The Heybeliada (Halki) International Sound Centre.

After-life abodes vary according to many traditions. The most mythical and poetic among them seem to be those “Islands of the Blessed", refuge for bards and heroes, havens of wisdom, peace and repose. Ancient bardic epics of East and West refer to a silver spiralling citadel whirling beyond the North Star or Polaris, a fixed star around which, the world, as we perceive it, revolves. Heroes in “those days of old” counted amongst those warriors whose skills were not at the service of unbridled conquest but rather at the calling of defending a legitimate order or legacy sanctioned from above. Bards were the keepers of an oral tradition with which they wove the natural order of Nature in its ascending vortex into the bodies, hearts and minds of people. Their other mantle was to separate opposing armies on a battlefield through verse, dance and music.

Heybeliada (Halki) reflects in the material plane the civilising energies of those mythical islands inasmuch as it became through the ages a place of learning and a haven for poets, anchorites, teachers and mystics. It is no coincidence that in the 19th century, at the apogee of the Romaioi-Greek economic recovery, three keystone institutions were founded there, which helped the Ottoman Empire in its overture to Europe and to the Christian world. The Naval Academy of the Ottoman Empire was initially housed in the domain of a renowned Greek family. The first business and foreign language school to be established in the Empire was erected on the ‘handle’, so to speak, which joins the head and main body of the island. To this day the edifice houses the language school of the Turkish Navy. The monastery of the Holy Trinity, which crowned the hilltop ‘head’ of the island since the early years of Byzantium, was transformed into a Theological seminary. Since time immemorial this same hilltop, reached through a spiralling path, has been a place of worship, overlooking as it does, the Bosphorus straits in the misty distance over the Sea of Marmara. In fact, the entrance to the ancient Byzantine monastery was said to have been paved with a mosaic representing a labyrinth through which the pilgrim had to wind through before penetrating through the doors of the monastery.

Halki is derived from ‘chalkos’ or ‘chalkitis’, which means copper in Greek. The island has been inhabited since the copper and early bronze age. There are signs of extensive diggings around Cham Liman (Bay of Pines) where malachite ore was extracted. Green copper-rich malachite stones can still be found in the sea and scattered along the shores of the bay. Aristotle’s disciple Theophrastus visited the mines, which were still functioning in his time. He mentions in his “Peri Lithon” (About Stones) both Cyprus and the island off Chalkidoni or Chalkitis in the Sea of Marmara as being the main producers of Malachite. In ancient Egypt Malachite was mined in the Sinai Peninsula and was considered sacred to the goddess Hathor. One of Hathor’s avatars was Ma’at, goddess of Truth and Order, Patron of the Sciences, Learning and the Arts. In the Hellenistic world it became sacred to Aphrodite. In Mediaeval Byzantium metallurgists used the symbol for Venus (♀) as the hieroglyph to symbolise copper. Copper, let it be said, is a beautiful metal, soft and malleable, a good conductor; it helps transfer all the energy into our homes and connects us with the speed of light to miraculous distances. It has sustained generations of Gypsies and other nomads who fashioned our kitchenware. It is said that the great friend of God, Mevlana Cellaledin Rumi began to whirl and dance at the rhythmic sound of copper being beaten into shape as he was walking by the stalls of tinkers in the bazaar.

Follow The Bagpipes / The Copper and Tin road – The Music Road

Halki appears as an insular node along the metallurgical road of the copper and early bronze age. Tin and silver from the Black Sea coast was carried to Mariandyne (renamed Irakleio in the iron age, and now Eregli ) in Bythinia, copper was extracted from Halki and shipped to the other Mariandyne (Irakleio – Trakya Eregli) in Thrace. Gold sifted in Thrace, was added to these metals, which then made their way to Celtic Europe, Ireland, Wales and Caledonia, great sources of tin used in the amalgam with copper to produce bronze and orichalcus. From the Black Sea to Thrace and all the way to Ireland and Scotland the dominant musical instrument seems to have been the bagpipe. An attentive and discerning ear can pick familiar sounds, rhythms and melodies all along these routes. The tunings and harmonics in fourths of the present day Pontiac kemençe or lyra (kemenche – short-necked, long and narrow-bodied lute played with a bow) show an affinity to the bagpipe.

As late as the early 20th century, on the 1st. of May, the mothers of the Greek community used to gather in the vale below the little promontory capped by a wind- mill in the northernmost part of the island, to feed their children with milk and red wine. This custom can be traced all the way back to the matriarchal early copper age. Is it not a wonder that in Turkey traditions persist that can find their roots archaic time – “In that Illustrious Time of Old” – “In Illo Tempore” as Mircea Eliade preferred to call it?

The music route was followed by the silk route, which in turn was replaced by the pipeline route. Now, we all know that petrol-oil is a source of war, and after war follows famine. Nations are in competition, the fires of culture and religious wars are fanned yet there exists that perennial wisdom, that silent sound which permeates everything, this Logos which binds and unites all that exists, this wondrous play of numbers, which is music, to which the ancients looked up in praise and in awe before its Wisdom.


The International Heybeli Sound Centre.

An echo of the heavenly origin of music persists through the speculations of all the ancient and mediaeval philosophers and musical theorists from Pythagoras to Safi Al Din. This harmony of the spheres has enthralled some of the greatest mystics and dervishes of Islam as well as Christian hymnologists and musical theorists. What then is this marvel of the natural order that abolishes all contradictions and unites men of wisdom of diverse faiths and seemingly opposed cultures? Is it not the recollection and contemplation of the wisdom with which number and sound produce without repetition these myriad forms of life while using the least possible energy and matter. To quote Plato himself: “That which is divine and breads amazement to those who fix their gaze on it and consider how universal nature moulds form and type by the constant revolution of potency and its converse about the double in the various progressions” (Plato – Epinomis 990e).
The International Heybeli Sound Centre through the study of the Eastern maqam system of music will attempt to approach the wisdom of the ‘ancients’ in an attempt to create bridges between seemingly opposing cultures.

Let us recall. Throughout pre-historical to historical times the East has always been a source of culture, wisdom, knowledge and refinement in arts and techniques – witness the fact that as early as the 19th. Century, the cloth-weaving techniques the British invaders learned in India and China brought about the industrial revolution in England. A great deal of commerce between East and West flowed through the Bosphorus straits and the Balkans.
The present energy routes are the most threatening culturally and uninspiring to say the least. The previous routes of metals and silk offered adjoining populations enhancement and refinement of both their material and spiritual world, for man’s workmanship was closely tied to the notion of the sacrality of matter. With his labour man fulfilled Nature's procreative energy of embellishing the material universe.
The new world order thrives precisely on the de-sacralisation, exploitation and abuse of the material universe.

The ambition of our music centre on the island of Heybeli, sitting on a node, a maqam, of the ancient trade and culture routes, would be to contribute in re-establishing cultural ties amongst the people bordering these routes and to remind them that music unites people in celebrating the majesty of all creation.