Turkish jazz musician (1932-1999). Born an only child in Konya, Türkiye, he grew up in a very modest household. His father was a clerk for the city; his mother washed clothing and cleaned houses for a small number of wealthy families in the area. Alayak was an indifferent student, but he showed significant musical talent -- and when he discovered his first jazz records -- a stack of imported singles from a variety of artists, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra -- he knew what he wanted to do with his life.
Cin was a very talented musician for his age -- he was already proficient in piano, accordion, and violin. But after discovering jazz, he quickly picked up performance-level abilities in trumpet, trombone, and upright bass, along with rudimentary skills as a drummer. He attended Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, but was frustrated by the school's relentless focus on classical music and opera. He was able to perform at small jazz venues in Istanbul, but appreciation for jazz was pretty low in Turkey, and it wasn't long before Cin decided he needed to try his luck in America if he was ever going to get any recognition as a jazzman.
When he moved to New York City, Cin took two semesters at NYU, partly to study music and partly to improve his English language skills, but once he started getting regular performing gigs, he dropped out to focus on playing jazz. He played at the Blue Note, Small's Paradise, the Dutch Club, Cafe Zanzibar, Minuci's Riviera, and more, and his performances were appreciated by many of the best jazzmen in New York.
Cin also enjoyed playing with the audience while performing live. He danced exuberantly during breaks in playing, flirted mildly with ladies in the audience, and reacted with overblown shock when bandleaders mispronounced his name. He was still all business when it came time to play, and he developed a reputation as a reliable, professional sideman, thanks to his clean living habits. He didn't drink or use drugs, and his flirtations with the audience never advanced beyond that. His primary vice: rich, spicy foods. He dearly loved Turkish cuisine, but he was an equal opportunity diner, joyfully chowing down on food from the Middle East, from southern Europe, from Mexico, and from the United States.
Cin also began making records, but always as a session musician, or at best, a featured performer. Generally, Cin didn't mind. He was getting to perform, he was getting paid, he was getting album credits, he was working with musical greats. And he also realized that he was a very good, self-taught jazz musician -- and his skills paled before the musical prodigies who grew up in a nation saturated in jazz, blues, and swing. Cin's instrumental work can be heard on records by Armstrong, Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Mel Torme, Jay Jay Johnson, and dozens more.
Still, Cin's musical career didn't advance the way he wished it would. Part of this is because, though he was a talented, respected, and well-liked performer, there were nearly always other session musicians who were more talented, more respected, and more well-liked. But he wasn't the greatest self-promoter either. A few labels had been willing to have him cut an album if he'd change his name to something more Anglo, but Cin completely refused. In part, this was because he was really proud of his name, his family, and his heritage. And in part, this was because people kept coming up with terrible pseudonyms for him -- Alan Sin, John Klyne, Jimmy Jones, John Sink, John Jones, Sim Salabim, Ali Bobo, Nicholas Zin, Carlos Ayala, the Turk with the Work. Honestly, I think he was right. Give up a fantastic name like Alayak Cin for some generic American moniker or a bizarrely insulting nickname? No thanks.
Cin had begun thinking of returning to Turkey, and an extended argument with Miles Davis sealed the deal. Davis hired Cin for a few live gigs in New York and began exhorting him on stage to play "some of that weird Turkish jazz." Well, Cin didn't know any Turkish jazz. He'd learned jazz by listening to American musicians and had never really considered trying to cross the one with the other. And Davis kept needling him about Turkish jazz for a whole week's worth of gigs, and it frustrated Cin so much that he finally walked off stage in the middle of the last night of the gig, shouting, "There is no Turkish jazz, there is just jazz!"
It's not known if Davis really believed there was anything that could be called "Turkish jazz." Really, Miles Davis was an asshole, and the argument probably stemmed from him wanting to be an asshole to a sideman. He never expressed any regrets, at any rate.
Cin spent six months completing his commitments to studios, clubs, and other musicians, gave a farewell concert that was, unfortunately, sparsely attended, and caught the next flight back to Turkey.
Cin spent another year playing at clubs in Turkey. Yes, there were more jazz clubs in Istanbul and Ankara than there had been when he moved to the States, because jazz was becoming more popular all over the world. But it didn't feel like enough to Cin. He'd spent a few years playing with the giants of jazz in the Big Apple, and performing with his own countrymen now felt disappointing.
And then his old alma mater, the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, called him up, told him they wanted to branch out from classical music and introduce a new jazz performance program, and offered him a job. Cin took a position as teaching faculty, not really knowing whether there would be enough students interested in jazz. And it turns out there were plenty of students. Jazz was cool, and young people who loved music wanted to play cool music. So the newly minted Professor Alayak Cin taught classes on jazz history, lessons on performance, and directed two of the program's lab bands. And he kept that up for decades, rising to become the head of the department, then the dean of the division, and briefly, just before his retirement, the university president.
And he did eventually help codify Turkish jazz. He didn't invent it himself, but he worked with a couple of other professors and a quartet of very talented students to create a sound that blended American jazz with traditional Turkish folk music -- and it caught on, not just in Turkey, but throughout the Middle East, northern Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Alayak Cin died in his family home, surrounded by family and students, hours after attending a trumpet recital by his oldest grandson at the university.
Research:
Wikipedia
The Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University website
Biography and selected recordings on the "NYCJazz" website
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