ABSTRACT
Crimea is a region located to the north of the Black Sea, which is extremely important with respect to social, economic and geopolitical perspectives. For some time, it has occupied the world’s agenda as a conflicting region between Ukraine and Russia. Currently, the Crimean Tatars live in their homeland as a minority and they have been forced to migrate from one place to another for almost 250 years. This situation creates the need to understand several historical incidents and their political implications for researchers who study the music of the Crimean Tatars. In discussing the Crimean Tatars, I refer to a society living in several places in the world. Thus, I associate the new musical style and its meanings in the popular culture of the Crimean Tatars firstly with the concept of diaspora. I will indicate the musical differences among the Crimean Tatar diaspora existing in various locations by the term kolorit (“distinction”). In addition, I will try to shed light on how the Crimean Tatars, who live in their homeland as a minority (12 percent of the population), have entered the music industry and formed their music through popular culture with the introduction of urbanization and mass communication since the 1980s by taking various performance types into consideration.
