I knew from music theory class that, when Middle Eastern music sounded like wailing, or like it was out of tune, it was because our ears—my ears—had been desensitized by the conventions of Western music. The Middle Eastern scale had twenty-four tones per octave and was actually more true and real than the twelve-tone version that European people had invented to make a piano work. But I still didn’t like to listen to more than one or two Sezen Aksu songs in a row.
