The Arabesk Debate
Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey
- Author: Stokes, Martin
The Arabesk Debate
Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey
- Author: Stokes, Martin
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About
The Arabesk Debate describes the way in which Turkish musicians discuss, dispute, and attribute meaning to their music. Martin Stokes examines the debate over 'Arabesk', a musical genre popular throughout Turkey. His book is an ethnographic study of urban music-making in Istanbul, focusing on the activities of professional musicians and their audiences in the city. Dr Stokes looks at the Arabesk debate in the context of state cultural politics, Islam, and the experience of urbanization in Turkey. Within this context he discusses the role of the media, music education, the technology of popular music-making, the construction of gender and the emotions through musical performance, and concepts of musicianship in Turkish society. In looking at the interplay between national cultural politics and urban music-making at a local level, this book challenges both `mass culture' theory and more general assumptions about the study of music in society.
Contents
- Part 1 Introduction: centres and peripheries
- cities and migrants
- discourses of sentiment
- fieldwork. Part 2 Discovering the folk and their music: Turkism
- Ziya Gokalp and the Turkish theory of culture
- the language reforms
- the construction of a national music, from Gokalp to the TRT
- reform in action - the institutions of urban halk music
- "dernek" and "dershane". Part 3 Rules systems, and techniques - reconstructing Turkish folk music: defining boundaries - "makam" and "ayak"
- individuality and invention
- notation
- the "baglama"
- regional style - "tavir" and "duzen"
- the "electrosaz", the "piyasa", and the polyphony debate - live and studio performance of halk music. Part 4 Arabesk: musicological critique - arabesk and Arab music
- sociological critique - the "gecekondu" problem and "dolmus culture"
- arabesk and "religious reaction" ("irtica")
- the musicians
- audiences. Part 5 Arabesk lyrics and narratives: predictive metaphors of sound - "yanmak" and "yakmak"
- narratives of music - the arabesk film
- the arabesk song text and the interior domain
- arabesk and protest - the social domain and the "gariban"
- fate, love, and self
- "hal" and urban space
- emotions and secrets. Part 6 The musical organization of Arabesk: inspiriation
- the recording studio
- "makam" in arabesk - "sevda gozlum"
- "fantezi" in arabesk - "dunya donuyor"
- "usul" and disorder. Part 7 Arabesk and "sema": "sema" - the language of "sema"
- the secret and the feast
- the dance
- "tasasvvuf" and the music of the spheres.
