“Music speaks to the soul rather than the mind…Traditional music can be grounding, so calming, and very beautiful”.

Gulcin is a Sufi singer and instrumentalist based in Manchester. She was born in Istanbul and grew up singing and playing rock music. After moving to the UK, she turned to her roots, playing traditional Turkish folk and Sufi music. Music is Gulcin’s passion, but she also works as an NHS Psychotherapist and she acts as a community leader within the Turkish diaspora, helping to promote and introduce Turkish culture and arts. Gulcin co-founded NWTCA, a charity that provides Turkish language, traditional dance and music classes. They also organise music performances and other artistic events to celebrate this culture in Manchester.
 

GULCIN’S MUSICAL LIFE STORY

Gulcin was born in the city of Istanbul, Turkiye. 

From an early age, Gulcin was recognised for her musical talents, getting picked for school shows and choir solos. At secondary school, her interest in music deepened, and she started learning the guitar at a local music centre. As a teenager, she began listening to rock music, including American hard rock groups like Guns N’ Roses and Metallica as well as Turkish psychedelic bands such as Mogollar, Erkin Koray, Baris Manco and Cem Karaca. At the age of 13, she set up her first rock band with friends from the music centre and they started playing gigs around the city. 

"I was singing to myself as a child. Both of my parents worked so I used to be with my grandparents and spent my time listening to songs and learning songs and practising in front of the mirror…When I reached secondary school, I wanted to do more, I wanted to be able to play an instrument…That’s when I really started enjoying learning more about music…I met other people like me who were into music, and we started to form a band together”. 

“We started doing Turkish rock music as well as international and that was a great experience. The cultural centre of our city hosted us, we had a room to practise. We used to perform at the weekends at the rooftop bar as guest musicians or support act for the more famous musicians. We were able to perform in the large cinema hall once a year when they did a festival where all the rock bands came together. I was a singer. I played the guitar as well, but I wanted to focus on the singing more”.

Gulcin moved to Bursa to study at Uludag University. She helped set up the university orchestra and became one of its singers, performing popular music concerts on the campus and also in some hotels in the city. 

Gulcin’s dreams called out to her to move to England. In 2001, she relocated to Manchester. 

“I decided that I wanted to live in England when I was 15…It was just some sort of an inner knowing…I needed to be here…I felt the land was calling me…I did dream about it a couple of times at night…I came here following my dreams – my literal dreams!”. 

“I fell in love with the language first, because we were singing in English…so I think that’s initially how the curiosity started. I remember saying to my friends and my family that I want to be a global person…so therefore I chose to come to England and do some studies in English. Everything changed when I came… I felt like I was given a new life. All my goals needed to be updated including myself” . 

Gulcin’s life changed rapidly. As well as moving to another country and completing her studies, she got married and had a daughter five years later. This was a challenging transition for Gulcin, which led her down a path of reinvention. 

“I came with my books and my guitar and my music. I was thinking that everything is going to be the same. Little did I know how it was going to change my life. I initially felt like I was transported to another world…I wasn’t expecting everything to be so different…I had that initial cultural shock”.

“My life changed so quickly that I could not adapt…I stopped the music all together because I was maybe particularly feeling that stress and pressure of being in a different country, trying to make a successful outcome of this adventure for myself…Music was triggering. It was making me homesick so I locked music away for a while…I did have some sort of depression…Then obviously I started soul searching…It was an opportunity for me to find what will make me happy in life. I had to dig deeper and explore the topics around migration, grief, authenticity and belonging". 

Gulcin retrained as a psychotherapist and got back into music. However, she wanted music that felt more grounded, more deeply rooted, than the pop/rock she had played in the past, so she started playing Turkish folk music and Turkish and Persian Sufi music. In 2013, she joined a choir, Sacred Sounds, which performed all over Manchester, including the Royal Exchange and the RNCM. Around the same time, Gulcin started learning the frame drum, first the daf and later the bendir, to accompany herself singing Sufi songs. She met other musicians with similar interests and set up a group for learning the daf.

“Being an immigrant, I feel like, to a certain degree, you need to reinvent yourself, to find how you can adapt and continue living there, being yourself and maybe matching your values with the country that you’re living in…When I was exploring myself and going through that transformational journey, my music taste started changing because of being uprooted. The grief and longing to belong started coming together… I started to be drawn to more traditional songs, not usual Turkish pop music, but the root of where I’m coming from…which for me was Turkish folk music and Sufi music”.

“In 2014, I realised that, coming back to music, singing again, was making me feel more whole, integrated and authentic. I thought that I cannot leave this part of me outside of my life, because it’s an integral part of me and trying to cut that from my life was the worst decision I’ve ever made. But it wasn’t a decision, it was like I was trying to protect myself…I felt like, if I was too emotional, I wouldn’t last here and that will be such a terrible failure…Being a migrant is very difficult…So, it was me trying to turn off my emotions and act like I was handling it…only later I understood I was not being authentic to myself”.

