LEE- Müzikoloji ve Müzik Teorisi Lisansüstü Programı

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http://hdl.handle.net/11527/19413

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Konu "blues" ile LEE- Müzikoloji ve Müzik Teorisi Lisansüstü Programı'a göz atma
  • Öge
    Blues as musical pidgin-reflections from Türkiye
    (Graduate School, 2025-05-21) Grill, Nikolaus ; Karahasanoğlu, Songül ; 414142007 ; Musicology and Music Theory
    The present thesis is an attempt at a definition of blues from the perspective of the field of blues in Türkiye. Even in its original U.S.-American manifestations blues is a superficially highly diverse style. This diversity has posed a problem to researchers on the subject - musicologists and music theorists alike - as conclusions drawn from superficial musical material will necessarily be limited to only part of the repertoire termed blues in the common practice of music cataloguing and the self-understanding of musicians. A comprehensive definition of blues, accounting for all of its possible substyles, has in the author's eyes hitherto not been established. The present thesis aims at closing this striking knowledge gap and providing a definition that will withstand comparison to the whole of the blues style. As a post 1990s non-U.S.-American field, the Turkish blues field provides insights into processes that are in the original U.S.-American blues field shrouded in the obscurity of history. As such, the Turkish field provides valuable insights into processes of blues acquisition, creation and continuation within an observable timeframe. The present thesis uses a two-step approach to elaborate a definition of blues. In the first step, a metaphysical definition of blues is proposed. This metaphysical definition is derived from a musical analysis of selected works of the pre-war and early post-war U.S.-American blues repertoire, based on a modified form of Schenkerian analysis and simple tonal analysis. As a conclusion of the first step, blues is defined as a musical pidgin, drawing on principles of avoidance of certain tonal musical traits in blues. The methods of avoidance show great similarities to the treatment of lexifier languages in pidgin languages. In the second step, the metaphysical definition of blues, is put to test against the reality of the Turkish blues field. The highly personalized processes of blues acquisition, creation and continuation in the Turkish field suggest a deconstructive rather than a metaphysical process to be at hand in the Turkish field. It soon comes to be understood that this is also valid in the case of original U.S-American blues. The thesis yet shows that pidgin languages are themselves means of the deconstruction of their respective lexifier languages, and as such blues is defined as a deconstructive pidgin language, a definition that holds up in its original U.S.-American and Turkish manifestations respectively. The notion of blues as a style is further equated with the concept of the book in Western philosophy, with all the faults that have been uncovered by a deconstructive reading of the concept. As such, blues becomes a method of deconstruction that plays out in a field roughly equated to the philosophical concept of the book, an in itself incomplete and never fully defined concept. The blues style is therefore defined as the fluid area deconstructive blues processes play out in, an area that can never be fully contained, thus providing an explanation for the high superficial diversity of the constituents of the style. The thesis is concluded with and investigation of ideological positions and the world-views of musicians in the Turkish blues field, showing that the notion of blues as a deconstructive pidgin language transcends the realms of pure music theory into the realms of world-view and ideology.