Abstract
The creation of Turkish classical music state choirs beginning in 1976 was one of the most significant cultural institutional developments of the nation-building project by the Turkish Republic’s ruling elite. The conceptual emergence of “musician as civil servant” ushered in a new class of musicians: artists of the state socially and economically empowered with respectability, tenured salaries, and pensions. The rise of state choirs was accompanied by that of “amateur” choirs, which facilitate musical transmission and community-building in Turkey’s urban centers and diaspora. Despite frequent implications that amateur choirs do not contribute high-quality musical performances, I argue that diasporic amateur Turkish music choirs are often effective agents of cultural diplomacy, seemingly occupying a liminal space between states and people as well as between Turkey and the rest of the world. I seek to demonstrate how the relational networks on display and behind the scenes at these amateur choir concerts upset clear boundaries between the work (and dichotomy) of state and non-state actors, disrupting notions of soft power as a force states apply linearly to clear effect. I argue that members of amateur choirs are often more effective agents of cultural diplomacy than the actual “state musicians,” government officials representing the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Although these choir members engage state and non-state actors and enhance the political visibility of their transnational communities, there are limits to the extent diasporic amateur choirs can “bridge” political borders, a rising tension as Turkish musicians seek permanent (if scarce) opportunities to relocate abroad.
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Notes
- 1.
“Biz sadece amatör bir koroyuz ama profesyonel bir etkinliği sunmaya çalışıyoruz” (translated by author).
- 2.
In 2012, this ensemble (in Turkish, İstanbul Devlet Klasik Türk Müziği Korosu) was renamed the Presidential Classical Turkish Music Choir (Cumhurbaşkanlığı Klasik Türk Müziği Korosu).
- 3.
The problems of delineating musical traditions in Turkey reveal broader cultural and political tensions hearkening back to the nation-building project of the Republic’s ruling elite. The Republic’s foremost ideologue Ziya Gökalp divided the music of Turkey into “Eastern, Western, and folk” music, a trichotomy currently reinforced by the partitioning of the Turkish state ensembles into Western classical, Turkish folk, and Turkish classical. In the case of this latter category, the very act of naming the genre is particularly thorny, as it construes as a single genre the many referents of osmanlı mûsikî (Ottoman music), türk sanat müziği (Turkish art music), klasik Türk musikisi (classical Turkish music), alaturka (music of the Turkish style), and ahenk, among other terms. For more about how the Republican ideological project manifested in musical categories, see Tekelioglu (1996), Markoff (1990/1991 and 1994), O’Connell (2000), Degirmenci (2006), Karahasanoğlu and Skoog and Karahasanoglu (2009), Greve (2017), and Wozniak (2023).
- 4.
State choirs reinforce a strong divide between the musical genres of Turkish art music (Türk sanat muziği) and Turkish folk music (Türk halk muziği), with ensembles being dedicated to either one or the other; some amateur choirs also follow this split while others are more flexible, programming repertoire drawn from both genres.
- 5.
How else does one begin to unravel the cultural diplomacy of infamous Chicago Bulls basketball legend Dennis Rodman’s multiple visits to North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, originally financed and mediatized in a documentary series “Basketball Diplomacy” by Vice Media and later sponsored by an Irish betting company and a Canadian cryptocurrency firm?
- 6.
- 7.
Turkey comprises many diverse populations that can be distinguished on the basis of ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities, including Kurdish, Armenian, Laz, Jewish, Alevi, Greek, Romani. The diasporic populations to whom I refer also include migrants and their descendants from Turkey and North Cyprus. Following Semra Eren-Nijhar (2017), for the purposes of this article, I use the term Turkish broadly to include this diversity paralleling the way in which the term “British” is employed to describe those from the United Kingdom (18).
- 8.
It is important to note the choirs I describe tend to attract members of middle-class status and project a certain ideal of Turkish identity in their membership. Turks from the most elite social strata, many of whom have received or aspire to education abroad in Europe or the United States, often show disdain for “traditional” Turkish music in favor of Western classical music as well as English language popular music, an attitude that mirrors Kemalist ideology of the early Republican period. At the same time, from its outset the choir phenomenon has strongly emphasized the value of its members’ social respectability through primarily performing repertoire associated with an urban elite class, deterring the participation of those from the most marginalized classes; amateur choir members are often active or retired engineers, professors, real estate agents, accountants, or other white-collar workers. Moreover, while some amateur choirs may perform well-known songs from the arabesk genre that is strongly associated with singers from southeast Turkey, the groups tend to disregard the songs’ composers’ minority (often Kurdish) identities as well as the broader political issues surrounding expressing minority identity in Turkey. My forthcoming work “A Discipline for the Nation: Turkish Classical Music Choirs in History and Practice” contains a broader discussion of how musical amateurism is deployed as a strategy of maintaining respectability (simultaneously subverting and reinforcing ideologies around gender, class, and ethnoracial categories) in Turkish classical music communities.
