Representation of Turkish pop-vocal art in the artistic context of postmodernity

Abstract

The artistic and stylistic specificity of Turkish pop music, an important component of which is vocal performance practice, is determined by the organic combination of Western and Eastern musical traditions. A significant influence on its formation was exerted by the deep folkloric foundations of the musical art of the countries of the Middle and Near East, as well as by the traditions of Islamic culture and religion, which have affected the character of Turkish vocal art and a number of its specific musical and semantic features, such as meditativeness, narrativity, the predominance of a recitative type of musical speech, and the ornamentation of melodic lines. In the formation of the Turkish vocal performance tradition in general and in the pop sphere in particular, an important role is played by the specific manner of performance in which, for many centuries, duas and surahs from the Qur’an—the sacred book of Muslims—have been recited.