Music
Turkey has a long musical tradition, and therefore many kinds of it – starting with military music, and ending with pop. Today, you can listen to a Janissary band at the Military Museum in Istanbul, whose music, won on timpani, bagpipes and horns to the accompaniment of guns, encouraged the soldiers to fight. The Turkish army marched to Europe with this music, and in the event of a retreat and the accompanying panic, she left many instruments, which thus penetrated into European culture. Composers such as Mozart and Beethoven were often inspired by Janissary music.
Before, however, military and court music was created (classic), there was folk and religious music. It is based on quarter-tone intervals, not on tones and semitones, what kind of music we are used to. Folk music was formerly represented by itinerant musicians (Asik), appeared at the beginning of the 15th century. Like a medieval European troubadour, so the asik wandered from settlement to settlement, playing on saz (an instrument similar in construction to the balalaika, with a long neck and three strings), and his songs had a political and social overtone. Sometimes asika can be found in the east of the country, in Erzurum or Kars or in Konya, at local festivals.
Religious music was dominant in convents, mostly mystical, like the spinning dervishes, and is still performed by them today. It is characterized by great variety and a quick rhythm tapped out by the kudum.
Turkish instruments
Law, a popular instrument among Arabs, came to Turkey in the 18th century., and he was favored by noble women. Kanun is flat, trapezoidal in shape, z 72 stringami. The Keman is nothing but a European violin, long neck lute drum with eight double strings. Arabic, and also Turkish for a long time, the ud is also a lute – the ancestor of all European lutes and guitars, which, so as saz, in appearance it is similar to a balalaika. The resonance box has a pear-shaped shape and a short neck (neck) ending in a characteristic 60-degree bend. Mostly it counts 11 or 12 strings. Ney is a wooden flute, characteristic of not only Turkish culture, but also Persian and Arab. Ma 10 holes and in Turkey can be extracted from it 14 tones. It was – and still is – the primary instrument used by the dervishes, who claim, that the sound of ney is similar to the voice of God. Kudum is a kind of boiler or drum, once braided, then wooden and ceramic.
Pop music is the most popular in today's Turkey, which is characterized by eclecticism. It is a combination of western rhythms with eastern notes, which gives sometimes interesting, and sometimes an unpleasant effect. Most often this kind of music is heard in taxis, dolmuszach and public places and private homes. Of course, well-known bands and singers from Western and Turkey are popular, but local stars break records of popularity. Rock is played here, rap and broadly understood pop, and what's interesting, Tarkan, known to us, was not so popular in Turkey, as it may seem, because many feel that his music was influenced too much by Western culture. In addition to Tarkan, pop music is played, among others, by. That's Poker, Mustafa Sandal and the Ayna band, high-flight rock is played by Haluk Levent (nice Arkadas album) and the Athena band (Hersey Yolund's album recommendable), sounding a bit like Goran Bregović. Who wants to listen to traditional Kurdish melodies, can find Sivan Perver's records in stores.