Like most events of its nature, the ironies stood out the most at first. The festival was affiliated with environmental causes, but there was trash all around (though we were told that if we picked up trash for a certain amount of time we could have free access to the bathrooms). There was no food donation box at the gate so people who had brought food or water with them had to throw it away. Etc etc etc. But it was fun, and we heard some great music.
Having Gabe there was especially great, because he studies Anatolian rock. According to him, what made the early rock so interesting was that the musicians were still pretty cut off from the rest of the world and thus developed the music in a much different way than it was going in other countries. A lot of the bands we were going to see in the festival, however, would sound exactly like American rock except in Turkish. A few, though, retained a lot of Turkish elements.
We saw the most hilarious mosh pit. A bunch of young guys in your standard metal/punk gear linked arms as in Turkish folk dancing and crashed their lines into each other.
It was certainly a different feel from the Tarkan concert, where the people next to us kept repeating how much Turks loved America. Here, the band I liked the most led a chant: "Murderous USA, get out of the Middle East!" Not once, though, did I feel personally unsafe.
Here's a booth protesting article 301, which makes "insulting Turkishness" illegal. Next to it, is some Armenian organization whose website I would check out if only the internet in the dorms still worked and I weren't stealing shaky internet from the bakery across the street:
And I'm not quite sure why, but here at the campsite, they're calling communists Smurfs:
Halfway through the day, we met up with Osman:
Despite all the political overtones (more like right in your face tones), one incident in particular reminded us that the festival was also acting as, you know, a festival with a lot of rock music. During one song, Osman and his friends started shouting "No to Arabesque!" which was weird to me because, first, I didn't think the music sounded anything like Arabesque, and two, given all the speeches about Israel and Palestine, the festival seemed like a pretty Arab friendly atmosphere. Crash course in Arabesque music: It is, well, arabesque, and began as the music of poor, working-class Arabs in Turkey. For a while, it was illegal. Now some Arabesque musicians are TV personalities. Today the music often conjures up images of old gangsters and depressed teenage kids. Martin Stokes wrote a book about it.
Given this history, it seemed like Osman and his friends were making a huge political and racist statement. Michelle, Rachel, and I were uncomfortable, and, like most people do when they are uncomfortable, left to get waffles (oh my god, how do I begin to describe Turkish waffles...). After talking to Mike and Didem, we realized we had probably read way too much into it. This was a rock festival, not an Arabesque festival, and while there were some great Arabesque musicians that no one would dare speak poorly about, it made sense that people expecting rock would boo a different kind of music at their festival. It would be kind of like booing a rap artist at an American rock festival, except that rich Turkish kids don't drive around the suburbs in their SUVs listening to Arabesque music and trying to look gangsta.
While I don't believe that aesthetic preferences are completely devoid of politics, maybe when Osman explained that he didn't like Arabesque music, he just meant that he didn't like Arabesque music.
At any rate, here's a picture of Rachel sitting in a tree, listening to one of her favorite bands, Mor ve Ötesi, Turkey's entry for this year's Eurovision contest:
And here is the band itself:
The lighting was craaaaaazy.
So all in all, it was a pretty sweet day.
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