Analysing the music performance of baglama-playing female singers in terms of gender

Conceptualizing the notion of performance is considered ambiguous for many researchers. This concept, for some researchers, stands for performative acts which have to result in success whereas for some others the same acts don't have to bring about any success since they refer not an end but to a process of refreshing experiences. Some scholars, on the other hand, define performance as the ability to accomplish something, namely talent. Whatever the perspective might be employed to describe the concept of performance, it stands for a performative integrity which has a beginning as well as an end. It is such an integrity that it encompasses all surrounding realities; for, the idea of performance is considered as the minimum condition for mutuality between human beings. This being the case, performance at social level brings about communication. It is through musical performance, which is one of the most efficient methods of communication that a great deal of social, cultural and historical data on daily practices is transmitted by means of either implicit or explicit references from one source to another. Other than biological and determinist approaches relying on positive sciences, the concept of gender, which is defined in social and cultural contexts, provides worth-exploring data about performance in general and musical performance in particular. In this work titled Analysing the Music Performance of Baglama-Playing Female Singers in terms of Gender connections between performance, musical performance and gender are assessed particularly in the example of ladies with an ability to both play the musical instrument called baglama and also sing in accordance with it. The underlining reason behind my focus on the aforementioned women is that I have personally performed in the same musical tradition for many years. I have managed to get my performance and education in the area of musicology complemented by all of the subject-related knowledge I could obtain mainly by means of experience, participation and observation. What is more, since the current research subject is about gender and performance, there has been drawn upon a variety of disciplines such as sociology and anthropology and psychology and history; the first couple being of paramount importance. Given the interdisciplinary context employed in this research, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to claim that musical performance is no longer considered across the globe only as a means of musical transmission, but rather it provides lots of valuable social and cultural knowledge about the past and the present. As widely acknowledged, each data is linked to another in social sciences. Emergence of a phenomenon is all about the impact of surrounding conditions around that phenomenon. In this regard, baglama-performing women surveyed in the present research are evaluated not only by their individual performances, but also by the way they have been conditioned in the area of music throughout the history. The present research has drawn upon performance as an umbrella concept in order that it divulges performance as a tool of measurement in presenting both gender statistics and surrounding factors in musical performance. Music field exists right in between of two practical areas that provide social gender data. Meaning, both social life practices and music field, along with the performance produce social gender data. Social norms related to the gender identity are stored in memory by means of performans and they later turn into performance via memory itself. Even though each performance can show a change to a certain extent depending on time and place, it has the most significant influence on the transferring of cultural codes to different ages. Nevertheless, it leads to an interpretative qualification of the performance. Undoubtedly, behavioral patterns relating to the gender identity which consist of both general meaning of the performance and specifically musical performance are seen in every field. Bourdieu's field theory and homologies within the fields were therefore used in analyzing the behavioral patterns that emerge in the musical field and performance. The causal link between the field and the social gender data in the field practice was explained through a cooperation between the field and habitus. Within this cooperation, the different types of topics such as doxa, capital types and efficacy, nepotism, nominal value and symbolic violence etc. disclose the social gender issue regarding the musical performance of women who play baglama and sing. The relation between power domain and its dependent in the music field, and the destruction as well as protection strategies that rise from this relation, have a significant importance for women and their musical performance. Women's role and musical behavioral patterns in the struggle between fields are the main determinants of the aesthetic value of their art and sufficiency perception led by this value. The dogmas of the social life and the musical practice such as 'men do, women support it' and 'women should stand with men,' force women to depart from the masculine social life and reduce their efficiency in the musical field. There are many examples of this. Turkey is pretty much the same with the countries mentioned above when it comes to interpretation of the gender identity that comes to produce musical performance. Nevertheless, in the course of the production of traditional music and at the two endpoints that constitutes the conditions thereof, namely from birth to death or lullabies to mournings, it can be asserted that women have the primary role in the production and transmission of many kinds of repertoire as such. Even if their productive role is evident, it is safe to argue that the role of women has not been recorded by any official or private institution since the 1920s due to the fact that women had been confined to private area. In fact, in individual compilation studies, the vast majority of the people called'reference person' who conveyed the traditional songs were masculine. Women had been removed from many fields such as transferring traditional music to the public area, handing down to next generation and factors consist of the musical performance (include instruments) by way of consent of women or symbolic violence. Thus, the answer of the question 'why have there been no great women artists?' is a debatable issue all around the world, should be sought among dogmas, social roles and silenced calls that are embedded with the masculine rules and permanent with consent or stigmatization of the women. The thesis consists of four chapters in associate with all of these explanations mentioned above. The first chapter is the introductory part which set a framework for the study by examining the existing literature review in this field. In addition to the analytical evaluation of the related studies, this section also reveals the main goal, question, limits, method and hypothesis of this thesis. The scope of the study has been narrowed down from the general to the specific with a specific focus on the relations between musical performance, culture and gender relations. In this regard, the influence of the Turkish Folk Music during the period of the last century on women who play and sing baglama has been analyzed. In other words, a historical process of women playing and singing baglama has been studied. Within this context, the impact on feminism in Turkey of the importance of the first Turkish-Muslims Union in Anatolia (Bacıyân-ı Rûm) in 13.century has been touched upon. Additionally, the impact of the leading scholars of the 20thcentury, female minstrels, officials or private educational institutions and popular culture on feminism have been discussed. The second and third sections compose the main body of the study. At the outset, the theoretical framework has been studied. Within this scope, a feminine identity which was built upon the silenced calls that are embedded with the hegemonic rule and women who play baglama has been discussed in the context of musical performance, gender, and field theory by Bourdieu. Moreover, by doing this, cultural memory, musical field and performance have been evaluated. In the third part, representation of the baglama in the perspective of gender has been studied in conjunction with the second part. In this point, what the baglama means for thesocial gender has been analyzed in the context of the field as well as performance and the historical process. Additionally, at least fives performances (concert, tv shows and audition etc.) by seventeen artists have been examined. Gender data' points that can be possessed has been determined regarding those musical performances. While doing this, both literature review and fieldwork inputs have been used. Therefore, even if some of the outcomes are open for comment, as an insider, many practices experienced by myself for 24 years has made the research reliable. Furthermore, in the third section of the dissertation, components that support gender and composes the musical performance such as instrument (baglama) types and accord preference, melodic features, reference tone, and repertoire has been studied. Divisions of preferences of the instrument types, accord preference and reference tone of the women who play baglama have been examined among from 75 works of art. The reason for these preferences is important as gender can reflect musical performance. Beside, existing among the reasons for factors constituting musical performance, behavioral patterns, which have been observed in the form of imitation of the main male figure, popular performer or master as the source of inspiration, have been examined in terms of both proportional facts and also melodic intonations and their transcriptions. In addition to this, aesthetic judgments, which was placed on 'masculine pleasure' and all of these behavioral patterns point out has been examined. Last section of the thesis is the conclusion part in which the theory and the practice have been synthesized and analyzed. In this section, the entire data that has been acquired through the samples within the scope of the research has been evaluated in terms of gender. Keywords: Music, woman, baglama, playing and singing, gender, performance, music performance, music field, Bourdieu.