In Turkey five times a day all music stops. The loudspeakers on public beaches stop pounding dancing rhythms, the DJs in bars and clubs grant their audiences some time to get new refreshments, the shopkeepers’s radios cool down their tubes: all of Turkey listens to the Muezzin’s call to prayer (click here to hear a rendition of the call to prayer). The Adhan or Ezan, as it is called in Turkish, is not considered music, but belongs together with the Qur’anic Chants (Qira’ah) and the Pilgrimage Chants (Tahlil) to the Non-Musiqa category in the system of music in the Islamic world. While on a short vacation in Turgutreis near Bodrum I had the chance to listen to numerous renditions of the call to prayer and it amazed me to hear that what used to sound like a repetition of the same chant in the beginning was in fact a highly diverse group of melodic variants. Each recitation was new and offered fresh melodic turns and twists. Amidst the never ending stream of prerecorded music that floods our lives day in and out, the precious moments of the call to prayer stuck out like small islands of silence.