Turkish Folk Music

   The unusual wealth and variety of Turkish folk music attracts the attention of musicologists from all over the world. Many of the melodies have very ancient origins in the many different Turkish cultures that from the background to modern Turkey.
   Every district has its own local tunes, songs and dances. There is some special song or dance for every event of rural life : a birth or a wedding, the death of a loved one, sowing the fields and harvesting the crops od leading the flocks to water. Some songs and dances have to do with a particular craft or work, some have fertility or good
lock as a theme. Still other express the timeless feelings of man-joy and sadness, longing of an exile for his home and homeland, love and affection for the beloved.
   The instruments played are still mainly traditional and again vary from region to region. They are made by local craftsmen of great skill from locally obtained materials. One of these, the saz, with its wide range, may be considered the earliest form of the western lute. The kabak kemane, made from a gourd is again an early from of violin.
And Turkey has its own bagpipe, the tulum.
   The main difference between Western polyphonic music and Turkish is that, in the former, A scale is divided into twelve stable tones, whereas in the latter, into twenty-four instable tones some of which are used according to the peculiarity of the tune in the partition.
   Often song and dance are combined. In such cases the colorful costumes, different in every region, make a spectacular display.

 Kemençe

 Zurna

Traditional Instruments

Sipsi : a reed-pipe.
Bağlama : one of the saz family, a six-stringed long-necked lutelike instrument played with a plectrum.
Kabak Kemane : a small three-stringed fiddle made from a gourd . This is a very ancient form of the fiddle.
Koltuk Davulu : a big double-sided drum
Zurna : a kin dof primitive oboe with a double reed The zurna is always accompaniedby a drum.
Kemençe : a small three-stringed fiddle made of wood.
Tulum : a droneless double-chanter bag-pipe, the wind-bag made from the skin  of a lamb or kid. This is a typical
instrument of northeast Anatoli, especially, in the Kars region.
Üç Telli : a three-stringed lute-like instrument of the saz family.
Tambur : another of the saz family, with a longer nect than the bağlama.
Kaval : a simple flute.