.) as Mevlana.

The exceptions to this concern words that are in common usage in the English language and in instances when the Turkish version may cause confusion. Thus, the name of the Prophet Mohammad (Mohammed, etc.) is written Muhammad, rather than the Turkish Mehmet, and al-Q&hirah is written Cairo, rather than Kahire.

While much of the terminology foreign to the English appears in italic typescript, proper nouns and some musical terminology, particularly instrument names, remain in regular plain typescript. With respect to pluralization, I substitute the typical Turkish suffixation (-lar, -ler) with -s, as in zikr-s.

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure / Page

1 Entrance to A!zıkara Hanı, a 13^th-Century Selçuk Caravanserai (Near Aksaray, June 6, 2002)  10

2 Map of Mevlevi Lodges and Centers in the Near East (Provided by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism) 15

3 The Mevlana Museum and the Rear Garden (Konya, July 9, 2005)37

4 Right Door of the Main Entrance to the Mevlana Museum (Konya, June 18, 2005) 39

5 Tomb of the Mevlana Celal ed-Din Rumi, Mevlana Museum (Konya, June 9, 2002) 40

6 Interior Dome Decoration, Semahane, Mevlana Museum (Konya, November 14, 2004) 41

7 Interior Dome Decoration, Mosque, Mevlana Museum (Konya, June 9, 2002)  42

8 Dabke Dance Performed at a Circumcision Celebration (Konya, July 9, 2005)  48

9 Sufi Numerical Symbolism (Based partially on the Ikhwan al-Safa and Ibn Sina) 57

10 Ud, Mevlana Museum (Konya, June 18, 2005) 68

11 Front View of the Konya Otogar (Konya, November 14, 2004) 73

12 Side View of the Konya Otogar (Konya, November 14, 2004) 74

13 Dome Interior, Konya Otogar (Konya, May 12, 2005) 75

14 Whirling Dervish Coffee Mug and Other Trinkets, Konya Otogar (Konya, November 14, 2004) 76

15     Turkish Flags Adorn the Çesme Town Center (Çesme, April 23, 2005) 79

16  The Kapalı Çarsısı (“Covered Bazaar”) (Istanbul, June 24, 2002) 82

17   Pedestrians Shopping in Karsıyaka (Izmir, March 26, 2005) 83

18  Image of a Whirling Dervish Made of Cabbages (Konya, December 10, 2004) 104

19  The Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, June 18, 2005) 105

20 Map of the Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 10, 2004) 107

21 Detail over Open-Air Sema Amphitheater, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 10, 2004) 108

22 Dress Rehearsal and Preparations for Opening Night, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 10, 2004) 110

23 Detail from the Hood of a Tourist Minivan (Near Aksaray, June 05, 2002) 116

24 Tourist Arrivals and Revenue in Turkey and Egypt, 1999-2005 117

25 Mevlevi Figurines, Store Window Display (Konya, November 14, 2004) 119

26 “Pilgrimage to the Konya of Shams & Rumi” 121

27 Formal Outline of the Ottoman Fasıl 132

28 Formal Outline of the Mevlevi Sema Ceremony 135

29 Outline of Genre Types in Use in the Modern Sema Ceremony 139

30 Instruments on Display, Mevlevi Museum (Konya, June 9, 2002) 142

31 Silsila of Mevlevi Musicans and Composers 151

32 Fireworks over the Mevlana Museum (December 12, 2004) 154

33 Musicians of the Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlıgı Konya Türk Tasavvuf Müzigi Toplulugu, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 10, 2004) 160

34 The Postman Sitting in Contemplation, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 12, 2004) 161

35 Performing the Nat-ı Şerif, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 10, 2004) 162

36 The Sultan Veled Procession, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 12, 2004) 163

37 Semazen-s in Niyaz Posture, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 10, 2004) 164

38 Stages of Sema Whirling, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 12, 2004) 165

39 Semazen-s Performing Sema, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 10, 2004) 166

40 Semazen-s Performing Sema, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 12, 2004) 167

41 Semazen-s Performing Sema, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 12, 2004) 167

42 The Postni"in and Semazen-s Whirling, Mevlana Cultural Center (Konya, December 12, 2004) 169

43 Şedaraban Scales 175

44 Accidentals Used in Turkish Musical Notation 175

45 Opening of the Fist Selam of Nakşi Dede's Şedaraban Ayin-i Şerif 177

46 Upper Range of Makam Şedaraban, Stanza I, Verses 3-4 of the First Selam of Nakşi Dede's Şedaraban Ayin-i Şerif 178

47 Ending of the Teslim of the !edaraban Pe"rev Attributed to Gazi Giray Han 178

48 Transitional Section between Stanzas I and II of Nakşi Dede's Şedaraban Ayin-i Şerif 179

49 Scale of Makam Rast 179

50 Formal and Modal Layout of the şedaraban Peşrev Attributed to Gazi Giray Han 180

51 Melodic Motives from the Third Stanza of Nakşi Dede's Şedaraban Ayin-i Şerif 181

52 Modal Layout of Nak"i Dede's !edaraban Ayin-i !erif in Ritual Context 182

53 Public Sink (Damascus, October 04, 2004) 185

54 Usul Düyek 201

55 Usul Sofiyan 201

56 Rhythmic Contraction of the “Allah Hayy” Formula 223

57 Changes in Kudüm Rhythmic Cycles 223

58 Painting of a Native American Flute Player (Do!ubeyazit, November 19, 2004) 240

59 Qawwal-s at Chittaurgarh Mosque (Chittaurgarh, August 7, 2003) 256

60 Zikr-like Formula from “Çekirge Dansı” 264

61 Zikr Formula used in “Kûh” 265

62 Flyer for Mercan Dede's Concert Tour during the Mevlana Festivities of December 2004 276

63 Bendir Decorated with a Whirling Dervish (Konya, December 17, 2004) 307

64 1973 Commemorative Stamps featuring Whirling Dervishes, Küdum Players, and the Mevlana   315

65 UNESCO Mevlana 2007 Emblem 316

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