Surrender What You Carry

It is time to celebrate, for it is a joyous occasion. I am closing my Tarkan Deluxe blog. This post will be its last.

We will keep all our archived pages online as long as our host Blogger allows us to, accessible to anyone who wishes to come along and read them. In about a month, we shall change to a static frontpage (UPDATE: here it is), providing links to our main pages for Tarkan fans across the world.

I have personally emailed all our closest friends of our decision, which has been a few years in coming I must admit, and they all agree it's the right time to go. I thank our guest writers for their contributions made to my blog. Each input has been an invaluable education, an individual colour, and a great opportunity to learn something new and grow.

But there are so many projects, so many horizons to set off to, that this closure is going to be the start of a wonderful new adventure. This was fun, but the future will be even better.

A Celebration of Endings

I call our closure a time of celebration, because that is how I see endings of any kind - as a chance to look back and celebrate what has gone, and look toward the future in anticipation of what will be. The loss of a good friend taught me that sadness is selfish, and no goodbye is a sad occasion unless we choose it to be. As death is a chance to celebrate life, so, too, is every ending a chance to celebrate a new beginning.

I hope that in some way this blog has been a valuable tool for its readers. When I first opened Tarkan Deluxe, we were the first blog of its kind, now there are many insightful Tarkan blogs out there, and Tarkan's official channel themselves are active, too. The standard of English translations to Turkish lyrics was bordering on unintelligible, now they are at least being translated with tips we have provided over the years, and fans sharing these works have started to actually credit names with translations - because many are now clued up that translations are intelligent property, too.

When I look back to the situation as it was, and to the situation as it is now - where a Tarkan fan can get their daily fix of all things Tarkan from a multitude of sources - it is indeed a time to celebrate. With Tarkan Deluxe gone, it is a rewarding opportunity to take a look around at what else is out there, and it will be fun just reading for a change and letting others do all the hard work for Tarkan fans!

And for the record, I never wanted to attain any degree of popularity or notoriety in the blogosphere where Tarkan fans were concerned. Those that know me, I mean really know me (not think they do after three e-mails of pie-in-the-sky and then starting a campaign of idiocy from their feverish brains) know I don't shoot for things like that.

I can leave with a clear conscience. I have done what I can. The baton is passed with the best of intentions.

New Projects, New Horizons

The prospect of having new outlets for my writing and exciting new projects on the horizon has doubtless had an impact on my decision to stop this blog, as well. It seems unfair to carry something that I feel I'm dragging behind me - both to me and the wonderful people that have been holding the blog up between my, ever-widening, absences.

I feel it has been especially unfair to Adelind, the wonderful lady who kept up the Tarkan News Index and who nevertheless has been saying let's not stop just yet ... let's stop at such-and-such a time. I have literally had to pry her fingers away from the keyboard. But closure in real life is not so neat. It isn't deliberate or planned, or for show, or to cause some kind of reaction. The end comes when it comes. Our friends are right, it's the right time.

I love you so much Adelind; I love so much your never-ending energy that still wanted to go on! It is with full cringe worthy cliché that I say one of the things I will miss about Tarkan Deluxe will be our constant contact, but I will most certainly be popping in for Christmas breakfast at your home with your loving family! And that is another thing closure brings - new opportunities - I now have time to visit all those doors this blog has opened for me across the world.

No matter what anyone says about the future, the real world will always be the one out there - not the one in here.

For my departure from the blogosphere is not that I have less to say; just less time in which to say it. Indeed I have more, so much more that I wish I could share with all of you. The new things I have seen, the new projects I am working on. My new poetry is intense, and more personal than it has ever been, but as the readership grew and grew (we were having daily hits in the thousands at one point) I became more and more reluctant to share what I wrote.

It felt like I wasn't sharing any more, but shouting.

Surrender What You Carry

But I will surely look back on my many posts and the comments I've received years from now and have a wonderful (and sometimes bitter-sweet) snapshot of my life during a time of great transition for me. The boy who began this blog, is not the man who closes it today. It is the end of an era for me; a spirit-led journey over six years during which I lost a great and good friend, and found many more - in the most unlikeliest of places. I lived on the streets of Cyprus, where refugees opened their humble homes and hearts to me. It's a public record of a very private time for me.

However, because a vast majority of the posts were not about my personal life, I will keep the archives online to serve as a record for fans of Tarkan, should they wish to use it. Or at the very least, as a potent testimony to the Iraq War, which I hope will be long over by the time anyone looks back on this blog from the distant future.

