Dave Fossum | Arizona State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Dave Fossum

Journal of popular music studies, Jun 1, 2024

Despite the increasing international integration of intellectual property (IP), national laws and... more Despite the increasing international integration of intellectual property (IP), national laws and structures for implementing rights in music continue to vary, for better or for worse, in ways that matter to musicians and other copyright stakeholders. This article draws on oral history and archival data to examine one such variation. Where most countries have only one copyright collecting society for musical authors, there are two in Turkey (MESAM and MSG). IP experts and administrators blame competition or lack of coordination between the two societies for a host of problems, including complicating the processes of performing rights licensing and royalty distribution. Analyzing the origin story of the second collecting society through the lens of Anna Tsing’s influential concept of “friction,” I highlight the social and cultural dynamics that complicate the ongoing global integration of IP and the general development of structures for enforcing IP rights in music.

Journal of Popular Music Studies, 2024

Despite the increasing international integration of intellectual property (IP), national laws and... more Despite the increasing international integration of intellectual property (IP), national laws and structures for implementing rights in music continue to vary, for better or for worse, in ways that matter to musicians and other copyright stakeholders. This article draws on oral history and archival data to examine one such variation. Where most countries have only one copyright collecting society for musical authors, there are two in Turkey (MESAM and MSG). IP experts and administrators blame competition or lack of coordination between the two societies for a host of problems, including complicating the processes of performing rights licensing and royalty distribution. Analyzing the origin story of the second collecting society through the lens of Anna Tsing’s influential concept of “friction,” I highlight the social and cultural dynamics that complicate the ongoing global integration of IP and the general development of structures for enforcing IP rights in music.

Asian Music, 2023

This article examines a series of ambiguities and apparent contradictions surrounding a copyright... more This article examines a series of ambiguities and apparent contradictions surrounding a copyright lawsuit over the song “Mühür Gözlüm,” penned by Turkish singer-poet Ali İzzet Özkan but reinvented and popularized by another famous performer, Neşet Ertaş. It argues that these ambiguities emerge because of how Ertaş engaged with a series of institutions: rural traditions, state folklore, and copyright. These institutions enact distinct music ontologies that sometimes overlap and sometimes clash. This account highlights Ertaş’s agency in navigating this complex situation, thereby clarifying how individuals negotiate the kinds of ontological pluralism that often emerge in (post)colonial or modernizing contexts. Bu makale, aşık Ali İzzet Özkan tarafından kaleme alınan ancak başka bir ünlü sanatçı Neşet Ertaş tarafından yeniden keşfedilip popüler hale getirilen “Mühür Gözlüm” adlı türkünün telif hakkı davasıyla ilgili bir dizi muğlaklıkları ve belirgin çelişkileri incelemektedir. Bu belirsizliklerin, Ertaş’ın kırsal gelenekler, devlet folkloru ve telif hakları hukuku gibi farklı müesseselerle nasıl ilişki kurduğundan kaynaklandığını iddia eden bu çalışmada, söz konusu müesseselerin bazen örtüşen ve bazen de çatışan farklı müzik ontolojilerini temsil ettiği vurgulanıyor. Ertaş’ın bu karmaşık durumlar sırasında yön bulmadaki failliğine dikkat çeken bu yaklaşım, böylece bireylerin genellikle (post)kolonyalizm veya modernleşme bağlamlarında ortaya çıkan ontolojik çoğulculuk türlerini nasıl müzakere ettiklerine açıklık getiriyor.

Ethnomusicology Forum, 2023

Abstract: The idea of anonymity is central to how folk music is defined in Turkey. A widely circu... more Abstract: The idea of anonymity is central to how folk music is defined in Turkey. A widely circulating theory posits that folk songs are not simply anonymous because their authors are forgotten, but because folkloric creativity differs from the process of artistic creativity in other genres. This article draws on the concept of semiotic ideology to analyse the assumptions that mediate how subscribers to the anonymity theory hear folk music. The anonymity theory resonates with recent scholarly accounts of collaborative or distributed creativity, though the network of agency it maps is distinct. Other scholars have described a semiotic ideology associated with romanticism whereby the materiality of semiotic forms is constitutive or reflective of the interiority of an individual creator’s self. The anonymity theory, meanwhile, takes the materiality of semiotic forms to reflect a collective self’s interiority, and it locates creative agency beyond the individuals most involved in folk songs’ production.

