![]() ![]() This seven-string instrument is one of the most basic instruments of Turkish folk music, and is an important symbol of folk culture. Each time I played baglama in public, people immediately came to the stage to get a close look at the instrument.Ī baglama is similar to the dombra of the Central Asian cultures, but its structure and playing technique are quite different. Later, when I brought my baglama to China and started to join some little gigs, I found that the sound of the baglama attracted great interest from local people. When I first came to China in 2011, I didn’t bring my baglama, I thought that such a traditional instrument would not attract any attention in China. In this song, we found our own story:įor the blue brook running in the mountain When we were asked to sing in Chinese, our first choice was Ganlan Shu (Olive Tree). In addition to this, we sing folk songs from Turkey, Iran and Italy. We have composed a piece based on Rumi’s “Mesnevi” and a poem by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, one of the greatest writers and poets of modern Turkish literature. RTD has also found inspiration from other sources over time. When you listen to the song Diomira, you will find yourself on a journey from Rome to Istanbul, from there to Tehran, then the ancient cities of Central Asia which were centers of culture and art once upon a time, and finally reach “Tianxia,” the world under heaven. The historic Silk Road passed through a chain of cities. It wasn’t about finding Diomira, but a matter of heading towards it. This name was actually something that we had chosen temporarily at the beginning, but in the course of time, we adopted this name. In the end, we thought it appropriate to call the band, Route to Diomira. Because, as a Turkish writer once said, the road educates a man. The purpose of this spiritual journey is not to arrive at a place, but rather the aim is to be on the road. Diomira, as the first song of our band, is a road song in this respect. The band RTD is comprised of five music lovers who all play instruments out of pure passion.Įach of us contributed to this piece by combining what we felt while reading this passage of the book and the melodies we brought from our distant geography. But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are hung all over the doors of the food stalls, and you can hear a woman’s cry from a terrace, is that he feels envy towards those who believe they have once lived an evening identical to this and think they were happy at that time.” All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them in other cities. “Leaving there and proceeding for three days towards the east, you reach Diomira, a city with 60 silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, and a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower. Then one day we decided to express this experience through music.ĭiomira, the first part of the Invisible Cities, presented a name to our band and became the name of our first song. In our China experience, we travel to various cities, meet people, and learn about their daily lives. ![]() All of us live in China and are traveling through its cities like the Venetian traveler did. All RTD members come from different corners of historical Silk Road, Cenk and I come from Turkey, Massimo from Italy, Amir and Mahiar from Iran. Moreover, the writer was inspired by the historical Silk Road when he wrote this novel. How could we have been inspired by this book to form a band? Well, even though the story is fictional, it described the experience of a traveler passing through China. In the end, Khan carefully listened to the observations from what this foreign traveler had seen and heard. After his conversations with the Khan, Marco Polo traveled through Khan’s country city by city. Invisible Cities is based on imaginary dialogues between the Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, and Kublai Khan. #Ancient cities band how to#None of us were professional musicians, and so didn’t know where to start or how to create different ideas. We later made a plan to start a music group together with the friends who were interested in music and played an instrument. ![]() While we were drinking Yanjing beer, which is a strong symbol of the city’s long past, and eating fresh soya beans at an open air restaurant with some friends, we suddenly discovered that everyone at the table had something in common: Each of us had read the book, Invisible Cities, by Italian writer Italo Calvio at a certain period in our lives and had been influenced by it. What brought Route to Diomira (RTD) together was the book Invisible Cities. EVERY music band has their own story of how they came together. ![]()
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