Musician, pianist, vocalist and composer Yiğit Özatalay was the most knowledgable person who spoke up during my presentation as a member of the Caz Kedisi team “Jazz Musicians of Poets, Poets of Jazz Musicians” which took place during the 3rd Mavibahçe Jazz Festival. I conducted an interview with him about his albums with “Yürüyen Merdiven” and his poetic compositions.
Yiğit Özatalay (Photo: internet/unknown)
The artist was born in 1985 in Isparta and started his piano studies with Turgut Aldemir and Zafer Çebi in Izmir. Özatalay was a the students in Istanbul Bilgi University, one of the most prestigious jazz schools from which many of the great younger generation jazz musicians graduated from. He worked with musicians Selen Gülün and Onur Türkmen on theory and composition and jazz piano with Gülün and legendary jazz musician Tuna Ötenel.
The musician continued with his education abroad after receiving his undergradute degree and attended Krakow Music Academy in 2006-2007 to work with Wojciech Widlak and Wojciech Zych on composition. Özatalay returned to his undergraduate school and studied two more years at Bilgi University as a research assistant to Michael Ellison. He went to Italy in 2009 with the scholarship given by Bilgi University and completed his graduate studies with Alessandro Solbiati at Milano Conservatoire.
The successful musician returned to Turkey in 2011 and started an important period in his career. Yiğit Özatalay started to work as the pianist, following in the footsteps of Emin Fındıkoğlu who wrote the arrangements, in Genco Erkal’s “Ben Bertolt Brecht”(I, Bertol Brecht) play at Dostlar Theater.
Özatalay has been working as a full time academician at Bilgi University’s Music Department since 2012, composing contemporary acoustic pieces and performing in various bands as a composer-pianist. He also is the musical director and pianist of “Yaşamaya Dair” and “Merhaba” plays at Dostlar Theater.
Pianist Yiğit Özatalay recorded two albums called “Çınar, Güneş ve Bir Deli” (2016) ve “Yok mu, Var” (2018) with drummer Mustafa Kemal Emirel, who is also mentioned in this interview, as “Yürüyen Merdiven”.
Mustafa Kemal Emirel & Yiğit Özatalay (Photo: Müjde Çapraz)
These works demonstrate the union of poetry and jazz feature guests such as Genco Erkal, Tülay Günal, Ülkü Aybala Sunat, Güç Başar Gülle, Angelika, Niescier, Luca Avanzi, Eloisa Manera, Deniz Doğangün, Meriç Dönük, Hans Andersson and Volkan Topakoğlu.
I was extremely curious about how Yiğit Özatalay came together with Mustafa Kemal Emirel, whom he describes as an old and precious friend, while he was working on academic and international projects. I wish to share a video that reflects the impressive musical harmony between the two musicians that is very influential.
Yiğit Özatalay: Devrim, I think you are one of the oldest witnesses of my musical collaboration with Mustafa Kemal because for the first time we participated in the third edition of ‘Amateur Jazz Musicians Festival’ in Eskişehir which has been organized by you successfully for many years. It has been almost 15 years since then!
Kemal and I have been friends for a long time and we share a lot of things in addition to music. We even were roommates once. We graduated from the same school. We wanted to solidify such a close friendship and musical exchange with a band in 2014. Of course, there were guests musicians in both of the albums but Yürüyen Merdiven is foremost a duo. About our name, an escalator is a daily object so commonly used but we see it from a different perspective. If we say this in Can Yücel’s words, we want a different “yürüyen merdiven” (escalator)… It is an organism with two legs. It is not an mechanical escalator. It is an escalator/ladder with two legs. The foundation of the band goes back to a dialogue. The logo was born out of this as well. We also have structural choices in addition to the meaning, of course.
Yürüyen Merdiven’s initial letters are the first letters of our names. Other than that, it consists of two words that rhyme together. These words are balanced in syllables as well. And of course, it is in Turkish. We are ultimately Turkish musicians. We set off on this path to create something that would go well with our own aesthetic ideals and could express who we are. I see where we are as a comma. It is good to be on a path. As Oruç Aruoba says, “to make the path the destination”. So where will this walking ladder lead us to? It is an internal journey that is long, tough and just as pleasurable. There is also the external aspects of this journey; to reach the audiences and to create the same emotions and excitment in them. Our aim is to reach big audiences from all ages, nations and classes. But Turkey is the priority with this album; there are things from the country we live in, our environment, its realities and language. We will continue working on this.