Ethnomusicology, 2015

Ethnomusicologists have often shown how traditional musics at prestigious institutions have taken... more Ethnomusicologists have often shown how traditional musics at prestigious institutions have taken their current form only recently, under Western influence. The post-Soviet state of Turkmenistan at first appears to offer yet another case: contemporary musicians have used modern technology and Western notation to studiously reproduce masters’ classic versions of traditional pieces, all the while using terms that recall canonizing discourse from European art music. But this article argues that the Turkmen practice is well grounded in indigenous precedent that predates Soviet modernization efforts. This finding therefore complicates the usual story about the rise of canonization processes in Western-influenced musics.

Asian Music, 2023

This article examines a series of ambiguities and apparent contradictions surrounding a copyright... more This article examines a series of ambiguities and apparent contradictions surrounding a copyright lawsuit over the song “Mühür Gözlüm,” penned by Turkish singer-poet Ali İzzet Özkan but reinvented and popularized by another famous performer, Neşet Ertaş. It argues that these ambiguities emerge because of how Ertaş engaged with a series of institutions: rural traditions, state folklore, and copyright. These institutions enact distinct music ontologies that sometimes overlap and sometimes clash. This account highlights Ertaş’s agency in navigating this complex situation, thereby clarifying how individuals negotiate the kinds of ontological pluralism that often emerge in (post)colonial or modernizing contexts.

Bu makale, aşık Ali İzzet Özkan tarafından kaleme alınan ancak başka bir ünlü sanatçı Neşet Ertaş tarafından yeniden keşfedilip popüler hale getirilen “Mühür Gözlüm” adlı türkünün telif hakkı davasıyla ilgili bir dizi muğlaklıkları ve belirgin çelişkileri incelemektedir. Bu belirsizliklerin, Ertaş’ın kırsal gelenekler, devlet folkloru ve telif hakları hukuku gibi farklı müesseselerle nasıl ilişki kurduğundan kaynaklandığını iddia eden bu çalışmada, söz konusu müesseselerin bazen örtüşen ve bazen de çatışan farklı müzik ontolojilerini temsil ettiği vurgulanıyor. Ertaş’ın bu karmaşık durumlar sırasında yön bulmadaki failliğine dikkat çeken bu yaklaşım, böylece bireylerin genellikle (post)kolonyalizm veya modernleşme bağlamlarında ortaya çıkan ontolojik çoğulculuk türlerini nasıl müzakere ettiklerine açıklık getiriyor.

TUMAC: Turkish Music Academic Circle, 2019

This article analyzes the form of compositions in a tradition of instrumental performance for the... more This article analyzes the form of compositions in a tradition of instrumental performance for the two-stringed, long-necked lute dutar, the main instrument used in the traditional music played by Turkmens in Turkmenistan and northern Iran. While this instrumental tradition is perhaps ancillary to a more prominent vocal tradition surrounding the figure of the bagşy, a bard similar to the aşık or ashug in Azerbaijan and Turkey, musicians in parts of Turkmenistan have nonetheless developed a rich repertoire of instrumental compositions. I argue that within instrumental dutar compositions, there are no fixed, traditional compositional forms akin to those found in many other musical traditions. However, it is possible to identify what I call recurring formal strategies for organizing compositions. These include employing an arc-shaped countour in which the overall pitch of the piece ascends to a climax before descending downward again; the use of recurring motifs, especially in the cadential portions of otherwise differing sections of a piece; transposing melodic material upward; and building to an exciting climax by playing in a high range on the higher-pitched of the instrument’s two strings while the lower-pitched string drones open below it, for example. I highlight these formal strategies using three case studies of traditional pieces of uncertain or collective authorship: the pieces “Gonurbaş mukamy,” “Humar ala,” and “Döwletyar gyrk.” I offer recordings, partial transcriptions, and schematic analyses as needed to outline the form of these compositions and where and how particular formal strategies are employed. Because I draw on only three examples, I emphasize that my analysis reveals a non-exhaustive sample of such formal strategies. The formal strategies I identify neither appear in all pieces in the traditional repertoire nor do they represent all such formal strategies that a more extensive number of case studies might reveal. While the article is organized around my argument that the dutar masters who developed the traditional repertoire employed these formal strategies in order to craft and further develop traditional instrumental compositions, I also intend this article as a listening guide for readers unfamiliar with Turkmen music.

