#Light in Babylon #Michal Elia Kamal #world music #Mediterranean folk #ethno folk #Turkish folk #Middle Eastern folk #music video
The Ingathering: What’s the band’s story, did you get started playing on the streets?
Michal Elia Kamal: We started playing on one specific street, called İstiklal Avenue [İstiklal Caddesi, or Independence Avenue], not everywhere.
Specifically just that one street in Istanbul?
Yes, İstiklal Avenue, it is a very special place. We started around 11 years ago in Istanbul on İstiklal Avenue, which is in the city center near Taksim Square. It’s very specific and a very special place. That was in 2009, almost 2010, and that moment was also a very good time in Turkey, culturally. Istanbul was chosen to be the cultural capital of Europe, and that period was like a golden time. It is not like that anymore, by the way, but then it was a place with a really big potential for musicians, and artists in general. İstiklal Avenue is a huge avenue with no cars. There are more than two million people passing through there every day. It is very crowded, very touristy, and it was like an artists’ avenue. You had bands playing there—even half-organized—proper bands brought their equipment and put on concerts. You had a puppet show. It looked like a festival. It was not an organized festival, but it was like that every day. It was so intense.
Is that where you met Metehan Çifçi (Mete)?
I wanted to learn music, and I wanted to start my own project. I traveled in India, worked a bit in Europe, and decided I was going to dedicate my life to music. I had even already looked at music schools in Israel. But I looked around, and many of my friends studied music in Israel. I saw them struggling, actually. They are really high-level musicians. They put a lot of money and effort and study into it, and I didn’t see them achieving what they deserved. That changed my mind a bit, and I thought that maybe music school was not the place for me.
I continued to travel. I passed through Turkey almost by chance. It was just before I was about to go back to Israel to figure out what I was going to do, and I just discovered Istanbul. I discovered it not only in a musical way, because it was also a place that’s attractive to me in a much more personal way, too. I arrived in Istanbul, and I started to feel my heart beat. I arrived at İstiklal Street, and I asked my friend — I was with a Turkish friend — I said, “Is this like a holiday or Independence Day or something?” And she told me, in this heavy accent, “No, this is Taksim, baby.” Something was happening there. That was normal, every day. I saw all the musicians, everybody was playing, and I realized that this was the place for me.
I had met Julien, and together we were thinking about building up a project. I knew I could find musicians in Istanbul. Julien said, “There’s İstiklal Street, let’s play there a little and see how it goes. Maximum, it doesn’t work.” We rented a small room in a neighborhood nearby. We earned a little money. Then he said, “There’s this one santur player. I saw him play solo on İstiklal Street. He’s very shy. He doesn’t speak English. But he’s really, really good. We need to find him.” Every day, we went to İstiklal Street, and finally, we found him. We approached him — I had my own songs already that I wrote — and we said, “Can we play?” He said, “Yes,” and I think that moment was when we played our first song as a band. We didn’t know Turkish. He didn’t know English. But it was like, bam. At that moment, something was created. A crowd started to form, and that was the very first moment, 11 years ago. It was like this magical moment, like the spark was there, and all the rest is history. We played one song, a second song, and 10,000 songs since then.
You had instant chemistry.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s happened to me before or after like that. I don’t know what it is in Mete. He’s Turkish, but today he’s family, after all we’ve been through.
What language do you speak with him?
At first, we spoke with our hands, plus a little English, and a little Turkish. Now he’s learned English. I taught him English, and he speaks English like an Israeli [laughs]. We’ve also learned Turkish. Nowadays, we speak English and a bit of Turkish. But in the beginning, we started from scratch. It started from music, which is the main thing. I think it’s what’s beyond language that makes the connection. Even Julien, he’s from France — today he is my husband — I am Israeli, Persian, and Jewish. But the three of us, we say we are dreamers, and that’s what we had in common. We had this culture of dreamers. We decided to go out from our comfort zones, and achieve some inner dream or inner wish, and to take that risk. Choosing music as a lifestyle is a risk. Playing in the streets is a risk. It is not conventional. That was the first thing that brought us together. It was very clear. You didn’t even need to explain it in any language. It was something that was very clear for the three of us, and that’s why it worked.
You said you’re Persian, do you speak Farsi, too?
I understand Farsi, but I don’t speak it that well because I grew up in Israel. I was born and grew up in Tel Aviv. My parents spoke Farsi at home, but I didn’t speak it. People who came to Israel from Iran had to leave something behind. They realized that they were not going back there. That was also something my parents realized. They ran away from Iran so I would have a better future and have a normal life. I am very grateful for that. I have singer friends in Iran, and it is not a place I want to be. I think my parents made a decision to sacrifice something so I would be able to integrate better in Israel — that my first language would be Hebrew and that my first identity would be Israeli.
But did you hear Iranian music around the house?
Yes. You need to sacrifice something, but there are some things you cannot take out. I grew up in a Persian home, with the huge carpets, Persian music, and only Persian food. I think that is why I found myself, eventually, in Istanbul, because it is like a bridge for me. It’s my personal bridge between Iran and Israel. When you grow up in Israel and come from an Iranian family, you grow up in a sort of conflict. My parents told me about a world that doesn’t exist anymore, because it’s the Iran from before the revolution, and today Iran is something else. I also think my parents were conflicted. They came from Iran, but at the same time they are Jewish and Israeli.
That conflict for me is not only between being Israeli and Iranian, but it is also a conflict between east and west. I grew up in Ramat Aviv, which is a very good neighborhood in Tel Aviv and very Ashkenazi. I was the only Mizrahi in my class in my school. I was always very different, and I grew up in a very Mizrahi and Iranian home. On one hand, I enjoyed the privilege of growing up in modern society, in Israel, where women are more empowered, for example. It gave me confidence as a women in this world, and all the benefits you get that come from the west, including the education. But on the other hand, I still have the rich culture from home — the colors and the smells and the music and the warmth and all this stuff they brought from Iran.
I think that is also a conflict you find in Istanbul — between east and west — and sometimes, it’s not always a conflict. It isn’t always a negative thing. It’s a positive thing. It’s a mix. It’s something that is always there, the question of identity, and it is something I speak about a lot in my music. However, after 10 years of meeting people from all over the world and making music and having fans from many religions and cultures and countries — including countries I can not even enter — I am learning more and more about the common things we do have. Maybe it sounds like a cliché, but east, west, Jewish, Muslim, Christian — we all have a choice. Every individual chooses, and takes responsibility for his own choices. It doesn’t matter what his background is. In every language, we feel love, or anger, it is something we all have, and we have a choice, to either choose the positive side or to chose the negative side. That is something that I found in many people, and I find it again and again at every concert.
About the question about identity, that is getting blurrier with time. Not blurry — it is always inside me — but it is becoming less important. For me, Mete is not a Turkish guy from a Muslim country, to me, he’s family. His religion or his background isn’t relevant, because you have a different kind of connection with the person. He’s a human being. But why is that connection possible? Because he made a choice similar to my choice. And then you spread that to a big amount of people and fans. From: https://theingathering.substack.com/p/light-in-babylon-and-the-universality
