Four years of waiting came to an end for fans of the Turkish alternative rock group Manga as the five-piece band released its third studio album, “Şehr-i Hüzün” (City of Sorrow), this past Wednesday.
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Manga takes its listeners on a life journey in the new album, which opens with “Gündoğumu” (Sunrise) and ends with “Günbatımı” (Sunset). And notably, with this third album, Manga shows just how high it has raised the stakes in terms of expectations. You really do have to listen to the oriental tales Manga tells in the new album, in which a diverse set of names appear, from Omar Khayyám to pianist Tuluyhan Uğurlu and Alper Ağa from the Turkish rap group Cartel. The Ankara-born Manga formed in 2001 with Ferman Akgül on vocals, Yağmur Sarıgül on the electric guitar, Özgür Can Öney on drums, Cem Bahtiyar on bass guitar and Efe Yılmaz on the turntable. They spoke with Sunday’s Zaman about their latest album.
This new album demonstrates that Manga has matured during its four years of silence. What sort of changes have you become aware of during this time?
Ferman Akgül: It was a period during which there were changes in our lives, the cities where we live and, of course, our ages, going from 25 to 30. When you put all these together, they inevitably bring about a change in perspective on life. This album emerged after very careful work on our part, a result of moving from Ankara to İstanbul and getting a first taste of this city almost like children and then also getting a sense of the melancholy of İstanbul.
Yağmur Sarıgül: İstanbul has really had an enormous influence on us -- which is why “Şehr-i Hüzün” is actually a depiction of İstanbul.
You have managed to tear away a bit of İstanbul’s cosmopolitan aspects. It’s as though you see İstanbul as an eastern city.
F.A.: We get caught up in lots of little details. Why don’t people look around when they cross the Bosporus Bridge? Why don’t they really see the 400-year-old fountain they just walked by? We still look around and say, “Wow!” But it seems like there are very few people from whom such a reaction is elicited anymore in this city.
Y.S.: We used that feeling of surprise that İstanbul leaves us with in this album. Sometimes people get so caught up in life’s routines that they really forget to be surprised by what’s around them. When we first arrived in İstanbul, we were so surprised and so excited. This is really a very important thing. We are not talking about things that people haven’t seen or don’t already know in this album. What we do is talk very sincerely and naïvely about things that people may have already seen but have forgotten.
It seems like there are so few eyes that look around with curiosity in İstanbul these days. Maybe that’s why you are trying to touch on life in this album.
Özgür Can Öney: There are three things here, Karacaoğlan, Omar Khayyám and the chorus line in [our song] “Hayat Bu İşte” [That’s Life]: “While you are looking for a reason to live, you find one to die.” In the end, you see that there are words on this soil that have not lost their meaning for 700 years. It is so clear just how simple and obvious life is, but how confusing we have made life in this modern age.
F.A.: People talk about how they will die. To know this is very important. Not everyone is aware of this. We focus more on things that we should really not be focusing on rather than the things we should. If we are able to extract a breath from the air around us, fine, but the real goal is to remember the things that so many try to make us forget.
It seems like you are all in pursuit of life’s great secrets…
Y.S.: Actually, all of our songs have an aspect of introspection in their starting point. Actually, I guess that’s how it appears in the beginning, but then one by one they start to spread and join up with each other. I guess we sing about subjects that emerge from us, but which really touch everyone in the end.
In the song “Dünyanın Sonuna Doğmuşum” (Born to the End of the World), you criticize the modern world. In such a world, one of the things that we fear will touch us is death. Isn’t the age of 30 a bit early for these types of questions?
Ö.C.Ö.: Everything is developing so quickly. People just have to grow up so quickly; become mature so quickly! If you are not thinking about these things, that’s where there’s really a problem.
Isn’t it difficult to discuss these subjects through electronic and modern music?
Y.S.: The fact that we rely on both electronic music and Turkey’s own traditional instruments lends not only a balance but also a sweet kind of contradiction to our music. And isn’t that what İstanbul is like? It is the most Western-looking city in Turkey. But since it’s also the endpoint of enormous migrations from the East, it has a very complex structure. People are trying to get accustomed to this confusion and mix. If you think about what kind of voice İstanbul would have, the voice would be composed of such varied elements like electronic music, the sound of the call to prayer and even rap music. Perhaps we were able to capture that particular “aromatic blend” well.
You have transformed these contradictions into a kind of dialect.
