Music Across Borders
Türkiye and Its Cultural Neighbours
A Listening Club Series
Explore the musical connections between Türkiye and its cultural neighbours in this Listening Club at Yunus Emre Institute in London. Facilitated by musician and musicologist Prof. Dr Mine Doğantan-Dack, each session offers a carefully curated journey through sound, focusing on shared musical traditions from the Balkans, the Levant, the Aegean, Persia, the Turkic world, and the Ottoman musical sphere.
What Is the Listening Club?
This six-session Listening Club is conceived as a space for slow listening, cultural reflection, and shared inquiry. Music is approached not only as sound, but as a form of knowledge, memory, and connection. Each session centres on close listening to selected vocal and instrumental works, supported by visual materials such as videos, maps, and instrument guides.
Through guided listening and conversation, participants explore how musical traditions carry histories of migration, encounter, coexistence, and transformation, and how sound travels across regions and cultures. The focus is not on performance, but on listening as an emotional, sensory, and reflective practice.
Participants are encouraged to reflect, share impressions, and engage with the music in an open and interactive way, discovering how music travels across borders and cultures.
Who Can Attend?
This Listening Club is open to:
- Music lovers and curious listeners
- Students and researchers in music, culture, or area studies
- Anyone interested in Türkiye’s cultural connections with neighbouring regions
No musical training is required.
Who is Mine Doğantan Dack?
Mine Doğantan Dack is a musicologist and concert pianist, recognised internationally as a leading figure in a new generation of artists who are also academic researchers. Mine was born in Istanbul, and studied Philosophy at Boğaziçi University, and Piano Performance at the Juilliard School (BM, MM). She holds a PhD in Musicology from Columbia University, New York, and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from Cambridge University. While at the Juilliard School, Mine was awarded the Scholarship of the Turkish Ministry of Education for Young Artists, and won the prestigious William Petschek award. She performs as a soloist and chamber musician, and has given concerts in USA, UK, Germany, France and Turkey. She participated in the Mozart Bicentennial Festival in New York, and recorded the music of JS Bach and Scriabin for WNCN. She also recorded various programs for the Turkish radio and television. Mine is the founder of the Marmara Piano Trio and received an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, for her work on chamber music performance. Mine’s books include Mathis Lussy: A Pioneer in Studies of Expressive Performance, and the edited volumes Recorded Music: Philosophical and Critical Reflections, Artistic Practice as Research in Music, Music and Sonic Art, Rethinking the Musical Instrument, The 21st-Century Chamber Musician, and The Music Performers’ Lived Experiences (forthcoming). She was recently a guest of BBC Radio 3’s “Composer of the Week” program to talk about the music of the Turkish Five. Having previously taught at Yeditepe University, (Istanbul), Middlesex University, University of Oxford, and University of Manchester (as Professor of Music Performance Studies), Mine currently teaches Performance Studies at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge.
What Can You Expect from Session One?
In this inaugural session of Yunus Emre Listening Club, participants will journey through shared myths and folk tales carried by music across the Northern Balkans and Türkiye’s Trakya region, encounter the emotional world of Sevdalinka, also known as the Balkan Blues, alongside beloved Turkish and Balkan musicians, and engage with both historical and contemporary interpretations of a living repertoire. The session will also include a commemorative moment for Barış Manço , whose life and work reflect the region’s layered cultural histories. Designed as a guided listening experience rather than a concert or lecture, the session invites close listening, reflection, and optional creative response in a shared, welcoming atmosphere.
WEEKLY PLAYLISTS
As part of the Music Across Borders Listening Club, each session is accompanied by a curated weekly listening list and playlist, designed to extend the experience beyond the physical gathering. These playlists offer participants a way to continue listening, reflecting, and engaging with the musical traditions explored in each session — before and after every meeting.
Each playlist brings together selected recordings, key artists, and representative pieces from the region in focus, creating a living archive of sound, memory, and cultural connection that grows throughout the series.
Sign up for the 1st Session : The Balkans The opening session of the Listening Club opens with the Balkans as a sonic and cultural crossroads — a region where memory, migration, myth, and music have long travelled together.
