Ruzba: Alevi İnanç Sistemi İçerisinde Bir Halk Çalgısının Kültürel Temsili

The stringed instruments used in Alevi music are not only instruments of sound production, but also carriers of collective memory, aesthetic expression and cultural identity. In this study, I examine how cultural and religious belonging is constructed through music within Alevi communities in Turkey, using the example of the ruzba, a stringed folk instrument. Throughout my research, I have adopted Stuart Hall's approach that defines identity as a discourse that is constantly reconstructed within historical contexts and Kathryn Woodward's view that identity is a socially constructed process through systems of representation as a theoretical foundation. In line with this theoretical framework, I conducted a long-term ethnographic fieldwork covering the provinces of Kahramanmaraş, Malatya and Kayseri between 2014 and 2024. I conducted in-depth interviews and participant observations with six informants belonging to the Sinemilli Ocak. In the course of my research, I found that performers such as İsmail Bakır and Apdullah Bakır, who are in the position of dede, use the ruzba to perform religious repertoire in cem rituals; on the other hand, Ahmet Bulut, Ahmet Tekdemir and Halil Akyol, who are in the status of talip, use the instrument in a way to serve daily identity narratives with secular melodies. These findings revealed that the ruzba is not a fixed identity carrier; on the contrary, it gains meaning according to the social and religious position of the performer. The fact that the ruzba carries different representations in both religious and secular contexts positions it as a multi-layered means of identity expression. I also critically evaluated stylized folk music performers' placement of themselves in the central position by making Alevi informants invisible within the framework of Walter Mignolo's concept of “epistemic colonialism”. In conclusion, I argue that the ruzba plays an active role in the construction of Alevi identity at aesthetic, religious and sociocultural levels and stands out as a functional tool in the representation of this identity at both individual and collective levels.