Before the London leg of Babadan Oğula Bir Gırnata Efsanesi (From Father to Son: A Clarinet Legend): a conversation with Ramazan Sesler, third-generation carrier of the alaturka strand of the clarinet, and Kaan Bıyıkoğlu, who moved from engineering to jazz piano — on stage, inheritance, “accompaniment,” and the fusion.
When Selim Sesler died of heart failure at 57 in 2014, he left behind far more than a clarinet repertoire: the sound of a migration route stretching from Drama to İbriktepe and on to Tarlabaşı, an international career that Turkey was the last to recognize, and a single word passed down to his son — “çal” (“play“).
When Babadan Oğula was released by Sony Music Türkiye in 2016, it became the first written record of how that single word had been kept. The project now arrives, in May 2026, on the stage of Ronnie Scott’s in London’s Soho — a Sesler stop at the cathedral of jazz. Ramazan Sesler on clarinet, Kaan Bıyıkoğlu on piano, Enver Muhamedi on bass, Ekin Cengizkan on drums. We spoke over Zoom before the concert.
Starting with the score
Selim Sesler began playing at village weddings at 14. He learned the clarinet by ear; he encountered the score in the army, as a grown man. In Romani musician families, where the norm is 5 or 6, picking up the clarinet at 13 makes Ramazan a late starter even within his own community. I wanted to open the conversation here.
You started at 13 — does that coincide with when your father came back from the army?
Ramazan: Oh no, much later. My father was born in 1957, I in ’83. He came back from the army and learned the score at 26; by the time I started, he was already a man walking with the score in hand.
So the first sound to reach Ramazan’s ear wasn’t the clarinet of a father who played by ear, but that of one who walked with the score. I thought this wasn’t just a difference of personal timing — it must also have shaped how he was guided. While the other children in the neighbourhood were playing what they’d heard from their elders, he was first sent to score lessons.
Could you sense a difference in how your father guided you — between “before the score” and “after the score”?
R: Absolutely. When I started blowing into the clarinet, my father first sent me to score lessons. The score came first. This whole adventure started with the score.
I knew he had gone to Pera Güzel Sanatlar Lisesi (Pera Fine Arts High School), where he studied Western clarinet and Western notation. His circle of friends in the evenings was the opposite — in the homes of Thracian Romani children, everyone played by ear. I had the feeling that Ramazan, with the score in his hand, had stepped out from one edge of the musical language of his neighbourhood. I asked:
When you came together with friends, did your foundations align?
R: There was a difference. I was taking Western lessons, working out my scores, but my friends couldn’t quite grasp them. I didn’t want to pull them in that direction. So we mostly played songs from Turkish Art Music that we all knew — whatever was popular at the moment, whichever musician was in fashion. Playing together was a bit hard, because the foundations were different.
He had become someone who could lift the inflections of music out of the marketplace tongue and discuss them in an academic vocabulary — someone who could say “this part goes lower, this part goes higher.” I thought this must have given him the ability to decipher new music when he first heard it.
That must have opened a kind of universal door for you, too?
R: Absolutely. It opens you up to a more universal range — something very different.
Drama Bridge
The Sesler family migrated from Drama — a city in what is today northern Greece — to İbriktepe, a village in the Keşan district of Edirne, during the 1923 Greek–Turkish population exchange. Drama Köprüsü (Drama Bridge) is an anonymous piece bearing the name of the city the family came from; it is also one of the pieces at the heart of Babadan Oğula. For me, a piece weighted with a family epic, a migration story, and a bridge never seen.
When you play “Drama Köprüsü”, are you reaching into the drama, the emotion — or is it a more technical interpretation?
Honestly, I’ve tried to play it the way I heard it from my father. Of course I added things from myself; you always do. But mostly it was, “I tried to play it the way my father played it.” I added my own interpretation, too, of course — but I didn’t dwell on the drama, to be honest. Let’s call it more technical.
