Karaoke at the Clubhouse

Turks love to sing. I've heard them do it on the street, on the bus, in the meyhane (a restaurant with live music where everyone sings along). I've heard my own Turk sing in the shower and, to my occasional embarrassment, at the top of his lungs in a crowd.

But one place I never expected to hear any singing was in the clubhouse of the Zirve Mountaineering Club. This is the place we meet every Tuesday night for our climbing course that will eventually end in certification. It's very serious. We listen to speakers and look at slides that educate us about nutrition, orienteering, adverse weather conditions, safety and equipment. We've quite possibly learned about nearly every aspect of mountaineering. What we haven't done, however, is cranked up the classical Turkish art music and had a big ol' sing-a-long. Until last week, that is.

Although we normally only go to the clubhouse on Tuesdays for our course, on a whim we decided to drop by on a Wednesday night. It was a different world entirely. The people gathered in the room differed significantly from the Tuesday night crowd in that they were (a) less athletic, and (b) more predominantly female. On the big blank wall used for projected presentations there was no picture of correct passing procedure for icy mountain passes, but rather a great big, red-lettered screen that read 'Welcome to Özcan's Karaoke'.

What ensued thereafter was a potent blend of comedy and tragedy. There were speakers that could scarcely project louder than a normal human voice, badly synthesized tracks punctuated with rap-like record scratches and ridiculous flourishes totally out of keeping with the original character of the song. There was a microphone that screeched bloody murder when held in practically any position, and singers so wildly off-key that it did prompt a bit of soul-searching within myself, searching for the ultimate answer to the question 'how do we define entertainment?' Seriously, why do people do this to themselves? Okay, for the ones who 'sing', it's fulfilling their '15 minutes of fame' fantasy. There are others who don't sing, but hope that someday they might have the courage to, because they really want to express themselves. There are others who never have any intention to sing, ever, but find it entertaining to watch others make fools of themselves. And then there are those who wind up there by accident, or because their friends wanted to go, who sit there listening to a bad rendition of cat-in-heat yowl, saying to themselves "why, why, WHY???"

Fortunately, the fridge was well stocked with beer, a situation which we quickly rectified, of course. By the end of the third beer, I was beginning to discover some entertaining aspects of the whole spectacle, and was learning a little Turkish (and a little Turkish culture) to boot. I reflected that these old songs, which form part of the national consciousness, might have been forever inaccessible to me were I only to have heard them on the radio or at the meyhane. (The lyrics are normally wailed and pretty unintelligible.) Here I got to read them from a wall, in bright red letters. So now when I hear that song about making love under the stars, or the drunken inkeeper, or the lout who forgot about his love (just for a moment), maybe I, too, can sing along. I just hope I have the good sense not to put a microphone in front of my face when I do it.