Chapter 07
Twenty-Four Performances Across Music of Türkiye
10 min
This sequence is neither a ranking nor a compressed national canon. The listening question changes every few tracks: melodic motion, ceremony, poetry, language, dance, migration, broadcast, studio and present-day authorship. For older compositions and archival reissues, the life of the music extends far beyond any modern release date.
1. Hammâmîzâde İsmail Dede Efendi: “Yine Bir Gülnihal”
Credited renditions of this nineteenth-century composition preserve the difference between composer and later performer. The melody’s poised rise and return remain recognizable while tempo, diction and ornament change. A canonical work survives as a chain of performance choices.
2. Tanburi Cemil Bey: “Çeçen Kızı”
The early twentieth-century recording keeps the compact duration and surface noise of its medium. Inside that narrow span, the bow attacks, pivots and gathers rhythmic spring. The historical recording sounds worn; the musician’s decisions remain startlingly immediate.
3. Kâni Karaca: “Saba Ayini”
The 1996 release Mevlana: Dede Efendi (Saba Ayini) provides enough duration for an ayin to disclose proportion instead of supplying only a few seconds of ney. Voice, kudüm and instrumental passages unfold across the four selams. This is Mevlevi repertory, not a generic soundtrack for whirling.
4. Udi Hrant Kenkulian: “Hastayım Yaşıyorum”
Credited archival issues keep the original recording era visible. The oud line behaves like a singer: plectrum, short decay and silence shape every arc. Hrant’s Armenian Istanbul identity belongs inside the history of urban classical music.
5. Aşık Veysel: “Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım”
A historical performance keeps the recording era distinct from the date of a later reissue. Voice, bağlama and a compact road metaphor carry the piece. Its measured delivery gives philosophy the scale of ordinary speech.
6. Neşet Ertaş: “Gönül Dağı”
A credited release preserves the recording context. The bağlama acts as a second speaker: it answers, propels and colours the vocal line. Ertaş’s Abdallık musicianship turns a nationally familiar song into an exchange between hand and breath.
7. Dengbêj Şakiro: “Emro”
The track appears on Helîmcanê (1995). There is no instrumental cushion: Kurdish narrative, melodic formula, breath and memory must hold the span. Stay with the repeated turns long enough to hear how an apparently bare line sustains dramatic time.
8. Emin Yağcı: “İki Ayak Horonu”
The 2011 album Tulum: A Sound from the Black Sea names Yağcı on tulum and voice, with Onur Şentürk on kemençe. Continuous air, piercing reeds and compact rhythmic cells push the horon forward. This direct performance should be heard before Black Sea material is translated into rock.
9. Talip Özkan: “İzmir Zeybeği”
Özkan’s recording on Turquie: L’art du Tanbur (1994) gives the Aegean its own musical scale. The asymmetric gait and spacious accents leave room for zeybek's poised physicality; not every regional dance depends on a continuous rush.
10. Selim Sesler: “Roman Oyun Havası”
On Karşılama (1998), Sesler’s clarinet leads through attack, slides, breath and teasing rhythmic placement. The performance centres Roma musicianship in Thrace and the wedding circuit without turning ethnicity into a synonym for effortless virtuosity.
11. Janet and Jak Esim: “Ija Miya Mi Kerida”
The 2005 Kalan edition of Antik Bir Hüzün: Judeo-Espanyol Ezgiler preserves a clear context for the recording. Ladino language, arrangement and the duo’s research make Sephardic Istanbul audible through named musicians, not an abstract paragraph about lost cosmopolitanism. Other renditions reveal how the repertory travelled.
12. Ali Ekber Çiçek: “Haydar Haydar”
Bağlama pattern, sacred poetry and vocal concentration create inward gravity in this public recording. Its Alevi associations remain visible, although it cannot stand in for every regional semah or for the ceremony of cem.
13. Ahmet Adnan Saygun: “Yunus Emre Oratorio”
Composed in 1942, the oratorio gives the republican concert project substantial musical form. A complete credited recording reveals how Turkish text, choral mass, solo voices and orchestra create a large architecture that cannot be reduced to folk material placed inside a European shell.
14. Zeki Müren: “Gönlümün Baharı Bir Gün Açacak mı Acep”
The 1953 Odeon recording catches Müren close to the beginning of his recording career. Diction, microphone control and ornament show how radio and the 78-rpm record created a new intimacy. His later stage image matters, but first hear how much public persona already exists in the voice.
