Chains, Networks, and Followings: Researching Processes of Connection through Musical Labor of Transnational Türkiye

In the musical tradition today regarded as “Turkish classical music,” lineages of master-apprentice relationship (meşk) have long been referred to as “chains” (silsile), referring to the accumulated generations of transmission presumed to establish master musicians’ valid claim as culture-bearers and imagined to be audible in their performances. While the immersive oral transmission method of meşk was formerly the dominant mode of musical instruction in the Ottoman Empire, sweeping social reforms, new recording and broadcast technologies, and political ideologies in the nascent Turkish Republic radically transformed and even eliminated predominant sites and modes of musical transmission via meşk. The result was the rise of musical “professionalization” as well as the state’s outsized role in mediating the institutions and routes for attaining such “professional” status. In contemporary Türkiye and its diasporic communities, the distinction between “amateur” and “professional” is strongly articulated, particularly in reference one’s position vis a vis networks of state institutions and affiliated actors. In this day and age, social media platforms add a virtual dimension to the establishing one’s status and belonging within such networks, with significant “real-world” implications for achieving success in the music industry, signaling and sensing connection, and negotiating transnational boundaries.

In this workshop, Audrey Wozniak will present a series of case studies drawn from over 10 years of conducting research in Türkiye and its diaspora, with the goal of sparking debate on the implications of establishing relationship and connection via new mediations of musical transmission (with particular consideration of issues of gender, creativity, copyright, etc.) She also aims to moderate discussion about the value and ethics of approaching social media and virtual platforms as ethnographic “sites.” This workshop will also introduce examples of transnational musical labor to invite discussion about how the virtual dimension contributes to and complicates imaginations of “home” across geopolitical boundaries.