Ö.C.Ö.: Just think about how the tram passes in front of the centuries-old Topkapı Palace. We are always surprised at this. Or how about an airplane flying over the roofs of 600-year-old buildings? İstanbul’s history is said to date back 10,000 years. Maybe there is a tunnel being dug over there, but who knows, you just might find the tools that some guy was using 10,000 years ago to make bread while you’re digging that tunnel. We are just interpreting things [we see around us].
Y.S.: We don’t limit ourselves just because we are a rock band. What we are after is to save our listeners from the routine packaged formats of life, if only for a few minutes. … The most basic element that defines us is that we are without pre-conceptions, and we are brave enough to be able to embrace everything which affects us.
Your album also contains messages from your fans. One of them says, “You taught us to be ourselves.” The listener is also on a journey of self-discovery. Listeners try to elicit things from viewpoints expressed by the bands they listen to. But doesn’t this also pose the dilemma: “Music groups in Turkey either don’t represent their music well, or their music doesn’t reflect their real depth”?
Ö.C.Ö.: I see more often that art and personality don’t always work in harmony.
Y.S.: Are you talking about us? (Laughs) We have done some things, but we are not really aware of what we have done. … No, you cannot save a person. If that person is ready to be saved, then you can motivate him for salvage. That person’s search is going on inside himself. And it could be that our music fans the flames of what is going on inside. In other words, the search begins inside the person.
So you are saying that music is a vehicle for self-exploration. Did Manga become aware of its own journey during the making of this album?
Y.S.: It seemed like in our first album, we figured out quite a few things about ourselves. But in this album, most of the songs are much more on-target, hitting the bull’s eye in terms of what we want to express. We simply said, “This is what we want to say,” and just said it. In this album we have succeeded in expressing our real thoughts with more self-confidence. We knew what we wanted to say. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll be able to produce anything better than this.
This album tells us fairytales, stories that are actually our own but which we are not aware of. So it’s quite brave in that sense, isn’t it?
F.A.: We were told so many tales when we were younger. And tales are still being told to us. You have put your finger on something very interesting here. When you said “fairytales,” my mind went to closed eyes, to thinking about being put to bed with fairytales. … But actually, we see that none of those tales come true.
Y.S.: You know there are subtexts embedded in classic fairytales. There’s so much to be taken from those subtexts. So I really like this assertion. The fairytale sense is particularly prevalent in the musical structure of our songs. The instrumental interludes without lyrics; for example, in “Şehr-i Hüzün,” there is sort of the feel of “One Thousand and One Nights.” When I listened to the album after we completed it, this was what I felt. That air of fairytales, the melancholy and stories that fill the narrow backstreets of the city, these really do exist.
The album opens with the song “Gündoğumu” and ends with “Günbatımı.” The beginning and the end, like birth and death. So in a way, what is in between, the rest of the CD, accounts for life itself.
F.A.: You’re giving us hints for upcoming interviews.
Ö.C.Ö.: I am pleased with the overall result of this album rather than the introduction and the development. The song “Alışırım Gözlerimi Kapamaya” (I’ll Get Used to Closing My Eyes) is one of those I’m talking about.
There is a real sense of expectation and hope in that song.
F.A.: That is what pianist Tuluyhan [Uğurlu] said, too. Interesting. He noted, “You attain hope from drama, but I am not able to.” That’s actually not how it seemed to us. For us, that song tells of our hopelessness.
You await that hope. You say you are willing to pay the price.
F.A.: If only we could just close our eyes [like others] and feel that comfortable. But we are not able to. If only someone could come before us, tell us that it will be “OK” and we could believe him.
Y.S.: In the finale of the song, the diverse arrangements we used in various parts of the song are joined together, they reach a climax and then they dwindle as the piano reopens the main theme of the song for the last time. But it ends with an interrupted cadence. The final note that should be played is actually not played. If we played that note, the song would be finalized, but that unplayed note indicates hope.
Ö.C.Ö.: I was not aware of that. I think it turned out very well. In İhsan Oktay Anar’s novel “Suskunlar” (The Taciturn) the character İbrahim Dede intentionally makes a mistake every time he plays the ney. He says, “The mistake I make is my signature.” Later he calls on Satan’s help, and because he has called on Satan, he plays without error. He plays the ney perfectly. But now the only error in all this perfection is that everything is faultless. [The album holds] all these philosophical deliberations... Yeah, that’s the kind of album we made (laughs).
19 April 2009, Sunday
FATİH VURAL İSTANBUL
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