Abstract:

Ashik Reyhani is one of the prominent ashiks of the 20th Century, who helped in the successful maintenance of the tradition of ashiks and who achieved outstanding success in contest and performances held both in Turkey and abroad. Obtaining information on the musical identity of Ashik Reyhani, who had a past full of success stories, by means of conducting multi-dimensional content analysis on the his compositions constitutes the primary purpose of the present study. In line with this purpose a total of 47 compositions listened from records and put into notation by the researcher were examined, each of them were analyzed in terms of usul, meter and the range of pitches used, and 13 of them, which were determined to have a range of 7 or more pitches, were further subjected to maqamic analysis. During the maqam analysis, not only the maqam scale of each composition was determined, but further emphasize was also placed on the movement characteristics and dominant pitch of each composition. In order to establish the theoretical part of the study, the related literature was reviewed as well as the analyses conducted on the records of the Ashik. In consequence of the conducted research detailed information on Ashik Reyhani's life, his art and works were obtained, which are briefly mentioned in the study. In data collection process, "scanning technique" among descriptive research methods was employed and the analysis of the collected data was made through the technique of content analysis. Findings were presented in tables, with the interpretation of which the conclusions were made. The results of the maqam analysis are considered to be important particularly because they draw attention to the similarities between Classical Turkish Music and Turkish Folk Music, rather than pointing out the differences.

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