As Turkey's most cosmopolitan city, Istanbul has long been an ever-changing, ever-expanding juncture for different music cultures. But among these, rebetiko constitutes a unique music scene, offering its adherents a substantial, multicultural yet tradition-driven and somewhat "alternative" experience. This ethnographic study of Istanbul's rebetiko scene offers a testimony of the city's re-emerging rebetiko music culture and examines the phenomenon from both anthropological and sociological viewpoints. It addresses the questions of rebetiko's end-of-the-millennium revival in Istanbul after several years of relative silence and of the motivations and artistic attitudes of rebetiko musicians, as well as an analysis of the socio-musical behaviors of rebetiko listeners. In this work the author invites you on a journey of exploration through different music venues on both sides of the Bosphorus, and seeks to answer these questions and others in an attempt to discover the contemporary meanings and representations of rebetiko music in Istanbul.
