TAVERN IN TURKEY IN THE 1980'S AS A POPULAR PLACE

Abstract

The 1980s is a distinct era in terms of cultural, political, and socio-economic phenomena. Musical genres, which were influenced by the political, social, and cultural ideals of the time, also exhibited mixed compositions depending on the listeners. In this context, considering the dominant musical genres of the age and their performers as well as analyzing newspaper archives of the concerned period, we can see that many people have shown an interest in taverns and arabesque music during that time. Although taverns and arabesque music were discussed jointly in the newspapers, it is possible to track certain differences. Apart from musical substructures and lyrical styles, the most obvious differences between arabesque music and tavern can be found in terms of the singers, the places where performances are revealed, and the audiences/listeners. In this sense, taverns occupy a distinct role in terms of their popular position in that era and the audiences who patronized such places. In this paper, we consider taverns as a sociological research object and analyze its distinctive features in the 1980s. We achieve this by examining the listeners' leading role in the ascension of taverns as a popular musical genre. In this aspect, the socio-cultural climate, which determines the attendance of tavern audiences as a differentiating and distinguishing practice, is also discussed in this paper.