I typically attend two persuasions of concert for my research on Turkish classical music choirs (korolar), ensembles ubiquitous in Turkey’s urban centers and diasporic populations abroad. Both are typically staged in a concert hall and feature a choir of male and female singers accompanied by instrumentalists usually led by a conductor.
One, however, is highly restrained in its precise musical delivery as well as the performers’ engagement with their equally subdued audience, features older and more complex repertoire (often with Ottoman Turkish lyrics unintelligible to the layperson listener) as listed in the program, runs somewhere between 60 to 90 minutes, and is rather poorly attended. The musicians are likely rather underwhelmed, if not altogether disillusioned, by the entire production.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euG865FsGTk
The other concert is a boisterous affair both on stage and in the audience: the choir leader (şef) calls out to the fully packed crowd of family, friends, and known cultural and bureaucratic figures, who frequently clap and sing along to a repertoire often drawn from the “lighter” Turkish art music canon (later works of Turkish classical music with simpler melodies and modern Turkish lyrics, songs famous from the Yeşilçam golden age of Turkish cinema, ubiquitous folk songs, etc.). Despite the relatively lower quality of the performance (particularly the singing), enthusiasm exudes from the singers. The audience, too, sings along to well-known works and claps in unison with complex rhythms that could seem confounding to a listener more accustomed to the evenly divided beats of Mozart, the Beatles, or Dua Lipa. Among the musicians in this concert, one may find a keyboardist and electric bass player, unthinkable additions to the former type of concert. This latter type of concert will often last for three to four hours, an already extensive program made longer by many call-outs to esteemed attendees in the audience and special guests invited to the stage to sing works off the program.
The other concert is a boisterous affair both on stage and in the audience: the choir leader (şef) calls out to the fully packed crowd of family, friends, and known cultural and bureaucratic figures, who frequently clap and sing along to a repertoire often drawn from the “lighter” Turkish art music canon (later works of Turkish classical music with simpler melodies and modern Turkish lyrics, songs famous from the Yeşilçam golden age of Turkish cinema, ubiquitous folk songs, etc.). Despite the relatively lower quality of the performance (particularly the singing), enthusiasm exudes from the singers. The audience, too, sings along to well-known works and claps in unison with complex rhythms that could seem confounding to a listener more accustomed to the evenly divided beats of Mozart, the Beatles, or Dua Lipa. Among the musicians in this concert, one may find a keyboardist and electric bass player, unthinkable additions to the former type of concert. This latter type of concert will often last for three to four hours, an already extensive program made longer by many call-outs to esteemed attendees in the audience and special guests invited to the stage to sing works off the program.
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P1BdX1Plo8
What is the fundamental difference between these two Turkish classical music choir performances? The former is considered profesyonel (“professional”) — an ensemble dedicated to promoting Turkish musical culture under the auspices of a state ministry. These ensembles, such as the Presidential Classical Turkish Music Choir, Istanbul Historical Turkish Music Ensemble, and Izmir State Classical Turkish Music Choir, are comprised of tenured musicians who completed conservatory education, entered via rigorous examination (and/or torpil, backroom connections), and are assured lifetime employment, as well as a pension. The latter is an amatör (“amateur”) choir, likely led by a profesyonel musician (often employed by one of the aforementioned state ensembles) but with a choir made up of members currently working in or retired from non-musical occupations. Although the amateur choir may receive some external funding from municipalities, private foundations, and corporations, its members pay a fee that covers the cost of hiring rehearsal and performance space, the şef, and the “professional” instrumentalists who join the choir for concerts. A significant contingent (and often the majority) of amateur choir members tends to be female, middle-aged or older, housewives or retirees. Although some may have had some musical education when they were younger and long enjoyed Turkish classical and art music, for many it is the first time they are directly engaging in a musical ensemble, particularly one dedicated to this repertoire. Many cannot read music and are not familiar with the makams (musical modes) and usuls (rhythmic cycles) that form the backbone of the Turkish musical theory system underpinning the works they sing. Amateur choir rehearsals and concerts are as much opportunities for socializing as they are for musical edification and performance, with members often describing their choirs as “families” and their participation as “therapy.”
