Guide
The Music Museum occupies part of the Musiki Muallim Mektebi in Ankara — the first conservatory of the Turkish Republic, founded on Atatürk's instruction to train music teachers for secondary schools. The building is therefore part of the subject, and the museum keeps photographs of the school and period newspapers in its archive.
The collection is arranged by case and reaches well beyond Anatolia. Turkish instruments run from the bağlama, kabak kemane, kemençe, kanun, ut, lavta, ney, kaval and zurna to the darbuka, davul, kudüm and zilli tef, with reconstructions of Hittite instruments — a harp, a bağlama, a darbuka — at the start. Other cases hold the erhu, pipa, sitar and tabla, the kopuz, rebap and rubab, the balalaika, banjo, mandolin and accordion, gaida, trumpet and trombone, and a group of African and Latin American percussion including the kalimba, cabasa, conga, valiha, maracas and rain stick.
The museum's stated aim is to keep this material as something living rather than as the record of a culture that has disappeared, and it is run by Mamak Municipality as a free service.
