Turkey is a land rich in musical history with literally thousands of compositions, songs and dances passed down from generation to generation over hundreds of years – “ klasik Türk müziği ” - Turkish Classical Music, “Türk Sanat muziği” - Turkish Art music, “halk oyunları” - folk dances - are just a few of the many musical styles which are each a massive subject in themselves.
The Turkish songs I sing mostly come from a tradition of music called halk müziği which literally means “the people’s music”. Singers and players of Anatolian folk are part of a living tradition stretching back hundreds of years. Folk songs and folk poetry have followed a discernible tradition from Yunus Emre c1300 to Mahsuni Serif who died in Cologne in only 2002.
The songs are passed down orally from one generation to the next by folk-poets known as “aşık”. Traditionally, the poets played an instrument called the saz which is still played all over Turkey. The “aşık”s believe in a branch of Islam called Alevism and the term aşık means literally, “those who are in love”.The Alevis are known for practicing a moderate form of Shia Islam where music is of great importance. The tenets of Alevi belief are compassion, solidarity, love, and equality. In Alevi tradition, men and women pray together in a religious house called a Cemevi. Worthiness and closeness to God are achieved by being a good person rather than by the public performance of religious rituals.
Alevi songs cover many subjects such as love, homesickness, mysticism, rebellion and the difficulties of life. Some folk songs appear in more than one language version such as Turkish, Azeri and Armenian. Whilst many songs can be traced back to a particular region of modern day Turkey, populations in many areas were ethnically mixed so it would be hard to say which was the original and more importantly whether such an idea is relevant at all to that era.
To understand folk music from this region you have to understand the world as it was a few hundred years ago when many of the songs were written. Pretty much up until the start of the previous century the modern idea of national identity was unknown across the part of the world we now know as the Middle East and Turkey. People were more likely to identify themselves by other means such as tribe, or religious practice. For example, whilst older members of my family refer to themselves as simply “Arab”, younger ones are more likely to describe themselves as Jordanian. It's for this reason, that it's more correct to describe halk müziği as Anatolian rather than Turkish*.
Many songs are set against the backdrop of Alevi resistance to the increasing power of the Sunni Ottomans from the 15th century onwards. Before the Ottomans conquered the region that was to become the Ottoman Empire, villages and regions had a pretty much autonomous existence. In the 15th Century, the villagers of Anatolia weren’t too happy about being brought under Ottoman state control. My own grandparents, who were Bedouins from a completely different area, then known as Arabia, remembered the arrival of the Ottoman Army with loathing for much the same reasons. To the ordinary villagers, state control meant more taxes, less control over their own lives and less freedom. Many of us, all over the world, still feel the same way and that's probably why the songs still have a powerful international message today.
Stories of rebellion and the sheer harshness of life in the villages are amongst the most moving themes of the folk songs. Many of the great “aşık” were themselves heroes who died fighting the new Ottoman armies or were executed by Ottoman officials for rebellion. It’s not difficult to see why in more recent times, halk müziği has also been the voice of the Turkish left with some songs, in particular, being associated with anti government sentiments from the 70’s onwards.
Whilst there is plenty of material in Turkish on halk müziği and its great poets there is not so much in English. Over the next year I hope to continue this article with more information about some of the great writers from this tradition.
Pir Sultan Abdal - 16th Century
Köroğlu - 16th Century
Nesimi – 17th Century
Gevheri – 16th Century
Karacaoğlan - 17th Century
Yunus Emre – 14th Century
*This era is brilliantly portrayed in a brilliant book by Ahmet Yorulmaz called "Savaşın çocukları" - Children of the War. The book is set on Crete at the start of the 20th Century where a young boy and his friends are confused by their new identities as Greeks and Turks. Their parents had grown up in a world where there were only Muslim Cretans and Christian Cretans. It was a world that was coming to a tragic end as World War I approached and people were forced to adopt a national identity as either Greek or Turkish. Most of the Christian Cretans spoke Greek at home, most of the Muslim Cretans spoke Turkish at home and a large proportion of the population was bilingual. Nevertheless, the huge population exchanges that took place between Greece and Turkey after the war resulted in a fair few people ending up in a country where they had the right religion but the wrong language and no contacts at all.
Paula Darwish 2009
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