Bu makalede, Türkmenistan ve Kuzey İran’daki Türkmenlerin geleneksel müziğinin aslî sazı olan iki-telli, uzun-saplı “dutar” sazının icra geleneğindeki beste formları incelenmektedir. Bu saz icrası geleneği, Azerbaycan ve Türkiye’deki “âşık, ozan” olarak addedilen “bagşı” figürü etrafında şekillenmiş sözlü geleneğe nazaran daha arka planda kalmış olmakla birlikte oldukça zengin bir beste repertuvarına da sahiptir. Bu makalede, dutar sazının saz eseri bestelerinde, diğer müzikal geleneklerde benzerleri görülen sabit, değişmeyen, gelenekselleşmiş beste formlarının yer almadığı tezini savunacağım. Öte yandan, besteleme sürecinde, kendi tabirimle yinelenen biçimsel yöntemleri teşhis etmenin de mümkün olduğunu belirtmek isterim. Bestede pest perdeye inmeden önce tiz perdeye çıkılan kubbe şeklinde melodi çizgisi (arc-shaped contour); özellikle bir bestenin farklılık gösteren bölümlerinin karar (cadential) kısımlarında mükerrer nağme kullanımı; melodik materyalin yüksek perdeye transpozisyonu; ve dutarın iki telinden pest olanıyla zeminde dem sesi verilirken tiz olan teliyle tiz perdelerden çalarak melodiyi heyecan verici bir tiz perdeye çıkarmak bu yöntemlere örnektir. Mevzu bahis biçimsel yöntemleri vurgulamak için anonim veya müşterek kaynaklardan alınma “Goñurbaş mukamy,” “Humar ala,” ve “Döwletyar gyrk” adlı üç besteyi örnek alarak bu yöntemlerin incelemesini yapacağım. İncelemeleri yaparken bu bestelerin formlarını, hangi hususi biçimsel yöntemlerin ne zaman ve nasıl kullanıldığını ses kayıtları, kısmî çeviri notayazımları ve şematik analizler ile açıklayacağım. Konu hakkında sadece üç örnek üzerinden incelemeye çalıştığım biçimsel yöntemlerin analizinin yüzeysel sonuçlar verdiğinin altını çizmek isterim. Teşhis ettiğim biçimsel yöntemler, geleneksel repertuvardaki eserlerin hepsinde yer almamakla beraber daha kapsamlı bir örneklendirme içeren bir araştırmanın ortaya koyacağı bütün biçimsel yöntemleri de yansıtmayacaktır. Bu makale, “geleneksel repertuvarı geliştiren dutar ustaları, geleneksel saz eseri besteleri yapmak ve geliştirmek için bu biçimsel yöntemleri kullanmıştır” argümanı etrafında şekillenmiş olsa da aynı zamanda makalenin Türkmen müziğine âşinâ olmayan okuyucular için de bir dinleme rehberi olması amaçlanmıştır.

Analytical Approaches to World Music, 2017

This paper focuses on a repertoire of instrumental pieces performed and orally transmitted among ... more This paper focuses on a repertoire of instrumental pieces performed and orally transmitted among players of a two-stringed lute called dutar in Turkmenistan. Through music analysis, it seeks to illustrate exactly how Turkmen dutar players negotiate contrasting demands to maintain the pieces as learned from their masters while also developing them over time as part of an ongoing collective composition process. The analysis relates to a complexly interconnected set of research areas: studies of that focus on the importance of formulas and patterns to the process of reconstructing memorized material and studies that show how musicians draw on formulas, internalized schemas, and compositional principles to generate new musical material in the course of improvisation or composition. While Turkmen music does not feature separate, marked spaces for generating new melodic sequences at length as do most of the genres that have been studied by scholars taking similar analytical approaches, we...

