Melihat Gülses

Rumeli türküleri are the Turkish-language folk songs of Rumelia (the Balkan lands of the former Ottoman Empire), carried and shaped by Turkish, Muslim, and multiethnic communities in today’s Greece (Western Thrace), North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia and beyond. They fuse Ottoman/Turkish makams with distinctly Balkan dance rhythms (notably 9/8 karsilama and 7/8 meters), and are commonly performed with G-clarinet, violin, accordion, bağlama/saz, oud, kanun, and lively hand percussion (darbuka, davul). Lyrically they span love, longing and migration (gurbet), weddings, and playful banter, often reflecting the bittersweet memory of displacement from the Balkans to modern Turkey in the 19th–20th centuries.

Türk Sanat Müziği (Turkish Art/Classical Music) is the urban, courtly art music tradition of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. It is built on the makam system (a finely nuanced modal practice with characteristic scales, microtonal intervals and prescribed melodic routes, or seyir) and the usûl system (cyclical rhythmic patterns ranging from simple 4/4 to very large, asymmetrical cycles). Typical instruments include tanbur (long‑necked lute), ud (oud), kanun (zither), ney (end‑blown reed flute), kemençe (spike fiddle), keman (violin), kudüm (small kettle drums) and various frame drums; voices are central and use ornate melisma and microtonal intonation. Core forms include instrumental peşrev and saz semâî, free‑rhythm improvisation (taksim), long vocal forms such as kâr and beste, and the popular şarkı (strophic song). Suites (fasil) modulate through related makams while maintaining a chosen usûl. Aesthetic values emphasize refined timbre, precise intonation (Arel–Ezgi–Uzdilek theory describes 24 unequal pitches per octave derived from small comma steps), graceful ornamentation, and expressive, often romantic or contemplative poetry.