Mercan Dede

Mercan Dede believes that when you put digital, electronic sounds together with hand-made, human ones, you can create universal language, capable of uniting old and young, ancient and modern, East and West.

It’s a bold claim, but the Turkish-born and Montreal-based musician/producer/DJ has the career and the music to back it up. When he takes the stage with his group Secret Tribe, he hovers at the side behind his turntables and electronics, occasionally picking up a traditional wooden flute, or ney to float in sweet, breathy melodies, while masters of the kanun (zither), clarinet, darbuka (hand drum) and whatever other instruments he’s decided to include that night, ornament his grooves and spin magical, trance melodies to match the whirling of the group’s spectacular dervish dancer, Mira Burke.

Mercan Dede is keen to bring his extraordinary music and stagecraft everywhere in the world because he feels its inclusive spirit carries a profound message of understanding and reconciliation. "I don’t like the separation," says Dede. "The Sufi poet Rumi has a very good saying: 'If you are everywhere, you are nowhere. If you are somewhere, you are everywhere.' My somewhere is my heart. I try to figure it out. The rest—the hype, the trends—they are not important. Instead of talking about war in Iraq, if you can make a sound of a small instrument from an Iraqi village, you can tell people more about what is going on there. For me, the future is electronic and folkloric."

Here's a nice photo of Peter Murphy performing with Mercan Dede in Turkey, probably sometime during 2002 when he was recording Dust (which Mercan Dede co-produced)



I soooo wish I could have been there. I was thrilled when I heard that they knew each other after discovering Dede about a year beforehand. These are two artists whom I much admire. If I am ever fortunate enough to meet up with either or both of them I have a lot of things I would like to talk to them about, but for now I really just dig the music.

There are many mp3's here at Mercan Dede's website, go enjoy!