In this paper, we analyze onset characteristics to try to identify important differences between ... more In this paper, we analyze onset characteristics to try to identify important differences between two famous Turkmen dutar performers in terms of patterns of timing. We first analyzed annotated onse ...

Analytical Approaches to World Music, 2017

This paper focuses on a repertoire of instrumental pieces performed and orally transmitted among ... more This paper focuses on a repertoire of instrumental pieces performed and orally transmitted among players of a two-stringed lute called dutar in Turkmenistan. Through music analysis, it seeks to illustrate exactly how Turkmen dutar players negotiate contrasting demands to maintain the pieces as learned from their masters while also developing them over time as part of an ongoing collective composition process. The analysis relates to a complexly interconnected set of research areas: studies of that focus on the importance of formulas and patterns to the process of reconstructing memorized material and studies that show how musicians draw on formulas, internalized schemas, and compositional principles to generate new musical material in the course of improvisation or composition. While Turkmen music does not feature separate, marked spaces for generating new melodic sequences at length as do most of the genres that have been studied by scholars taking similar analytical approaches, we can observe similar generative processes at play in the ways that Turkmen musicians vary and expand on traditional repertoire. Specifically, I show how traditional pieces feature constantly shifting constraints on and affordances for variation and development. Turkmen musicians internalize principles for exploiting such affordances in the process of learning the repertoire and reapply these to the traditional compositions as they reconstruct them in performance. I separate such analytical observations from the question of how Turkmens assess and valorize performers’ variations on and contributions to the traditional compositions, providing additional ethnographic data on this point. In doing so, I also seek to bring clarity to some of the confusion surrounding the much-discussed, problematic term “improvisation.”

Ethnomusicologists have often shown how traditional musics at prestigious institutions have taken... more Ethnomusicologists have often shown how traditional musics at prestigious institutions have taken their current form only recently, under Western influence. The post-Soviet state of Turkmenistan at first appears to offer yet another case: contemporary musicians have used modern technology and Western notation to studiously reproduce masters' classic versions of traditional pieces, all the while using terms that recall canonizing discourse from European art music. But this article argues that the Turkmen practice is well grounded in indigenous precedent that predates Soviet modernization efforts. This finding therefore complicates the usual story about the rise of canonization processes in Western-influenced musics. Teswirnama. Dürli medeniýetleriň sazlaryny öwrenijiler (etnomuzykowedler) abraýly mekdeplerdäki tradision sazlarynyň öz häzirki görnüşine ýaňy-ýakynda Günbataryň täsiri astynda gelendigi hakda ýygy-ýygydan aýdyp geçýärler. Öň Sowet Soýuzynyň düzümine giren Türkmenistan döwleti hakda aýdaňda ýag-daýlar başgaçarak ýaly: häzirkizaman sazandalary öz halypalarynyň tradision eserleriniň nusgawy wersiýalaryny döretmek üçin döwrebap tehnologiýany we Günbataryň şertli belgilerini ulanmak bilen bir hatarda Ýewropanyň klassyky sazyna degişli kanonizirleýiş diskursyny ýadyňa salýan terminleri hem ulanýar-lar. Emma bu makala türkmen praktikasynyň (meselesiniň) Sowet Soýuzynyň kämilleşdirmek tagallalaryndan hem öň bar bolan ýerli nusgalara düýpli es-aslanandygy hakda gürrüň berýär. Şeýlelikde bu netijenama kanonizasiýa prosesleriniň Günbataryň täsir eden sazlarynda kemala gelendigi hakdaky adaty wakany çylşyrymlaşdyrýar.

Books by Dave Fossum

Wesleyan University Press, 2025

Copyright Consciousness explores the mutual influence of intellectual property law, musical creat... more Copyright Consciousness explores the mutual influence of intellectual property law, musical creativity, and state cultural policy in Turkey's vibrant music industry. Drawing on ethnographic and archival data from the past five decades, this book is among the first in-depth ethnographies of music and the law. Adapting theories of legal consciousness and introducing them into ethnomusicology, it documents how a broad range of actors, from courts to composers, negotiate and constitute an emergent legality in music. It tracks how these actors make sense of and respond to the music copyright system's purported failures and perceived injustices, often integrating their experiences into larger narratives about Turkish society, the nature and value of musical creativity, and the histories of national genres, especially folk music.

