Turkish citizens who went to Germany as migrant workers during 1960s and
1970s attached themselves to the language and music of their home country in
order to sustain their local, regional or national belongings. In the 21st century,
against the backdrop of globalization, the second and third generation of the
Turkish group in Germany has different ties with Turkey and &ldquo / Turkish culture&rdquo / .
Are the belongings of the German-Turkish youth still shaped by language, music
and cultural artifacts related to Turkey? What do they try to preserve, what do
they reassemble or re-arrange? What is the meaning of music in these processes of
identity?
Considering the literature on the German-Turkish youth, this study aims at giving
voice to an &ldquo / invisible&rdquo / group through an unheard genre of music. This study looks
at young women, second and third generation of Turkish background, in Germany
and the role of Turkish classical music in their everyday lives. A genre with a
history of about a millennium, Turkish classical music as a performance entered
the German context in late 1970s with the first Turkish classical music choir.
v
Since then the production of Turkish classical music has been feminized, and the
young women singing in these choirs, who are somehow the followers of previous
generations, develop ties to the music and the music circles they attend.
The ethnographic data, which has been collected through a fieldwork of three
months in Germany, mainly in Berlin, among young women in Turkish classical
music choirs, shows that multiple belongings play a role in the transnational
experience of music making among German-Turkish young women. When
considered the Turkishness and Germanness of their identities with religious,
linguistic and national aspects, it can be said that the young women experience a
contestation of belongings and try to hide themselves in music in an effort to
escape the tension of contested belongings. However, Turkish classical music is a
source of contested belongings since the young women considered produce a type
of music that they do not normally listen to.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12611138/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 September 2009 |
| Creators | Sahin, Nevin |
| Contributors | Strasser, Sabine |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
Page generated in 0.0016 seconds