Sema (Mevlevi Whirling Ceremony)

A sema opens with a solo ney — the end-blown reed flute that sounds more like breath than a wind instrument. The opening taksim is improvised, drawn out of the player's internal state. Then the ud, kemenche (bowed lute) and kudum (small drums) enter and the ayin, a multi-movement composition in successive makams, begins to unfold. The dervishes turn counterclockwise on the left foot to this music. The structure is the reverse of what a listener might expect: the music does not follow the turners — the music pulls them.

The practice traces to 13th-century Konya, where the Persian-language poet and Sufi master Jalaluddin Rumi led ritual gatherings with his disciples. Rumi's Masnavi supplies the texts that are sung during the ayin, and music, poetry and movement are inseparable in the form. The Ottoman court formalized the Mevlevi tradition and supported its lodges (tekke). When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's 1925 reforms outlawed Sufi orders, the sema went into official suspension; it was permitted to resume from the 1950s as cultural heritage and was inscribed by UNESCO in 2008.

The opening ney taksim has no meter — the breath sets the pace. Once the ensemble enters, the ayin moves through several different makams, each with its own emotional weather. If you can watch as well as listen (Kudsi Erguner's recordings are widely available with footage), notice that the dervish's right palm faces upward to receive and the left palm faces down toward the earth.

Kudsi Erguner's 'Mevlevi Ayin in Hicaz' is the clearest entry, particularly with video — the relationship between the turning and the music becomes visible.

The horizontal flare of a dervish's white skirt comes from centrifugal force; the technique of turning for tens of minutes without falling takes years to acquire. The opening lines of Rumi's Masnavi — 'Listen to this reed, how it complains, telling tales of separation' — can be read as the ney flute itself speaking.