Thread: Turkish version of Baladi?

I'm not sure whether to post this here or in the music forum.

So I'm looking at how we classify Egyptian dance, from the folk/loric like Saidi/Tahtib to folksy/social styles like Baladi and Shaabi and then to the stage art of Raqs Sharqi.

I'm wondering now if you can do something similar with Turkish dance?

I know you have Romani folky style music and dance, but do they have a mellow baladi style of dance/music? A performance/stage art style of dance and music? And a popular, street style?

If you had to name a Turkish musical or dance genre that would be closest in feeling and essence to Egyptian Baladi, what would it be?

Deborah

TEASE! I thought you were actually commenting.

Dont know much about it...just know what I feel when I hear it. There is a slower gruntier form of Turkish folk that I just love. I have a very soullful song called Oyun Havasi - Roman. Lots of clarinet and strong slower kashlimah. Feels like beledi to me.

You always ask such good questions...g.:

I wish I had a good answer for you.

Originally Posted by anala

Dont know much about it...just know what I feel when I hear it. There is a slower gruntier form of Turkish folk that I just love. I have a very soullful song called Oyun Havasi - Roman. Lots of clarinet and strong slower kashlimah. Feels like beledi to me.

Oyoun Havasi is a generic term for that slow 9/8 music/dance we associate with Turkish Romani. It does have that soulful funky sound, but I think Aziyade was wondering if there's something else, more common to the non-Romani population in Turkey (if I'm reading the OP correctly)

Isn't there a tsiftitelli tradition in Turkey, similar to Greece?

Turkish dancers generally dont dance to a true Taxim which is an unmetered piece of music. we in the west to to refer to a taxim as anything slow or more improvised sounding which is incorrect.
I think Lauren is on the right track with Oyoun.

First I want to say I know nothing of Turkish dance... however, recently this dancer performed what I would recognise as Turkish dance to Egyptian beledi music...having said that, I did pick up some music years ago from Istanbul which had this beledi music played by Turkish ensembles.

this dancer worked in Turkey as a dancer and this is the style she mostly teaches.. like I said, I have no idea but here she is

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwmwunY9tkM]YouTube - casino el layl (Dandesh)[/ame]

Wasn't that Nancy? I do like her!..g.:

Anyway...back to OP - several years ago I asked on Bhuz whether there was a 'social' version of bellydance in Turkey, as there is in some Arabic countries. I was told 'yes', and *think* that the Bhuzzer who gave that information was aasiyah (sp?). I don't think the Old Bhuz archives are searchable any more, and I don't know if aasiyah still posts on here, but she might be a source of more info.

Sorry that's not very helpful,r:;

There really aren't a lot of true Turkish dancers around. Turkish style always had a lot of misunderstandings surrounding it (particularly confusion about pure Romani vs. pure Turkish), and when Egyptian style became so massively popular, Turkish fell out of favor and became kind of an artistic garbage dump for whatever people didn't want anymore. The fact that Turkey itself went through a wave of less-than-stellar dancers at the same time didn't help things any. You might try contacting someone who specializes in the style like Artemis, Eva Cernik, or Dilek.

I think there are lots of true Turkish dancers, they seem to perform regularly on TV programs like Ibo's and on the Turkish TV programs devoted to dance. (Youtube is full of clips from shows like Oryental Star).

Often a big chunk of the audience will stand up and dance along with the dancer, or dance at their seats while someone is singing a song that particularly moves them. And their movements are very much recognizable to me as 'bellydance' moves.

So that implies to me that there is a social form of bellydance. Further evidence: Turkish videos, like Tarkan's, often show people club-dancing in a manner recognizable as 'bellydance.'

Whether this social, informal dance style has a name, a tradition, a body of music associated with it like beledi, I don't know. That's what you're asking, isn't it, Aziyade?

We do have Turkish Buzzers (Aasiyah, Dilek) and Bhuzzers who've lived extensively in Turkey. It would be great if one of them stops by to answer!

Originally Posted by Lauren_

I think there are lots of true Turkish dancers, they seem to perform regularly on TV programs like Ibo's and on the Turkish TV programs devoted to dance. (Youtube is full of clips from shows like Oryental Star).

Sorry, I was talking about finding performers and teachers in the Western dance community. I think there was a period in the 1990's (give or take a few years) where the dance scene in Turkey was in a real nadir. Didem and a few others have since turned that around, but for a while, everyone who came back from there was reporting that nothing much of creativity, interest, or beauty was going on, and that the dancers were all PYTs in skimpy costumes with not much skill.

Originally Posted by aziyade

TEASE! I thought you were actually commenting.

Oops . . . sorry! :Aembarassed:

Although I started out listening to and dancing to quite a bit of Turkish music 30 years ago, I really don't know as much about it, in the sense you mean, Aziyade, as I do about Egyptian.

You know, I'm really bummed out now that I've had that realization.

*depressed*

Somebody share his/her knowledge -- please!

Deborah

Just a quick comment about an aspect of this discussion: Oyun Havasi means dance tune, and can be applied to dance tunes in any meter. Most frequently, the term oyun havasi is linked with the maqam - e.g., nihavent oyun havasi "dance tune in maqam nihavent". Roman oyun havasi means Romani dance tune.

My guess (coming back from a road trip) would be that the equivalent to beledi in Turkish could be dancing to a Turkish chifti.

Originally Posted by steffib

My guess (coming back from a road trip) would be that the equivalent to beledi in Turkish could be dancing to a Turkish chifti.

Now you've got me curious. I'm going to ask Artie tomorrow when I see her. But chifti sounds like a good bet.

I wouldn´t say there´s an eqvivalent...even if many arabesk songs are introvert/contemplating they can´t really be compared to beledi.