My research interest emerged from my experiences working with musicians employed by state ensembles, as well as through observing, rehearsing, and performing with dozens of amateur choirs in Turkey and its diaspora since 2015. It also came from my own peculiar positionality: I am a “professional” violinist with extensive training on my instrument in the Western classical tradition and simultaneously an “amateur,” as a relative newcomer to the vastly different world of Turkish music. As I have immersed myself in the Turkish classical music scene, particularly in Istanbul, through musical participant-observation, extensive interviews, and archival research, I have been struck by how the categories profesyonel and amatör are instrumentalized (no pun intended) by musicians to enforce a hierarchy that arbitrates which musicians have enough status to transmit a certain form of national culture. That musicians employed in state ensembles often position themselves at the top of this hierarchy through asserting their roles within the state apparatus validates their own authority. At the same time, many “state” musicians find themselves uninspired and artistically limited by the tight bureaucratic control that same connection to the state ensembles entails. To describe someone (or oneself) as an amateur is disempowering, demeaning the quality of their performance capabilities, and weakening their claim as a culture bearer. In many ways, “amateur” is deployed as a terminal category: musicians-in-training who follow the currently prescribed pathways to state ensemble membership of conservatory or conservatory-equivalent education are unlikely to be deemed amateurs, but musicians who primarily pursue other vocations and play for leisure (for instance, the full-time computer engineer who has played the instrument ud for a few years in a neighborhood choir) will almost certainly never progress to be accepted to professional status. Musicians who play Turkish classical music and work in the commercial music industry but are not employed by state ensembles often inhabit a contested space: they may not be considered “amateur,” as music is their full-time occupation, but they are also frequently rejected as “professional” by state-employed musicians, who may look down on them due to factors such as a lack of formal training, performance of lower-status musical genres (pop and arabesque, for example) and in lower-status venues (bars and nightclubs), and identification with Romani ethnic identity, among others.
I have been fascinated to discover that the concept of amateurism as a pejorative is a relatively recent phenomenon, and one that represents a complete transformation of a term (amatör) that in the late 19th century more resembled its original French cognate (amateur, “lover of”) in meaning: meraklı, hevesli (aficionado, enthusiast). Similarly, the idea of professionalism and professionalization appears to have emerged in the Turkish language a little over a century ago; even now, when I ask musicians in the Turkish classical music community what makes a profesyonel, they tend to assert that a professional musician is one whose primary occupation and source of income is music. Turkish speakers position profesyonel and amatör as diametric opposites. However, I have found that, conceptually, music did not exist as a sole “profession” in the same ways that the marker “professional” implies today. Although they are today remembered for their musical legacies, many of the legendary musicians and composers of the Ottoman Empire had primary occupations that sustained their livelihoods, as evidenced by their addended monikers: Hammamizade İsmail Dede Efendi (proprietor of a hamam, a public bath, as well as a dede, a religious figure, in the Mevlevihane), Şekerci Cemil Bey (şekerci, candy store owner), Basmacı Abdi Efendi (basmacı, worked at a printing press and later as a muezzin), and Balıkçı Hafız Mehmed Efendi (balıkçı, fish vendor). One may consider musicians working in the Ottoman Court an exception; even then, their musical duties were often accompanied by non-musical obligations. Well after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, renowned composers and performers of Turkish classical music continued to pursue primary professions in fields such as medicine and law, such as Dr. Nevzat Atlığ (radiologist and founder of the Presidential Classical Turkish Music Choir), Dr. Alaeddin Yavaşca (gynecologist and co-founder of Turkey’s first state-affiliated conservatory of Turkish music), and Ercüment Berker (lawyer and co-founder of the aforementioned state-affiliated Turkish music conservatory). Until the late 1970s, arguably, to pursue music as a primary occupation usually condemned a musician to the lower-status and hardly desirable title of çalgıcı, a category that included itinerant wedding band musicians and nightclub performers. Again, the term çalgıcı often carries disparaging associations with the Romani ethnic group. One of my musical mentors, who himself is a renowned ud virtuoso and retired member of a state-affiliated Turkish classical music choir, recalled in the 1960s his mother beseeching him, “Çingeneleşme, oğlum” (“Don’t become a gypsy, my son”), and his wife walking paces behind him to avoid the shame of affiliation with a çalgıcı. In short, if one defines profesyonel as one who earns their livelihood through music, it seems that a significant number of the historical figures of Turkish classical music do not fit the bill — they may even more closely resemble amateurs in the original sense of the term.
Nonetheless, starting from the early 20th century, the rise of the recording industry, radio, and state-sponsored musical ensembles created new routes to musical professionalism. In my research, I explore how state sponsorship of Turkish classical music choirs empowered a new class of “professional” musician with economic power and cultural influence; at the same time, I assert that the state’s role in creating such professional pathways has been and continues to be part of a broader nation-building project, one that seeks to curate and consolidate state control over “national culture,” as well as who is allowed to transmit it. I seek to understand why and how musicians animate an amateur-professional dichotomy through situating the practices of Turkish classical music choirs in the context of broader sociopolitical structures and tensions. In this vein, I hope to bring to the fore modes of engagement that elude singular categorization as either amateur or professional; I also explore how the category of “amateur” invokes and reinscribes gender dynamics that frequently inhibit women’s full participation as musical professionals. Although “professional” musicians often position themselves in contrast to “amateurs” to assert their authority and dismiss other musicians, I aim to demonstrate how amateur spaces can be empowering, celebratory, and therapeutic for their participants, particularly for women. Going forward, I hope to demonstrate how choirs in Turkey and its diaspora can generate alternative readings of amateurism, offering models for creating community as well as sites of political imagination.