TURKISH MUSIC HISTORY

The lack of good rock music and musical culture in Turkey can be counted by the number Turkish bands known all around the world.I believe no one can count even to 3 about this subject.Its not that there is no good music or good musicians in Turkey,its beacuse of the producers and their very small vision.In 1960,1970 and 1980 Turkish democracy had been cut with a very sharp knife of the military.The people who were elected those years to the government was not that good either.This was the main reason fort he delay of the start of rock music in this country.Although Turkey has the tradition and musical taste of both Europe and Anatolia,it became hard for people to play music,listen to the good bands all around the world.Those fascist regimes closed nearly all the doors for Turkish people to improve their cultures.There were a couple of good Turkish rock bands during the second half of the 1960s. Cem Karaca,Moğollar,Erkin Koray,3 Hürel,Baris Manco and Mavi Işıklar were some of them.Some of the lyrics of these bands songs had protested the bad things happening in the country especially the politics.The roots of their style was the traditional Anatolian music,so they called the music they played as “Anatolian Rock”.The crisis in Turkey in those years made these young groups to make this kind of music and they gained a lot of attention.The number of these bands increased a bit during the 1970s.Bunalimlar (a.k.a Grup Bunalim) was one of the bands of the 1970s that had some punk spirit,although they were known by very few people.The lack of substructure was a handicap for rock music in Turkey to improve itself paralel with world.It also improved in a very wrong way especially in the second half of the 1970s.1980s was a decade in the country where pirate vinyls and casettes entered the secene.Rock based and punk influenced music suddenly lost strength and left its place to the disco scene and kind of bands which imitated Abba etc very badly.These bands were only making arrangements on the known melodies,also some of them stole too much from this and that.Although the musiacal substructure in surf music has its roots in Turkish/Arab music and bands like The Ventures,Dick Dale had been very succesful by making the surf music, Turkish bands continued to gain popularity by imitating.There was no uniqueness in anything and no soul.Late 70s and 80s was the period,where people were introduced to Punk Rock,Mod,Ska,Retro,Funk,İn

die but nobody in Turkey were aware of this really.In 1968 TV broadcasting started in Turkey and until 1988-1989 there was only one channel.It was nearly impossible to follow the musical styles mentioned above and learn what they were about.1980 was the year that the worst militarist regime in the history of Turkey came to top.This took the less improved 20 years more back,those were very dark days.So many things changed in a very bad way and this went on until the late 80s.


GÖKHAN TUNÇİŞLER

PUNK GLOBE MAGAZINE / LOS ANGELES