I mean,there´s no "egyptian version of Black Sea dance".
Every music style is unique IMH(humble)O :)

By the way(another of my humble op)
I think the best turkish dancers are in the US these days...most performing solo dancers in Istanbul uses arabic music and never play finger cymbals or spoons.
The folk troupe dancers are much better(although I appreciated Reyhan when I saw her at a Hidrellez festival,and I love Reyhan Tuzuz)

So Artemis,Eva and Dilek are big favorites,hope to see Bhuzzers Patrisha and Aasiyah dance someday.

Yes most famous "Turkish" dancers dance Eygptian style, not Turkish style.

Time to revive this thread:

http://www.bhuz.com/forum/belly-danc...e-dancers.html

The fact that there is not immediate, obvious counterpart is probably strongly influenced by the different history of the dance in Egypt vs. Turkey. First, Turkey was not a country until after WWII (1923, but things went downhill a few years before that), Turkey was the heart of the Ottoman empire. Given the nature of Turkey as a big country, comprising many different regions with their own traditions, Turkey has many different folk dances, and under Ataturk (who was the leader in founding the Republic of Turkey), the authentic dances were catalogued and defined - so, there is a different folk dance tradition in Turkey, in contrast to e.g. what Mahmoud Reda did. Dance performances in Turkey during the Ottoman times were not done by Turkish women, it was either foreigners and slaves (incl. the court dancers), males in drag, or social outsiders, i.e., the Roma - while Egyptian dancers also have to struggle in society, that's a difference in how dance was accepted. Bellydance as a public performance discipline developed fairly late (I believe more in the 40s/50s), while the Egyptians had a head start.

So, the point is - there is a very different history, and my gut feeling (I can't back that up) is that a well-defined discipline like beledi did not have time to develop. But then, as Lauren pointed out, people have always danced, and when Turks (and for that matter Greeks) get up and dance, it looks just like bellydance. It does NOT look like Romani dance, though. Just based on my knowledge of the music, chiftelli is usually used to indicate "this is dance music", and it does not mean "this is a CD with slow music", it is tunes is many different time signatures, including 9s. The image that's popping in my head is the scene in Latcho Drom, where the Romani girl just starts belly dancing.

Here is an article on Greek tsiftetelli: History of the greek Tsifteteli

The gist I get from this is that in Greece, tsiftetelli is what people dance, quite similar to beledi in Egypt. (Greece and Turkey are not completely identical cultures, of course.)

steffib I am a turkish bhuzzer and I think you are on the right track here. And yes when I read the question of this thread( before I 've read any of the answers) ciftetelli poped in to my mind too. Not in the sense most thinks in America, just as an ryhtym part in a song like in arabic music. But as folky belly dance much simpler than stage style, similar to Romani but little different. The difference of Turkey is that cabaret style belly dancers don't add folk performances to their sets! Even Romani is not performed by all..

Originally Posted by steffib

Just a quick comment about an aspect of this discussion: Oyun Havasi means dance tune, and can be applied to dance tunes in any meter. Most frequently, the term oyun havasi is linked with the maqam - e.g., nihavent oyun havasi "dance tune in maqam nihavent". Roman oyun havasi means Romani dance tune.
.

Oh, thank you! That's really great info. I've usually seen Roman Oyun Havasi so I had drawn a mistaken conclusion.

And I've often wondered what nihavent was, I come across that word all the time in Turkish music. Now I know it's a maqam!

*is happy to have learned two new things*

I asked Artie this afternoon and she said, no, that she didn't think there was anything quite like a beladi progression in the Turkish tradition. But maybe I narrowed the question down too much for chifti to pop into her mind.

Originally Posted by Serpentine

I asked Artie this afternoon and she said, no, that she didn't think there was anything quite like a beladi progression in the Turkish tradition. But maybe I narrowed the question down too much for chifti to pop into her mind.

Hm, starting the question by focusing on beledi progression may have introduced a rather narrow focus and may have emphasized the differences?

Starting the question by trying to find more general similarities could be a different approach with possibly a different outcome. A good line of investigation could for instance begin with the question what is the Turkish way of describing the dancing that the "country people" in the city do? Then one can become more specific towards a beledi progression. (Hope that makes any sense written out, it does in my head.)

The reason this popped into my brain -Roman Oyun Havasi - one of songs in that genre that I have danced to builds into an emotional climax of epic proportions. It starts in an introspective manner and becomes more intense as it progresses. The audience is pulled along like a train going uphill.

I didn't think she meant Baladi in the sense of baladi progression so much as in the more general sense.

'Baladi' in the sense of the style of dance that Egyptian people do, as opposed to professional dancers. Or what a professional dancer might do while dressed in a galabeya to folksier music, like Tahtil Shibbak or Mdalla Ya Hillou or Bint el Balad. Which could include a baladi progression, but certainly wouldn't be limited to that musical genre.

ahhh....dense again!

Originally Posted by anala

ahhh....dense again!

Huh? I thought your comment about the Romani tune was spot on - that's exactly what good Turkish music is supposed to do to you. Have a glass of wine for me in the hot tub, maybe? ;-)

Wow! I said something right? Wow!

Fer sher!!! A toast!! To The Turkish Train!

Okay, now that I think I have a better understanding of the question (Lauren: "'Baladi' in the sense of the style of dance that Egyptian people do, as opposed to professional dancers. Or what a professional dancer might do while dressed in a galabeya to folksier music") then my vote is for chiftitelli.

Deborah

I'd be inclined to think in terms of the line dances that are very, very typical of Turkish folk dancing. Ie, NOT a solo dance resembling belly dance, but a line of people holding hands and moving together as a group.

Although chiftetelli is also a candidate.