Rawa Serves Up Turkish Tunes

As Umut Yasmut filled the dining area of Westville’s Mediterranean and Middle Eastern fusion restaurant RAWA with cascading melodies, the New York musician said that his instrument, an intricately carved stringed creation, did not exist.

Yasmut was performing at this week’s ​“Music Night Wednesday,” a series Rawa is hosting to combine their menu with weekly live performances from 6 to 9 p.m.

He was playing a kanun, sometimes spelled qanun, a trapezoidal instrument whose sounds come in waves, like a harp, and whose resonance comes from the tension of taut skin, like a drum.

The kanun carries 25 identical triplets of strings, with small metal levers called ​“mandal” that can make any note sharper or flatter in up to nine degrees of detail.

He described it as a sort of ​“Turkish piano,” a cousin of the dulcimer and sitar, a creation of rosewood, pine, and a mystery third wood that did not come to mind.

The reason Yasmut said his kanun did not exist was that it was a special 19-string-set version. For a flight, car, or bus, he said, the original instrument was just too big. He looked at the variety of notes, from treble to mid to bass, and decided he didn’t need the lowest ones.

“Let me cut six off the bottom,” he said, ​“and use the rest.” 

Yasmut often plays alongside an upright bass at his performances in New York and across the country; he realized he could trust his bandmates to fill in the gaps. He worked with an instrument maker in Türkiye to create a smaller version of the kanun. That was what he brought to Rawa Wednesday night.

Yasmut began his musical journey in 1984, giving him over 40 years of experience. On Wednesday night, it showed. He plucked fast, trilling over simple riffs until they rolled into waves of sound.

The strings gave off a twang familiar from guitar or harp, while the small steps between notes allowed Yasmut to dance around every tone.

Every so often in Yasmut’s set, he looked over his shoulder toward his three handwritten pages of songs he could choose from, separated into scale types, or makam. While Western music has major and minor scales, Yasmut’s organized his selection into nihavent, hicaz, húzzam, rast, mahur, and more, each with their own moods.

He folded classics from other cultures into his own Turkish designations, telling me the bolero classic ​“Bésame Mucho” by Consuelo Velázquez was in the nivahent makam and ​“It’s Now or Never” by Elvis Presley was in the rast makam. Yasmut said he likes to play flamenco songs on his kanun, tapping into the Mediterranean connection. 

“As long as there’s melody,” Yasmut said, ​“any kind of songs in the world, I can play with this instrument.”

Both ​“Bésame Mucho” and ​“It’s Now or Never” made appearances Wednesday night, along with hours of Turkish kanun pieces that allowed Yasmut to make full use of the notes not just between C and D (which would be C sharp), but between C and C sharp, and between C and that note, and between C and that note.

He used the metal levels of the instrument, the mandal, to access up to nine komas, or separations, between each string triplet.

Perhaps this was why his melodies scratched such a specific itch. These were sounds not typically used or even accessible in Western instruments.

While there were no requests or setlist, Yasmut was loyal to his own timeline of the night’s performance. During one pause late in the set, the hostess started playing the restaurant’s sound system, and Yasmut held up a hand: ​“Not yet.” He went on to play a few more pieces, finally ending when the moment was right.

Rawa continues their ​“Music Night Wednesday” series next Wednesday, with Middle Eastern music by Baklava Express 6 p.m. to 8 m. and a Belly Dance performance from 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on March 12; a Goza Latin Jazz Ensemble from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on March 19; and Hot Cat Jazz 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on March 26.