Turkey and copyleft music production: Reflections on bandista

Abstract

This article focuses on copyleft music production in Turkey through a case study on Bandista, a music collective with strong oppositional stance formed in 2006 in Istanbul. Describing its musical performances as "situationist experiment of rage and rapture" Bandista became immensely popular in the Turkish political music scenery after releasing its debut album De te fabula narratur in 2009 under the copyleft scheme. The article tries to look at the copyleft with the notion of 'music as performance' in mind, and argues that copyleft politics are essential, especially for new music bands to form themselves as independent actors within the music scene.