I know it might seem highly doubtful, but it can be done. Some of the last poetry I had written for the blog was about Iraq, and my brief visit there, and where I witnessed a few bloody endings (like in so many hangouts in the Bible, Torah and Koran). Yet, if we remember that there are no endings, only changes, and only change has the last say - then we must also trust that change, too, knows that where we hope and keep positive in the midst of its coming and use it for a greater good, death and terror will not have the final word.

Hopelessness, like sadness, becomes burdensome to the spirit if we use them as rocks tied around our necks to keep us from moving on. And that is of no benefit to anyone - not to those we have lost, or to those we must help to keep on living despite all they have suffered.

We need to surrender the heavy rocks we each carry with a light heart, and not be afraid to say goodbye. For in this beautiful life we only really carry with us our own shadow.

And we surrender that in the light.

Read more: The War In Iraq | About this Blog | My Life | My Say >>

Is It a Wrap for Tarkan?

Editorial by Mark Mayhey reporting from London, UK

As Turkish music station Kral lists in its "Nation's Top 10" last week that Tarkan has topped all the major charts in Turkey - including both airplay and sales - it seems that Tarkan has wrapped up the mouths of his critics tightly shut once and for all with his 2010 album.

How can you criticise someone who is making money - when so many other artists are struggling with album sales? It's not about the music is it?

Of interest is music critic, musicologist and Turkish pop archivist Naim Dilmener's recently re-published list of his 100 best Turkish songs and albums, with Tarkan making the grade in both lists.

Dilmener is noted for not having gotten over his pet hate, Tarkan's 2007 double award-winning Metamorfoz, and can't help but take a dig at an album that went platinum in its first and diamond in its second year of sales, with four top ten hits.

Holding a rock heavy slant in what purports to be a pop list, Dilmener has listed Tarkan's "Kır Zincirlerini" (Ölürüm Sana, 1997) - known as "Bu Gece" in Europe - at 57th of his 100 best songs, while putting the album Ölürüm Sana at 22nd place, and Karma (2001) at 56th position of best records.

A recent tweet from Dilmener is even more interesting, with the critic responding to a follower who agreed with him when he described Tarkan's rise from now on as temporary.

"I also said that if Tarkan doesn't change his sound and intentions, his journey will lead him straight to Serdar Ortaç's door; just like Ajda Pekkan has done," he notes.

Therefore, it's a little more than ironic that Ortaç decided to release as his second video single from his own 2010 release the track titled "İşim Olmaz".

It happens to share the exact same name with the Tarkan-Yıldız Tilbe track from Tarkan's 2010 album, which has been growing in popularity amongst listeners if a past poll by music station Kral is anything to go by. It's already been reported in the Turkish media that the similarity of track title did not go unnoticed by Ortaç.

Was Ortaç's second video decision from his 17-track album to choose the same title as Tarkan's so as to jump-step the singer? Take from it what you will.

Meanwhile, 70s music icon Erol Büyükburç has been quoted as saying in an article published by Haberturk (pictured left) that Tarkan hasn't been able to go past his "Şıkıdım" era (A-acayipsin, 1994).

"They locked him there," Büyükburç is quoted as saying.

Now, for those in the know (or many of us who don't), Büyükburç is a crazy egomaniac at best, who started with high school pop, then tried to crossover to folk music dragging his pop-ego behind him. Most of his material is kitschy taverna-like music. His music had its moments, far less than Tarkan's music has, but does the man make a valid point here?

It seems to me that public perception was subconsciously "built up" to be disappointed by Metamorfoz (the Turkish public were never going to really warm to anything he released as a follow up to the Come Closer fiasco - releasing on the back of his English language failure looked like Tarkan was treating the Turkish music industry as second choice in rebound), and they have been just as "built up" to like whatever he published after it looked like that had pushed him over the edge (a.k.a Tarkan turning to drugs).

And of course none of that is really true, either. Tarkan was neither pushed off the edge or otherwise, and his 2010 album has yet to reach the sales of Metamorfoz - and yet perception is everything.

The only thing that is possibly true is that Tarkan has for the first time made music for the masses, not for himself. He made it to silence the only critics he couldn't face to let down - the ones he thought he ran the risk of losing after the drug arrest - his staunch fans. With his 2010 album, fans have been screaming that "Tarkan is back", wholeheartedly applauding songs that - if truth be told - would be mediocre, kitschy taverna-like music at the hands of any other Turkish artist.

And Tarkan fans should be proud of the singer's 2010 album. It truly is their album, not Tarkan's - because it is full of the rehashed same-o, same-o that he knows they want to hear. Does the album have its moments? Of course it does.

But maybe this is what music critic Dilmener meant (although in this, his hands are just as dirty). In giving up the fight, Tarkan has handed Ortaç the legacy of Turkish pop music, because for years Ortaç has been constantly filling up the eardrums of the Turkish public with the same humdrum, dum-dum. If Tarkan is now following Ortaç by example, then we should all say goodbye to the longevity of Turkish pop. It's a bubble that will ultimately burst.

