Friday marks 173 years since the passing of legendary composer Ismail Dede Efendi, known by many as the father of Ottoman classical music. “Dede Efendi is the pioneer of the Ottoman classical music,” Yalcin Cetinkaya, a musicologist at the Turkish Music Conservatory of Istanbul Technical University, said. Speaking at Istanbul’s Yenikapi Mevlevi Lodge, where the Turkish composer created his first song more than 200 years ago, Cetinkaya compared Dede Efendi’s ...