A Night at Nil Bar
Published:
I recorded this video myself.
Şeytan Tüyü were playing Bu Biçim at Nil Bar in Ankara. Watching it now, many years later, I notice things that probably felt completely ordinary that night.
The stage is small and dark. There are two guitarists almost shoulder to shoulder, barely separated from the audience. One of them sings and sometimes brings a harmonica to his mouth. The other stays focused on the guitar, occasionally turning toward him as they play. Behind them, the bar continues to live its own life.
Nothing looks polished.
There are no giant lights, no LED screens, no carefully designed stage production. The musicians are standing only a few metres away from the people watching them. The room feels narrow enough for the sound of the guitars to belong to the walls as much as to the amplifiers.
That closeness was important.
At a large concert, you watch a performance.
In a small bar like this, you are inside it.
You can see the musician changing his grip on the guitar. You notice when someone looks at another band member before a transition. You hear the sound of the room together with the music. Even small mistakes, pauses, and rough edges become part of the evening.
The recording itself carries that roughness.
It is only 220p. The image becomes muddy whenever the light gets weaker. Dark areas almost disappear completely. The camera shakes because I was holding it by hand. Sometimes the musicians become silhouettes for a moment and then return when the light catches their faces again.
By today’s standards, it is a bad video.
But today I would not want it to look any better.
A modern phone would clean everything. It would stabilise the image, correct the exposure, sharpen the faces and reduce the noise. It would produce a much better recording of the performance.
This old camera recorded something else as well.
It recorded the period.
There is a certain kind of darkness in old bar videos. A certain yellow-green light, a certain softness around everything. You immediately understand that nobody was thinking about Instagram stories, vertical video, or how the night would look online.
We were simply there.
The camera was not the reason for the night. It was only a witness.
Şeytan Tüyü were one of the bands I listened to a lot in those years. I also spent many nights around places like Nil and Braka. Ankara had this small but very alive entertainment world where music was close, informal, and easy to enter. You did not need a huge event or a festival ticket. Sometimes you simply went downstairs into a dark bar and found a band playing a few metres in front of you.
Those places had their own geography.
You knew which bar had which crowd. You recognised faces without knowing names. Someone would tell you that a band was playing somewhere, and that could be enough to decide the evening. Plans were less organised. Nights developed on their own.
At the time, none of this seemed special.
That is probably the most important part of the memory.
We never walked into Nil thinking, I should remember this because one day this world will disappear.
It was just Saturday night.
Or Friday night.
Another evening.
Another drink.
Another song.
We assumed there would always be another one.
Youth makes everything temporary feel permanent.
A bar seems as if it has always existed and will always exist. A band playing there seems as if they will be back next month. The friends around you feel permanently attached to the same city.
Then slowly, without a ceremony, everything separates.
Someone graduates.
Someone moves.
A bar closes.
Another place changes its name.
A band stops appearing on stage.
The city continues, but not in the same shape.
When I watch this recording now, the song is still important, but I also keep looking around the musicians.
I look at the darkness behind them.
I look at the tiny stage.
I look at the instruments, the microphone stands, the cables, the narrow space in which everyone somehow fits.
These details have become more interesting with time because they are evidence of an Ankara that I remember very clearly but can no longer physically enter.
Memory often works through unimportant objects.
A sweatshirt.
A smell.
A dormitory corridor.
An old email.
A low-resolution video.
At the moment they happen, these things seem ordinary. Years later, they become anchors.
This video is one of those anchors for me.
It proves that Şeytan Tüyü were standing there playing Bu Biçim.
It proves that Nil Bar was alive that night.
It proves that there was a time when I could stand a few metres from the band, hold a small camera in my hand, and record seven minutes without knowing that I was preserving anything important.
I cannot remember exactly what we talked about before the music started.
I cannot remember who entered the bar first.
I cannot remember what we did after leaving.
Those parts are gone.
But I can still see the guitarist bending over his instrument.
I can still see the harmonica coming up to the microphone.
I can still see the dim lights struggling against the darkness.
And I can still hear the room.
That is more than I expected to keep.
Sometimes a bad recording becomes a very good memory.
Not because it shows everything clearly.
Because it shows just enough.
A dark bar.
A small stage.
Two guitars.
A harmonica.
Şeytan Tüyü playing Bu Biçim.
And an Ankara that still existed.