Lost in scales: Balkan folk music research and the ottoman legacy

Balkan folk music researchers have articulated various views on what they have considered Oriental or Turkish musical legacy. The discourses the article analyses are nationalism, Orientalism, Occidentalism and Balkanism. Scholars have handled the awkward Ottoman issue in several manners: They have represented 'Oriental' musical characteristics as domestic, claimed that Ottoman Turks merely imitated Arab and Persian culture, and viewed Indian classical raga scales as sources for Oriental scales in the Balkans. In addition, some scholars have viewed the 'Oriental' characteristics as stemming from ancient Greece. The treatment of the Segâh family of Ottoman makams in theories and analyses reveals several features of folk music research in the Balkans, the most important of which are the use of Western concepts and the exclusive dependence on printed sources. The strategies for handling the Orient within have meandered between Occidentalism and Orientalism, creating an ambiguity which is called Balkanism

The effectiveness of Sufi music for mental health outcomes. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 21 randomised trials.

BACKGROUND: There is some evidence that Sufi music therapy might improve physical and mental well-being; however, no systematic review or meta-analysis has pooled and critiqued the evidence. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the effects of Sufi music therapy on mental health outcomes. METHODS: We searched Medline, PsycINFO, the Web of Science, Science Direct, PsycARTICLES, Cochrane Library, SCOPUS, CINAHL Plus, AMED, and ULAKBIM databases, and the reference lists of the studies found. Papers published in academic peer-reviewed journals were included, as well as from other sources such as chapters in edited books, the grey literature, or conference presentations. Articles published up to March 2020 in Turkish and English were included. Our primary outcome of interest was anxiety and secondary outcomes of interest were other mental health outcomes such as depression. To assess the methodological quality of the articles, the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool was used. The quality of evidence was assessed using the GRADEpro GDT system. RESULTS: This search yielded 21 clinical trials that were eligible for inclusion. A meta-analysis, using a random effects model, of 18 randomised controlled trials involving 1454 participants showed that Sufi music therapy with makams, compared with treatment as usual (TAU) or a no-music control group, reduced symptoms of anxiety in the short term in patients undergoing an operation or treatments such as chemotherapy or haemodialysis (standardised mean difference SMD= -1.15, 95% CI, -1.64 to -0.65; very low-quality evidence). The evidence of Sufi music with makam's effect on anxiety is rated as very low. Qualitative synthesis of secondary outcomes revealed significant effects for depression, positive symptoms in schizophrenia, stress, which however were based on fewer studies. Trials were of moderate methodological quality, and there was significant heterogeneity across the studies. CONCLUSION: Sufi music may reduce anxiety of patients undergoing medical procedures like haemodialysis, coronary artery surgery, angiography, colonoscopy, bone marrow aspiration and biopsy procedures. Evidence from single studies suggests effects on depression and stress as well. However, due to methodological limitations of the studies, further, higher quality studies are required in other cultures

Sufi music therapy with makams as a potential intervention for common mental health disorders

Sufi music has long been regarded as both spiritual and beneficial. This thesis aims to develop and evaluate Sufi music with makams as an intervention for people with mild to moderate levels of depression and anxiety. To reach this aim, the MRC framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions was used. As a first step, reviews of the historical and theoretical framework for Sufi music, its structure and applications were undertaken. Then an umbrella review of systematic reviews on receptive music therapy and its impact on mental health was conducted, followed by a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of listening to Sufi music with makams in patients with mental health symptoms. As a fourth step, a qualitative face-to-face interview study on how such music would best be delivered was conducted in adults attending two Turkish community centres in England. Participants listened to short clips of Sufi music and fed back on the emotions it evoked and how it might help them. A brief manual for the face-to-face delivery of Sufi music as an intervention for anxiety and depression was then designed from the results of these studies, as well as from consultation with three international experts on its application in clinical and community settings. Finally, a feasibility randomised trial was undertaken to explore the acceptability of the intervention, patients’ adherence to the intervention and the research, and to provide preliminary data on its effectiveness. The overall objective of the trial was to estimate whether a major trial would be possible. While the historical and theoretical framework provided a theoretical baseline for the intervention, the umbrella review and systematic review provided an evidence base. The qualitative study revealed that Sufi music with makams was perceived by listeners as spiritual and beneficial. Finally, the feasibility randomised controlled trial demonstrated that this music listening intervention was feasible and acceptable for Turkish people in the UK, and preliminary results of the clinical exploratory analysis revealed that it might be helpful for reducing anxiety and improving mental and spiritual well-being. Thus, the overall finding of this PhD project is that a manualised Sufi music intervention can be delivered to community dwelling people with mild to moderate distress, and that it is a feasible and acceptable intervention for the Turkish community living in the UK. It suggests that a larger randomised trial could be undertaken

