Lives hidden in folk songs: Women's folk songs

Abstract

Folk songs, which cover the life styles, traditions, customs, experiences and stories, beliefs and cultural traces of the society as the voice of the people, are among the data sources containing many sociological and cultural elements. The analysis of folk songs as a data source not only conveys information about the period in which the individual lives, but also includes her feelings and thoughts. The aim of this study is to examine the past of rural women, their roles and coverage areas in the socio-cultural structure of the period in which they live, how they live, how they perceive, interpret and how they are affected by these structures, and to examine their inner worlds through folk songs, which are the products of oral folk literature. Folk songs, one of the ways of self-expression, which cover an important part of the folk culture, are sung by women and take place as "women’s ballads" in the literature, are important documents in order to understand the roles assumed by Anatolian women in their lifetime. Of course, women in different communities formed by the cultural texture and who have different class, racial and sexual orientations have quite different living conditions. The documents examined in the study are the scrutiny of the folk songs in order to catch the clues that reflect the reality of being a woman in the countryside, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, to the folk songs, not of a certain teritory. According to the result of the folk song lines analyzed for this purpose, unfortunately, women living in rural areas who are not considered as social actors do not have the right to speak even in the most basic dimensions such as maintaining their lives, establishing a family, and having children due to the patriarchal family structure.