Remembering the 'timeless city'

Music can be a brilliant vehicle for creating 'memories' about the place it evokes, even if its performers or listeners have never lived there. This paper describes a musical performance with Istanbul as its theme by the Australian Turkish Music Ensemble in Sydney, a group made up of first- and second-generation Turkish migrants. I argue that the sounds, modes, images and narratives moulded together in this musical event not only generate performers' ties to Istanbul but they also demonstrate how remembering Istanbul in the present is connected to broader and contested historical knowledge about the city, especially that produced by the Turkish nation-state.