Melancholic Modalities: Affect, Islam and Turkish Classical Musicians is the first and only truly ethnographic book on Turkish classical musicians in contemporary Turkey. An ethnomusicologist based in the US, Denise Gill is a kanun player who has been a student of master virtuoso on the ud, Necati Çelik, since 2004. The book is born of extensive firsthand archival research and ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, and Konya in 2004–2005, 2006, 2007–2009, 2011, 2013, and 2014. The author opens the preface with several critical concerns regarding the methodology and theoretical lines of the book. These caveats serve to prepare readers for the subsequent analysis occasionally becoming dense and complex in its novelties related to methodology and theoretical argument.

Melancholic Modalities: Affect, Islam and Turkish Classical Musicians is the first and only truly ethnographic book on Turkish classical musicians in contemporary Turkey. An ethnomusicologist based in the US, Denise Gill is a kanun player who has been a student of master virtuoso on the ud, Necati Çelik, since 2004. The book is born of extensive firsthand archival research and ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, and Konya in 2004–2005, 2006, 2007–2009, 2011, 2013, and 2014. The author opens the preface with several critical concerns regarding the methodology and theoretical lines of the book. These caveats serve to prepare readers for the subsequent analysis occasionally becoming dense and complex in its novelties related to methodology and theoretical argument.