The resistance of the Turkish makam and the habitus of a performer. Reflections on a collaborative CD-project with erdem helvaciolu

I will take a recent CD-project as point of departure, a collaboration with the Turkish composer and electronic musician Erdem Helvaciolu. We did a series of recording sessions in Istanbul in December 2009 for which we agreed to use the Turkish makam as common point of departure in all the pieces. In this paper I will discuss the resistance of this material and specifically the relation between the resistance and the habitus of a performer. In the sessions we agreed to approach the different makam by applying different scordaturas to the instruments. I will develop on the resistance of the instrument with regard to this phase, also looking back at Kent Olofsson's Il Liuto d'Orfeo.