15. Selda Bağcan: “İnce İnce Bir Kar Yağar”
The 1970s recording credits Aşık Mahsuni Şerif as songwriter. Bağcan’s voice cuts through electric density while guitar and rhythm enlarge the song’s tension. The transformation is an authored performance that keeps its writer visible.
16. Erkin Koray: “Cemalim”
The 1974 release carries a source chain that includes Refik Başaran and Nida or Selahattin Tüfekçi. Bass, guitar tone and repetition build suspense around a known melody. Psychedelic arrangement does not erase the people through whom the song reached it.
17. Orhan Gencebay: “Bir Teselli Ver”
The 1969 recording makes arabesk audible as deliberate composition rather than uncontrolled sadness. Strings, rhythm and melodic detail build the plea for consolation. Gencebay’s bağlama knowledge remains active inside the large popular arrangement.
18. Sezen Aksu: “Gülümse”
The title track of the 1991 album holds warmth and melancholy in the same melodic line. Aksu’s apparent intimacy survives polished production because her phrasing remains conversational. Continue from here into her work as a songwriter and mentor for other singers.
19. Aynur Doğan: “Keçê Kurdan”
On Keçe Kurdan (2004), Aynur’s Kurdish vocal command remains central as the arrangement widens the sound for a concert audience. Şivan Perwer wrote the words and music, Kemal Sahir Gürel arranged the recording and Hasan Saltık produced it. Those credits reveal collaboration rather than diminishing the singer.
20. Ceza: “Suspus”
Released in 2015, “Suspus” is an important point in rap history, not the limit of the current field. Rapid delivery remains intelligible because breath, accent and beat are tightly organized. Ayben, Ezhel and newer local scenes extend the story in different directions.
21. Gaye Su Akyol: “İstikrarlı Hayal Hakikattir”
The 2018 title track joins surreal lyric, surf guitar and a deliberately built visual world. Authorship matters more than retro quotation. The song marks an important recent lineage before the final three performances bring the chronology into 2025 and 2026.
22. Meral Polat: “Meydana Gel”
Released in 2025, the track opens a Kurdish-diasporic present built through voice, drums, keyboards, guitar and studio collage. Polat produced the album with Chris Doyle, and parts were recorded in Istanbul. It connects migration to Türkiye without pretending that residence, ancestry and recording location are the same thing.
23. Büşra Kayıkçı: “Grand Bazaar”
Released on 15 May 2026, the piece credits Kayıkçı as pianist, composer and co-producer. Resonance, prepared texture and repetition make small changes carry the drama. Its focus on touch and decay supplies a quiet but fully contemporary contrast to the denser tracks around it.
24. Lalalar: “Tabancamın Sapını”
Released on 21 November 2025, the track drives a Black Sea melodic source and 7/8 motion into industrial rave and punk pressure. It closes the sequence by returning to regional material through a new production system. The archive is neither discarded nor left untouched.
Where to Hear Music in Türkiye
Istanbul rewards a calendar-led approach. Atatürk Cultural Centre presents opera, orchestral music and traditional ensembles; Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall and Borusan venues connect other concert networks; İKSV’s music and jazz festivals create seasonal programmes. Smaller clubs are often more useful than famous buildings for rap, indie and electronic music. Check the named act and date before travelling.
For Ottoman and Turkish classical music, seek a programme that identifies makam, composers, forms and ensemble. A full or carefully structured fasıl reveals more than an anonymous medley. In Konya, Şeb-i Arus programmes concentrate Mevlevi events each December; distinguish ceremony, concert and shortened tourist presentation, and follow the host’s guidance on photography and conduct.
Ankara’s Presidential Symphony Orchestra, opera, conservatories and university programmes give access to republican composition and contemporary concert music. İzmir connects Aegean repertory, opera, jazz and current clubs. Diyarbakır is an essential centre for Kurdish cultural life; Kırşehir carries Abdallık and bağlama histories; Trabzon and the eastern Black Sea open onto kemençe, tulum and horon.
Regional listening depends on occasion as much as city. A zeybek festival, a kemençe-led horon, a Roma wedding ensemble and an aşık gathering answer different questions. Municipal programmes and announcements from named performers provide a safer starting point than a generic “Turkish night.” Weddings and cem ceremonies require relationship, invitation and respect; they are not attractions to collect.
