Music, City and Social Change: A Study of Musical Preferences in a Former Suburb of Istanbul

The main objective of this article is to analyze the link between the expansion of the city and the variety of taste in music with regards to the patterns of suburbanization, modernization and cultural plurality in Turkey. This study thus investigates the impact of social change on musical preferences within the context of Atasehir, a rapidly growing former suburb of Istanbul. With a particular focus on musical preferences, it examines the predictors of taste including socio-economic and cultural background variables. In our models, by employing quantitative methods, we analyze the patterns of preference for twelve different musical genres grouped under popular, traditional and sophisticated styles. The results of our analyses reveal a high level of interest in both pop music and Turkish folk music among other genres. We thus suggest that global and local music genres coexist though a hybridization of taste at both the lower and upper end of social strata fuelled by factors such as rapid urbanization, migration and globalization. Regarding the multicultural dispositions of Istanbul, its former suburban regions display highly fragmented taste cultures where residents from different backgrounds allow a cultural conjunction in the suburban milieu.