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Arkın Ilıcalı (born 1966), better known as Mercan Dede, also known as DJ Arkın Allen, is a Turkish composer, ney and bendir player, DJ and producer. He divides his time between Turkey, Europe and North America. He is a world music artist, playing a fusion of (traditionally acoustic) Turkish and other oriental musics with electronic sounds.
His best known albums include Seyahatname, Su, and Nar. He has worked
in collaboration with Turkish and international musicians such as
Susheela Raman, Dhafer Youssef, Sheema Mukherjee (Transglobal
Underground) and Hugh Marsh.
Mercan Dede's Music
The sound of Mercan Dede incorporates traditional instruments from
Turkey and other parts of the world, with horns, drum'n'bass dance
beats, ambient electronic music and a sufi spirituality. (The name
Mercan Dede itself evokes sufism as "Dede" is the word for 'elder' in
the sufi traditions, although the name Mercan Dede in fact was taken
from a character in a modern Turkish novel). The music is all composed
by Dede, some of it very rhythmic, some of it ambient and new-age-ish.
With a bright red mohican hairstyle and wearing traditional sufi robes
Dede's appearance also communicates the blended aesthetic that the
music is trying to achieve.
He plays with groups of various sizes and fluctuating membership; the
Mercan Dede Trio, the Mercan Dede Ensemble, the Secret Tribe etc. The
instrumentation includes electronics and the elements of classical
Turkish Music such as the ney (which he plays himself), percussion,
violin, and zither. The groups often include Montreal-based
percussionist Scott Russell; and have at times included: virtuoso
Canadian violinist Hugh Marsh; Turkish clarinetist Hüsnü Şenlendirici;
and many others (see list of collaborators below). The shows often
include men and women in sufi costume doing the Sufi whirling.
Dede also works as a DJ under the name Arkın Allen, specialising in
musics related to that of his live groups, in this case dance music
with an oriental flavour.
Mercan Dede has been criticised by Turkish music purists for not being
steeped in the sufi traditions and for not properly representing sufism
in his music and writings (such as the liner notes to Seyahatname
quoted below).Other criticism has been that the whirling dancers he
uses to accompany his shows do not accurately display the correct
dervish routines. But then he more than just a ney player, working just
as often as a DJ as performing live in concert, and his audience is
clubbers not islamic scholars, and he aims for a synthetic music not a
historically pure music.
History
Born; Arkin Ilicali in Turkey, 1966, graduated in media studies from
Istanbul University, moved to Canada as an art teacher, specialising in
ebru (a traditional Turkish marbled printing), still resident in Canada.
The Mercan Dede ensemble was founded in 1997, by which time Arkın had
been working as a musician for some years, and the first album was Sufi
Dreams in 1998, the profile of which was boosted when the music was
used in a German television documentary on sufi music.
In 2001 he released his 3rd album Seyahatname, which means "Travelogue"
in antique Turkish and evokes the era of the great caravanserai
crossing Anatolia on the Silk Road. The sound of the ney goes back to
this period anyway, and the music aspires to the spirit of the mystic
sufi poets of that time, such as Mevlana. The liner notes are very much
in the sufi vein: Mercan Dede claims that the sound of the ney is "a
pure, universal spiritual sound" superior to 'the imitative
observations, dry beliefs and loveless ideologies' (that so many of us
live by). He goes on to say that the ney evokes deeper feelings than
these, deeper than we can comprehend in just our short time on earth.
The ney "speaks the language of love, instantly comprehensible in the
heart, compared to which all the mosques, churches, temples built to
decorate (our spirituality) drift away". The album is Mercan Dede's
flawed, personal effort to reflect his own spiritual journey. His 2002
album Nar (which means 'fire' in Turkish) continued in the same vein.
And in 2004 he released Su which stayed at no. 1 on European World
Music Charts for two months. The album was recorded with an
international line-up of musicians and has more vocals on it than the
previous works. One track featuring folk singer Sabahat Akkiraz was
particularly popular in Turkey. Mercan Dede made his U.S. debut at the
1st Globalfest that year, followed by a North American tour and the
release of the album Fusion Monster under the name 'Arkin Allen', a
slightly different twist on his familiar sound. He was then
commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Culture as the music director
of the Guldestan project to represent Turkish culture and arts all
around the globe, working alongside choreographer Beyhan Murphy.
Mercan Dede and his Secret Tribe have given powerful live performances
at prestigious festivals including the Montreal Jazz Festival, Womex,
the Festival de Trans Musicales and Banlieus Bleus, Arezzo, the
Montreux Jazz Festival, the World Roots Festival, and the Rhythm Sticks
Festival, and at more than 100 shows in Vienna, Geneva, Brussels,
Cologne, Paris, Amsterdam and Istanbul.
The 2006 album Nefes included Transglobal Underground sitar player
Sheema Mukherjee in the line-up. 'Nefes' means 'breath' in Turkish and
the liner notes were in the same vein as previous albums (breath gives
life, our first greeting to the spirit world is the cry we give out
when we are born, etc. etc.)
Collaborations
* Violinist, long-time collaborator Hugh Marsh - (Canada)
* Vocalist Susheela Raman
* Kanun virtuoso Göksel Baktagir (Turkey)
* Clarinet virtuoso Hüsnü Şenlendirici, and his group Laço Tayfa (Turkey)
* Vocalist Dhafer Youssef (Tunisia)
* Urban poet, Ceza (Turkey)
* Azam Ali and her group, Niyaz
* Classical pianist Fazil Say (Turkey)
* Jazz saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin (Turkey)
* 'Arabesque' singer Özcan Deniz (Turkey)
* Folk singer Aynur Dogan (Turkey)
* Pop Musician Peter Murphy
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