Journal of popular music studies, Jun 1, 2024

Despite the increasing international integration of intellectual property (IP), national laws and... more Despite the increasing international integration of intellectual property (IP), national laws and structures for implementing rights in music continue to vary, for better or for worse, in ways that matter to musicians and other copyright stakeholders. This article draws on oral history and archival data to examine one such variation. Where most countries have only one copyright collecting society for musical authors, there are two in Turkey (MESAM and MSG). IP experts and administrators blame competition or lack of coordination between the two societies for a host of problems, including complicating the processes of performing rights licensing and royalty distribution. Analyzing the origin story of the second collecting society through the lens of Anna Tsing’s influential concept of “friction,” I highlight the social and cultural dynamics that complicate the ongoing global integration of IP and the general development of structures for enforcing IP rights in music.

Journal of Popular Music Studies, 2024

Despite the increasing international integration of intellectual property (IP), national laws and... more Despite the increasing international integration of intellectual property (IP), national laws and structures for implementing rights in music continue to vary, for better or for worse, in ways that matter to musicians and other copyright stakeholders. This article draws on oral history and archival data to examine one such variation. Where most countries have only one copyright collecting society for musical authors, there are two in Turkey (MESAM and MSG). IP experts and administrators blame competition or lack of coordination between the two societies for a host of problems, including complicating the processes of performing rights licensing and royalty distribution. Analyzing the origin story of the second collecting society through the lens of Anna Tsing’s influential concept of “friction,” I highlight the social and cultural dynamics that complicate the ongoing global integration of IP and the general development of structures for enforcing IP rights in music.

Asian Music, 2023

This article examines a series of ambiguities and apparent contradictions surrounding a copyright... more This article examines a series of ambiguities and apparent contradictions surrounding a copyright lawsuit over the song “Mühür Gözlüm,” penned by Turkish singer-poet Ali İzzet Özkan but reinvented and popularized by another famous performer, Neşet Ertaş. It argues that these ambiguities emerge because of how Ertaş engaged with a series of institutions: rural traditions, state folklore, and copyright. These institutions enact distinct music ontologies that sometimes overlap and sometimes clash. This account highlights Ertaş’s agency in navigating this complex situation, thereby clarifying how individuals negotiate the kinds of ontological pluralism that often emerge in (post)colonial or modernizing contexts. Bu makale, aşık Ali İzzet Özkan tarafından kaleme alınan ancak başka bir ünlü sanatçı Neşet Ertaş tarafından yeniden keşfedilip popüler hale getirilen “Mühür Gözlüm” adlı türkünün telif hakkı davasıyla ilgili bir dizi muğlaklıkları ve belirgin çelişkileri incelemektedir. Bu belirsizliklerin, Ertaş’ın kırsal gelenekler, devlet folkloru ve telif hakları hukuku gibi farklı müesseselerle nasıl ilişki kurduğundan kaynaklandığını iddia eden bu çalışmada, söz konusu müesseselerin bazen örtüşen ve bazen de çatışan farklı müzik ontolojilerini temsil ettiği vurgulanıyor. Ertaş’ın bu karmaşık durumlar sırasında yön bulmadaki failliğine dikkat çeken bu yaklaşım, böylece bireylerin genellikle (post)kolonyalizm veya modernleşme bağlamlarında ortaya çıkan ontolojik çoğulculuk türlerini nasıl müzakere ettiklerine açıklık getiriyor.

Ethnomusicology Forum, 2023

Abstract: The idea of anonymity is central to how folk music is defined in Turkey. A widely circu... more Abstract: The idea of anonymity is central to how folk music is defined in Turkey. A widely circulating theory posits that folk songs are not simply anonymous because their authors are forgotten, but because folkloric creativity differs from the process of artistic creativity in other genres. This article draws on the concept of semiotic ideology to analyse the assumptions that mediate how subscribers to the anonymity theory hear folk music. The anonymity theory resonates with recent scholarly accounts of collaborative or distributed creativity, though the network of agency it maps is distinct. Other scholars have described a semiotic ideology associated with romanticism whereby the materiality of semiotic forms is constitutive or reflective of the interiority of an individual creator’s self. The anonymity theory, meanwhile, takes the materiality of semiotic forms to reflect a collective self’s interiority, and it locates creative agency beyond the individuals most involved in folk songs’ production.

