Ozan Baysal (bağlama) and Shohret Nur (dutar)

Performance, Wind of Saba, August 13, 2024.

Ozan Baysal has performed bağlama, including regional folk and Alevi traditions, since a young age. He studied institutional approaches to Turkish makam alongside jazz and classical music, and completed a PhD on bağlama şelpe (tapping) techniques at the Istanbul Technical University, MIAM. He was a visiting scholar at SOAS between 2021 and 2023.

Shohret Nur was born into a musical family in Kashgar and trained in the Xinjiang Arts Institute before moving to Istanbul to study ethnomusicology. He learned Uyghur Muqam at the Institute, and is now researching the Twelve Muqam repertoire at SOAS.

This collaboration developed out of their participation in the SOAS-based Miras Silk Road Collective. In the video, Ozan and Shohret discuss their approach to the composition, and their sources of inspiration, which range widely across different maqām-based traditions, approaches to modal improvisation, instrumental techniques, and recording technologies.

https://www.maqamproject.uk