Posted by Fatih Demirtas on August 19, 19102 at 16:58:02:
Music is a of means of communication among people. With this aspect, music provides us with the opportunity to gather information about a culture. Thus we can evaluate its development from the past to now. To make this analysis for Turkish music, we have to first divide it into two parts: modern Turkish music and traditional Turkish music.
Traditional Turkish music yields us a mystic environment mainly coming from its being a part of the Asian continent. In addition, we discover the ways ancient Turkish people lived in the old Anatolia. When a man suffered from loving someone, he used to write a traditional song about what he had experienced. In this way, he gave us the important information about those years. For instance, by searching these traditional songs, one can infer the difficulties of the years they lived compared with the ones today. Moreover, he can get some hazardous data about the traditions of the Turks. For example, one can learn why the man willing to marry a girl has to pay for that or why a family fights with another because the other family killed someone from the first family.
Modern Turkish music reflects the face of the Turks posing towards the west or Europe. This music consists of the same music types we know from the western countries. The most famous ones of these are pop music and rock music. To give examples of these types of music, we can mention Tarkan, known in many parts of the world, for pop music. For rock music, we can claim Teoman, also a very popular singer in Turkey. Coming from the point that an artist is a product of a society, no one can claim that he does not introduce Turkish culture to the world. An artist always has the fundamental essences coming from his growing years in his own country to show the others who are interested in the artist’s product. Thus, they combine Turkish culture, characteristics and properties with western music.
Consequently, we can infer that both music and the musician performing it are the mirrors of their communities from which they are coming. In other words, one can learn much while just observing the music of a country.