Ethnomusicology, 2015

Ethnomusicologists have often shown how traditional musics at prestigious institutions have taken... more Ethnomusicologists have often shown how traditional musics at prestigious institutions have taken their current form only recently, under Western influence. The post-Soviet state of Turkmenistan at first appears to offer yet another case: contemporary musicians have used modern technology and Western notation to studiously reproduce masters’ classic versions of traditional pieces, all the while using terms that recall canonizing discourse from European art music. But this article argues that the Turkmen practice is well grounded in indigenous precedent that predates Soviet modernization efforts. This finding therefore complicates the usual story about the rise of canonization processes in Western-influenced musics.

Asian Music, 2023

This article examines a series of ambiguities and apparent contradictions surrounding a copyright... more This article examines a series of ambiguities and apparent contradictions surrounding a copyright lawsuit over the song “Mühür Gözlüm,” penned by Turkish singer-poet Ali İzzet Özkan but reinvented and popularized by another famous performer, Neşet Ertaş. It argues that these ambiguities emerge because of how Ertaş engaged with a series of institutions: rural traditions, state folklore, and copyright. These institutions enact distinct music ontologies that sometimes overlap and sometimes clash. This account highlights Ertaş’s agency in navigating this complex situation, thereby clarifying how individuals negotiate the kinds of ontological pluralism that often emerge in (post)colonial or modernizing contexts.

Bu makale, aşık Ali İzzet Özkan tarafından kaleme alınan ancak başka bir ünlü sanatçı Neşet Ertaş tarafından yeniden keşfedilip popüler hale getirilen “Mühür Gözlüm” adlı türkünün telif hakkı davasıyla ilgili bir dizi muğlaklıkları ve belirgin çelişkileri incelemektedir. Bu belirsizliklerin, Ertaş’ın kırsal gelenekler, devlet folkloru ve telif hakları hukuku gibi farklı müesseselerle nasıl ilişki kurduğundan kaynaklandığını iddia eden bu çalışmada, söz konusu müesseselerin bazen örtüşen ve bazen de çatışan farklı müzik ontolojilerini temsil ettiği vurgulanıyor. Ertaş’ın bu karmaşık durumlar sırasında yön bulmadaki failliğine dikkat çeken bu yaklaşım, böylece bireylerin genellikle (post)kolonyalizm veya modernleşme bağlamlarında ortaya çıkan ontolojik çoğulculuk türlerini nasıl müzakere ettiklerine açıklık getiriyor.

TUMAC: Turkish Music Academic Circle, 2019

This article analyzes the form of compositions in a tradition of instrumental performance for the... more This article analyzes the form of compositions in a tradition of instrumental performance for the two-stringed, long-necked lute dutar, the main instrument used in the traditional music played by Turkmens in Turkmenistan and northern Iran. While this instrumental tradition is perhaps ancillary to a more prominent vocal tradition surrounding the figure of the bagşy, a bard similar to the aşık or ashug in Azerbaijan and Turkey, musicians in parts of Turkmenistan have nonetheless developed a rich repertoire of instrumental compositions. I argue that within instrumental dutar compositions, there are no fixed, traditional compositional forms akin to those found in many other musical traditions. However, it is possible to identify what I call recurring formal strategies for organizing compositions. These include employing an arc-shaped countour in which the overall pitch of the piece ascends to a climax before descending downward again; the use of recurring motifs, especially in the cadential portions of otherwise differing sections of a piece; transposing melodic material upward; and building to an exciting climax by playing in a high range on the higher-pitched of the instrument’s two strings while the lower-pitched string drones open below it, for example. I highlight these formal strategies using three case studies of traditional pieces of uncertain or collective authorship: the pieces “Gonurbaş mukamy,” “Humar ala,” and “Döwletyar gyrk.” I offer recordings, partial transcriptions, and schematic analyses as needed to outline the form of these compositions and where and how particular formal strategies are employed. Because I draw on only three examples, I emphasize that my analysis reveals a non-exhaustive sample of such formal strategies. The formal strategies I identify neither appear in all pieces in the traditional repertoire nor do they represent all such formal strategies that a more extensive number of case studies might reveal. While the article is organized around my argument that the dutar masters who developed the traditional repertoire employed these formal strategies in order to craft and further develop traditional instrumental compositions, I also intend this article as a listening guide for readers unfamiliar with Turkmen music.

