Notanın otoritesi, otoritenin notası: Türkiye’de nota-merkezli resmî halk müziğinin yapısökümü

Abstract

Extended AbstractThe authority that spreads all over life is basically the legitimacy of subordination and obedience. The power, hegemony, domination and authority relations appear everywhere in the arena of the main struggle for power. In the context of music, the existence of authority exists in all fields such as music education, music performance, music research and music criticism. These areas are also built with cultural hegemony, domination and power relations. The legitimate basis of authority in the area of power ensures the obedience of those who are subject to it. Notation is the fundamental basis of authority in the field of music as a written text. People who define the “folk” and its music with the nation state building processes establish their authority through their own legitimate grounds with this definition. In other words, the relationship between folk music and authority is constructed within the meanings and values that are imposed on the music in the name of power, as well as the discourses and performances of the individuals and institutions that define the music. However, in this process, there is a problem between the efforts of the standardization of music and the attempt to maintain the authentic characteristics of folk music: On the one hand, the idea of collecting with an ideological approach and defending the authenticity, on the other hand, standardizing and introducing it to universal values, contains contradictions within itself. In the context of folk music, the “folk”, which is the subject of ideology, becomes a source of the aesthetics imposed by notation. Although this aesthetic is seen as reflecting the “essence of the folk” on the one hand, on the other hand it creates its own aesthetics and ideology by the metamorphosis. In this process, the notation becomes a written text that includes an ideology of the Western, modern, rational thought that is intended to be achieved through the construction of the nation state, and is accepted as an official document of how music and hence culture will be shaped. Thus, notation-centered music thought is invented. But here, the tension between the sound/performance and the text/notation is revealed. This situation is not only seen in Ottoman/Turkish music or Turkish folk music, but also in non-Western world music cultures. The notation-centered idea,emerged in the 19th century in the Ottoman Empire and transferred to Turkey in the 20th century, has an approach by which the music is perceived as an “object” and is “fixed” by notation.The memory-based oral transfer of traditional music has been halted by this approach, which includes a systematizing system of education and performance. This systematization process, which developed in parallel with the institutionalization and standardization activities during the early Republican period of Turkey, was built by fixing folk music on a notation-centered basis. The official collections and compilations for this systemization process, called “Turkish folk music”, provided a significant number of sources for the “rediscovery” of music, thereby creating standardized folk music through notations. The notation utilized in the official collecting of folk music in Turkey, was initially used to conserve the compiled folk songs and later used for performance. The requirements of ethnographic study weren’t fulfilled in almost no official fieldworks.The collectors didn’t make any effort to understand “what” music means to the sources. They only transcribed the songs that they compiled into notations and took hold the power and authority related to folk music.In this respect, no official fieldwork with scientific quality has been done in Turkey for folk music, conversely the collected materials have only been “captured”. Folk music performance and education have been officially carried on until today through these notations ensued from these collectings. The notation-centered standardization of official folk music involves contradictions, as Derrida tries to demonstrate by deconstruction.Folk music traditions in Turkey, contrary to what the notation-centered approach imposed as a homogeneous thought, are plural, various, and even conflictual with each other. Therefore, it is necessary to interrogate the notations and the notation-centered understanding, which are the legitimate basis of official folk music authorities.As a written text, there is a necessity to rethink the ideology of the notation, as well as what the notation is “hiding” and “excluding”. In this case, “folk” and “folk music”, which are the source of the official folk music authority, should be taken into consideration in a different way from notation-centered thought.Therefore, in this article, the deconstruction of notation-centered official folk music is proposed. Keywordsturkish folk music, folk music, ethnomusicology, authority, notation, deconstruction