This answer came back much further from what I expected — Ramazan didn’t romanticize the drama, he said “technical.” A surprise in the interview; I want to keep it as it is in print, because it shows his philosophy of playing: he avoids drowning in emotion, fidelity is for him a technical matter.
“Two names for the same search”
The world found Selim Sesler before Turkey did. The Canadian vocalist Brenna MacCrimmon discovered him at an Istanbul nightclub in 1997; Fatih Akın placed him at the centre of Crossing the Bridge (2005).
Fiachra Gibbons of The Guardian called him “the Coltrane of the clarinet.” That nickname became the Sesler family’s international passport. But, for me, it was also a category cage.
I wanted to put the diagnosis behind the Coltrane likeness into the middle of the conversation:
John Coltrane was one of the deepest improvisers in jazz history — he began as a church musician in North Carolina, then moved through bebop, modal jazz, and on to free jazz in New York. The most striking parallel with Selim was that both had identified a wind instrument with their own body. Coltrane brought to the saxophone a breath drawn from Indian classical, from Africa, from the East — carrying sound worlds that, from the Western centre, were always treated as “peripheral,” straight to the centre of the stage. Selim, with the clarinet, carried the emotional scale of Thracian–Romani makams onto the world stage: the same peripheral stance, in another geography. Both came from a marginalized community and reached the world; both left at their peak — Coltrane at 40, Selim at 57. The nickname, then, is a diagnosis: they were two names for the same search, in two different geographies.
Your stepping onto the Ronnie Scott’s stage is, to my mind, an iconic move — does it feel to you like a message from the Turkish Romani side, or just another stage among many?
R: I’m very excited, genuinely very excited. To step onto the Ronnie Scott’s stage, because it’s a very prestigious place. Actually, I didn’t know much about it beforehand, but it’s been a year since this project began — we got very excited. We’ve been excited throughout the process. I know I’ll take great pleasure in playing there with someone like Kaan Bıyıkoğlu, because I always enjoy playing with him. Messages will go out, of course — but they’ll reach those who know. Because to play at Ronnie Scott’s — not everyone gets to play there. This is very important to me, I say it emphatically.
At this point, Ekim Öztürk (Caféturc Music & Arts), who had joined the conversation as the project’s organizer, stepped in — pushing the question to a sharper place.
“The test is on the Turkish programmers”
Ekim Öztürk: I think one of the tests will be on the Turkish programmers. Because as you said: Selim Sesler’s worth was recognized abroad first, and only after that did the people living on the land he belonged to come to understand it better. It’s a bit like that here too, because of course this isn’t classical jazz, it isn’t a classical story — it’s fusion jazz. Fusion jazz is being made and programmed in Turkey too, but ours is a slightly different kind of project. We aren’t a group that has yet been fully embraced by the important programmers.
Selim Sesler’s worth was recognized abroad first, and only after that did the people living on the land he belonged to come to understand it better.
— Ekim Öztürk, Caféturc Music & Arts
“A score is never music”
The title of Kaan Bıyıkoğlu’s master’s thesis, completed at the Informatics Institute of Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2002–2003, was: “A Markov Model for Chorale Harmonization in the Style of J.S. Bach” — modelling Bach’s chorale harmonization with what amounted, in its day, to an early form of AI. The thesis didn’t remain only an academic exercise; it was presented at ESCOM5 (the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music conference) in 2003 and was cited across the subsequent Bach harmonization literature — Allan & Williams 2005, DeepBach 2017, BacHMMachine 2021. So Kaan was one of the early pioneers of the era when machines first began learning to imitate Bach. I was curious how that equipment sits alongside a Thracian çiftetelli.
Can Bach’s mathematics and the mathematics of Thrace share the same living room, in your view?
Kaan Bıyıkoğlu: Mathematics is essentially an apparatus — an apparatus used to model any given thing. Depending on the detail of the model you make, or the validity of your assumptions, it reflects something to a certain extent. In the same way, the score is also a model.