Bu makalede, Türkmenistan ve Kuzey İran’daki Türkmenlerin geleneksel müziğinin aslî sazı olan iki-telli, uzun-saplı “dutar” sazının icra geleneğindeki beste formları incelenmektedir. Bu saz icrası geleneği, Azerbaycan ve Türkiye’deki “âşık, ozan” olarak addedilen “bagşı” figürü etrafında şekillenmiş sözlü geleneğe nazaran daha arka planda kalmış olmakla birlikte oldukça zengin bir beste repertuvarına da sahiptir. Bu makalede, dutar sazının saz eseri bestelerinde, diğer müzikal geleneklerde benzerleri görülen sabit, değişmeyen, gelenekselleşmiş beste formlarının yer almadığı tezini savunacağım. Öte yandan, besteleme sürecinde, kendi tabirimle yinelenen biçimsel yöntemleri teşhis etmenin de mümkün olduğunu belirtmek isterim. Bestede pest perdeye inmeden önce tiz perdeye çıkılan kubbe şeklinde melodi çizgisi (arc-shaped contour); özellikle bir bestenin farklılık gösteren bölümlerinin karar (cadential) kısımlarında mükerrer nağme kullanımı; melodik materyalin yüksek perdeye transpozisyonu; ve dutarın iki telinden pest olanıyla zeminde dem sesi verilirken tiz olan teliyle tiz perdelerden çalarak melodiyi heyecan verici bir tiz perdeye çıkarmak bu yöntemlere örnektir. Mevzu bahis biçimsel yöntemleri vurgulamak için anonim veya müşterek kaynaklardan alınma “Goñurbaş mukamy,” “Humar ala,” ve “Döwletyar gyrk” adlı üç besteyi örnek alarak bu yöntemlerin incelemesini yapacağım. İncelemeleri yaparken bu bestelerin formlarını, hangi hususi biçimsel yöntemlerin ne zaman ve nasıl kullanıldığını ses kayıtları, kısmî çeviri notayazımları ve şematik analizler ile açıklayacağım. Konu hakkında sadece üç örnek üzerinden incelemeye çalıştığım biçimsel yöntemlerin analizinin yüzeysel sonuçlar verdiğinin altını çizmek isterim. Teşhis ettiğim biçimsel yöntemler, geleneksel repertuvardaki eserlerin hepsinde yer almamakla beraber daha kapsamlı bir örneklendirme içeren bir araştırmanın ortaya koyacağı bütün biçimsel yöntemleri de yansıtmayacaktır. Bu makale, “geleneksel repertuvarı geliştiren dutar ustaları, geleneksel saz eseri besteleri yapmak ve geliştirmek için bu biçimsel yöntemleri kullanmıştır” argümanı etrafında şekillenmiş olsa da aynı zamanda makalenin Türkmen müziğine âşinâ olmayan okuyucular için de bir dinleme rehberi olması amaçlanmıştır.

Analytical Approaches to World Music, 2017

This paper focuses on a repertoire of instrumental pieces performed and orally transmitted among ... more This paper focuses on a repertoire of instrumental pieces performed and orally transmitted among players of a two-stringed lute called dutar in Turkmenistan. Through music analysis, it seeks to illustrate exactly how Turkmen dutar players negotiate contrasting demands to maintain the pieces as learned from their masters while also developing them over time as part of an ongoing collective composition process. The analysis relates to a complexly interconnected set of research areas: studies of that focus on the importance of formulas and patterns to the process of reconstructing memorized material and studies that show how musicians draw on formulas, internalized schemas, and compositional principles to generate new musical material in the course of improvisation or composition. While Turkmen music does not feature separate, marked spaces for generating new melodic sequences at length as do most of the genres that have been studied by scholars taking similar analytical approaches, we...