I haven't seen the likes anywhere in the western music industry where the fans dictate the music their favourite artist creates. Surely, we should follow the artist on his or her journey - we shouldn't drag them onto our path, or worse still force them to never grow up but stay forever in one moment in time, even if that was their greatest moment in time.

So, when Büyükburç says that Tarkan has been "locked in", maybe he isn't all wrong after all. Tarkan's 2010 album is musically fine to Turkish standards I guess, but somehow when I hear it I can't help feeling the album may come to symbolise Tarkan's arrested development in music. First arrested by the cops for drugs, then by his fans for music. In different senses of course, but the limitations are the same.

Look at Tarkan now: any other artist would have immediately released a music video to launch his new album (not that Tarkan needed to). But it took him until September, nearly three months later, to provide his first video single from his 2010 album. And it was to a track that polls did not show as a favourite. A little rebellion from the child, maybe?

And Tarkan seems more happier concentrating on his social projects, voicing National Geographic documentaries and visiting Africa, then he is on pushing his latest album. Of course he doesn't need to push it, but ten years ago Tarkan would have been living and breathing his new songs - he wouldn't have been taking pictures in Kenya.

But isn't it cruel not to let a child grow up? Not to let them free to be what they want to be and to follow their dreams? Sometimes, with all the best intentions, this cruelty comes from a love that believes it knows what's best - when in reality it's the farthest thing from that.

Tarkan voices National Geographic doco for Turkey

Yes, an artist should give fans what they want in regards to performance, concerts, official sources online, etc., - but he shouldn't give them what they want so much that he has to compromise his music to do it.

Check out what it means to be a 21st century pop star with Lady Gaga who's doing it through 24 hours a day of fierce work (it's almost as obscene as not letting a child grow up) and compare that with Justin Timberlake, who hasn't released anything since 2007 and is concentrating on acting instead.

The showbiz sites tells us:

Uncertain when he will make a chart return, "Does a painter make a painting because he has to make it by December 21st? No, he doesn't," Timberlake said when asked if he plans to release another record.

"It happens when it pours out of him. That's how music is for me.. I never stop making music. I don't know what else to tell you, except that I just don't know in what capacity I want to be involved any more... All I'm saying is, in very simple terms, I'll know when I know. And until I know, I don't know when I'll put another album out."

If only Tarkan had that freedom. But, Tarkan's making money. The fans are happy. So, who cares about the music?

History will. Time - that little devil fans want to press the pause button on for Tarkan - will actually show whether this 2010 album was simply a flash in the pan, or whether it really is a work that will endure over time as Tarkan's Karma record has for example.

But for now, it's a wrap for Tarkan. And the here and now is all that matters in pop.

The views in this article are those of the author alone.
Read more Mark Mayhey articles on Tarkan >>

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Not Just a Hot Flick: The Emperor of Mandopop

"Cultural Mosaics" by Timi, writing from Budapest, Hungary

I was watching Jet Li's breathtakingly beautiful farewell movie, Fearless on DVD when at the end of the film I came across a very unusually structured song with really strange rap-Chinese opera mixed vocals. I raised an eyebrow, but as the music was very much to my liking, I looked it up on YouTube. That's how I came to know an artist named Jay Chou.

It turns out, Jay Chou is not just simply a singer. As I'm looking up information on him I basically drop my jaws in an aw. He is the third most downloaded artist in the world (!) after Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson, and the only Asian musician in the top 20. He started learning the piano at the age of three and majored in cello and piano at a prestigious Taiwanese music high school. He went on to accompany a friend on the piano at a TV talent show, where the lady was basically thrown out of the show, the jury saying she had no voice. The show host though happened to take a look at Chou's complex score and immediately hired him to be a songwriter for prominent Chinese singers. Most of them though, refused to sing Chou's songs in the beginning, claiming they were musically too difficult to perform. Now that's when I stopped reading for a moment and decided to take a closer look at his music, my interest rocketing high. I always considered mandopop as something to despise, linking it to anime films and something to do with lack of quality - at least that's what I have read about mandopop before. See, our usual prejudices... After I listened to Jay Chou, I decided to put my pre-configured European musical mindset away for a moment and just let music take me. Was it worth the trouble? Well, you can guess. Would I be writing this essay now?