Three Listening Sequences
For melodic motion and ceremony, begin with Tanburi Cemil Bey, continue through Kâni Karaca’s Saba Ayini and finish with Udi Hrant. The sequence moves from instrumental improvisatory intelligence to ceremonial scale and then to the intimate grain of a recorded oud.
For region, language and dance, hear Şakiro, Emin Yağcı, Talip Özkan, Selim Sesler and Janet and Jak Esim in that order. Unaccompanied Kurdish narrative gives way to Black Sea propulsion, Aegean asymmetry, Roma clarinet and Ladino song. No item is a sample of generic folk music.
For recording culture and the present, move from Zeki Müren to Selda Bağcan, Orhan Gencebay, Sezen Aksu, Ceza, Meral Polat, Büşra Kayıkçı and Lalalar. Radio diction, electric transformation, arabesk arrangement, pop songwriting, rap flow and three different 2025–2026 studios form a history of changing public ears.
Türkiye does not resolve into one representative sound at the end of these journeys. The useful result is a sharper set of distinctions: makam is heard as motion, regional repertory has people and places, source and performer remain separately visible, and the present is allowed to sound as contemporary as the country itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions about Twenty-Four Performances Across Music of Türkiye
1. What is makam?
Makam is a system of melodic movement, not simply a scale. It includes characteristic phrases, registers, intervals, resting points and expectations that performers learn through repertory and practice. A taksim can introduce a makam through improvisation, while composed vocal and instrumental forms develop it within larger structures.
2. What is a fasıl?
A fasıl is an ordered sequence of instrumental and vocal pieces in a shared makam. A peşrev may establish makam and usul, vocal forms follow in a considered order, and a saz semaisi can provide an instrumental conclusion. Modern stage fasıl may shorten or rearrange this architecture for entertainment.
3. How are Mevlevi sema and Alevi-Bektaşi semah different?
Mevlevi sema belongs to a ceremonial practice associated with the Mevlevi order, with ayin, ney, kudüm, voice and learned movement. Alevi-Bektaşi semah belongs within cem and joins bağlama, sacred poetry and varied regional movement. Similar English spellings do not make the communities, repertories or ceremonies interchangeable.
4. What are bağlama and türkü?
Bağlama names a family of long-necked lutes in several sizes and tunings, played with plectrum or finger techniques. Türkü is a broad term for vernacular song associated with place, story and oral circulation. Aşık poetry, regional dance songs, long-song practices and broadcast arrangements can all involve bağlama without sounding alike.
5. What is dengbêj singing?
Dengbêj is a Kurdish narrative vocal practice in which an unaccompanied singer sustains history, romance or tragedy through language, melodic formulas, breath and memory. The absence of instruments places greater pressure on voice and text. Dengbêj Şakiro's “Emro” offers a substantial recorded example.
6. What is arabesk?
Arabesk became a major popular language of post-war urbanization, internal migration, longing and social injury. Makam-inflected melody, dramatic vocal ornament, strings, percussion and modern studio arrangement all shaped it. Orhan Gencebay, Müslüm Gürses, Bergen, Kibariye and Ferdi Tayfur represent distinct positions within the field.
7. What is Anatolian rock?
Anatolian rock joins electric guitar, bass, drums, organ and studio experiment to folk repertories, new compositions and political or theatrical performance. Selda Bağcan, Erkin Koray, Barış Manço and Cem Karaca developed very different versions of it. The source song, songwriter and later arranger remain separate parts of the credit history.
8. Why are minority and multilingual histories central to this music?
Armenian, Greek, Jewish, Kurdish, Laz, Roma, Arab, Syriac, Balkan and other musicians helped shape classical music, wedding performance, popular song, regional repertory and contemporary scenes. Their work is not an appendix to a homogeneous centre. Naming language, community, locality and artist preserves both shared musical life and real difference.
9. Where can I hear music in Türkiye?
Istanbul's Atatürk Cultural Centre, Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, Borusan venues and İKSV festivals cover several concert networks. Ankara has major orchestral, opera and conservatory institutions; İzmir connects Aegean repertory to jazz and clubs; Diyarbakır is central to Kurdish cultural life; Kırşehir, Trabzon and other regional centres offer different histories. Always confirm the current performer and programme.
10. Why do recording credits and dates matter?
A composition, source performance, archival recording and modern reissue may carry different dates and names. Folk singers can disappear behind later arrangements, and old works can be attributed only to their newest performer. Keeping writer, source musician, arranger, performer and release distinct reveals how music travelled without inventing a false origin.
