This paper re-examines the musical narratives in Evliya Çelebi’s 17th-century Seyahatnâme (Book of Travels) to explore how the Ottoman traveler engaged not only in documenting musical practices but also in constructing theoretical frameworks and mytho-historical lineages. Recent scholarship by Jacob Olley (2023) focuses on Çelebi’s account of a courtly musical gathering under Murad IV (r. 1623-40) and emphasizes Çelebi’s role as an ethnographer: a “creator of social worlds through textual inscription.” This study shifts focus to sections of the Seyahatnâme that reveal Çelebi’s participation in transregional music-theoretical discourse. Specifically, the paper analyzes his invocation of Pythagoras as a form of intellectual mythmaking that bridges Hellenistic and Islamicate epistemologies. By foregrounding Çelebi’s narrative about Pythagoras’s invention of musical instruments, alongside his descriptions of Quranic recitation, this paper argues that the Seyahatnâme operates as a site of theory-building, blending legend, acoustical speculation, and spiritual hermeneutics. Drawing on methodologies from critical musicology and ethnomusicology, the analysis situates Çelebi’s work within broader debates about the role of travel writing in shaping musical knowledge. The paper engages with recent decolonial critiques of music historiography to challenge Eurocentric narratives that bifurcate “Western” and “non-Western” theoretical traditions. By illuminating Çelebi’s synthesis of Quranic chant practices with Greco-Roman theoretical tropes, this study contributes to ongoing reappraisals of early modern Ottoman thought and its entanglements with global music histories.

Yorgo Bacanos (1900–1977) was one of the most influential oud players of the twentie century, revolutionizing the instrument’s technique and shaping the modern Turkish oud style. As an ethnic Greek musician in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic, Bacanos’s virtuosity embodied the empire’s rich cosmopolitanism, where makam music was a shared tradition among Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and other communities. His artistry was not only a testament to personal brilliance but also an assertion of cultural resilience in an era when nationalism threatened the multiethnic fabric of musical life in Türkiye.

This paper provides a technical analysis of Bacanos’s oud technique, particularly his use of çarpma, a hammering-on effect that became a hallmark of the Turkish style. Unlike the Arabic oud tradition, which is heavily plectrum-based and often defined by tremol Bacanos’s playing emphasized left-hand ornamentation, creating a florid and rhythmical incisive sound. His approach to phrasing and articulation contributed to the Istanbul style’s distinctiveness, blending rapid chromatic runs, dynamic expressivity, and intricate embellishments.

Despite being a member of an ethnic minority, Bacanos became a central figure in Turkish music, influencing generations of oud players. His legacy underscores how makam music was a shared cultural language of the Ottoman world. His innovations ensured the preservation of diverse musical voices within Türkiye’s evolving national identity while solidifying the oud’s role as a bridge between past and present traditions.

Gazel has the most esteemed position In the vocal performance of classical Ottoman music, where the performer exhibits their knowledge of music and textual articulation, their virtuosic performance, and richness of musical and poetic repertoire they interpret. Gazel refers to vocal improvisation in Ottoman Turkish music as well as a poetic form of Ottoman classical Divan poetry, testifying to the intense relationship between poetry and music. The first recordings from the beginning of the twentieth century give us an insight in to the performance and the Ottoman aesthetic that continued to reverberate into the post-Ottoman period, although under different conditions.

Those conditions reflected the social and political changes in the Turkish Republic, and in particular, understanding of modernity as Europeanization when it came to cultural and musical production and performance. The most severe was certainly the official ban on gazel radio broadcast, but it was largely reflected in the way in which this musical performance and expertise was perpetuated and taught throughout the twentieth century.

This paper will focus on the importance of gazel as a classical form and its deep relationship with poetry, emphasizing the relevance of makam, meter, and rhythm. Further, it will consider gazel throughout the twentieth century to analyze the continuities and ruptures in its performance, teaching, and role in classical music. Finally, it will assess gazel’s most recent revival and its twentieth century trajectory as a living tradition, by analyzing the historical recordings, ethnography, and performance.

Discussion