Abstract:

The change of cultural practices after immigration forms an important research subject on immigrant communities. How do the homeland related cultural practices of an immigrant community endure as an indicator of identity? Or how do these practices change while maintaining their homeland related structures? Music, an important and distinctive symbolic practice in culture, is an indicator of identity and distinctness for immigrant communities. Ethnomusicology, on the other hand, seeks the answer of the question: how does music vary unlike or sometimes parallel to other cultural practices? The Macedonian immigrants, who started to live in Turkey after the immigrations from Macedonia to Turkey, use music as an indicator of their identity just like other cultural practices related to their homeland. In this paper, the role of music over the image of a common Macedonian immigrant society will be discussed, while trying to understand how the Macedonian immigrant community in Izmir carries on their musical practices.

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