Savaş Çekirge was one of the primary people that helped guitar to develop as a classic music instrument. Although he started his career in playing this hard to play instrument as an amateur he reached a very rearly seen mastery, experience and knowledge. Then he used this knowledge to enlarge his repertoire and educate, hearten and train young people who are interested in this subject. Savaş Çekirge was born in Kayseri in 1944. He took interest in classic guitar when he was in high school in Ankara. At those times guitar education was not a part of the schools of music; as a result he learned music and playing the guitar from private lessons. The one that opened the gates of music and gave his classic guitar education was Mazhar Reşit Ertüzün. He was a student of the one that brought the modern guitar techniques and the ways of “ School of Tarrega”, Andrea Paleologo. In those years one of his childhood friends, Harun Batirbayirgül was taking guitar lessons from Paleologo too. This coincidence made these two young people to take hart and gave a chance to share their primary knowledge and to continue their training with enthusiasm. Savaş Çekirge came to İstanbul in the early 60′s and had his major in civil engineering at İstanbul Technical University. In 1964 he had the chance to work with Paleologo even for a short time before Paleologo would migrate from İstanbul to Athens. The same year he met other students of Paleologo, Mutlu Torun, Misak Toros and Samih Rıfat; he made friends that would last for a lifetime. He married Nevin Çekirge whom she met in her university years. After a short time their only daughter, Zeynep was born.
In the 80′s he was more effective in the educational area; He worked in associations that gave music education and gave private lessons. He started the courses for classic guitar in İ.T.Ü Kültür ve Sanat Birliði and İ.T.Ü. Vakfİ. He instilled the love of classic guitar to everyone with his widespread friend relations and his impressing personality. He contributed in the training of many musicians including internationally famous ones such as Ahmet Kanneci and Emre Sabuncuoðlu. His friendship with Ahmet Kanneci to whom he met in Ankara affected both their lives and accelerated their works in music. Throughout his art life he excreted a great effort in creating a national guitar repertoire and he edited many compositions into guitar. He made did criticizing editing and parmaklama exercises on the songs in his repertoire and he shared the results generously with his friends and students. His students performed these edits and transcriptions in their recitals and concerts. The edit that he made on İlhan Baran’s 10 Çocuk Parçası was recorded in CD in France. With the knowledge he gathered he took the first step of a note publishing company and he gave the name La Tucura considering the offer of his friend Jorge Cardoso (in the language of the Indians of Guaran La Tucura means grasshopper which has the same meaning as Savaş Çegirge’s surname) and in 1992 he published his first international work Los Mitai. After this quality work he started other projects but because of his untimely death these woks were left unfinished. Besides these works he had committed he also he also participated many international guitar performances. In 1984 he was one of the leading people in organizing the first classic guitar competition in Turkey, I. İstanbul Ulusal Gitar Yarışması. Again in this organization he participated as a member of the decisive committee. Later on in 1994 he was invited by the Polish government to be in the jury in the Uluslararası Krakow Gitar Yarİşmasİ. In 1996 he was invited by the ministry of culture of Argentina to be present in the Festival Guitarras del Mundo ’96 . He made many guitarist friends from all over the world. Again in 1996 he was in the jury of Antonio Lauro Klasik Gitar Yarışması that was organized by Sevda-Cenap And Müzik Vakfı with the support of Venezuelan Embassy with many famous people such as Alirio Diaz and Colin Cooper. After his death, in the October of 1998, the same competition was organized and named as “A Tribute to Savaş Çekirge”.
The memory of Savaş Çekirge who put together so many work, products and organizations into a short life and passed on 7th of April 1998 will always live in his world that even exceeded the national boundaries of guitar and the hearts of the ones that loves him. However it shouldn’t be forgotten that the best way to remember him is to continue the relay he has started and resume his works from where he had left them.
Samih RIFAT – İstanbul,1999