There are many types of Turkish music that have been developing for thousands of years; it has varied from folk music to classical and religious music in addition to Ottoman enthusiastic music and Western music and recently some types of music that were not known in Turkey have appeared, such as Rock and jazz.
Below are the main 4 types of Turkish Music.
1-Turkish Folk Music
Turkish folk music has been transmitted through the generations with the passage of ages, as the Turkish state radio, which began operating in 1937, played a prominent role in reviving folk music in Turkey, and the spread of Turkish folk music increased in the mid-eighteenth century and early nineteenth century.
Turkish folk music is among the types of music most listened to by Turks in recent years. In ancient times, during the reign of Sultan Mahmud I and Selim III, these rulers played national instruments in military parades.
There are many musical instruments that are used to play popular Turkish music, including the violin, flute, darbuka, drum, tambourine, saz, oud and many other musical instruments.
Turkish folk music that combines the cultural values of civilizations that lived in Anatolia and the Ottoman territories.
2-Turkish Classical Music
Classical Turkish music is divided into two main branches, which are religious and non-religious music, where religious music consists of mosque music that depends on the human voice only, and tikya music in which various musical instruments are used.
As for non-religious music, it is divided into two types, namely vocal music and played music. And vocal music is more prevalent than played music.
Classical music is considered maqamat music, and many musical instruments such as the nay, rababa, kamancha and oud are played in this music. Rauf Yekta, Saad Eddin Ariel, Sobhi Azji, Munir Nur al-Din Selcuk, Safia Ayla, Saad al-Din Kaynak and Salah al-Din Pinar are among the foremost developers of Turkish classical music.
3-Turkish Rock and Jazz
Rock, pop and jazz music spread all over the world in the 1960s, and rock and jazz music consists of mixing Western music with Turkish folk music.
This music was very popular and the bands performing this type of music were widely accepted by the public, as the sales of local and foreign tapes and discs reached more than 100 million numbers.
The tapes and discs of the most popular pop singers such as Paresh Mango, Jim Karaja, Arkin Koray, Sirtap Aranar, Mazhar Group Fuad Ozkan, Chebnam Farah, Tioman and Sardar Ortag are acquired.
4-Turkish Sufi Music
This music is characterized as religious music of the first degree, and the Sufi orders in general were primarily responsible for the emergence of this type of music in the past and its survival until now in Turkey.
The Mawlawi Sufi order founded by the well-known Sufi, Jalal al-Din al-Rumi in (1203 – 1273) is the way. Saad Eddin Haber (1899-1980) is considered one of the most prominent Turkish musicians in Mevlevi music, the most prominent in this artistic field.
Sufi music appeared in the city of Konya by the whirling dervishes who used to chant a lot of praise poems about the honorable Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, and his pure companions and family, as well as praise for the great Sufi men, and this was in the corners of the method that spread in cities South and Central Anatolia, such as Konya, Kayseri, Sivas, and Kusrai.