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 The Turkic Cultures and Children's Festival will be held in Houston, America's fourth largest city - home to more than 4 million people and a major trading hub for international business and commerce. Because of an always present need to celebrate and honour the richness of our heritage, and through a worthwhile project pulling together the many facets of Houston's population, we bring to Houston for the first time a festival of various programs highlighting the many different heritages shared by Turkic peoples - stretching from as far west as Bosnia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan to as far east as Kazakhstan, The Kyrygyz Republic, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
The festival will allow Turkic Americans, not only from Houston, but also from other Texas cities, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and New Mexico to live and feel their native country. Children will learn more about the Turkic cultures and understand how Turkic-Americans have created a blend of the various cultures.
15,000 people are expected to attend the two-day event. Meanwhile, senators, representatives, mayors, college professors, community leaders, art advocates, musicians, college students, elementary and secondary school students are expected.
Houston Turkish Festival Turkish-American TX Texas Raindrop Turkevi Turkish cultural center
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Ottoman military bands are thought to be the oldest variety of military marching band in the world. Though they are often known by the Persian-derived word mahtar (mehter in Ottoman Turkish) in the West, that word, properly speaking, refers only to a single musician in the band. In Ottoman, the band was generally known as mehterân , though those bands used in the retinue of a vizier or prince were generally known as mehterhane (meaning roughly, "a gathering of mehters"). In modern Turkish, the band as a whole is often termed mehter takımı ("group of mehters"). It is believed that individual instrumentalists may have been mentioned in the 8th century Orkhon inscriptions, the oldest written sources of the people who would eventually become the modern Turks. Such military bands as the mehters, however, were not definitively mentioned until the 13th century. It is believed that the first "mehter" was sent to Osman Gazi by the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin III as a present along with a letter that salutes the newly formed state.
