Comparative analysis of folk songs common for Turkish and Azerbaijan cultures

ABSTRACT In this research our folk music existing throughout the history and important for its traditional peculiarities, especially some songs used in certain parts of Anatolia, and thus the interaction of two close cultures (Turkey-Azerbaijan) is investigated. Reflecting common elements of Turkish culture and having a cognate language Azerbaijan stands out among the Near-Eastern nations. Owing to the favourable conditions created by scientific and theoretical founders of Azerbaijan Folk Music these songs are widely used in our country. The main purpose of this research is to study the usage of common folk songs in Turkish-Azerbaijan culture to define 5 folk songs most frequently used by vocational musical educational institutions and to make comparative analysis of their melodical structure, words, form, sound range and rhytmical structure. An attempt was made to decide to what extent common folk songs are involved in our modern musical educational which although developing in a different direction, uses the heritage of Turkish-Azerbaijan folk music culture. The experimental group of the research consists of 56 teachers and 205 fourth grade students of 7 musical educational institutions chosen at random. The corresponding persons filled in a questionnaire and after statistical analysis the findings were arranged in a table. The experimental results show that author composition in Azerbaijan are known as anonymous in Turkey and used as folk songs. We believe that the quality folk musical compositions presented in the research in new transcription to be widely used in choir, orchestra and individual instrument/ vocal lessons by students of musical educational institutions will help in developing their taste for music.