Throat playing practice of Honamli Yörüks

Yörüks are the group of the people mostly living in South and West parts of Anatolia and leading a life based on pastoral nomadism. Today, most of the Yörük groups have settled down. Thus, culture and social structure that developed according to nomadic life have been changed. Throughout that process of change in lifestyle, musical practices that evolved with respect to nomadism have began to be forgotten. Among those musical practices, throat playing is a unique vocal technique of Yörük culture. Throat playing is executed by ornamentation of the sound produced by the vocal fold by pushing the hand fingers onto the throat. Primarily practiced while shepherding, this practice is mainly done by women performers. In this study, a group of Honamlı Yörüks living in Gedikli Village, Isparta is chosen as the field of the study focused on throat playing practice named as dova or dova çalmak by the members of the community. In the study, the practice of throat playing is analyzed with respect to its musical and technical characteristics as well as its interaction with nomadic life and Yörük social life based on the date gathered from the field. The field chosen is a field where the researcher's family is coming from, so the position of the researcher in the field and the study is another aspect of the study. The purpose of the study is to search the social and musical characteristics of the practice of throat playing while considering the effects of the interaction between the researcher and the field.