Women Representing Music in Alawi-Bektashi Cultural Environment

Abstract

Cultural environments where stringed instruments, words and performers represented have also animportant role in production, transfer and representation of oral cultural products. These environmentsbearing traces of the geography and social atmosphere are important determinants of the musiccharacter that woman within the Alawi-Bektashi culture and socio-musical environment they raised(Cemevi/djmevi). Besides, the relation they established with the music in such environments is ofimportance in terms of defining musical identities of Alawi-Bektashi women (āsik, zākir).The study has been conducted with an interpretative understanding and ethnographical approach overthe gender roles with the idea saying that gender2 perspective is useful for investigating the musicrole of woman within Alawi-Bektashi culture. Within this approach, the experiences of women whoproduce word-music and represent the oral culture products in this culture were based on within thescope of audio and published music data in the fieldwork.Accordingly, while the following questions are the questions which form the starting point of thestudy, the answers given to these questions ranked among the important findings of the result: “Canyou see the cultural environments where women are raised and their performance environmentsas an important criterion determining their musical identities?” “Do the subject-musical transfersthat women discussed in the cultural environment where they raised form a basis for examining thefemale-specific musical identity?”The scope of the research is related with impacts of the cultural environment where women are raised(ritual and conversation environment of space) on the artistic representation of women. Questionsconstituting the focus of the research are based on the assumption that the performance environment(space) where women are presenting is closely associated with the spatial theory and social gendercoding.