Conservative progressivism : Hasan Ferid Alnar and symbolic power in the Turkish music revolution

This study examines the reciprocity of the musical relationship between the Turkish and Austrian nation-states during the first half of the twentieth century through analysis of interactions between Turkish Five composer Hasan Ferid Alnar and his Austrian teacher Joseph Marx. Through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s Practice Theory and its concepts of habitus, fields of cultural production, and symbolic capital, I argue that the force driving this relationship was the strategic acquisition of symbolic capital by both parties within the context of their respective fields of music culture and power. By analyzing letters, documents, and newspaper articles found in Turkish and Austrian archives, I contend that the conservative composer Joseph Marx sought to bolster his powerful position in inter-war Austria through his activities as musical advisor in Turkey. Alnar, under the influence of his earlier teacher Hüseyin Saadeddin Arel, sought to enhance his positionality in the revolutionary early Turkish Republic as a progressive composer of Western-style music while preserving a space for Turkish Art Music marked by Republican vi modernizers as backward and anti-revolutionary. From the perspective of disability theory, I locate a discourse of musical sickness and health in the Turkish Republican field of music’s division into vigorous, national Turkish Folk and sick, non-national Turkish Art Music by reconsidering nationalist ideologue Ziya Gökalp’s role in the Turkish Music Revolution. Through musical analysis of Alnar’s Kanun Concerto and examination of its reception, I argue that Alnar’s association with Turkish Art Music caused him to be “musically disabled” in the context of the Turkish Folk/Art Music divide. This study throws new light on the transnational role of music in negotiating power and identity in the Turkish and Austrian nation-states, and challenges the prevailing model of unidirectional flow of cultural capital from Europe to Turkey during the twentieth century. Examination of Alnar’s dual musical habitus complicates the conventional narrative used to describe the Turkish Five group of composers. Analysis of the Kanun Concerto and its encoded agency challenges Pierre Bourdieu’s characterization of cultural products as reactions to but not shapers of culture. Finally, re-considering the Turkish Folk/Art Music divide in the field of Turkish music-cultural production in terms of disability theory and challenging Ziya Gökalp’s supremacy as theoretician of the Turkish music revolution bring new understanding to the Turkish Music Revolution.Musi

The Effect of Temperament Systems on Emotion Induction and Verbal Identification Performance of Makams in Turkish Makam Music

There are various musical features that are yet to be studied in music with regard to cognitive processing and emotional meaning. This thesis aimed to explore one of these features – the effect of the temperament system on emotion induction and verbal identification performance in Turkish makam music. In particular, employing the assumptions of statistical learning in music and music expectation theories which argue that listeners anticipate most strongly the sound sequences to which they have been most frequently exposed. This exploratory aim was investigated in three different experiments. The first experiment explored whether presenting an unfamiliar tonal context within a culturally and formally familiar and unfamiliar temperament system might cause different reactions in terms of the emotion induction of that unfamiliar tonal context and verbal identification of presented musical structure. Moreover, the first experiment also served as a pilot study that tested the thesis’s preliminary predictions and the proposed method. The second experiment investigated the first experiments’ findings by extending exposure time and using novel stimuli. Furthermore, Experiment 2 also included another experimental paradigm to test whether the surrounding musical/cultural environment might affect the participants’ experience of temperament systems even though they were educated in the Western music tradition. While the previous two experiments indicated a potential effect of veridical expectations while experiencing temperament systems, the third experiment aimed to explore the existence of temperament systems in schematic expectations. Overall, the findings of the thesis indicated that the intensity of emotions differed according to the familiar and unfamiliar temperament systems; familiar temperament systems induced more vitality when compared to unfamiliar temperament systems. Furthermore, the experience of uneasy emotions (e.g. sadness, tension) was congruent between the type of ear training course and type of stimulus temperament. However, the congruency effect was not observed in all conditions and differed according to the ear training course, temperament system and country variables. On the other hand, neither temperament systems nor temperament-based ear training courses influenced the verbal identification performance. Also, the ‘goodness-of-fit’ ratings indicated that temperament systems might be encoded in schematic memory as a consequence of statistical exposure and might be stronger in smaller intervals and when combined with a familiar syntax. While there were no constant findings that temperament systems are in place in all situations, the findings indicated that temperament systems are a musical component that might independently influence emotion induction in music

