An examination of Walter Zev Feldman’s studies on Ottoman-Turkish music in terms of research practice, performance, and ınternational circulation

Abstract

This study examines how the scholarly and musical expertise developed through Prof. Walter Zev Feldman’s research and performance practice in Ottoman-Turkish music has been translated into concert performances, recordings, archival projects, publications, and educational activities through international collaborations. The central argument of the study is that Feldman’s work on Ottoman-Turkish music cannot be explained through a unidirectional model of transmission from Türkiye to the United States. Rather, his work is understood as a multifaceted process that developed through the reciprocal relationship between his intellectual orientation, shaped by his family roots, personal memory, and scholarly curiosity and grounded in the comparative study of different musical cultures, and the performance-based transmission tradition of Ottoman-Turkish music. Drawing on a historical documentary approach, the study examines Feldman’s published works and personal narratives alongside CD liner notes, concert programs, newspaper articles, institutional announcements, and the professional chronology published on his personal website. The historiographical approach evident in Feldman’s historical ethnomusicological research is examined through the concept of “locally generated modernity,” while his projects aimed at reconstructing historical repertoires from documentary sources and bringing them into performance are analyzed through the concept of “bi-musicality,” developed within American ethnomusicology. The findings indicate that the meşk (traditional master–apprentice musical instruction) and performance activities Feldman undertook with musicians such as Fatih Salgar, Hurşit Ungay, and Necdet Yaşar during his research visits to Türkiye beginning in 1969 played a decisive role in shaping his experience of performing across multiple musical cultures. This experience provides insight into Feldman’s theoretical and methodological orientations in historical ethnomusicology. Throughout his musical journey from the Bronx to the Bosphorus, the inward-looking and metaphysically oriented aesthetics he encountered in Ottoman court and Sufi lodge musical traditions enabled him to establish a new relationship with his own musical past and to reassess that heritage.