ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a cliche about the history of Turkey, which either considers class struggle as a trivial issue or skips it altogether. It presents some approaches proposed in the study of musical change by ethnomusicologists. The chapter provides a result of fieldwork made in 2006 on one of the most prominent political music groups in Turkey, Grup Kizilirmak, founded after the 1980 military coup. It considers political music as a particular popular music practice and the left-wing movement as a particular agent of class struggle in Turkey. The chapter suggests that it is important to return to Antonio Gramsci for defining agents mediating the struggle for hegemony in order to study popular culture. It utilizes left-wing movement to refer to socialist and communist parties and organizations which claim to represent the ultimate interest of the working class by leading a revolution. The left-wing movement not only motivated political music, but also constrained it in some cases.