Statistical Machine Translation from Arab Vocal Improvisation to Instrumental Melodic Accompaniment

International audienceVocal improvisation is an essential practice in Arab music. The interactivity between the singer and the instru-mentalist(s) is a main feature of this deep-rooted musical form. As part of the interactivity, the instrumentalist re-capitulates, or translates, each vocal sentence upon its completion. In this paper, we present our own parallel corpus of instrumentally accompanied Arab vocal improvisation. The initial size of the corpus is 2779 parallel sentences. We discuss the process of building this corpus as well as the choice of data representation. We also present some statistics about the corpus. Then we present initial experiments on applying statistical machine translation to propose an automatic instrumental accompaniment to Arab vocal improvisation. The results with this small corpus, in comparison to classical machine translation of natural languages, are very promising: a BLEU of 24.62 from Vocal to instrumental and 24.07 from instrumental to vocal

The life and works of Ahmed Adnan Saygun

Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907-1991) was one of Turkey's most prominent composers, described in The Times obituary as "the grand old man of Turkish music, who was to his country what Sibelius is to Finland, what de Falla is to Spain and what Bartók is to Hungary" (15 January 1991). Yet so far Saygun's life and works have never been the subject of a critical study in or outside Turkey. This thesis aims to create a comprehensible picture of his life and music for the first time. Divided into three parts, Part I of the thesis presents an annotated biography, preceded by a short introductory survey on the state of European music within the Ottoman Empire, which was significant in Saygun's upbringing. Taking as source material scattered newspaper articles, interviews and hitherto unpublished letters and a diary belonging to the composer, Part I focuses on Saygun's musical upbringing in Izmir and his subsequent education in Paris under Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum between 1928 and 1931. Also amongst the issues that are addressed here is the important role Saygun played in the musical life of the country on his return to Turkey from Paris, which was being rapidly transformed under Kemal Atatürk's reform movement; his enthusiasm for Turkish folk-music which led to a collaboration with Bela Bartók that finally culminated in the latter's celebrated field-trip to Anatolia in 1936 and his friendship with Michael Tippett, drawn from Tippett's original unpublished letters. The thesis shows that Saygun was not only responsible for training future musicians of Turkey in Western compositional techniques, but also himself wrote works in line with the country's modem music policy which took the principles of European polyphonic music as a model. As a prolific composer Saygun's output comprised five operas, five symphonies, three string quartets, five concertos and a wide range of chamber and choral music. Taking selective works, Part II looks at his developing style, beginning with the influence of the Schola Cantorum education and the effects of the music policy of the early republican years on his output and establishes him as the national composer of Turkey. Works discussed include the oratorio Yunus Emre (1942), his most celebrated work, which immediately became a symbol of the music reforms and was subsequently conducted by Leopold Stokowski in New York in 1958, the first two string quartets, the first two symphonies and the two piano concertos. Part III is a catalogue raisonné which has been compiled through evaluating existing lists of works and going through all the autograph manuscript scores of the composer that are housed at the Bilkent University Adnan Saygun Archives in Ankara. Since Saygun's works have never been systematically catalogued before, the information given here includes dates of composition, instrumentation, duration, dedication, location of manuscripts, publication and recording details, as well as translations of hitherto unpublished analytical notes on certain works written by the composer

Urban Ethnomusicology in the City of Thessaloniki (Greece): The Case of Rebetiko Song Revival Today

