Soundscapes of Trabzon: Music, Memory, and Power in Turkey

Abstract

This dissertation is an ethnographic exploration of the practices, affective meanings, and personal and political stakes of music making and listening in Turkey. At the center of the ethnography’s musical soundscape is the kemençe of Trabzon, a three string bowed instrument, and the people who play, listen, and give meaning to it. This study focuses on a number of people whose ways of feeling, ideas about history and belonging, concepts of morality and “good life” among other, shape and are shaped by the sound of the kemençe.

The dissertation is not about “music” per se but about people who engage in this fascinating and mysterious activity we conventionally call music. To paraphrase one of Geertz’s captivating statements, what do the people in this ethnography believe they do when they listen to and play kemençe?

The dissertation explores the ways in which acts of musical listening relate to issues of power and politics, to ownership, transformation, subjectivity and agency. At the center of my investigation I place the listening actor and his ideas and actions. My informants are kemençe music listeners; the performers are listeners too—listeners of themselves and of other performers. Thus the acts of kemençe listening and the remaking of sensory cultures are central in this study of musical practices in Turkey.