Remembering the ‘Timeless City’: Istanbul, Music and Memory among the Turkish Migrants in Sydney

Abstract

Music can be a brilliant vehicle for creating ‘memories’ about the place it evokes, even if its performers or listeners have never lived there. This paper describes a musical performance with Istanbul as its theme by the Australian Turkish Music Ensemble in Sydney, a group made up of first- and second-generation Turkish migrants. I argue that the sounds, modes, images and narratives moulded together in this musical event not only generate performers’ ties to Istanbul but they also demonstrate how remembering Istanbul in the present is connected to broader and contested historical knowledge about the city, especially that produced by the Turkish nation-state.

Keywords:

• Istanbul
• Kemalism
• Memory
• Music Revolution
• Turkish Australians

Notes

1. Turkish migration to Australia began after the signing of a bilateral migration agreement with Turkey in 1967. The flow was distinctive within the broader context of Turkish emigration at that time given that it was made to a traditionally migrant receiving country with a policy that promoted settler migration. The flow was at its peak until the mid-1970s. Içduygu notes that “the first immigrants were mainly young couples from the rural areas of Turkey who had limited formal education and little experience of working in an industrial setting”. In the mid-1970s, the flow took the form of chain migration and family reunion, which continued in the 1980s and 1990s, and were further accompanied by the flow of university students, graduates and professionals. Moreover, further political oppression in Turkey during the 1980s, partly due to the military coup in 1980 and related to an ongoing declaration of martial law and accompanying State violence in the Kurdish regions of Turkey was decisive in changing the composition of migrants from Turkey, who now also included political refugees. The settlement of the Turkish migrants is concentrated mainly in two cities, Melbourne and Sydney. Their total number according to ancestry and place of birth is 54,596 and 29,821, respectively (ABS). For the best historical account of Turkish migration to Australia see the work of Içduygu.

2. Instrumental Semaî is a form of instrumental piece composed with measures of 6 or 10 cycles. Segah is the name of a particular makam (mode), a scale that determines tonal relations, starting and reciting notes, as well as the melodic contours in a musical piece.

3. The conservatorium was originally founded as the Ankara School of Music in 1936. In 1935, in line with Mustafa Kemal's directives on the development of musical and theatrical arts, German composer Paul Hindemith was invited to Ankara to supervise the founding of the new Ankara School of Music.

4. Houston notes that in addition to tekke music, the Turkish Kemalists also sought to “reduce to silence everything sung in Kurdish, including the music of religious worship of Sunni and Alevi Kurds, as well as of Kurdish popular songs” (Kurdistan 133).

5. Gűngőr (55) notes that there were 4,834 registered sets in rural Turkey at the height of nationalist reformism. Kept in village ‘guest rooms’, these radio sets were used to disseminate educational programmes about the new Turkish language, history, folklore and music (Stokes Ethnicity, Identity and Music 11–12).

6. It should also be noted that the newly approved musical styles were not limited to polyphonic music, but also included martial music. March music was also approved and developed as a musical field in this period. See Üstel.

7. Needless to say, I am not claiming that the state's attempts to nationalise music were entirely successful. The state did mute certain musical genres including Turkish Art Music, tekke music and Kurdish music, but its official musicology and imposition of polyphonic music was hardly appreciated by individual people. Instead, many Turkish listeners began to tune into the Egyptian radio or watch Egyptian films to satisfy their taste. The works of Özbek and Stokes (1992) also draw attention to the popularisation of Arabesk (meaning Arab like) music in the 1960s, a musical genre which has been devalued as inferior by Kemalists and banned in the 1980s.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Banu Şenay

Banu Şenay is a full-time doctoral student in the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion in the Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy at Macquarie University, Australia