THE SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE CLASSIFICATIONS ON POPULAR MUSIC IN TURKEY AND THE WEST: A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE HIERARCHIES OF TASTE

The theoretical framework built in the West to classify popular music reflects the socio-historical characteristics of the Western societies. This paper argues that this framework is not suitable to understand the music debates in Turkey. Art/popular music (or high/low music) distinction in Western music discourses have reflected a class-based hierarchy of taste. Ottoman-Turkish example differs from this model in many respects. Due to lack of a Western-type aristocracy, land owner ruling class and clergy, Ottoman classical music has developed as a kind of urban music open to all classes of society, exceeding the limits of class-based musical genres and styles. With the start of the Westernization era, however, the East-West distinction reflected in the famous alaturka-alafranga debate has become the yardstick to determine the place of a certain piece of music in the hierarchy of taste built by the Westernizing elites.