Keep the Beat, Beat the Stress!

Rhythm, which Native Americans used as a means of communication, has today become a much-loved way of relieving stress. Many people attending M3 Ritm Atölyesi (M3 Rhythm Workshop), most of whose participants are young, are keeping the beat against the stress of life. As you walk down İstiklal, the music rising from the bookshops keeps you company. When you reach Tünel, where musical instruments are sold and music studios come to life in the back streets, the atmosphere changes. Sometimes the sounds of a violin, an oud or a guitar played by beginners’ hands can be heard all around. If, amid all these sounds, you hear a group of people keeping the beat at the same time, don’t be at all surprised. For the young people who gather in a studio in Tünel are both doing their utmost to keep time together and having fun. Their aim, more often than not, is to step into music professionally, like hundreds of young people in Turkey. But, sadly, not everything we are keen on always comes true. Yet sometimes, even if we don’t manage to do it professionally, a step taken along this road can give us a new hobby and rid us of stress. Those who knock on the door of M3 Ritm Atölyesi, which offers percussion training in Kadıköy and Taksim, are mostly young people who want to add rhythm to their lives. The aim of these young people, who form groups of five or six and come together, is most often to use what they learn here to contribute to a professional life in music later on. But once you start keeping the beat, the desire doesn’t stop there. Those who want to say goodbye to the pressure of city life and the stress loaded on them every day never let go of rhythm. An old Native American saying goes: hold your wrist with your thumb and index finger; that is rhythm. In other words, rhythm is inside all of us from birth, but it is waiting for a chance to come out. Rhythm, once used by Native Americans for communication and in their feasts, is today widely used for educational and therapeutic purposes. At M3 Ritm Atölyesi, where those who keep the beat to get away from stress gather, training is offered in three forms. Eastern percussion covers the Turkish rhythms we all know and Turkish instruments such as the darbuka, tef, bendir and davul. In Latin percussion, Latin and Cuban rhythms such as samba, cha-cha, rumba, salsa and bossa nova are practised on instruments such as congas, tumba, maracas and shakers. In Brazilian percussion, rhythms like those of the batucada at the giant samba festivals in Rio de Janeiro that we watch on TV are played on instruments such as the surdo, agogô and chocalho. But we also learn from Erdem Genç that, since rhythm comes in a great many varieties, different versions will in time be taught at M3 Ritm Atölyesi. At M3 Ritm Atölyesi, lessons are given by graduates of the percussion departments of conservatoires in Turkey or by percussionists described as ‘alaylı’, that is, trained through the master–apprentice relationship. Erdem Genç, who says that music consists of rhythm and melody, says that although they teach rhythm they do not skip the melody side. Although young people make up the bulk of those who go to M3 Ritm Atölyesi and keep the beat to get rid of stress, there is no shortage of ladies and gentlemen who have passed 60, or of mothers and fathers who bring their seven-year-old along by the arm. There are even people in their fifties and sixties who, having come to rhythm lessons and completed their training, go on to perform with municipal orchestras. In other words, everyone expects something different from rhythm lessons. Young people choose M3 Ritm Atölyesi with the dream of being able to form a band, mothers and fathers to strengthen family bonds, and working people to shake off the stress of their jobs. If you want to be on the side that makes music rather than the side that listens to it, and if you intend to lend an ear to the sound of rhythm in order to shake off your stress, we recommend that you drop in, at least as a guest, at M3 Ritm Atölyesi, where you will make your presence felt by adding something of yourself.