"In memory of the Ottoman court
Sep 13th 2007
From The Economist print edition
A Swiss musician sets out to restore the purity of Turkey's musical lore “NEITHER the sweets of Damascus, nor the face of the Arab.” This Turkish adage sums up the disdain modern Turks have long expressed for their Arab neighbours, a disdain that became fashionable with the founding of the republic by Ataturk, who in his zeal to make Turkey Western set about erasing all traces of its Ottoman past, including its links to the Arab world. The court music of the sultans was not spared and soon was buried in a layer of Western instruments like the violin and the piano. The result, according to Julien Jalal Eddine Weiss, an expert on classical Arab and Sufi music, was like “using African bongos in a Mozart sonata”."
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