“Daf is a very dimensional instrument. You’ve got your classical ‘tom’, ‘back’, ‘chap’, but you have also got the rings inside of the drum and which creates different dynamics. It’s been played for 1500 years. It’s an ancient instrument. I think that’s what I was moving towards – ancient, authentic, connecting with roots. Maybe this gave me assurance and made me feel more connected to the things that I loved”.

The daf group gradually turned into a band, the Sahba Ensemble. With this group, Gulcin has been performing Turkish folk music and Persian Sufi music all over the city, singing alongside traditional Persian instruments including kamancheh, tar and santur and Turkish instruments such as baglama. In addition to this, Gulcin also acts as a community leader for the Turkish diaspora in Manchester, running a Turkish charity with other wonderful trustees to help build this “family”. Gulcin continues to pursue music as her passion, keeping her main job as a psychotherapist in the NHS and in private practice. 

She is currently writing her own songs and hopes to bring the guitar into her music, and she also wants to collaborate with other international musicians as part of her aim to share music with people from all different backgrounds.

THE MEANINGS OF GULCIN’S MUSIC

For Gulcin, singing is a deeply spiritual experience; she stresses that, otherwise, she would not be performing. Music has offered Gulcin an outlet for self-expression and, after her experience of migration, for self-reinvention, and she points out that it can have a therapeutic function for many listeners too. She suggests that all music is to some extent spiritual, but that she particularly loves the Sufi music because it directly harnesses the power of music for spiritual experience. She highlights that it is important not to lose these traditional music forms which preserve centuries of knowledge and wisdom, both in their messages and their sounds.

“Turkish Sufi music and Persian Sufi music talk about wisdom, and it helps people to feel calm and sometimes ecstatic. Helps people to reach higher levels of consciousness. The instruments that are used also serves the same purpose. They are all part of a great tradition. It’s quite healing for the people who are listening. So, it’s music therapy in a way. The reason why I do music is to be able to share this beauty with everyone. I enjoy all traditional music and sacred music from all different cultures around the world”.

“The ideas of Sufism have always been part of me, being humanistic, empathic and loving towards all living beings…But I discovered Sufism here [in Manchester], especially when I was trying to find myself in that reinvention process of ‘Who am I?’ Rumi is a well known Persian Sufi poet and scholar that lived in the 12th century. His teachings has been my main inspiration. He moved to Turkiye as a child. He lived and died in Turkiye in the city of Konya – In his poems he talks about love and unity".

SUFI MUSIC IN MANCHESTER

Gulcin suggests that Manchester is a musically rich city because it has so much cultural diversity, which allows residents to discover all kinds of different music and enjoy the chance to experience the music more deeply through live performances. She also values the opportunities for women in the city, feeling that people in Manchester are much more conscious of gender equality than in many other cities, and this has helped her to build her confidence as a singer and as a leader within the Turkish community.

“Manchester is very cosmopolitan and it has this richness of many cultures living together. I think that played an important part in how I shaped my music, what way I want to play music, who I want to come together with. When I look into what kind of people have been our audiences, it is people with similar interests in history, literature, cultures, languages, arts, religion and spirituality. I think we all share the same values with our listeners. Love, respect, equality, love for the arts, cultures and that curiosity and interest to know each other and honour each other. I think that Manchester is a nice place to be able to do that. This city has become home for me!”.

“The Secret of Love/Mevlam” (SEE VIDEO)

This performance is from the “Eternal Fire” concert at the Church of Holy Name, which was a collaboration between the Sabha Ensemble with singers from Sacred Sounds, who performed Sufi music, and Catherine Braslavsky and Joseph Rowe, who performed Gregorian chant and songs from other sacred traditions.

“The Secret of Love” is a 13th century poem from Saadi, set to “Gushe Kereshme” in the Persian radif. “Mevlam” is a Turkish Sufi song from the 16th century. It means “My Lord” and the full title is “My Lord, give me your love”.

“This is the classical Persian music style…I’ve had some private lessons from a quite a famous Persian singer called Sepideh Raissadat. She’s very well known in Iran and she’s very well respected in the international Sufi community as well…This was one of the first gushes I’ve learned from their musical system. In their music, it was explained to me that gushes are the streets of the city and I think there are about 250 gushes that makes up their radif. They are usually poems that have been composed and passed through their musical education from the teacher to students. This Persian gushe and the Turkish song came together quite well because they are on the same tone”.

Translations:

The Secret of Love (Translated by Pasha Abdollahi):
“I made a thousand efforts to hide the secret of love
But being on fire, how could I stay calm?
I was conscious not to give my heart to anyone
But I saw you and my reason and patience were gone
You gave me up for nothing and I still say
That I will not give a strand of your hair for an universe”.

Mevlam (Translated by Pasha Abdollahi and Gulcin Bulut):
“Lord, give me your Love
Allah Hu Allah Hu Allah
O Lord, O Lord, O Lord
My Lord, give me your Love
Let me be bewildered in you
Like a nightingale in your rose garden
Let me sing the songs of yearning for you
Enflame me and wake me up
Rob my reason with the wine of love
Make me drunk, make me whirl
Let me be a drunken lover for you”.