The place of music within the collective consciousness representation: Yörük

This study, prepared as a master dissertation in I.T.U. Institute of Social Sciences Department of Musicology and Music Theory, consist of two main sections. In the first section, the general concept as well as the historical background are discussed to make a preparation to the rest of the master dissertation. The second section (third and fourth chapters) is related to the field survey that is deciphered in the context of the collective consciousness that also explains the role of the Yoruk music in the Yoruk society (in the third chapter) and vice versa (in the fourth chapter), respectively. The second chapter is not only based on literature but also uses verbal historical facts that are gathered from field survey, and is written by means of the historical data. In this chapter Yoruk origins is briefly being explained, then, Shamanism as a collective is shortly explained. It is a well-known fact that Shamanism is the one of the oldest religion that Turks believed for a long time and Yoruks, of course, no exception, believed as well. According to source books which I have mention in this chapter there were a connection between Yoruks and Shamanist beliefs. Before the place of music within the collective consciousness representation, in this chapter, it tries to clarify how Yoruk collective consciousness effect from shamanism. In the third chapter, it explains the role of the Yoruk music in the Yoruk society and also mentioned about the place of music within the collective consciousness representation. It focuses on the social environment of audience and music creators to understand why they listen and create this music and also what is the meaning of music for them. The goal was the record the collective activities and understand how the Yoruk's lifestyle is. Yoruks came to have a settled life and this may have cause them to play music to remember old days. Music was the key and it was good reminder, dance was meaningful with music and both were carrying the consciousness effect of shamanism. This was showing us that the music was a very important thing for the collective consciousness representations. The fourth chapter focuses on Ramazan Güngör's life and music which is represented by him. It discuss first the Güngör's life to understand what Güngör thought about Yoruk music perception and how he represented that perception. This part mainly focusing on the Gungor's character to understand the things which could affect Gungor's perception. As a proof, I used musical transcriptions to analyse 4 songs represented by Güngör. One of these was Kervan, this is representing the bells of camels which they got used to hear while they were traveling with their own camels in the past. They were using the bells to keep animals under control, if something was wrong they could understand from different rhythm of the bells. Camels were important for Yoruks, until they started to settled down an gave up their nomad lifestyle. Camels were then not as needed any more, also because camels gave damage to plants that was grown for food. The music which is belongs to the Yoruks who has no camels anymore, used this bells sound as representing the sprit of camels and the old times. Second song's name is Boğaz (throat) Havası that has a special technique and for the old days it was no needed to use instruments. Girls and boys were using finger to change their sound, they were putting fingers to their throat and applying a small pressure moving finger over the throat and started to sing. This was the hidden communication tools for young lovers to speak and also shepherd was used to communicate with sheeps and goats. As a communication tools, boğaz havaları had more complicated melodic lines compare to the kervan songs. Instead of the regular rhythm because they should have got used to listen regular camels bell sound, boğaz havaları had unregularly rhythm pattern, maybe because of shamanism effect or they effect the other communities. The other two songs are Ağır Zeybek and Kocaoğlan Zeybeği. Here dance and music are telling us some story, we are using, dance notation to decipher both of it. Recorded zeybek dance studied carefully to the decipher the songs, but this is not to analyse it with all details, mainly because understand the behind of scene. One can see melodic line and dance line together in that chapter, after this chapter it will try to put the story of the zeybek dance and music according to collective consciousness. To sum up, Shamanism as a collective which has no written book and could changeable from region to region, was carrying something that belonged to the nature. It impressed to Yoruk's life as both being part of nature, shaman was helping the human and human was connected the shaman clearly in old times. The connection was continuing with myth, legend, story, dance and music. That means, music and dance were carrying some symbols of collective consciousness and this master dissertation is trying to show this relationship based on deciphering them via musical analysis's.