Musics of Turkey: Modernization and Hybridity - Detailseite

In this seminar we will discuss the modernization and hybridity concepts in various music cultures of Turkey. The diverse cultural landscape of the Turkish Republic—established in 1923—is an important part of the legacy left by the Ottoman empire as a multi-ethnic state. Such an intersection of cultures under the Turkish nationalism has not only led to many complicated political situations, some of which are still apparent today. It has also created a unique atmosphere of hybridity at the intersection of Westernization and local traditions. The modernization started in the Ottoman society from early eighteenth century and continued in the early Republican era with the reformist pursuit of systematic musical organization—a process that resulted in a significant change on the performance art and folk music practices. 

In this seminar, we will explore Turkish/Ottoman classical music, Anatolian folk music, Arabesk, Anatolian pop/rock, Turkish pop, jazz, and Sufi (Mevlevi) music, Kurdish music, Alevi music, Armenian music, and Western classical music from Turkey. We will focus on ethnic identities and class hierarchies reflected in these genres, the issues of orientalism and occidentalism, and the influence of globalization on the musics of Turkey while expanding our knowledge of the repertoire

Bartók, Bela. 1976. Turkish Folk Music from Asia Minor. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Degirmenci, Koray. 2006. “On the Pursuit of a Nation: The Construction of Folk and Folk Music in the Founding Decades of the Turkish Republic”. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 37 (1): 47-65.

Ergur, Ali, and Yiğit Aydın. 2005. “Patterns of Modernization in Turkish Music as Indicators of a Changing Society”. Musicae Scientiae, 9: 89-108.

Feldman, Walter. 1996. Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire. Berlin: VWB-Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung.

Hamelink, Wendelmoet. 2014. “The Sung Home: Narrative, morality, and the Kurdish nation”. PhD dissertation submitted to the Leiden University.

Karahasanoğlu, Songül & Gabriel Skoog. 2009. “Synthesizing Identity: Gestures of Filiation and Affiliation in Turkish Popular Music”. Asian Music, Vol. 40 (2) : 52-71.

Neyzi, Leyla. 2002. “Embodied Elders: Space and Subjectivity in the Music of Metin-Kemal Kahraman”. Middle Eastern Studies, 38 (1): 89-109.

Özgür, İren. 2006. “Arabesk Music in Turkey in the 1990s and Changes in National Demography, Politics, and Identity”. Turkish Studies, 7 (2): 75-190.

Reigle, Robert. 2013. “A Brief History of Kurdish Music Recordings in Turkey”. Hellenic Journal of Music Education, and Culture, 4.

Skoog, Gabriel. 2012. “On Strange Shepherds, Golden Microphones, and Electric Guitars: Genre, Scene, and the Rise of Anadolu Pop in the Republic of Turkey.” PhD diss. University of Washington.

Stokes, Martin. 1992. The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stokes, Martin. 2010. The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music. Chicago: Studies in Ethnomusicology.

Tekelioğlu, Orhan. 1996. “The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music.” Middle Eastern Studies, 32 (2): 194-215.

Uyar, Yaprak Melike & Şehvar Beşiroğlu. 2012. “Recent Representations of the Music of the Mevlevi Order of Sufism”, Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, Vol. 6 (2): 137–150.

Uyar, Yaprak Melike, and Songül Karahasanoğlu. 2016. “The Early Performance of Jazz Music in Turkey”. Porte Akademik: Journal of Music & Dance Studies, 13: 129-139.

Uyar, Yaprak Melike. 2021. “Turkish Disco: At the Crossroads of Pop, Groove, Psychedelia and Anatolia.” Musicologist: An International Journal of Music Studies, 5 (2): 107-132.

Hausarbeit