That is: a score is never music. The music Selim Sesler played is real music; the music John Coltrane played is real music. The moment you commit them to score, so much remains in the air — outside the page. And in fact most of those notes were probably chosen precisely in order to play the things you couldn’t write down. There is a gesture, a mime, an air. Or the notes have been chosen to carry that air. But the moment you write the score, you’ve lost the air.
A score is never music. The moment you commit it to the page, so much remains in the air — and in fact most of those notes were probably chosen in order to play the things you couldn’t write down.— Kaan Bıyıkoğlu
Perhaps this is Turkey’s open wound — we do a great deal with scores, especially in music academies. It’s a real problem worldwide too. Say you’re going to play Chopin — there’s an entire Polish culture behind the music, the mazurka, this and that. Mozart has a style — and that style carries its own oral culture that doesn’t live on the page. I feel very lucky here, because while playing alongside a musician like Ramazan, who comes from the heart of this music — my first wish is for some of this music to rub off on me.
He then returned to Ronnie Scott’s — but from an unexpected angle.
Ronnie Scott’s is, of course, a very important place for music, an important place for European jazz. I was reading Sonny Rollins’s biography the other day — one chapter was titled “Ronnie Scott’s.” He played there for a long stretch, the music for Alfie was offered to him there, Michael Caine showed up… So a place with that kind of historical weight. But on the other hand, for me, what matters most is always playing music for the people I’m on stage with. I’m not someone who believes I can play for the listeners — I can play for the musician next to me. Because the first listener, for me, is always the musician next to me, and I want to be the first listener for them too.
I’m not someone who believes I can play for the listeners. I can play for the musician next to me. Because the first listener, for me, is always the musician next to me.— Kaan Bıyıkoğlu
“Maybe that’s why you’ve never made your own album”
Kaan is a pianist of thirty years; he has recorded on countless albums, played on countless stages, but to this day he hasn’t released a solo album under his own name. For me, a very particular position in Turkey’s jazz world: constantly visible, but always next to someone.
It feels as if you take this business of collective playing a little too seriously. Could that be one reason you’ve never made your own album?
K: There are actually many reasons, but perhaps one of them is that. Perhaps not feeling the “necessity” to make one. I’m constantly writing music, producing things between sets, constantly playing them at my own concerts. I’ll record them one day, of course — but I’m not in a rush. First, there are already a lot of my albums out there. Second, there’s no economic incentive either — given the country’s conditions, we’re all somehow living to get through the day, so it never quite became a priority.
There’s also this: making a wave with your own compositions on stage, and chasing that wave, may at some point narrow the number of musicians you can accompany. Could that be part of the subtext for you?
I’ve always taken accompaniment very seriously, actually. From the time I started studying jazz seriously — I was working to become a good accompanist; I’m someone who studied for the sake of accompanying. I’ve tried to learn different styles of accompaniment.
The accompaniment problem: “Ramazan is very strong in stance”
For example, in this music — especially in Ramazan’s music, that is, the music of that tradition — when accompanying, my biggest question was: what can I play here? Because there are certain harmonic arrangements made for makam music in Turkey, but I can play it rhythmically too. What can my models be? We’re actually playing music that is separate from things done in Turkey in the field close to jazz, like the East–West synthesis. Ours doesn’t sound like, say, Laço Tayfa. It moves closer to something like Ornette Coleman or Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet — the cool parts of us are quite open.
I think what we’re doing is bringing the folkloric texture of this music to the foreground. Because what gives jazz its value too is what cannot be put down to score, the things that come from oral culture. That is, the air of the music. What can I play that reflects this air, or how can I relate to it when playing on my own, what kind of contrast can I lay down — these are the problems for me.
Because Ramazan is very strong in stance, fierce. I’m not that strong. But while bringing this out, what can I play in my own playing… In a way, what we’re making is hybrid culture music.
