Whose funeral could bring together Kid Rock and Turkey's foreign minister Abdullah Gul?

In 1923, Ahmet Ertegun was born the son of a diplomat and close adviser to Ataturk. Indeed, before the Ottoman Empire collapsed, his father was sent to ask the founder of the Turk Republic not to resist the Allies. He was quoted by his son years later as saying to Ataturk, "Now I've done my duty to the sultan and if you need my services I am ready to resign from my post and join you."

A much different kind of revolution was to occur within young Ahmet when, having grown up in embassies throughout Europe, would be led by his older brother, Nesuhi, to a London concert featuring Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. "I had never really seen black people except I had seen pictures of great artists," he would say in an interview years later (slate.com). "And I had never heard anything as glorious as those beautiful musicians, wearing great white tails playing these incredibly gleaming horns with drums and rhythm sections unlike you ever heard on records... So I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter."

After his father moved to Washington D.C. as ambassador to the US and died 10 years later, Ahmet and his brother stayed as the rest of the family returned to Turkey. Ahmet Ertegün was studying classical philosophy at St John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, then at Georgetown University, though he was more interested in hanging out in nightclubs and record shops. "I was totally unemployable," he explained (news.independent.co.uk). "So naturally I decided to go into the music business."

With his friend, Herb Abramson, and $10,000 loaned from the family dentist, Atlantic Records was founded. "We started Atlantic simply because we wanted to sign a few artists whose music we liked, and make the kind of records that we would want to buy. I honestly never imagined I would be able to make a living from doing something that was so much fun. I am very glad I was wrong."

Very wrong, he would be credited not only for discovering and propelling the career of Ray Charles among countless others, but with bridging black music to white kids, thus contributing to the de-segregation of the 50's. In the 60's, he introduced a long list of white rockers to the world's youth, most notably Led Zeppelin, and personally negotiated with Mick Jagger to begin a 14-year working relationship with Atlantic. He also co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the 80's and would be inducted himself a few years later. His brother, Nesuhi, whom also worked at Atlantic, would become the first teacher of a jazz course at an American university.

On October 29th, Ertegun fell into a coma after suffering a head injury at a Rolling Stones concert. He died on Dec. 14th and was buried today in Istanbul after a muslim ceremony. As far as his own views on Islam, he once said: "Well, look I'm Muslim by birth—and the rest I'll have to explain when I write my autobiography."

above photo by Fred Prouser/Reuters

The Laz

One day, Cemal calls Temel from New York to tell his friend, "You must come and work over here! There's so much money here you'll be sweeping it off the streets!" So, Temel flies to New York and when he steps out of the airport he notices a $100 bill. Without picking it up, he continues on, saying to himself, "I just had such a long flight, I'm tired, and I don't want to start work just yet."

With such jokes, the Laz are often stereotyped as amusingly stupid. Because the name Temel is like the John of this ethnic minority from the Black Sea region, jokes almost always feature this gullible character. When I first heard these jokes, which run from the silly:

Temel is drinking too much. To show him the harm, his friends throw a worm into his glass of whiskey. When the worm dies, one of his friends says, "Look Temel, what can you learn from that?"Temel looks up blearily. "You should drink whiskey if you have worms in your body," he says.

to the sexual:

In a state of high anxiety, Temel telephones the doctor. He can hardly get the words out, "Doctor, doctor...Our baby just swallowed a condom! Come quickly!" The doctor drops everything and hurriedly readies his instrument case. As he starts running out the door, the phone rings again. Once more it's Temel, but his voice is relaxed and cheerful as he says, "You can take it easy doctor. All's well. You won't have to come. We found another one!"

to the sexist (Western for religiously conservative):

Temel's teacher told the class to rewrite the following sentence using different words but retaining the meaning: "The young girl opened the window without her mother's permission, looked outside, and smiled." As the teacher watched his students thoughtfully scribbling on their paper, he noticed Temel just sitting there doing nothing. "Why aren't you writing?" the teacher asked. Temel replied, "But teacher, I've finished." The teacher looked at his paper and read merely one word: whore.

...I thought it might be irreverent discrimination. But now I realize it's more like a nicer Polish joke in the States. Irreverent at least, but considering the people around me don't know any Laz personally, it's hard for them to have the opportunity to discriminate.