“Yürüyen Merdiven” band includes poem compositions in both their albums. First album, “Çınar, Güneş ve Bir Deli” features Nazım Hikmet Ran’s “Masalların Masalı” and “Bugün Pazar” and their 2018 album “Yok Mu, Var” features Nazım’s “Sıcaktı” and Edip Cansever’s poem which shares the same title as the album. Was it merely a coincidence that these poems were included in both these albums, considering that rest of the compositions and music are original, mainly written by Özatalay?
Y.Ö: Of course not… The love for poetry is a gift from my mother. I am so happy that she did. She is the one who introduced me to “Caz Kedisi” magazine. Music can be a powerful medium that can carry and deliver poetry. We like doing this as Yürüyen Merdiven. As all composers claim, trying to compose poetry is a rather risky business and one has to be very careful, even if music can make poetry more potent. What I try to be careful about is not losing the poem’s rhythm and its own internal music. By the way, even though the compositions belong to me, Kemal and I write the arrangements together. Arrangements are definitely parts of the composition itself… I feel the lack of poetry in jazz as well. We cannot say our music is mainstream jazz; it embodies elements from classical music, traditional music and theater. Yürüyen Merdiven can releate to poetry maybe due to its dual nature.
It wouldn’t be too surprising to see that Nazım Hikmet Ran is the most quoted poet if a research was conducted… We can point to pianist Tayfun Erdem’s “Demir, Kömür ve Şeker / Caz ve Nazım” album as one of the first examples of Nazım’s poetry being composed in the world of jazz. This album, in which Nazım’s poems “Kuvayı Milliye Destanı Başlangıç Kısmı” and “Hasret Trilojisi(Sofra-Memet-Vapor)” are vocalized by Genco Erkal, was initially featuring famous German actor Otto Sander. It is evident that Nazım Hikmet is a special poet for Yiğit Özatalay as he included his poetry in both his albums…
Y.Ö: I should first state this about my relationship with Nazım: I see music as a tool. Not as a goal. I see it as a tool to deliver something and share it with people. I have values that I prioritize and believe in. I have my own approach to and perspective on life and of course I want to achieve myself first and then say “look, there are such and such realities and this is what I think about them” afterwards. This is more or less my relationship with art.
This might be why I find importance in Nazım as someone who has achieved his relationship with art in the best way. If he wasn’t a communist, maybe he could be a good poet; but what makes Nazım who he is most likely is how he combines his art with his stance as a human being, the values he believes in, his life, his ideas. The fact that we cannot distinguish between a poem he wrote for his son from one he wrote for the party or a letter he wrote for Piraye from his love for socialism. The fact that these are all parts of a whole. For example; the fact that we emphasize integrity as a band, completing each other, the togetherness of music and poetry… These shouldn’t be separated. Totality is one of the most basic elements of life and it is very hard to achieve. We “try” to achieve this. This is a journey.
It is necessary to think the opposite as well. If Nazım was merely a communist, would he still be Nazım? No he wouldn’t! What makes him Nazım are the facts that he meets the needs of poetry and that he has created a revolution on the field of poetry. He wrote a poem that hasn’t been written until that day. I want to emphasize this: Poetry was something he did really well for Nazım and he could deliver it to people. He expressed himself well in this way (He wasn’t only concerned with poetry. He also was involved with cinema, theater and every field of literature but we have come to know and love him for his poetry).
I can say this about myself -of course, not comparing myself in this manner but taking Nazım as my role model-: Music is something I do well. It is a field in which I can trust myself at least in some aspects and I think I can reach people with it. For example composer Luigi Nono says “I am a musician by coincidence. I am a composer and how great if I can contribute to society with this”. This is what Nazım means to me. To shorten the gap between the artist and the man of action and to make that an integral whole.
Y.Ö: “Masalların Masalı” poem for example… To be able to write such a small story without using any philosophical concepts but relying solely on daily images… This requires being refined. We can see that formation in this poem. This could be called simplication. To use an expression that is not complex but instead rather simple and to be able to do this not only in context but in structure as well. To be able to build a refined building like an architect.
I said that I pay attention not to lose the rhythm or internal music of a poem while composing. I think maybe we achieved this to some point in “Masalların Masalı”. I can directly take the prosody and rhythm within the poem as an element in the music. For example, the rhythm in the stanza “Su başında durmuşuz çınarla ben” is evident in the piece. I think what hypnotizes people in Nâzım’s poetry is his mastery in the use of rhythm and repetitions. Every poem, just like every sentence, has a rhythmic structure of course. I can see this at the highest level in Nâzım’s poems. Nâzım really wrote his poetry within music.
