INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC (KÜĞ) OF THE TURKIC WORLD

Turkic folk and traditional musics consist of a huge variety of regional genres spread over a vast geographical area. Turkic music cultures as defined in this paper comprise the instrumental musical traditions (küğ) in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. In addition to the instrumental musics of the six principal republics, the musical instruments of some other Turkic peoples living in Afghanistan, China, Iran, Kosova, and Russia are also discussed. A polysemic term, ‘küğ,' is used by the Turkic speaking peoples throughout Asia with such meanings as ‘instrumental music,' vocal music,' ‘tune,' ‘meter,' ‘epic singing,' ‘composing music,' etc. In musicological literature of the Turkic world works on the küğ genre abound. Both Kazakh and Kyrgyz traditional music use the term küğ to refer to instrumental pieces commonly performed by a soloist and often contained improvised sections. Traditional musical instruments discussed in the article are aerophones (balaban, boru, çifte, çifte düdük, çöğür, dilli tüydük, kaval, kuray, koşma, koşnay, mey, ney, sıbızgı, şur, tulum, tüydük, zurna); chordophones (bağlama, dombıra, dutar, ıklığ, igil, ııh, ikili, kanun, kemençe, kıyak, kobız, komuz, saz); idiophones (ağız komuzu, ağız tamburası, çeng, çeng kobuz, çevgan, demir komuz, kobız, komus); memranophones (daf, daira, davul, kös, nakkare, tablak); and electrophones (synthesizer, amplified and electronic instruments).