Cultural interaction and migration: Turkish Music practices İn İsrael

Cultural flow has been drawing to itself both a global and a glocal path in the bobble of the inter-meshed connections by the intermediary of technologies, economies, ideologies, the media and the ethnical issues emphasizing the ?local?. The fact that the flow has multiple directions shape the social practices in our contemporary world as well as policies and economies. The complicated and the invented cultural structure of the new world supports the mixture and the re-production of creations. In this sense, the distance between geographical borders become closer and the reflections of the interactions beyond borders exist as hybrid productions by manifesting both similarities and differences.As stated above, the content of this thesis discussed in the context of cultural flow is related to how Turkish music exists and is positioned in another geographical region beyond borders, specifically in Israel, which is both a Middle Eastern and a Mediterranean country. The problematic of this research provides a kind of ?picture of situation? as a result of the literature survey and etnographical work accomplished as well as detailed analyses of the anthropological and ethno-musicological findings of the field research made between the dates of January 2009 ? October 2009 in Israel, which is the work field of this thesis.In the first part of the thesis, the points of emphasis are migration stories of the Turkish Jews who migrated to Israel together with their habits and the culture brought by them from Turkey to the country in which they try to build a new life. Issues which are in the areas of interest of the post-modern anthropology as well as of the modern global and the glocal world such as migration, cultural hybidity, flexible culturization, culture, multi-culture, sub-culture, scapes in post-modernism and cultural flow, change and continuity, globalization and glocalization, melting pot and assimilation, national, ethnical and religious identities are discussed from an anthropological point of view. The issues of the Israeli public and music which "migrated" in the context of the music of this country, performances of Turkish music in Israel, hybrid sounds on the Israeli stage, music culture in Israel and encounters in the border zones, sound-scapes beyond borders and geographies, dynamics of cultural flow and the representation of music, the place and the importance of music in the ambiguous contexts of the homeland and diaspora, marginalized musical identities in Israel, perceptions of identity in Israel and their reflections on music are deeply analysed from an ethno-musicological perspective and provided in the section of the theoretical framework of this research.In the field research of this thesis, which is made with an inter-subjective, subject-centered and self-reflexive methodology, the area of existence of Turkish music among musicians interviewed in Israel in the context of general musical thoughts is attempted to be understood. This work investigates the culture and the music which "migrated" together with the Jews from Turkey who migrated to Israel, both from an anthropological and from an ethno-musicological perspective and it includes in-depth interviews with Jews in Turkey, Turkish migrants in Israel, musicians who produce in both countries and community representatives as well as important findings and analyses which pretend to be the first of their kind in the related literature.While analyzing the Israeli music culture and the performances of the Turkish music in Israel, the analysis of the religious Maftirim music which the Sepharadic Jews who migrated to Israel from Turkey brought with them and of the secular Judeo-Espagnol/Ladino music is followed by entrance stories of the Turkish arabesque music and the Turkish popular music which entered into the Israeli stage after the year of 1975 and they are provided in the section of findings and analyses of the thesis. The influences of the Turkish folk music, Turkish art music and Turkish arabesque and popular music on the genres of Israeli Musika Etnit (Ethnic music), Israeli Musika Olamit (World music), Israeli Musika Mizrahit (Oriental music) and Israeli Musika Yam Tihonit (Mediterranean music) which take place on the multi-cultural and hybrid music stage in Israel are investigated and it's exposed and showed that, from an ethno-musicological perspective, Turkish music has a far bigger impact on the Israeli music stage than what is supposed in general.