In this paper, we analyze onset characteristics to try to identify important differences between ... more In this paper, we analyze onset characteristics to try to identify important differences between two famous Turkmen dutar performers in terms of patterns of timing. We first analyzed annotated onse ...

Analytical Approaches to World Music, 2017

This paper focuses on a repertoire of instrumental pieces performed and orally transmitted among ... more This paper focuses on a repertoire of instrumental pieces performed and orally transmitted among players of a two-stringed lute called dutar in Turkmenistan. Through music analysis, it seeks to illustrate exactly how Turkmen dutar players negotiate contrasting demands to maintain the pieces as learned from their masters while also developing them over time as part of an ongoing collective composition process. The analysis relates to a complexly interconnected set of research areas: studies of that focus on the importance of formulas and patterns to the process of reconstructing memorized material and studies that show how musicians draw on formulas, internalized schemas, and compositional principles to generate new musical material in the course of improvisation or composition. While Turkmen music does not feature separate, marked spaces for generating new melodic sequences at length as do most of the genres that have been studied by scholars taking similar analytical approaches, we can observe similar generative processes at play in the ways that Turkmen musicians vary and expand on traditional repertoire. Specifically, I show how traditional pieces feature constantly shifting constraints on and affordances for variation and development. Turkmen musicians internalize principles for exploiting such affordances in the process of learning the repertoire and reapply these to the traditional compositions as they reconstruct them in performance. I separate such analytical observations from the question of how Turkmens assess and valorize performers’ variations on and contributions to the traditional compositions, providing additional ethnographic data on this point. In doing so, I also seek to bring clarity to some of the confusion surrounding the much-discussed, problematic term “improvisation.”

Ethnomusicologists have often shown how traditional musics at prestigious institutions have taken... more Ethnomusicologists have often shown how traditional musics at prestigious institutions have taken their current form only recently, under Western influence. The post-Soviet state of Turkmenistan at first appears to offer yet another case: contemporary musicians have used modern technology and Western notation to studiously reproduce masters' classic versions of traditional pieces, all the while using terms that recall canonizing discourse from European art music. But this article argues that the Turkmen practice is well grounded in indigenous precedent that predates Soviet modernization efforts. This finding therefore complicates the usual story about the rise of canonization processes in Western-influenced musics. Teswirnama. Dürli medeniýetleriň sazlaryny öwrenijiler (etnomuzykowedler) abraýly mekdeplerdäki tradision sazlarynyň öz häzirki görnüşine ýaňy-ýakynda Günbataryň täsiri astynda gelendigi hakda ýygy-ýygydan aýdyp geçýärler. Öň Sowet Soýuzynyň düzümine giren Türkmenistan döwleti hakda aýdaňda ýag-daýlar başgaçarak ýaly: häzirkizaman sazandalary öz halypalarynyň tradision eserleriniň nusgawy wersiýalaryny döretmek üçin döwrebap tehnologiýany we Günbataryň şertli belgilerini ulanmak bilen bir hatarda Ýewropanyň klassyky sazyna degişli kanonizirleýiş diskursyny ýadyňa salýan terminleri hem ulanýar-lar. Emma bu makala türkmen praktikasynyň (meselesiniň) Sowet Soýuzynyň kämilleşdirmek tagallalaryndan hem öň bar bolan ýerli nusgalara düýpli es-aslanandygy hakda gürrüň berýär. Şeýlelikde bu netijenama kanonizasiýa prosesleriniň Günbataryň täsir eden sazlarynda kemala gelendigi hakdaky adaty wakany çylşyrymlaşdyrýar.

Wesleyan University Press, 2025

Copyright Consciousness explores the mutual influence of intellectual property law, musical creat... more Copyright Consciousness explores the mutual influence of intellectual property law, musical creativity, and state cultural policy in Turkey's vibrant music industry. Drawing on ethnographic and archival data from the past five decades, this book is among the first in-depth ethnographies of music and the law. Adapting theories of legal consciousness and introducing them into ethnomusicology, it documents how a broad range of actors, from courts to composers, negotiate and constitute an emergent legality in music. It tracks how these actors make sense of and respond to the music copyright system's purported failures and perceived injustices, often integrating their experiences into larger narratives about Turkish society, the nature and value of musical creativity, and the histories of national genres, especially folk music.