In this article, I examine humorous portrayals of European music in satirical journals published in Istanbul during the 1870s. Drawing on theories of humor as a means of expressing ambiguity, I analyze a description of a private salon concert as well as polemical debates about the public performance and reception of Turkish-language operetta. Through the strategic use of irony and mistranslation, Ottoman satirists exposed the incongruities of being modern while playfully undermining perceptions of distance and proximity between “Istanbul” and “Europe.” Modernity produced a sense of dislocation, a being out of place, that was heightened by listening to unfamiliar sonic practices as part of a broader assemblage of civilized behaviors. Yet by making light of such disconcerting experiences, Ottoman satirists produced a form of cultural intimacy that relocated modernity itself within a more familiar and accessible space – as long as their readers got the joke.