Ramazan is very strong in stance, fierce. I’m not that strong. But while bringing this out, what can I play — these are the problems for me.
— Kaan Bıyıkoğlu
Bartók, and the root of hybrid music
Béla Bartók was the first modern composer to record Magyar village melodies on a phonograph in the early 20th century — he collected from a geography stretching across Thrace, Edirne, and deep into the Balkans.
A composer who touched the musical “cousin” of the lands the Sesler family came from. Knowing of Kaan’s earlier jazz arrangements of Bartók’s works was, for me, a clue as to why this stage held together so coherently. I asked:
Do you see the jazz arrangements you did of Bartók as the ethnomusicological root of the work you’re now doing with Ramazan?
K: For me, yes. While Bartók was modernizing music in the 20th century, he worked with folklore so as not to lose the expression rooted in those origins. In modern and contemporary music it placed him in an unusual position — one that some looked down on, for that reason. While Schoenberg appeared sophisticated, Bartók was someone writing music with folkloric cells. That music is very valuable to me. It’s actually one of my sources here — when I accompany this music, Bartók is always in my head.
Seen from a larger plan, the work is also a bit political, in a way: music is actually something that belongs to everyone. Bartók’s village music was a second language to him — he went and learned it. In a sense, every music is like that for us. Jazz, for me, is like that. I’m someone from the middle of Inner Anatolia, my family is two generations back from a village, but their village doesn’t have a music — we’re not Alevi, no one in my family plays the bağlama. So then, what is my music? They both went to university; they listened to Beatles they also listened to Muazzez Abacı, these people. But somewhere, every music brings people together. The way this music brings Ramazan and me together, it also brings the listeners together. We form a community.
“I didn’t hear Selim in Turkey”
For me, perhaps one of the most surprising moments of the interview. The question was actually a technical comparison: between Ramazan and Selim Sesler’s playing, what kinds of colour differences do you see, through the eye of a jazz pianist? The answer started with a confession.
How would you describe Ramazan and Selim Sesler — not as better or worse, but as a colour difference?
K: I didn’t hear Selim Sesler live very often. While I was a student in Holland, he came to Rotterdam for a concert once, in 2008, I think. That was when they had announced him as “the John Coltrane of Turkish music,” and he played at the Lantaren-Venster hall. Other than that, I didn’t have the chance to hear him live. I listened to the albums — especially Oğlan Bizim Kız Bizim and Keşan’a Giden Yollar.
Let me also say this: I didn’t hear Selim Sesler in Turkey. I first heard his name when I went to Holland to study — I said, “Oh, who is this?” Because we were following concerts, we were students, we’d see a concert for five euros. Then the Rotterdam Central Library had a very nice CD and vinyl section — those albums were there too. Reaching Turkish music while abroad is sometimes easier, perhaps…
I’ve heard Ramazan from the stage — and listening to the two of them is a very different experience. I can say this: we play a rather interactive music in the back, and our accompaniment keeps “shifting” Ramazan. Ramazan plays as if he’s inside a fire; we’re maybe offering him a foundation that doesn’t necessarily make him comfortable — but he’s said he likes it, and that makes me very happy.
Selim Sesler stands as one of the peaks of that tradition. Ramazan is a musician who comes from inside that tradition but carries it elsewhere. So here, rather than “this one does this, this one does that,” each of us has different functions.
So not letting Ramazan settle on stage is the key sentence here.
Yes. And the fact that he enjoys it too… We don’t say to each other, “support the music I’m making.” We don’t play music that makes each other’s lives easier, when we’re together.
Sol clarinet, B♭ clarinet
The clarinet Ramazan plays is not the clarinet of Western orchestras — it’s the sol clarinet (G clarinet), specific to the alaturka strand of Turkey and the Balkans. The same body of pipe, but a different tuning, a different key system, a different history.
