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ABSTRACT
This paper addresses the paradoxes and challenges faced by tasavvuf musicians as they engage with the ‘field of tradition’ in Turkey. It shows the incoherent nature of this field and how the conservative cultural turn since the early 2000s contributes to its fragmentation. This period is particularly relevant, as it is considered a period of traditionalization, when society became more exposed to a new, traditionalized culture industry. Hence, the paper suggests that tasavvuf music, emically labeled as ‘tradition’, has been integrated into the period of traditionalization; yet, its practitioners show inconsistences and conflicting discourses in their relation with the traditionalization.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Erdem İlgi Akter is a lecturer and a doctor in the field of cultural/social anthropology with a political science and human rights background. She has recently completed her ethnographically grounded Ph.D. study on the ‘Constructions of “Tradition”: Cultural Productions in the Field of “Tasavvuf Music” in Turkey in the Early 2000s’ at Yeditepe University. Currently, she gives lectures on political sociology, introduction to sociology and anthropology, globalization, and society and tradition.
Notes
1 In this study, when the concept of ‘tradition’ is used in quotes it refers to the tasavvuf music tradition, and to the emic use of the term for this particular musical subculture. When it is used without quotes it is used only conceptually.
2 The ethnographic study was conducted for the Ph.D. thesis Constructions of Tradition: Cultural Productions in the Field of Tasavvuf Music in Turkey in the Early 2000s. As a site for field research, Istanbul was a conscious choice on three grounds: Firstly, as the center of the Ottoman Empire and its cultural heritage, Istanbul is viewed by the agents of tasavvuf music tradition as its center, and their musical identity in relation to the city and its history. Secondly, for the same reasons the case of Istanbul is emblematic of the contemporary tensions between the Ottoman legacy and the Turkish modernization experience, and hence is also at the center of discourses on tradition. Lastly, Istanbul’s sociopolitical dynamics often serve as a national litmus test; in this case, a massive influx of rural-to-urban migration has shifted the city’s political center to the right. Indeed, for over 20 years now, Istanbul has been under conservative leadership due to the effect this demographic shift has had on the voter base. This ‘urban conservativization’ process has been mirrored around the country, and has implications for the discourse and practices of traditionalization.
3 Yet, use of the term ‘sufi music’ in this context is consciously avoided. This is because the label ‘sufi music’ refers a wide range of musical genres practiced in a broad Islamic geography including India, Iran, Pakistan, North Africa, Egypt and so on, and has been attacked as Orientalist insofar as it totalizes within a single category several different musical genres and cultures linked abstractly through the ‘mystical’ dimension of Islam. The agents who participated in this study are similarly suspicious of the concept, and prefer instead to particularize ‘tasavvuf music’ as an indispensable element of Turkish maqam music with distinctive structural, aesthetic and cultural qualities. For critiques on the use of ‘sufi music’, please see Frishkopf, “Sufi Music,” 150.
4 The category of ‘lodge music’ may include various musical forms such as na’t (praise to the prophet), ilâhi (hymns in Turkish), şuğul (hymns in Arabic), kâside (free-rhythm vocalizations praising God and the prophet), durak (Turkish hymns sung during the dhiqr ceremony with a special rhythm to praise God), mersiye (melodic poems sung to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein), nefes (hymns of the Bektashi order of dervishes) and so on.
5 Asad, “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” 14.
6 Mardin, Türk Modernleşmesi, 12.
7 Deringil, “19. yüzyıl İmparatorluğunda Resmi Müzik.”
8 Mes’ud Cemil, Tanburî Cemil Bey’in Hayatı, 110.
9 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey.
10 Erguner, The Journey of a Sufi Musician.
11 Bourdieu and Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 97.
12 Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, 30.
13 Ibid., 53.
14 Ibid.
15 Turner, “A Note on Nostalgia,” 150–1.
16 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory. Adorno, in differentiating classism from the classical, argues that the classical indeed refers to a standard of style through which it relinquishes its distances to the empirical existence of an archaic model, whereas classicist productions always seem to be in search of that existence, namely authenticity. In order to reach this, they seek an ideal of form, the purity of which ‘is modeled on the purity of the subject, constituting itself, becoming conscious of itself, and divesting itself of the non-identical’, whereas the form and content of classical productions are already identical, and do not require the subject to be purified. As this position favors imitation and the purification of the agent in the quest for authenticity, it may be likened to some kind of classicism.
17 Behar, “The Technical Modernization of Turkish Sufi Music.”
18 Ayas, Mûsikî İnklâbı’nın Sosyolojisi. Characterized as an ‘invented tradition’ by Ayas, choirs were first adopted into Turkish maqam music during the late-Ottoman modernization process. Later, during the early-republican period, the ‘serious and dignified’ performance of classic pieces of Turkish maqam music by a choir, and under the direction of a conductor, became the officially recognized performance style in the eyes of the state authorities. While choral performances, as an ‘invented tradition’, were integrated into the Turkish maqam music tradition through this official recognition, their inclusion has been subjected to criticism by the agents of ‘tradition’ on the grounds that this performance style is both non-traditional and monotonous (monophonic monotony of a polyphonic style). See Ayas, Mûsikî İnklâbı’nın Sosyolojisi, 350–4.
19 Senay, “Listen to the Reed and the Tale It Tells.”
20 Ben-Amos, “Seven Strands of Tradition.”
21 Laroui, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual.
22 Kahraman, AKP ve Türk Sağı, and Tuğal, Passive Revolution.
23 Academic studies that dealt with JDP’s rise to power have long explained the party’s success through the notion of ‘conservative-democracy’, with reference to the party’s moderate Islamic and neo-liberal economic policies, as well as its break from its Islamist origins and its strong emphasis on democratization. The notion of democratization was abandoned within party discourse (and therefore in academic analysis) in favor of a focus on populism and nation (millet) after 2007, a move that was criticized for its limited scope and lack of inclusion among the constituency. For conservative-democracy literature, see İnsel, “The AKP and Normalizing Democracy in Turkey”; Kahraman, AKP ve Türk Sağı; Özbudun and Hale, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey; Tuğal, Passive Revolution.
24 Kahraman, AKP ve Türk Sağı, 144.
25 Although it is outside the scope of this study, the discourses and practices of the JDP, especially since the 2010s, conform to Laclau’s framing of ‘populism’, through which discourses on ‘national culture’ are observed as a symptom of policies that divide society antagonistically into ‘the people’ and ‘others’. Although populism is not a self-evident ideology, it can be articulated through different ideologies, and the rhetoric and practices around ‘the people’ is usually framed as anti-elitism. In order to understand how populism has been deployed in Turkey under the JDP to divide ‘the people’ from ‘others’, it becomes important to observe the rhetoric and practices of local governments in particular. See Canovan, “Populism for Political Theorists,” 248; and Laclau, “Populism: What’s in a Name.”
26 Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
27 Shils, Tradition, 13.
28 Ibid., 14.