I realized that even though the band stayed true to Nâzım’s poetry construct in their latest album “Yok Mu, Var” while picking their prefered stanzas from Edip Cansever’s titular piece, resulting in a poem composition that is the most approriate to the soul of jazz…
Y.Ö: You noticed my different approach to this poem! I first read “Yok mu, Var” in 2009. I was really moved when I first read it and wrote it down in my notebook. I wasn’t intending to compose it for a long time. Then, I realized a piece I was writing without lyrics at the moment would go well with this poem. What you noticed, the “freedom” in my approach to the text, was born from being able to bring my music together with the poem and to reconcile them. This is an asymmetric stream of thought poem. I arranged it a bit while writing the music and tried to use a different structure, that’s why some words and stanzas were moved around, I skipped some stanzas entirely… Then I thought this was not fair on the poet and the poem. Because Cansever values plurality. This poem embraces plurality with its abundance of objects and images, and requires a certain length with the perpetual repetition of the word “var”. Therefore I wrote another version in which I included all of this long poem as a whole. This version isn’t entirely jazzy, it is more so experimental and is a concert piece written for an ensemble of 10 people.
Here I want to a break from the interview and talk to Yiğit’s dear friend, his partner in “Yürüyen Merdiven” project, drummer Mustafa Kemal Emirel. I am curious about his opinions about Yiğit’s compositions and lyric writing skills…
Mustafa Kemal Emirel & Yiğit Özatalay (Photo: Erdost Yıldırım)
Mustafa Kemal: Yiğit always succeeded in writing music, writing his own music. This is a very surprising thing for me; you will encounter concepts like perfection and doing your job genuinely well when you get to know Yiğit. From what I know during our friendship that started in 2003, even his homework he wrote for harmony classes were beautiful, we actually recorded some in the albums. I remember that he wrote “Şellale” in 2003, might even be before he started going to college.
It is necessary to point out that Yiğit was one of the top students who knew how to utilize his teachers really well. His experiences during Erasmus program and going to Italy for his graduate degree changed him and his compositions, made them deeper. After the doctorate process at Mimar Sinan University and his relationship with ITU Miam, he achieved a level of composition writing that commanded every parameter of music. I realized this when I experienced “Bulutun ağdığı gibi” piece through the exceptional performance of Hezarfen Ensemble, if I were to demonstrate this with a single example.
Therefore Yiğit is a unique Turkish composer who can write his own music in depth. He always achieved to write simple, refined, unique and beautiful music. I think that he views the world through that window with his dedication to composing, his studious nature and productivity; he can be inspired by what most people would view as mundane and see the musical parameters in it and the essence of music.
Mustafa, where does “Yürüyen Merdiven”, which you founded with Yiğit Özatalay, stand in your musical life?
Mustafa Kemal: Yürüyen Merdiven is a ladder that I want to keep climbing, something internal that I never want to end with no end. It is an eternal experience and a musical transformation.
Sharing the end product with people is a different aspect of it, we only want to present a good result to others. Therefore this requires personal and collective condensation and work initially and continuously. Yürüyen Merdiven has a great role in this sense, with all its contributions today and in the future… Of course this is also a result of having a friend like Yiğit and our humane relationship style. We cannot distinguish between humane and musical situations because what we call “Yürüyen Merdiven” is the sound of this friendship. Yürüyen Merdiven is a product of a relationship that was made possible by friendship.
Another subject I want to touch upon is the decisiveness of the chemical harmony between people and the ability to communicate without talking in the chemistry of music. Our dear friend recording technician Esra Arslan said “They are playing like husband and wife” while listening to the takes, making us laugh with these words that refered to how we cling to one another while playing. Therefore Yürüyen Merdiven is a standard that keeps on raising for me; it is something I cannot achieve with other musicians easily in a sense of musical togetherness.
Another subject is an individual not repeating himself; the process of improvement being continuous and I believe that the aim to refine philosophies other than music has a deep and transformative effect on the comprehension and resolution of music. Since we try to achieve this as much as we possibly can, I have felt like I will always play together with Yiğit as Yürüyen Merdiven, experiencing new things through change and transformation.
Yiğit Özatalay (Photo: internet/unknown)
Returning to my Interview with Yiğit… We know that jazz has influenced quite a few of literary fields and authors. But it is evident that its relationship with poetry outweighs all… The high quality of art in poetry written with influence of the talent and attractiveness of jazz musicians can be seen just like in jazz pieces written with the influence of poems… Can this be due to the fact that poetry has a freer soul compared to other branches of literature just like the space of freedom in jazz that is in improvization?
