Music of Turkey

The roots of traditional music in Turkey span across centuries to a time when the Seljuk Turks migrated to Anatolia and Persia in the 11th century and contains elements of both Turkic and pre-Turkic influences. Much of its modern popular music can trace its roots to the emergence in the early 1930s drive for Westernization. Âşık, atışma, singing culture, wedding dance continued way of having fun with family and friends as before. Due to industry music and music in daily life aren't same. Turkish people including new generations have nostalgia music culture.

With the assimilation of immigrants from various regions the diversity of musical genres and musical instrumentation also expanded. Turkey has also seen documented folk music and recorded popular music produced in the ethnic styles of Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Polish, Azeri and Jewish communities, among others.

Many Turkish cities and towns have vibrant local music scenes which, in turn, support a number of regional musical styles. Until the 1960s, Turkish music scene was dominated by two genres, Turkish classical music and Turkish folk music with some staple figures like Aşık Veysel, Emel Sayın, Zeki Müren, Şevval Sam, Bülent Ersoy. The 70s came with Anatolian rock and groove music based pop music, iterated by the likes of Cem Karaca and Barış Manço. However, western-style pop music lost popularity to arabesque in the late 1980s, with even its greatest proponents, Ajda Pekkan and Sezen Aksu, falling in status. It became popular again by the beginning of the 1990s, as a result of an opening economy and society. With the support of Aksu, the resurging popularity of pop music gave rise to several international Turkish pop stars such as Tarkan and Sertab Erener. The late 1990s also saw an emergence of underground music producing alternative rock, electronica, hip-hop, rap and dance music in opposition, leaded by the figures such as Şebnem Ferah, Mercan Dede and Ceza, to the mainstream corporate pop and arabesque genres, which many believe have become too commercial.

The 2010s gave rise to indie music groups which were collectively named as "Üçüncü Yeniler" (Third New). With poetic, witty or emotional lyrics, groups' names are deliberately meaningless or employs figure of speech such as in the case of Nükleer Başlıklı Kız (a pun to Turkish translation of the Red Riding Hood). Also, The nostalgia of the 80s and 90s pawed the way for artists like Gaye Su Akyol and Altın Gün to fuze groove vibes into modern music. The 2020s brought in electronic dance music and drill music into mainstream, where they mostly top the charts.