ABSTRACT
The fundamental change in music and musical life in Turkey began in the early nineteenth century with the beginning and still ongoing replacement of the traditional teaching method by new emerging media including notation, audio recordings, radio, television and the internet; further by the foundation of public music institutions such as conservatories. Kemalist ideology loaded both Western and Turkish folk music with heavy ideological burdens, but also supported both, while the early Turkish Republic at the same time tried to impede traditional Ottoman music. The urbanisation beginning in the 1950s (and slightly later, the growing international migration) brought Anatolian folk music into Turkish (and European) cities, and gave a path to the emergence of new forms of hybrid popular music such as Anatolian rock and in particular arabesk. After the coup d’état of 1980, a new wave of neo-capitalism opened the musical life further, in particular for popular music. At latest, during the 1990s, a great number of musical revivals took place, most of them fostered by emerging identity discourses. The twenty-first century witnessed a further enrichment of the already wide musical plurality in particular in the “global city” Istanbul; however, it is more and more characterised by strong commercialisation.