How would you describe these two clarinets to someone who hasn’t heard you?
R: We’re talking about the sol clarinet and the B♭ clarinet. There are two systems — one is the German, the other is the French. So one is the alaturka system that we play, the other is the system played by Western clarinettists.
They are actually very close to each other, almost the same. But there are a few more keys in the Western system — we don’t have those keys. Of course we can play that keyboard when we pick it up, and a friend who plays the Western clarinet can play ours when they pick it up — it’s a matter of getting used to. Both have different difficulties. Both are hard, neither is easy.
“I always took my father as my model — but now there are notes that are my own interpretation”
In a Hürriyet interview around 2016, Ramazan described how, when listeners told him “you’ve become just like your father,” he treated it as a source of honour. Ten years have passed — with the Babadan Oğula project now on a new lineup, a new stage, I was curious whether his view in that mirror had also changed.
Does the phrase “just like your father” still mean the same thing to you, or has your own tone arrived at a kind of maturity?
R: We’ve grown older too, we’ve become more experienced in music. That interview was, I think, ten years ago. Since then I’ve gained a lot of experience, I’ve seen a great deal in terms of professionalism — with my orchestra colleagues, with the musicians I’ve played with. Of course I always took my father as my model, I always took my father as my model. But now I think I’m adding my own interpretation. In some places, there are notes that aren’t from my father. Of course there are always notes from my father — but there are also notes, interpretations, that I myself have added in.
His name is Selim too
In the documentary Çal Gırnatacı (“Play, Clarinettist”) there is one sentence: “The clarinet, master to apprentice, father to son, has come down to today through tradition. If it ends one day, if no work remains, what a great pity it would be.” The Sesler lineage, with Ramazan, is in its third generation. I couldn’t have closed the interview without asking whether the next link exists.
Ramazan, is there anyone else in the family who plays the clarinet, after you?
R: Not for now. After me, no one.
Do you have children?
R: Yes, my son. But he’s not very active yet. He’s seven, so I don’t want to put too much on him. Maybe, maybe next year. His name is Selim too, by the way.
His name is Selim too, by the way.— Ramazan, on his son
The flow of the evening
On Sunday evening, May 10th, when Ramazan, Kaan, Enver and Ekin took to the stage at the invitation of Ronnie Scott’s, it was a pleasure to hear so many things we had discussed in the conversation find their stage counterpart.
The night opened with Kasap Havası; an old dance tune that, from the very first moment, had the clarinet setting the stage — stretching from Thrace through Istanbul into the Balkans. With its kinship to the Makellarikos Horos of Byzantine Istanbul, the Greek Hasapikos, the Bulgarian Kasapsko Horo, and the Serbian Kasapsko Kolo — a whole expanse of Balkan–Istanbul memory came onto the stage in the very first piece.
What followed, Babadan Oğula, was one of the most personal moments of the night. What strikes me most in Ramazan’s general approach is that he doesn’t place the repertoire he’s inherited from his father into a nostalgic showcase, but plays it like music that is still alive. Babadan Oğula was one of the clearest examples of this: the name says the whole story already, but Ramazan doesn’t turn it into a heavy display of legacy; instead, he carries it forward with his own breath. His dialogue with Kaan also works very well here: as Ramazan opens the story on the clarinet, Kaan builds, with his piano, a calm, steady, ungiving foundation underneath it. One is the breath, the other the spine; one of the things that made the evening beautiful was this balance.
Nihavent Oyun Havası was, for me, one of the sweetest encounters of the night. The flavour of nihavent, which sits closer to the Western ear, made the piano and the clarinet sit naturally side by side. Kaan’s piano here doesn’t merely accompany from behind; it works from a place that gathers the flow of the piece, that holds up the rhythm. As Ramazan’s clarinet carries the anonymous melody onto a brisk line breathing on its own, Kaan’s habit of short, effective motifs — inherited from his Bartók work — slips neatly into that walk. The clarity that comes from his engineering background is perhaps felt here too: without flourish, without scattering the piece, he keeps the whole flow calm but firm.
