From Maqām to Makam: In Search of Syria’s Post-Revolution Cultural Imaginary in Turkey
This thesis explores musical manifestations of forced migration focusing on the experiences of Syrian musicians and artists in Turkey. Concentrating on key urban centres in Turkey (Istanbul and Gaziantep), I draw on extensive ethnographic fieldwork with displaced Syrian musicians employing semi-structured and unstructured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis as primary methods of data collection. My research adopts a multi-sited approach analysing a range of contexts in which Syrian music making in Turkey is experienced, including Syrian support and cultural organisations, schools, street music, and the lives of individual musicians. In light of the contemporary Syrian refugee crisis, this thesis offers a timely combination of approaches in ethnomusicology and forced migration studies to investigate how Syrian musicians as agents embed themselves in their new homelands where changes in performance practice, physical space, and cultural norms must be accounted for. The following research questions drive this study: How do Syrian musicians respond to their changing social and historical circumstances? How do they use their craft to create a voice for themselves in Turkey? Are there structural and political forces that support or impede this expression? Does settling in a metropolis like Istanbul as opposed to a smaller city like Gaziantep make a difference to the potential for and character of Syrian musical expression? If so, why and how? Who is the audience in exile? In answering these research questions, I seek to elucidate the social and artistic challenges Syrian musicians face in their efforts to adapt to their new host context and survive economically, to explore how they experience marginality and multiculturalism in Turkey, and finally, to extrapolate from their experience an analysis of the Syrian community’s current social and cultural profile while displaced in Turkey.
Syrian musicians, Forced migration, Turkey, Aesthetic agency, Displacement
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