- 9.
While beyond the scope of this article, the deployment of classicity in Turkish musical culture is tied to issues of class, urbanity, ethnicity, and many other intersecting factors.
- 10.
For a rigorous German account of multiple amateur Turkish folk music choirs and associations in Germany, see Greve (2003).
- 11.
“Katılımın oldukça yoğun olduğu konserde Türkiye Londra Büyükelçilik Ticaret Müşaviri Aytuğ Göksu, İngiltere Atatürkçü Düşünce Derneği Başkanı Jale Özer gibi Türkçe konuşan toplumların önde gelen isimleri de yer aldı.”
- 12.
“Konsere Zürich Başkonsolosluğumuzu temsilen Muavin Konsolos Gözde Akal, Azarbaycan [sic] Büyükelçimizi temsilen eşi İzulat Alakbarova, İTT Başkanı Suat Şahin, Schaffhausen Milletvekili İbrahim Taş, iş dünyasından önemli isimler, çeşitli dernek temsilcileri ve vatandaşlarımız katıldılar.”
- 13.
Since the UK’s “Brexit” from the European Union, Turkish green passport holders are obliged to apply for a visa for entry.
- 14.
“Köprü olmaya çalışıyoruz, küçük te olsa, köprü olmaya çalışıyoruz ama şöyle de bir gerçek var, çünkü çok arayanlar oldu son sıralarda, gelmek isteyenler var, hem de çok Türkiye’de önemli isimler…gelmek istiyor, fakat inanın, Türk müziği adına öyle geniş bir pazar yok. Ben en çok buna hayıflanıyorum. Burada yine, isim vermek doğru olmaz şimdi, kendisi şey olmadan, çok önemli bir ses, Türkiye’den, o da buraya yerleşmek istediğini konu oldu, gelsem çalışabilir miyim, dedim, öyle bir yer yok. Burada gelip restoranda çalışman gerekiyor, ben senin için onu yakıştıramam. Öyle bir müzikol, öyle bir şey yok yani. Aslında, diğer anlamda, diğer tüm müzikler için son derece farklı büyük salonlar var ama Türk müziği fazla rahbet görmüyor” (translated by author).
- 15.
“Gelemezler, ne yazık ki. Gelebilirler…ben dernek başkanı oldugum için, hazırlacağım bir kağıt ile, ki ben Türkiye’deki bir kurumla da, aynı zamanda distribütörüm…Türkiye’de sanatçı kurumu, ve ben bu kurumun Belçika’nın distribütörüyüm. İstediğim kişiye resmi sanatçı kimlik kartı çıkartabiliyorum. Ve buradan da bir davet yazısıyla, ki hazırdır benim, hemen iki dakikamı alır, davet yazısı ve sanatçı kimlik kartı ile Türkiye’de yurtdışına hiç çıkmamış Avrupa’ya çıkmamış birisine bir ay içerisinde vize alabilirim. Kültürel faaliyet gösterip. Ama, onların burada yaşayacağı anlamına gelmiyor. Pes ediyorlar. Yüz kişiden sadece bir tanesi sabredebiliyor…Çok soruyorlar, akrabalarım, arkadaşlarım, polis arkadaşım bile soruyor. Çok kişi soruyor. Ama burada kalmak, birincisi o sorumluluğu yüklenemem, üstlenemem, bir kişinin sorumluluğunu üstlenirsem benimle kalması lazım benim uğraşmam lazım, benim birinci dereceden akrabam olması lazım veya çok sevdiğim bir kız olması lazım ilgilenebilmem için. Yoksa Belçika gibi veya Avrupa gibi veya bir yerden oturum kimliği alabilmek eğer yaşama hakkını kazanabilmek için ya beyin göçüne sahip olması lazım ya da o ülkeye faydalı olabilecek bir mesleğe sahip olması lazım” (translated by author).
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Wozniak, A.M. (2024). Cultural Diplomacy Despite the State: Mobility and Agency of State and Amateur Musicians in Turkish Classical Music Choirs. In: Rijo Lopes da Cunha, M.M., Shannon, J., Møller Sørensen, S., Danielson, V. (eds) Music and Cultural Diplomacy in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36279-8_5
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