Then came Meşk Havası. This piece, which also appears on Selim Sesler’s Oğlan Bizim Kız Bizim, suited the spirit of the night even by its name. Because meşk is the old method of transmission that came before the score: master to apprentice, ear to ear, breath to breath. That was a little of what was happening on stage that evening, too. A repertoire wasn’t just being played, it was changing hands; but as it changed hands, it didn’t freeze — it was being remade with today’s breath. The first set closed with Bir İstanbul Gecesi; Selim’s composition, which carried onto the stage that Istanbul line stretching from Doublemoon’s Homegrown Istanbul Vol. 2 compilation to Ramazan’s 2016 album.
The second set opened with Arpa Buğday. An anonymous folk song from Yozgat–Akdağmadeni; walking along to the line “arpa buğday daneler, yıkılsın meyhaneler…” (“barley wheat in grains, may the taverns fall down…”) — a simple but deep love story rising up from inside Anatolia. What came next, Denizin Mavisi, stood like one of those Selim compositions worthy of its name: calmer, more open, with a touch more depth. After the briskness of the dance tunes, a different breath arrived on the stage.
Şu Köyceğiz Yolları was one of the pieces that stood apart for its story. For many years it was thought to be anonymous; only later was its composer revealed: the Muğla-born wrestler-musician Hasan Ali Dalar. He’s said to have written it in 1938, while in Muğla Prison, for the woman he loved, Ayşe. There’s even a story that the word “yollar” (roads) in the song was originally “damlar” — that is, prison. Once you know such a story, the piece becomes more than just a beautiful folk song; it touches somewhere else inside you. Kaan’s presence at the piano was again very pronounced in this part: without drawing the piece onto himself, he stood at a place that opened and gathered the flow.
The second set closed with Rast Oyun Havası Balkan. The root of rast — meaning “straight, true” — and its tune opening toward the Balkan side, beautifully completed the general line of the evening. Throughout the night, Thrace, Istanbul, the Balkans, Anatolia and Selim Sesler’s repertoire kept brushing against one another; it was a night that was neither entirely nostalgic, nor trying too hard to look modern. More like the old roads being walked again in the hands of today’s musicians.
In between, the solos by Enver and Ekin completed this feeling too. In Enver’s solo there was a kind of bass intelligence that didn’t speak too much, that held the gravity of the piece, that didn’t let the ground slip. Ekin’s solo, too, was played not to put on a show but to widen the pulse of the night. He came forward but didn’t scatter the piece; on the contrary, he kept the whole sense of encounter more alive. Part of what made the night beautiful was exactly this: everyone was showing themselves, but no one was getting in front of the music.
The encore, Bahar Dansı, was the night’s most beautiful closing. This piece from Selim Sesler and Brenna MacCrimmon’s 1998 album Karşılama holds a special place in Selim’s international journey. The fact that a piece from a small studio recording in 1998 was being heard again, in 2026, on the Ronnie Scott’s stage seemed, on its own, to sum up the meaning of the evening.
I honestly don’t know how much Ronnie Scott’s has hosted music from the Balkans and this geography over the years; but the sounds I heard that night reminded me of the line carried since the ’60s by Okay Temiz, Maffy Falay, and Ergün Şenlendirici;
and of the spaces opened in the 2000s by Doublemoon, Babylon, and of course the legendary Mehmet Uluğ.
That night, Ramazan, Kaan, Enver and Ekin felt like travellers of the same road. “Fusion” was once a new idea, today it might even feel a bit dated; but to witness such rare and beautiful encounters along the way — especially as a documentary filmmaker — I have to say, I really do love it. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing Ramazan and Kaan more often abroad, thanks to collaborations brought together by someone as good at their craft as Ekim Öztürk (Caféturc).
