Theorizing creativity in İstanbul's local electronic music scenes

Abstract

Electronic music cultures are cultural phenomenon experienced since the 1990s in fluid communal forms around the world. The concept of "scene" cluster these fluid communal forms in a comprehensive and researchable way. This master thesis aims to theorize the concept of creativity within Istanbul's local electronic music scenes, focusing on bass, experimental, queer, and techno scenes. The theorization of creativity provides a framework to analyze the scenes and its multiple facets, alongside the archival attempt formed in this thesis to record the participants of these living urban cultures in the scope of Istanbul. The study combines etic (outsider) and emic (insider) perspectives that have formed over the long-term participation of the researcher in the field from 2014 to 2024. Via nourishing from previous field experiences that consisted of participant observation, production analysis, semi-directed interviews with local producers, and tracking of new releases and events, this study employed multiple methods to delve into the concept of creativity in its aspects. The ethnomusicological framework split into two to examine Istanbul's local electronic music scenes in its sociocultural and musical dimensions. The sociocultural dimension provides a chronological overview of Istanbul's musical nightlife, policies and regulations that organize the daily flows based on a previous fieldwork focused on Istanbul's music business professionals, and detailed examinations of key participants, venues, and scenes of Istanbul's local electronic music circuit based on long-term participance in the field. The musical dimension explores the theorizing of creativity in different aspects based on instances and representative cases from Istanbul's local electronic music scenes. The study explores creativity through social interaction and urban dynamics while categorizing musical practices into music technologies, production, and performance. Music technologies are foundational for production and performance, with affordability being a critical indicator. Limited access to these technologies fosters creative and communal efforts that can be theorized through affiliations of the participants with collaboration/networking, crack culture, and open-access culture. For theorizing music production, the research focused on how creativity is linked with the place via a locality's sonic representations and emotional landscapes. Istanbul's musicians reflect their environment through sonic elements like field recordings, culturally specific sounds, and popular culture references. Producers create complex emotional landscapes with advanced production techniques, such as distortion and polyrhythmic structures, that form a sense of place. Istanbul's social and economic conditions influence performance practices. The decreasing number of venues has led to creative adaptations, including having events at non-licensed spaces, using events/venues between scenes, and transforming performance types. These adaptations help sustain local scenes and foster continuous evolution. This comprehensive approach provided an ethnomusicological framework for understanding creativity in Istanbul's electronic music scenes. This research aims to serve as a primary study for future work on Istanbul's electronic music ecosystem.