The World in a Frame Drum

Having grown up in two cultures, the German-Turkish percussionist Murat Coşkun is able to bring together rhythms and sounds from Brazil to Persia, both old and new music. Stefan Franzen reports on the musician and his work

Murat Coşkun (photo: &copy Tamburi Mundi)
"On the frame drum you are more flexible than with other drums," is how Coşkun explains his fascination with this percussion instrument

​​Murat Coşkun's main instrument, the frame drum, will be on center stage for the second time this summer at a festival in the southern German city of Freiburg, where the elite of the international frame drum scene will congregate.

Coşkun grew up in Ulm, but his parents are originally from the Turkish Konya region, the Anatolian center of Sufi culture.

"When she was young, my mother played frame drum and bells at weddings; she made the instruments partly from old olive cans. And she was a lively dancer, too," the musician recalls.

Mixing different drum cultures

But he learned of this rather late in life because the family did not want to encourage him to pursue a career with music. But they couldn't hold him back: "I tried out everything: I played the Saz – the long-necked lute – I danced Turkish folk dances, and even tried jazz dancing," says Coşkun of his wild days.

After finishing school, he entered the university in Freiburg to study ethnology and Oriental studies; he continued to pursue his interest in music in his free time.

A stroke of luck brought him further in his musical development: "If you study music on your own, coincidence plays a big role. It was my fate that I could take lessons from Hakim Ludin, who lives in Karlsruhe. I learned a lot from him, about sound, technique, and instruments, and also about mixing different drum cultures."

In addition to learning from Ludin, who is Afghani, his contact with drummer Glen Velez opened the world of frame drums to Coşkun. From this point on, this was his instrument of choice. During his trips to Turkey and Syria, he widened his understanding of rhythms and took up contact with many different musicians.

"I feel at home and safe with Turkish music!"

"I feel at home and safe with Turkish music, but I am equally as interested in North African sounds and the uneven meters from Bulgaria," he admits. He gradually experimented with more and more different musical directions.

Murat Coşkun's DVD recordings 04 (photo: &copy www.murat-coskun.com)
Coşkun's artistic concept is derived from Sufi philosophy: "For Sufi music you must have incredible inner peace"</wbr>

​​His group "FisFüz" was the first where he tried mixing Oriental sounds with jazzy grooves, for which the band won the world music prize sponsored by the German broadcaster Südwestrundfunk. Work with Freiburg's "Spielleyt" followed, then in 2001 the founding of "Ensemble A Chantar", which devoted itself to Italian and Spanish music of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

And he simultaneously endeavored further in new music. "These are different worlds, you have to feel your way into them. I like to be inspired and have learned a lot in particular about old music, I understand more and more about those periods," says Coşkun, who also teaches at a music school.

Encounters at the "Roaring Hooves" festival

A trip to the Gobi desert where he played with artists from Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia at the "Roaring Hooves" festival brought him further. This is also where he came into contact with the presumed home of the frame drum, a Central Asian shaman tradition.

"On the frame drum you are more flexible than with other drums," is how Coşkun explains his fascination with this particular percussion instrument.

"You can move while playing it, dance, throw it in the air. Different techniques have been developed in various cultural contexts that you can combine today: Brazilian tambourine with Italian, Indian ways of playing or Persian Sufi drums. This enables a whole palette of different sounds."

Coşkun wants to open up access to this unique instrument for the general public, too, by organizing concerts in churches and workshops in various art centers.

It was his luck to have gained contact to such famous artists as Glen Velez or the Moroccan Rhani Krija, the drummer for Sting, both of whom will come to Freiburg as artists in residence. The enthusiasm generated by the first festival led him to set two points of focus this time.

The events will center on Celtic Ireland and its frame drum called Bodhrán, and one entire evening will be devoted to Persian music including a Sufi ensemble from Freiburg's partner city, Isfahan.

His artistic concept is derived from Sufi philosophy: "For Sufi music you must have incredible inner peace. This is precisely what I strive for with my work."

Stefan Franzen

© Qantara.de 2007

Translated from the German by Christina M. White

Qantara.de

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www
Murat Coşkun's Website