Open up a world of Turkish inspiration with a Cornucopia digital subscription

Buy or gift a stand-alone digital subscription and get unlimited access to dozens of back issues for just £18.99 / $18.99 a year.

Please register at www.exacteditions.com/digital/cornucopia with your subscriber account number or contact subscriptions@cornucopia.net

Buy a digital subscription Go to the Digital Edition

Arif Mardin

Profile of an arranger and producer

Where would American pop be, asks David Barchard, without Arif Mardin, who left his venerable Ottoman family for a mixing desk in the US?

  • Photograph by Ara Güler

Chaka Khan, Aretha Franklin, Phil Collins, Carly Simon, Bette Midler and Manhattan Transfer are just a few musicians who, apart from fame, have something extra in common: their arranger and producer is the award-winning, Turkish-born aristocrat Arif Mardin.

Without Mardin, American pop culture and light music might have been different: probably much less smooth and sweet. It is an extraordinary feat for a man born into the Mardinzades, an İstanbul aristocratic family, sixty-four years ago. For centuries, the Mardinzades were Ottoman notables, belonging to the select group of families called “Seyit” who trace their line directly back to the Prophet and seventh-century Arabia. Under the new republic the family owned and still has shares in the oil company Türk Petrol.

Mardin was educated at the English High School for Boys in İstanbul, read Business Studies, and went to the London School of Economics. At 24, he was back in İstanbul preparing for a comfortable life as an oil mogul.

Then one day, in best Hollywood fashion, America called him. Mardin takes up the story: “I had grown up in the Western jazz and pop tradition. I bought my first Duke Ellington record when I was ten and my sister was always listening to American pop – Bing Crosby and Swing. I rejected everything old and wanted only the new.”

Mardin had no formal musical education, and realised he was a better arranger than performer. “I was a lousy piano player,” he says with a laugh. So he sent some of his own arrangements to a friend at Voice of America who passed them on to the jazz musician Quincy Jones. He liked the tapes and decided to perform them himself. Mardin recalls his surprise when he discovered the artists that Quincy Jones had got together: Art Farmer, Phil Woods and Hank Jones - “an unbelievable array”.

An offer of a musical scholarship in America instantly followed. “I said, ‘Dad, I’m sorry, I have to go,’ and he was stunned.” His young wife, Latife, stood by him and a few months later, in 1958, they were in Boston.

“My first job was to sort out unreleased tapes and learn how to mix them and use the desk, twirl the knobs, then I started to mix and prepare albums,” he says. “It was like a dream working with those tapes.”

Fame came when he produced a group called the Young Rascals whose record Good Lovin’ went to the top of the US charts in 1966. In demand ever since, he has picked up six Grammy awards, including last year’s Best Musical Show Album with Smokey Joe’s Café. His son Joe has joined him in the business with his own label, Nu Noise. Mardin still arranges and produces and his interests have grown. “I try to recharge my batteries by composing classical music and I’ve put together some pieces for a CD,” he says.

It is unlikely that anyone will be able to fathom the enigma of an Ottoman aristocrat who has become a guardian angel of American pop. But Mardin remains proudly Turkish. He returns five times a year to visit his family and he has watched the flourishing of Turkey’s own pop music industry.

“There is an incredible explosion of talent at the moment,” he says, “and some great voices around. İbrahim Tatlıses, for one, has a fantastic voice. Some people condemn his music as arabesk, but what’s wrong with it? This man is selling a popular song and selling it to millions.”

He looks solemn as we talk about the current shift Westward in Turkish pop. “I hope we never lose our heritage. It is vast and great and something we must protect. Some musicologists say that it is a dead end. I don’t think so.” He believes Turkish music can be taken to new areas if makam meters are used contrapuntally, combining contrasting rhythms and tunes. “There will be resistance from the purists but it may be the way ahead.”

Arif Mardin died in June 2006.
The Arif Mardin Music Fellowship has been established in his honour by the American Turkish Society and Berklee College of Music

Other Highlights from Cornucopia 11
  • The snowdrop treat

    When Mike Read, the plant conservation officer for Fauna and Flora International (FFI), uncovered a large illegal trade in wild bulbs from Turkey in the 1980s, he and his colleagues were greatly concerned…

  • Aphrodite’s Domain

    The finest school of sculpture in all antiquity was in Aphrodisias. Above the valleys of the Meander in Turkey’s Aegean hinterland, this favourite city of the Emperor Augustus remained largely unknown until the photographer Ara Güler brought it to the attention of the Princeton scholar Kenan T Erim in 1959. Here Ara Güler returns to the city and John Julius Norwich recalls Professor Erim and his first impressions of the sculptures that took his breath away.


  • Lake Shore Drive

    The Mosque of Esrefoğlu in Beyşehır, is one of the most beautiful in Anatolia. Built in 1298, it recalls earlier Central Asian traditions. Wooden columns with carved capitals support the splendid roof.


  • Bright Orange

    Tracing the history of this beautiful fruit is like reading a fairy tale. It spans continents and cultures like no other fruit, from its presumed natural habitat in the foothills of the Himalayas to the scented paradise gardens of the eastern Mediterranean and the orange groves of California.
    More cookery features


  • Vintners of Tokat

    The bunch of Narince grapes Ali Riza Diren is holding in his Anatolian vineyard (illustrated in this vintage issue of Cornucopia) is the raw material of a well kept secret. Tokat’s is an ancient wine, and its production was revived by Ali Riza’s father, to the delight of ambassadors and the approval of a Sotheby’s connoisseur.

  • Churches of the Rock

    High on the central Anatolian plateau, the craggy undulations of Cappadocia’s volcanic landscape conceal a silent world: countless Byzantine sancturies and cathedrals lovingly hollowed from the rock. David Barchard finds two valleys undisturbed since the Dark Ages. Photographs by Sigurd Kranendonk



  • Divan Inspiration

    Amasya, Tokat and Merzifon were once on the trade routes to China, centres of scholarship and commerce. Today they are secluded enclaves of traditional pleasures. John Carswell enjoys a feast of delicate architecture and heady wines. Photographs by Simon Upton

  • House of Great Illusions

    Hidden among the concrete blocks of Teşvikiye is a magnificent mansion riddled with mystery. Masquerading as a Venetian palazzo, Tozan House has disappearing passages, secret stairs and eccentricities it shares with its creator


Buy the issue
Issue 11, 1996 Anatolia Rediscovered
£50.00 / $63.10 / 2,042.39 TL
Related Destinations
Cornucopia Digital Subscription

The Digital Edition

Cornucopia works in partnership with the digital publishing platform Exact Editions to offer individual and institutional subscribers unlimited access to a searchable archive of fascinating back issues and every newly published issue. The digital edition of Cornucopia is available cross-platform on web, iOS and Android and offers a comprehensive search function, allowing the title’s cultural content to be delved into at the touch of a button.

Digital Subscription: £18.99 / $18.99 (1 year)

Subscribe now