However, while it's perhaps easy to laugh them off, organizations like the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, don't let the government off so easily. They accuse the government of squashing minority rights in an effort to "Turkify" the republic. One such technique is to restrict their access to the media. Only 5 minority languages are allowed to be broadcast on Turkish television, and the Laz language, which has only recently been recorded in written form, is not one of them. One recent example of this, according to freemuse.org, is when a well-known Laz musician, Birol Topaloglu, was invited and then not allowed to perform on a TV musical special.

The Laz are considered to have a rich musical tradition, a style that features the keremche, a long thin fiddle played upright, and the tulum, a bagpipe. By this description, perhaps you're thinking Scottish Bluegrass. Um, I don't know what that is exactly, but that's definitely not the Laz sound. Check it out for yourself and learn a little more here.

Paradoxically to the irreverence, it is said that the Laz are sharp businessmen and used to fiercely command respect as great and terrible warriors. Lonely Planet also says the Laz, dressed in black, were handpicked by Ataturk to be his personal bodyguards. If anyone can offer any more information regarding this info, please post a comment. I'm open-sourcing this paragraph. The only thing I have found was a reference to a Mohammed Laz-Oglu, picked by an Egyptian ruler to protect the throne while the latter was out of town conquering places.

As for other stereotypes, the Laz are said to have big noses, cook a million recipes with hamsi, Black Sea anchovies, dance wildly, and speak with a bizarre accent. Although, they are the butt of jokes, the best ones are supposedly created and told by the Laz themselves. My only personal experience with the Laz was as follows, which I'll italicize because it might as well be my own Temel joke:

Last Sunday, Eda and I were riding the ski-lift up Uludag mountain, when suddenly we saw a cell phone sliding down the steep slope. We mused over the misfortune of someone in a lift in front of us. Suddenly, a man flat on his back with a pained look on his face flew down under us. Seemingly to follow them both was a brown wallet. And not long after that another man. As we continued riding we saw two men below watching their companions' journey down the mountain. As they were speaking and I was laughing, Eda told me their accent wasn't typical Turkish. "What was it?" I asked, still amusingly confused at the sequence of events.

"Laz," she replied.

Oh Class with Eda

One day she came to my class. It was the first time since that first time.

I had a couple other newcomers so I did my stock-standard introduction: ask why they came to the US and why they're studying English. I can focus my lessons to their needs that way. Until I actually did that, I was going to talk about what I wanted: living together before marriage, crazy laws in our countries, cultural taboos, multi-cultural relationships. Today I was going to make them customs officers giving or withholding green cards from each other. We went around the room and I got the stock-standard answers.

"I want to get into an American university."

"I need to improve my TOEFL."

"I need to improve my English to get a job."

"I want to be an airline stewardess."

"The shopping at Union Square is good!"

"I'm here to take the TOEFL, get a masters and introduce my father's products in a trade show." She says.

"What are your father's products?" I ask.

"Press machines."

"Like dry-cleaning?"

"No."

"Who knows what dry-cleaning is?" I ask, attempting to keep the class involved.

"They shape car parts."

"Oh really? Who knows what "to shape" means?

"A circle?"

"Yes that's a shape, but this shape is a verb."

"It means to make something into a circle." Some student says.

"What shapes do they make?"

"Not shapes, a press. Here, I'll draw it." (She goes to the board, class snickers)

"Like a mold?"

"What's a mold?"

I draw on the board, but I have no idea what this shit means -- but for some reason my students expect me to know every word in English no matter how specialized the industry.

"Ah, yes. And he makes laser machines."

"Who knows what a laser is? (silence) What's a laser? (silence) It's a hot light. It cuts things. Like Star Wars. You know, Star Wars? Light sabers? Who has seen Star Wars? Anway, so what kind of cars do you mold things for?"

"We don't mold things for companies, we sell the machines to companies."

"What are the parts?"

"Parts?"

"Yes, what do the machines press or mold?"

"Oh-- doors to cars and buses."

"So you work for him?"

"Yes, but I don't want to."

"Really, what do you want to do?" (what lesson? what class?)

"By the way do you know where trade shows are given in San Francisco?"

"No, but I will definitely get back to you."

"Get back to me?"

"Yeah, um, I'll tell you tomorrow."

"Okay thanks." (smiling at me, half-suspcious, half-amused because she can tell I'm interested. Girls can always tell.)

"No problem. Let me know if you want to know anything about San Francisco. Ok class is over. (no reaction) Class is over. Sorry. Class is finished. We're finished. Go home!"