Arabesque music is mostly in a minor key, typically in varieties of the Phrygian mode; it heavily features themes that tend to focus on issues of longing, strife, and desire.
Simultaneously, with the influx of female singers, the sound grew more dancey and upbeat.
Other well-known older singers are Orhan Gencebay, Ferdi Tayfur, Müslüm Gürses, and Hakkı Bulut.
One of the most prolific and commercially successful is İbrahim Tatlıses, who broke all sales records in Turkey in 1978 and continues to turn out popular music to this day.
This theme had undertones of class differences in early 1960-70s, during which most of the genre's followers , mostly working-class to lower middle-class , identified themselves.