Women in Turkish Folk Dance and Music: A Case of Musical Gatherings (original) (raw)

2019, Journal of International Social Research

The environment of performance has a role as important in production, transfer and representation of oral cultural products as instruments, lyrics and performers. These environments, bearing the traces of their geography and social atmosphere, are so special that they become important determinants of the character of the dances that take place within them. The traditional musical gathering is one of the important performance environments of Turkish Folk music. In addition to it being an important determinant of oral cultural products in a wide area of our country, it also aims to put social rules into practice in a field of socialization. Stories are told, theatrical games are exhibited and folk dances are performed along with regional melodies in traditional musical gatherings referred to as "conversations", "meetings" as well as specific names that vary from place to place such as Ferfene, Yâren, Kürsübaşı, Sıra Gecesi, Barana etc. Traditional musical gatherings, which have occurred up through the present day and originated from Ahî Community (13th century) as it has been determined from sources, are male-dominant conversations. Women have no role in these gatherings. But, through the study of written sources and our field work, it has been determined that there are conversation environments, performance environments for which women gathered. In these gatherings, women appearing in the roles of instrument player, singer, actress, and dancer represent their region and reveal oral cultural products that are specific to women and local dances that are specific to the female body. At this point, we will answer the following questions with the support of visual and aural data that we obtained from field recordings; how do women representatives create a performance environment for themselves for musical gatherings? Do the performance environments they create fit with the traditional musical conversations of Turkish folk music? Do works sung by female representatives and the folk dances they perform in traditional musical conversations reflect their regions' traditional styles and forms? In addition, are there examples that reveal a women's style in these data? etc. In addition to written sources, we will answer the questions by supporting them with the visual and auditory data obtained from the records of the Ankara Club Association (Ankara Kulübü Derneği). While examining local music and describing forms of local dances of 21st century women representatives, we will try to identify women's status in their society and we will evaluate their representation of their form of art in their social environment by in terms of a cause and effect relationship. The scope of the research is related to the impact of the space (meetings with music, chatting environment) on women's execution of art. Questions that constitute the essentials of the research, are based on the assumption that the place of execution (space), where women are present, is closely related to the space theory and social gender coding. As the music is a means of body language in the study, it also appears as the executive of the environment where social gender roles are exhibited; and the women who perform exist as representatives of the tradititon in the performance area of the study.