Thirty year-old Adem Ekiz, from Trabzon’s Beşköylü neighborhood is currently one of the most popular kemençe players in Thessaloniki. Greek families invite him to their homes and parties and sing along with him during the Greek folk songs that Ekiz writes and composes himself.
Ekiz helped organize a unique event on Wednesday. He and his friend Lermi, who is also from Trabzon, along with Nikos Mihailidis, 34; Filipos Kesapidis, 38; and Mihalis Siopis, 25, who all grew up in the same neighborhood in Thessaloniki, came together to İstanbul to perform at a concert. It was called “Black Sea Melodies from Trabzon and Thessaloniki to İstanbul”. They played the kemençe.
Ekiz has been friends with Thessaloniki kemençe players for 10 years. Mihailidis’ family lives in Thessaloniki but his relatives lives in Bafra and Sivas. He has been playing the kemençe since he was a young boy. He came to Turkey for the first time in 1994. He met Greeks who live in different Turkish cities, played the kemençe for them, and listened to them play the kemençe. He studied political science in Athens and has been doing his doctorate in cultural anthropology at Princeton University since 2006. The topic of his dissertation is “Music and the Sense of Belonging.” He is researching how music unites people. He completed his field work in Trabzon in September. He speaks Turkish very well. He took classes at TÖMER while he completing his master’s degree in political science at Boğaziçi University in 2000. He can speak Turkish so well that he gives private Turkish lessons to students and businessmen in Greece.
Most people who are interested in the kemençe know Mihailidis very well. His album “Horon ke Trağodiya” was released in 2000. It is interesting to know that he was the first artist to release an album of Greek folk songs in Turkey. However, the album was not very popular. Mihailidis has released two solo albums in Greece and Canada. He released a Greek folk song album with Kesapidis in 2004. The young artists Mihailidis and Kesapidis also released an album called “From Trabzon to Thessaloniki” a few months ago.
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