Turkish Music

Turkish Music includes diverse elements ranging from Central Asian folk music and music from Ottoman Empire dominions such as Persian music, Balkan music and ancient Byzantine music, as well as more modern European and American popular music influences. In turn, it has influenced these cultures through the Ottoman Empire. Turkey is a country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, and is a crossroad of cultures from across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus and South and Central Asia.

The roots of traditional music in Turkey spans across centuries to a time when the Seljuk Turks colonized Anatolia and Persia in the 11th century and contains elements of both Turkic and pre-Turkic influences. Much of its modern popular music can trace its roots to the emergence in the early 1930s drive for Westernization.

With the absorbance of immigrants from various regions the diversity of musical genres and musical instrumentation also expanded. Turkey has also seen documented folk music and recorded popular music produced in the ethnic styles of Armenian, Greek, Polish, Azeri and Jewish communities, among others. Many Turkish cities and towns have vibrant local music scenes which, in turn, support a number of regional musical styles.

Historical background

Traditional music in Turkey falls into two main genres, classical art music and folk music. Turkish classical music is characterized by an Ottoman elite culture and influenced lyrically by neighbouring regions and Ottoman provinces, such as Persian and Byzantine vocal traditions and South European cultures. Earlier forms are sometimes termed as saray music in Turkish, meaning royal court music, indicating the source of the genre comes from Ottoman royalty as patronage and composer. Neo-classical or postmodern versions of this traditional genre are termed as art music or sanat musikisi, though often it is unofficially termed as alla turca. In addition, from the saray or royal courts came the Ottoman military band, Mehter takımı in Turkish, considered to be the oldest type of military marching band in the world. It was also the forefather of modern Western percussion bands and has been described as the father of Western military music.

Turkish folk music is the music of Turkish-speaking rural communities of Anatolia, the Balkans, and Middle East. While Turkish folk music contains definitive traces of the Central Asian Turkic cultures, it has also strongly influenced and been influenced by many other indigenous cultures. Religious music in Turkey is sometimes grouped with folk music due to the tradition of the wandering minstrel or aşık (pronounced ashuk), but its influences on Sufism due to the spritiual Mevlevi sect arguably grants it special status.

It has been suggested the distinction between the two major genres comes during the Tanzîmat period of Ottoman era, when Turkish classical music was the music played in the Ottoman palaces and folk music was played in the villages. However, with the type of cultural cross-breeding the empire allowed, both genres relate to the multitudes of ethnic groups to be found in the make-up of the Ottoman Empire. In that sense they are the first examples of their kind in world music. Although Turkish classical and folk music have generally enjoyed a broad popularity regardless of subcultures, regional classical music has had lapses in prominence.

When the modern Turkish state was proclaimed in 1923, the new republic aimed at creating a nation with a distinct and unified culture. This included replacing the culture of Istanbul, which was perceived as the Ottoman elite, by the culture of rural Anatolia, which was considered Turkish. Hence, folk music was promoted, while classical music became less popular. Moreover, western classical music was introduced and encouraged in accordance with one of the most important policies of the new state, westernization of the society. By the 1960s, western popular music had been introduced to Turkey, with the name hafif-batı müziği (light-western music). At the same time, socialist movements were getting popular in accordance with the world. Musicians who were inspired by these movements started adapting folk music with contemporary sounds and arrangements, giving rise to Anatolian rock and protest music or özgün muzik (authentic music). Increasing immigration in the 1970s from southeastern rural areas to big cities in the west, and particularly to Istanbul, gave rise to a new cultural synthesis, which was regarded as a degeneration of Istanbul music by some musicologists whom favoured Ottoman classical music. Paradoxically things had come full circle; a genre that had once been thought as foreign was now viewed as Turkish or alla turca, as it was reminiscent of a time when Turks were at the height of their power in world events.

The new residents of metropolitan areas suffered from hard economical conditions and had difficulties in adapting to the big city from rural life. This newly constructed culture proceeded to generate its own music, derogatively termed by Istanbul musicologists as arabesque or arabesk, due to its high pitched wailing and exaggerated symbolisms of suffering. Arabesque was a synthesis of Turkish folk and middle-eastern music, similar to the growing left-wing subculture's own "arabesque", which was a new version of protest music fused in folk traditions. In the era influenced by the military government, arabesque and özgün genres were labeled "degenerate" and discouraged by the government, while Turkish classical music and contemporary music were promoted.

Despite this however, western-style pop music lost popularity to arabesque in the late 70s and 80s, with even its greatest proponents Ajda Pekkan and Sezen Aksu falling in status. It became popular again by the beginning of the 1990s, as a result of an opening economy and society. With the support of Aksu, the resurging popularity of pop music gave rise to several international Turkish pop stars such as Tarkan and Sertab Erener. The late 1990s also saw an emergence of underground music producing alternative Turkish rock, electronica, hip-hop, rap and dance music in opposition to the mainstream corporate pop and arabesque genres, which many believe have become too commercial.