'Lost Songs of Anatolia': A musical odyssey

What Ünen has done with this project deserves a lot of respect; not only has he traveled throughout the entire country to gather the traditional songs, ballads, lullabies and poems of various ethnic groups, he has also made a modern arrangement of these tunes with an incredible ear for harmony. The beauty of it is that Ünen doesn’t re-perform the songs with a new choir or new orchestra; on the contrary, as the person he films/interviews starts singing the folksong, suddenly we hear the rhythm and beats of an off-screen orchestra supporting the singer. It’s truly beautiful.

What it all comes down to is protecting intangible cultural heritage, something in dire need in Turkey, a country that hosts so many different cultures and ethnicities. (I can’t stand sounding like a tourism ad, but it’s a fact which isn’t acknowledged nearly enough.) Not only do we watch the performances of traditional Turkish folksongs, but Ünen makes us listen to mesmerizing tunes from the Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Circassian and Greek communities as well.

This isn’t a film with a significant storyline or direction. As Ünen describes in his press release, the aim of the project was to archive the sounds and songs of Anatolia and try to find people who knew these songs, no matter where and who they were. Thus, Ünen takes us to villages in almost every region of Turkey and introduces us to ordinary people who have been handed down this musical heritage and who duly perform for Ünen’s crew.

It would be wrong to expect the film to be an in-depth musical investigation of all of Anatolia and its cultures, for there are so many songs that have not been included in this journey. However, the film gets to the gist of the matter and presents some of the most powerful folksongs from each region to the audience. I can’t even imagine the number of recordings that did not make it to the final cut.

What is so powerful about the recordings, besides the arrangements, is that they bristle with authenticity and capture the genuineness and zest of the subjects. It is obvious that Ünen has formed a true documentarian relationship with his subjects in gaining access to these people. It’s not an easy job to make the inhabitants of the provinces trust a film crew, let alone sing before them, especially older women, who in this film comprise half of the singers.

“Lost Songs of Anatolia” is not only a brilliant musical documentary (the rich visuals and dynamic editing support the technical aspects), but it also transforms itself into one of the most important visual archives of the last decade. Never before has such a systematic and creative audiovisual study of Anatolian music of such scope reached the public -- one which actually has a chance of getting the attention of the people and encouraging the notion of protecting cultural heritage.