This thesis is an ethnography of contemporary rebetiko music performance contexts in the city of Thessaloniki. It is the outcome of a research experience I underwent during the years 1997-98 in Ano Poli, a state-declared 'conservation' area of the city. The ethnography is organized in three case studies, each one representing a different performance context: (a) rebetiko concerts held in an 'ethnic' cafe bar, (b) a rebetiko taverna and, (c) a special rebetiko ghlendi (‘revelry') event. These case studies are current expressions of rebetiko entertainment, upon which my discussion of the ongoing revival of the genre in Greek society today is primarily based. My main concern in the thesis is to discuss how people make sense of and communicate rebetiko music culture as a lived experience in different contemporary rebetiko venues. To that extent, the knowledge of revivalist culture is grounded on the aesthetics and discourses which are 'other-ing' rebetiko music today. Eventually, such discourses and aesthetics provide the means for the theoretical discussion of the ways the genre is experienced as 'world music' in certain entertainment settings. These questions are explored within the broader framework of postmodern socio-cultural transformations, which appear to condition variously the contemporary revivalist culture. The ethnography is additionally underpinned with an introductory part that aims to describe the genre and provide a brief review of rebetiko history and associated rhetorics. Overall, there are two mam ethnographic orientations featured in this ethnography concerning the processes of doing fieldwork, as well as thinking and writing about it. One is the fact that I am a native researcher, born and grown up in the 'field'; the other being that this is an urban ethnography bearing the particularities and complex networks of city culture. Finally, this thesis is not just a current ethnography of rebetiko music; it becomes an ethnographic embodiment of the multiple dynamics of reflexivity defining the process of doing urban ethnomusicology at home

Музикологија / Musicology

Захваљујући радикалним променама на геополитичкој мапи Европе у последњим деценијама XX века, земље и народи Балкана ушли су, не по први пут у историји модерног света, у сам фокус пажње светске јавности. У научним круговима, Балкан је био препознат као „незапоседнута“ територија (М. Тодорова), а његово богато и разноврсно културно и уметничко наслеђе изнова је покренуло и интензивирало савремена политичка, историјска, антрополошка, социолошка, као и музиколошка и етномузиколошка истраживања.Тема броја: Музика Балкана: Традиција, промене, изазови / The Main Theme: Music of the Balkans: Tradition, Changes, Challenge

Extending our senses: music, nostalgia, space, artefact and the Mediterranean imaginary among the Greek- and Turkish-speaking Cypriot diaspora in Birmingham (UK)

My PhD research focuses on Greek- and Turkish-speaking Cypriots, their musical performances and Mediterranean transbordering tropes, and their diaspora to Birmingham (UK). It introduces a new spatial construction in diaspora which I term "The Mediterranean Imaginary"—an informed, playful, and re-structured space in the triangle of Cyprus, Turkey and Greece, defined by the history of the Cypriot di-ethnos, assessed in modern life through ethnographically-informed lived realities, yet geographically determined in the not-so- Mediterranean UK. After describing the ethnos in question (Preface) and orienting the reader to the methodological and theoretical approaches employed (Chapter 1), focus turns to the notion of nostalgic musical ends in Chapter 2, which via performance avenues foregrounds emotionality and a gender-play with feminine undertones alongside the diasporic masculine imperative. Part II, ‘Extending Our Senses’, analyses four YouTube videos. Chapter 3, ‘Zorba’, takes us to the Bullring Shopping Centre and a dance flash-mob; and in Chapter 4, a father-son duo (Stavros Flatley) reprises the famous neo-Celtic performances of Michael Flatley for Britain’s Got Talent. Chapter 5 examines Lil Maaz’s music-video Eat Kebabs and its effect on Turkishspeaking Cypriot migrants, while Chapter 6 looks into a parody of 50Cent’s Candy Shop named Kebab Shop, dubbed with lyrics from the Cypriot YouTube user hasandinho95. Part III compares native and diasporic practices against the background of Cyprus’ Mediterranean appeal. Following the construction of the Mediterranean imaginary, Mediterranean ethnomusicologies are advanced with the analysis of a set of versions of the Cypriot traditional tune Tillirka. Tillirka’s timeline traces a distant ecumenical past and a translocal native modern with fragmented censorial claims, peaking in diaspora where it recapitulates to the ecumenical and Mediterranean, turning into a contemporary paradigm of pan-Mediterranean culture and performance in diaspora