All this week, we've been visiting the Turkish city of Istanbul. It's a place where history won't stay in the past. In fact, Istanbul's history is playing a big part in shaping the city's future. Some of you wrote to comment on our series. Aubree Caunter, of Cleveland, came back to the US last August after living in Istanbul for several years.

Thank you, she writes, for highlighting Istanbul and all its quirky charms. Here's another quirky bit of Istanbul for you. It involves cymbals -- you know, drum cymbals. In the final part of our series from Istanbul, The World's Alex Gallafent explores an industry that's both ancient and modern.

Walking through the Topkapi Palace, you're greeted by these sounds. It's an Ottoman military band. Usually they play stirring music on the battlefield. Today, they're performing a sedate march to welcome you to Constantinople. Listen out, in particular, for the jangling cymbals high up in the music.

Jump forward to modern times, and you'll see those Ottoman cymbals have evolved. Now they're key to the sound of different music. American music.
Jazz.

Say hello to drummer Mel Lewis and his Jazz Orchestra, burning through a tune in the late 1980s. In that recording, Mel Lewis is playing Turkish cymbals. In fact, more or less the whole tradition of cymbal-making in modern music comes from Turkey.

The Chinese were making cymbals centuries ago, too, but it's Turkey that's led the way in modern times.

Now, you might think a cymbal is a cymbal is a cymbal. Not so. For drummers like Joey Waronker, a cymbal is part of your musical voice. Waronker has played with the likes of Beck and R.E.M.

“I'd be looking for an even-ness of sound, and then a certain amount of decay of the sound, like I might want something with a longer decay or a shorter decay.”

That means how long it takes for the sound to die away. Waronker looks for other things too. Like whether the sound of the cymbal is sharp or mellow. Or whether it's high or low. Each cymbal has a unique sound - in fact, some drummers can be identified simply by their choice of cymbals.

“Like Elvin Jones - you immediately know it's him or Tony Williams was another one. And they both used old Turkish cymbals but you just knew the second you heard it who it was.”

In case you DON'T know, that's Tony Williams you're hearing right now, from the Miles Davis album, Nefertiti.

That rich, pingy ride sound Willams had in the 1960s is something of a holy grail for jazz drummers.

The stick hits are all clear and distinct, but the cymbal doesn't sound too metallic or cold. It's a warm sound, you can hear a bunch of different colors in the sound, it's like the metal's alive somehow. OK - full disclosure. I play drums myself. So it's easy to get carried away about these things.

The point is, your cymbals are YOU. They're a big part of what identifies you musically. Drummer Joey Waronker does most of his playing in California. But his cymbals come from here.

This is Istanbul Agop, a cymbal-making company on the outskirts of, yes, Istanbul. The craftsmen working here are part of a cymbal-making lineage that goes right back to the days of the Ottoman Empire. Part of what distinguishes them is that they make all their cymbals by hand. A master cymbal-maker, Fatih, takes me through the process on the factory floor.

“This is the casting process - we put copper and zinc together, we mix them - and put into the oven which is 1200 degree. And after the melting, we put into these cases.

The exact formula for the alloy is a family secret passed from father to son. Each pool of molten metal cools and sets in a heavy iron pan. But it's about to get warm again.

“After we cast the copper, we put them into the oven, we make them warmer and softer. Then we put them into this machine to make them thinner.

They thin the sheet of metal seven or eight times.

“After these processes, we cut the edges off the cymbals and we start to hammer them. Each cymbal has 2000 / 2500 hammer hits in one cymbal.”

This is the key to traditional Turkish cymbal-making. Hammering the cymbal makes the surface of the metal uneven. That disrupts the way the cymbal vibrates when you hit it. And because every cymbal is hammered in a slightly different way, each instrument has a different sound.

Well it's not QUITE as simple as that. Lots of other factors play a part in determining the character of a cymbal.

The weight of the metal, how much alloy is used. Or the taper of the cymbal - how thin it is at the edge.

“They're like fingerprints or snowflakes - there really are no two alike.”

That's Brett Campbell, a cymbal specialist based in Boston. He says it's hard to distinguish cymbals hammered by hand and cymbals hammered by a computer-guided machine. That's how some of the big American cymbal companies produce their instruments: the computer produces a random hammering action to get the same effect as a person.

“I don't know if I could tell, to be honest with you.”
One of those big American companies, Zildjian, was ORIGINALLY Turkish. The company moved its operations to the US in the 1920s. Today Zildjian sells more cymbals than the smaller companies still operating in Turkey.

Zildjian can legitimately claim its place in the Turkish lineage. And their cymbals are generally agreed to be excellent. But there's a romance to the hand-made instrument that's hard to deny. Brett Campbell hopes traditional Turkish companies don't get TOO big, because if they did...

“You know, they would have to change their manufacturing techniques which would change their sound and their mystique - and everything would suffer that goes along with that.”

Right now, Turkish cymbal-makers like Istanbul Agop have achieved that rare thing - a successful integration of ancient craft and modern commerce.

“They can remain in the old world, while still providing an instrument that works in 2008.”

Before any cymbal leaves the Agop factory, it gets stamped with company logo. It reads 'handmade cymbals made in Turkey'. So next time you hear some American jazz, go take a peek at the cymbals. There's a good chance they'll be Turkish.

For The World, I'm Alex Gallafent, Istanbul.