The Turkish tradition of music and movement therapy

According to experts who study music, music existed even before speech. The abstract concepts, memory, symbols, associations, and analogical connections necessary for speech have developed and matured alongside humanity. In every particle of nature, there is a harmony of rhythm and melody that continues within a great order and harmony. In the perfection of harmony and rhythm found in birdsong, as well as in the amplified sounds of the movements of electrons, atoms, and galaxies and the circulation of fluids within our bodies, we can observe music’s connection and relationship with the realm of existence.

The global understanding of the history of music and music therapy leads us to collaborate with disciplines such as anthropology, history, ethnotherapy, ethnomedicine, psychology, pedagogy, sociology, spirituality, and parapsychology.

To approach this topic from a historical perspective, we need to go back many years:

The figures of dancing people found at the Gobustan Rock Art Site in Azerbaijan reveal the reality of music and movement dating back 12,000 to 14,000 years. The Mingyar rock paintings, located on the banks of the Mülçe River near the Çerçen district of the Uyghur Turk city of Hotan, date back 6,000 to 8,000 years.

When viewed through the lens of Proto-Turkic culture, the historical and cultural heritage that takes us back to very ancient times is significant, particularly the information documented by the German scholar Dr. Wolfram Eberhard, which demonstrates the influence of Turkic culture on Chinese culture in the 3rd millennium B.C.E.; music, dance, ceramics, theater, animal training, and other such fields. According to data published in the Lavinniac music encyclopedia by French researcher Maurice Curan, based on Chinese sources, ancient Turkic musical instruments and the pentatonic (five-note) style of music performance had a profound influence on Chinese culture. Researchers such as Eduard Chavannes, Bela Bartok, and Robert Lach, along with the great Turkish ethnomusicologists Mahmut Ragıp Gazimihal, Ahmet Adnan Saygun, and Ferruh Arsunar, have conducted studies on this subject documenting the connection between Turkic musical culture and Central Asia–Anatolia, as well as its influence on Chinese culture. According to these studies, the provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu were important centers of Proto-Turkic culture. The Hakas and Tuva cultures, as well as the Altai Turkic culture, connect us to the period around 3000 B.C. At the beginning of the 20th century, Soviet researchers Rudenko and Griaznov discovered an instrument called the “Çeng” buried under the ice in the Pazırık Valley in the Altai Mountains. Rudenko traces the history of the Proto-Turkic culture to which this instrument belongs back 3,700 years.