Diversity and Contact among Singer-Poet Traditions in Eastern Anatolia

This fascinating volume, published under the auspices of the Orient-Institut Istanbul, explores singer-poet traditions from the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. The volume concerns the cultural diversity of these traditions and the fluid, practical realities of their practitioners. It is meant as a corrective to mainstream, often state-funded research, which, guided by the assumption of “homogeneous national traditions” (9), has imposed ethnocentric essentializations on the representation of the Eastern Anatolian bardic practices.The epistemological scope of the volume is interdisciplinary, involving approaches from anthropology, historical ethnomusicology, gender studies, folklore, organology, textual analysis, and religious studies. The project's interdisciplinarity is matched by its transculturalism. Because the editors avoid a geopolitical definition of Eastern Anatolia, the region is delineated kaleidoscopically out of the music networks and genealogies analyzed in every chapter. “Eastern Anatolia” thus emerges on both microlocal and translocal levels, in relation to national borders but not confined by them. In the same spirit, the descriptive definition of cases studied as “singer-poet traditions” privileges a practice-focused approach, resisting ethno-nationalist nomenclatures.The topics of nationalism, music agency, and change pertain to the book in its entirety. After a succinct introduction to the principles of cultural diversity and interdisciplinarity, the stage is set by Xi Yang and Canser Kardaş, who offer historical and folkloric comparisons of the dominant terms used for Anatolia's poet-singers (ašuł, âşık, aşıq, and dengbêjs) and comment critically on the ethno-national discourses that frame these terms. The bulk of the volume examines the musical agency of singer-poets through topical foci on locality and ethnicity (Turgut, Schäfers, Greve), religion (Sağlam, Özdemir), or a combination of the three (Ağbaht, Williamson Fa).Lokman Turgut, Martin Greve, and Mahmut Ağbaht examine ways that Kurdish mitirbs, Dersim lamenters, and Hatay fınnans, respectively, negotiate spaces of artistic survival and sociocultural amelioration in opposition to ethno-nationalist canonizations. In a similar spirit, Marlene Schäfers examines how women dengbêj claim ownership of traditional repertoire by pointing to male appropriations of female lamenting styles. In these four chapters, nationalism is analyzed through the pragmatics of media, governmental policies, class, gender, collective memory, and linguistic difference.The religion-focused chapters examine how the singer-poets negotiate minority identity within a Turkish Sunni regime. These chapters employ a translocal scope, highlighting the mobility of the singer-poets within and beyond national borders. In particular, Hande Sağlam analyzes how âşıks encode Alevi messages in the presence of Sunni audiences, while Stefan Williamson Fa analyzes translational music networks of Azeri Shi'i music. Ulaş Özdemir offers an ethnohistorical account of the influence of the Hakikatçi religious movement on Turkish âşık music. He traces the Hakikatçi influence from the movement's beginnings in the nineteenth century until today, through genealogies of religious figures and musicians. Farhad Shidfar concludes the volume with an organological study of Azeri saz in Turkey and Azerbaijan. In keeping with the comparative approach of the volume, religion emerges through its relation to other traditions of faith and identity, and not as an enclosed system.The volume is a major contribution to Turkic/Anatolian studies. It illuminates aspects of (Eastern) Anatolian(-writ-large) cultures that have been neglected by official discourses. The traditions of singer-poets unfold in their conflicting complexities as fluid practices attached to subjectivities of locality, tribe, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, and nation. Ultimately, the volume fulfills its antinationalistic mission. The appropriation of Anatolia by Turkish (and Kurdish) nationalism is negated. The poet-singer traditions verify neither the ideological secularism of Turanic continuity nor the doxic normativity of Turkish Sunni Islam.The book also contributes to broader theoretical issues of ethnomusicology. Its emphasis on the fluid connection between oral traditions and popular music, a topic present in almost all chapters, deconstructs the obsolete distinction between folk and popular music. Individual authors offer theoretical insights as well. Schäfers, for example, raises interesting questions about the ownership of intangible culture. Greve reminds us that music specialization can exist on a practical level, without top-down definitions and expert classifications. Özdemir offers an exemplary case of agency analysis. These three contributions lie beyond the confines of the Durkheimian and Herderian sociocultural determinisms that have traditionally dominated ethnomusicology.The book could have benefitted from a summarizing theoretical reflection on how the ethnographic work presented comments on “Anatolia” as a category of political, cultural, and philosophical geography. Such a theoretically oriented chapter could have provided explanations for why these particular Anatolian bardic traditions were included in the volume—a question addressed only indirectly through a literature review in the book's introduction. In relation to this question, the Armenian ašuł traditions are missing from the volume, except for a passing mention by Yang. The decline of the ašuł tradition in contemporary Armenia, its systematic study in other publications, the absence of Armenians in Turkey as a result of the 1915 genocide, and the lack of institutional contact between Turkey and Armenia are all plausible explanations for this omission. A chapter on the Armenian bardic traditions in relation to these ruptures would have opened new possibilities for dialogue. All this said, no book can include everything, and this task can be undertaken by a future publication.Diversity and Contact among Singer-Poet Traditions in Eastern Anatolia exemplifies the fascinating multiculturalism of one of the richest musical corners of the world. It provides a multilayered and pluralist analysis of a seminal musico-poetic phenomenon that has exerted significant influence beyond eastern Anatolia. As such, this publication is a necessary read for every scholar interested in trans-/Ottoman heritage, as well as specialists of the Eastern Mediterranean, Caucasus, or Islam. The book is also highly recommended to anybody working on cultural diversity, orality, nationalism, ethnicity, or religion

Ancient history · Art · Diversity (politics) · Geography · Sociology · Anthropology · Diverse Musicological Studies · History · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Music Education and Analysis