Y.Ö: Absolutely. I don’t think any other branch of literature has as much open space or “order in disarray” as poetry does. Just as jazz is a music genre that values the moment and being shaped by the momentary conditions, poetry touches upon sounds and words with the same awareness of the moment with an improvizatory fashion. Poetry has conscious gaps like jazz does, these are gaps to be filled by those reading or listening to them. Jazz likes a fragmented style, sharp transitions and disorder, so does poetry. But this disorder has a purpose. They are both in a state of constant flow as well. I believe that improvization in jazz can be measured by how much you can let go in the flow within a conscious feeling of being lost. This flow is at its utmost level in poetry, euphonia and flow of ideas cannot be separated, because as Bedreddin Cömert also said, the euphonia in poetry is percieved as a conceptual closeness. We can talk about many other points of intersection between jazz and poetry…
We see Tülay Günal, who is a professional actor, in both of the albums of “Yürüyen Merdiven”. The artist, who graduated from the Theater Department of the School of Language, History and Geography in Ankara University, has been featured in both state and private theater plays, TV shows, movies, among esteemed actors and actresses and has been awarded many times while never straying too far from music. The artist sang alongside Işın Karaca, a unique singer well known in the pop world, in Istanbul for a while. Tülay Günal has been singing many songs successfully in the musical cabaret called “Ben Bertolt Brecht” for a long time.
Y.Ö: I owe meeting dear Tülay Günal to Genco Erkal. I learnt a lot about theater and stage music from Ben Bertolt Brecht play of Dostlar Theater that I have been working with as a pianist, the masterful acting of Tülay and Genco Erkal, and from Emin Fındıkoğlu’s musical direction. I am really happy to have formed a musical collaboration that breathes in synch with Tülay through the years and our work in Yaşamaya Dair and Güneşin Sofrasında plays. Tülay is an effective vocalist in addition to being a professional actress. It cannot be a coincidence that she is featured in the opening pieces of both our albums… Above anything else, she has a plain but expressive singing style that comes from the awareness of being an actress; she thinks about the meaning of the words and avoids unnecessary embellishment. Yürüyen Merdiven albums would be incomplete without Tülay. We started a new project with her last month during the Istanbul Jazz Festival. It aims to introduce jazz to children; we gave a great concert that included the writings of Brecht, Nâzım and Aziz Nesin. We wish to reach more children by performing this project more often in the upcoming months.
Yiğit Özatalay is also a lyrics writer and vocalist now in addition to being an esteemed pianist and a composer of poems… Both albums feature pieces with his lyrics (Kırmızı Paltolu Kız, Bir Delinin Hata Defteri, Direndikçe in the first; Bilmece, Üç Hece in the second). Should we regards these lyrics as poetry or merely song lyrics, written by someone who takes his love for poetry from his family and reads poems in addition to many other literary examples?
Y.Ö: “Kırmızı Paltolu Kız”, “Bir Delinin Hata Defteri” and “Üç Hece” were initially written as poems. “Üç Hece” has a special place for me among those because this poem was born from a verse that my dear wife Meliha Sözeri wrote in 2015 and I dedicated the song ti her. “Direndikçe” and “Bilmece” were written as song lyrics, meaning I wrote them as context to pre-existing music.
Yiğit Özatalay talks about his relationship with literature, especially poetry, as a musician and composer: “I started keeping a poetry notebook when I was only 6 years old. This amateur interest continued until I was 18 years old. As I said before, I took my love for poetry from my mother. I still hear the poems she read during Sunday breakfasts. But I cannot forget about my father’s contribution as well: I learnt about Orhan Veli’s collective poems, Karacaoğlan’s rhymes, about poetry in folk songs from him. Starting to work with Dostlar Theater in 2012 as a pianist and the musical director broadened my poetry horizon and improved my poetry culture. Genco Erkal is the most prominent actor who combined poetry with theater after all. I live within poetry thanks to . “Ben Bertolt Brecht” and still ongoing plays “Yaşamaya Dair” and “Merhaba” and I enjoy this immensely.” What else could be said about other poets and other poems waiting for your musings on composing, other than those who read over and over again…
Y.Ö: Nâzım and Brecht never get old for me as poets. Other than them, I really enjoy reading the works of Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Özdemir Asaf, Can Yücel, Cemal Süreya and Edip Cansever… I met a prominent Spanish poet through my doctorate thesis, Antonio Machado. I am working on one of his works at the moment. I have never composed the works of a non-Turkish poet before. Another poem I read and fell in love with last summer is Sabahattin Ali’s “Rüzgar”. My sister got me Sabahattin Ali’s book for my birthday–by the way my nephew is called Rüzgar. I would really like to compose this poem. Let’s see when…
We will continue to climb the peaks of music and jazz with “Yürüyen Merdiven” as we thank Yiğit Özatalay, a musician who already became a respected name not only in the jazz circle but in the entirety of the world of music, for his deliberate answers just like his music…