Jay Chou has given the name Zhongguo feng (Chinese wind) to his music. It's a very attractive combination of Chinese traditions, traditional musical instruments like the erhu, and everything "Western" from rap, hip hop, electronica, rock, pop... he even mixes styles like flamenco, bossa nova, French chanson or American Indian melodies, not to mention classical music. He's a Chopin freak, stuffing his 2007, self-directed movie "Secret" with Chopin waltzes, showing off his pianist's skills. He eventually ended up winning the Outstanding Taiwanese Film award at the Golden Horse Film Festival with it. He is named the emperor of mandopop by the Asian media, and his fans call him "Little Heavenly King". Fitting? Let's see.

The 31 year old music prodigy doesn't smoke, doesn't drink alcohol, doesn't go clubbing, considers filial piety the highest value in life, his lyrics are taught at schools both in China and Taiwan and he has been awarded several times by authorities for showing correct behaviour to young people. Cheesy? Maybe. The man is controversial. He might not be clubbing but he reportedly likes gambling, a maniac car collector (his latest addition is the Batmobile. Yes, you read that right. Reportedly this was the most expensive car import to Taiwan in history) and he likes going commando because he doesn't like doing the laundry. He's a control freak, and not only in the studio, where he produces his own albums. He tells even his own friends what to wear when they go out together, so their clothing would match his. Despite all this, all who know him claim he is shy and quiet off stage, just a normal guy. He has to fight though, a hereditary bone disease in his back gives him much trouble from time to time, having him to rely on painkillers so that he can perform on stage and in his movies.

I browsed through his music on YouTube, and I have to tell I am amazed at the variety of styles he mastered. He's a professional rapper (media calls him Asia's own Eminem) and has a nice singing voice. His voice is not outstanding, but is very pleasant, especially when he sings high notes. Most surely, his strongest skill is composing, whatever the genre might be, he is amazingly skilled a composer. He plays over fifteen instruments, the piano, the cello, various types of guitars, the violin, keyboards, turntable, the flute and a selection of traditional Chinese instruments. He plays them on stage as well. And can he dance! I wonder how much trouble break-dancing might give him considering his illness. (Rumour has it, if he goes on stressing his body like that, his illness might turn into bone cancer. His manager denied such rumours, though.) I can't comment on the lyrics as he sings in Mandarin Chinese (hence the name Mandopop), but according to what I read he has meaningful, imaginative, rich lyrics, mainly written by a friend, Vincent Fang, but he does occasionally write the lyrics himself. He has been criticised that for over 10 years now his musical style did not change. Chou says this is the kind of music he likes and does not wish to alter it. As far as I could see, his style might be unchanging but his songs are absolutely of a great variety. Themes might reappear from time to time and his singing (not the rapping) is repetitive, especially in his slow romantic songs, but his style and music is so unique you won't notice unless you really want to find something to complain about.

Last but not least, Jay Chou is also an actor and film director (he directed two movies and a TV series, along with all of his music videos lately). As an actor, he is nothing special, I have to say. I saw a couple of his movies and he's below average, with very poor mimics. His smile is cute, that's all I can comment on, as this is basically the only movement he does with his facial muscles. His performance was something of a better quality in The Curse of the Golden Flower, where he co-starred Chow Yun-fat and Gong Li, playing the second born son of the Emperor of China. His performance was praised by Western critics. Next he will star in The Green Hornet, alongside Cameron Diaz and Christoph Waltz, playing Kato, the quiet sidekick of the title hero, a role once made famous by none other than Bruce Lee, one of Chou's personal icons. Let's just clarify: Jay Chou never learnt martial arts, but he always dreamt about becoming a martial arts hero as a kid, hence his obsession with such movies (he made a quasi-martial arts, quasi-basketball movie called Kung Fu Dunk and as I mentioned, he wrote the theme song for Jet Li's Fearless, whom Chou also admires). For The Green Hornet he started learning English, which he found impossible before and said he would never attempt to sing in English as his language skills were "poor". Now that the The Green Hornet, being a huge budget Hollywood movie, is giving him the opportunity to expose himself to Western audiences, he seems to be changing his mind, saying he already sent a few demos to American publishing companies, but is afraid the studios would exercise too much control over his creative work, to which he is not used to.

Even if he never gets to sing in English, I am glad I discovered him. Just like with Tarkan before, the music of a very talented artist made me discover a new world, a new culture, opening up new horizons in my personal development. Jay Chou is not simply a musician, not simply a hot topic pop sensation. He is a true music prodigy playing musical strings that touch the soul. Take a listen and decide for yourself.

Top 5 Jay Chou songs to look up at YouTube:

• #1. The Curse of the Golden Flower (alternative title: Golden Armor)
• #2. The Herbalist's Manual
• #3. Cliff of Love
• #4. Huo Yuan Jia (alternative title: Fearless)
• #5. The Era

+1 bonus: Jay Chou & Yu Hao's live piano duet

One of Chou's self directed music videos: The Era (2010):

The theme song for The Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

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