Growing up in Diyarbakır, Turkey, Cemre Omer Ayna never planned to move to America.
But on Saturday, he sat playing his hurdy-gurdy and hand drum on Main Street, practicing before the International Fiesta at the Drill Field at Mississippi State University. He said he was excited to share his Kurdish culture with others at the fiesta.
“I can fill people’s heads about my culture,” Ayna said. “A lot of people are learning about Kurds, and maybe they’re meeting a Kurdish person for the first time.”
Ayna enjoys sharing his culture with people in Starkville, even though he originally thought he would stay in Europe for his education. He attended part of high school and college in Istanbul.
Ayna got his undergraduate degree at Koc University studying electrical engineering. While he was there, he also spent two years learning to play a traditional Kurdish hand drum in his free time. Then, he applied to a master’s degree program at a university in Sweden.
Ayna was accepted to the program, but “chance” got in the way of his plans.
“I was normally planning to get a master’s degree in Europe after I graduated,” he said. “But then the pandemic happened. … Then, I couldn’t because I had some complications with my senior project and they kicked us out of the campus.”
While he wasn’t able to go to Sweden, one of Ayna’s professors told him about an opportunity to continue his education in America — a graduate position at Mississippi State University where he could get his PhD in electrical engineering.
Coming to Starkville came with its challenges, Ayna said, but he tried to research what the American South would be like before he got here. In 2021, he came to the United States and started working on his degree at MSU’s IMPRESS lab.
Since then, he said, he has been working on projects focused on how to lose as little information as possible from a sensor when a signal is compressed. But when he is not in the lab, Ayna spends time investing in other hobbies, including linguistics and a new interest: the hurdy-gurdy.
Last summer, Ayna started learning to play keyboard out of curiosity. He taught himself for a few months, before his curiosity took him farther.
Ayna started watching a YouTube channel featuring a French woman playing traditional Kurdish songs on a hurdy-gurdy. The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound using a hand cranked wheel that rubs against the strings, including a rhythmic droning sound. It also uses a keyboard to create notes for the melody.
“It’s actually a very stereotypical medieval western European instrument,” Ayna said. “… It started appearing in the late 11th century and then spread across western Europe, and then it quickly fell out of fashion, actually. And it’s more associated with folk music in the later Renaissance periods, and it was adopted by the eastern European countries too.”
Ayna said he liked the sound of traditional songs from his culture played on the hurdy-gurdy, as he realized “how well it fits.”
In September, Ayna decided he wanted to pick up a hurdy-gurdy of his own. But there was a catch.
“I looked at the prices… and they were a few thousand dollars. So I got that kit, the hurdy-gurdy kit, and I built it from nothing because it was much cheaper.”
Ayna bought a kit online to build his own. The hurdy-gurdy came in prefabricated plywood pieces that he had to assemble with glue and sweat equity. Eventually, he had his practice instrument: A hurdy-gurdy with a rounded Spanish body and six strings.
“I didn’t have any musical experience with any other string instruments,” Ayna said. “And it was so hard for me to figure out the strings, because … setting up hurdy-gurdy strings is ten times harder than other instruments, and I didn’t have any experience with violin or guitar or anything.”
Ayna researched the entire construction process online. He also purchased one of the only lesson books on the instrument written in English, before starting to teach himself how to play.
Right now, Ayna said, he is still on a “beginner level,” but he intends to continue practicing often until he can play more complicated Kurdish melodies himself.
But at Saturday’s International Fiesta, he said, he would be bringing his instruments out to share Kurdish culture with others, including other international students on campus.
Ayna said he has attended the International Fiesta several times over the past few years, including serving food at a few. The best part, he said, has always been making friends and connecting with others. Learning about the cultures presented, he said, only starts there.
“International Fiesta is about presenting the very basics of the culture and stuff, and you learn something, but if you make friends, you’ll learn a lot more,” Ayna said.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 31 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
