Remembering Rahmi Oruç Güvenç
Sound, trust, and the restoration of a living lineage
Our guide on the path
Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç (1948–2017) was a Turkish lineage holder of Tasavvuf (Islamic Sufism), a baksı (Central Asian shamanic practitioner), musician, composer, ethnomusicologist, music therapist, and poet. His life’s work helped renew modern understanding of the therapeutic, spiritual, and historical dimensions of Turkish–Ottoman makam traditions and their deep connections to Central Asian nomadic musical cultures.
He is best known as the founder of TÜMATA (Türk Musikisini Araştırma ve Tanıtma Grubu — the Turkish Music Research and Promotion Group), an organization devoted to the research, preservation, and living transmission of Turkish music, instruments, movement, and healing traditions.
Yet to speak only of his titles or institutions is to miss something essential.
Those who studied with him almost invariably speak first not of what he taught, but of how it felt to be in his presence.
A Life Shaped by Listening
Born in Tavşanlı (Kütahya), Oruç Baba—as he was affectionately known by his students—entered music early. He often recounted a formative dream in adolescence that led him to begin violin study, a story that students understood not as a romantic anecdote, but as an early sign of how guidance came to him: quietly, inwardly, and through listening.
His musical path expanded to include oud (ud), rebab, ney, and tanbur, alongside deep engagement with poetry and philosophy. He studied philosophy at Istanbul University and later pursued doctoral work in clinical psychology at Cerrahpaşa, focusing on music as a modality of healing and on the historical traditions of music therapy in the Islamic world.
He went on to establish the Center for Research and Application of Turkish Music at Cerrahpaşa and held academic posts related to music ethnology and music therapy in Istanbul. His work consistently bridged scholarship and practice, refusing to separate intellectual rigor from embodied experience.
TÜMATA and the Work of Restoration
In the mid-1970s, Oruç Baba founded TÜMATA, an organization dedicated to researching historical repertory, recovering and reproducing traditional instruments, documenting performance culture (including costume and decorative arts), and exploring the therapeutic and pedagogical uses of music and movement.
Through TÜMATA and related initiatives, he led seminars and trainings throughout Turkey and Europe, collaborated with universities and cultural institutions, and helped steward extensive collections of traditional instruments. His work received international recognition, including an honorary professorship from the University of Fergana and an award from Argentina’s Academia de las Naciones.
Yet TÜMATA was never merely an academic or preservationist project. It was a living environment—one in which sound, rhythm, movement, and silence were treated as ways of shaping human beings, not simply as cultural artifacts.
Tasavvuf, Lineage, and the Insan Kamil
Oruç Baba’s work unfolded within Tasavvuf (Islamic Sufism). His students remember him as an Insan Kamil—a realized human being—not because he claimed spiritual authority, but because he embodied inner coherence and unconditional love. Sources describe him as holding teaching authorizations across six tarikats (Sufi paths), and as bringing traditional practices such as dhikr and sema into educational contexts, particularly in Europe during the late twentieth century.
What distinguished him for many students was not intensity, charisma, or exhortation, but trust.
He did not hurry people.
He did not pressure belief.
He did not perform sanctity.
Instead, he created conditions in which people settled. In his presence, people felt themselves soften. Attention deepened. Listening became possible. Many students describe feeling seen without being analyzed, guided without being controlled.
This quality was not incidental. It was the fruit of a life lived in relationship with uncertainty.
Nomadic Roots and Shamanic Lineage
In addition to his Sufi lineage, Oruç Baba was recognized by his students as holding lineage within the Central Asian shamanic tradition—a rare distinction that came to him through direct contact with a baksı (Central Asian shaman) who recognized his capacities and entrusted him with this transmission.
For Oruç Baba, this was not a contradiction. Nomadic shamanic traditions and Tasavvuf share a fundamental posture: listening to what cannot be forced, and entering relationship with the unknown through sound, rhythm, and presence.
Music, for him, was not metaphor. It was method.
Being Found
One of the quiet truths of this lineage is that it does not always announce itself loudly. Often, it finds people when they are already in motion.
My own discovery of Oruç Baba’s work came not through formal seeking, but through wandering—via the internet, while living a nomadic life, and appropriately enough, while passing through Türkiye. What appeared first was not a biography, but sound. Then fragments of teaching. Then, a coherence, presence, and even a calling that could be felt before it was understood.
At the time I first encountered Baba’s work, I did not speak Turkish and had been in the country only a handful of days. What reached me was not explanation, but orientation. In part because of him, I began learning the language, and over time spent roughly six months in Türkiye, including extended periods among tribal and rural communities. The desire to hear his teachings directly—without mediation—eventually led me to translate select materials into English. What began as listening became a path of learning, and what began as wandering became a way of staying.
This is how many others I know have encountered him as well, through their own testimony: not through persuasion, but through recognition.
A Living Doorway
Oruç Baba passed away in Istanbul on 5 July 2017.
Rahmetullahi aleyh.
Nur içinde yatsın.
Yet his work does not belong to the past. Through his students, through TÜMATA, and through the continued circulation of this music, the lineage remains alive—not as an archive, but as a path.
Oruç Baba pointed all of us toward a way of listening that still matters: one capable of orienting the heart, regulating the nervous system, and accompanying human beings as they learn—again and again—how to be at home within movement.
Yolun açık olsun.
May your path be open.
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This essay is accompanied by an example of the music being discussed, because these traditions cannot be understood apart from direct encounter with sound. Please take time to play the provided video, above.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lisa England is a nomadic writer, listener and practitioner devoted to embodied sacred medicine from the desert — devotional practices that soothe and orient the nervous system; increase inner resilience to change; and cultivate a deeper relationship with the Real. Her work draws from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystical traditions, with a particular focus on Turkish Music Therapy and its Central Asian and Sufi roots. She honors the guidance of Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç. This Substack is offered independently and is not affiliated with any institution transmitting Turkish Music Therapy. Lisa lives and works between desert cultures, listening for what endures.