This study is a preliminary investigation into the viability of narrative and modal analysis in traditional Turkish makam music, building upon the author’s previous research on the stylistic aesthetics of Turkish art music and related art forms. By establishing a basis of comparison in non-tonal and non-Western music, this study proposes that the manifestation of musical narrative is a culturally-dependent phenomenon. From the socio-linguistic perspective, the “high-context” communication codes of collectivist Turkish culture are reflected in the “open-form” aesthetic of traditional Turkish arts, which encourages greater interpretive agency on the esthesic level. The cultural aspects of traditional Turkish art music are related to mythical logic in music as examined by Levi-Strauss and Tarasti, as well as Greimas’ concept of “figurative manifestation” in poetic logic. The mediating geographic locus of Turkish music is considered in relationship to traditional rasa theory in Indian music as a conceptual Eastern extreme, and representative narrativity in tonal music as a conceptual Western extreme. Likewise, examples of narrativity in tonal music will be compared with figurative significations in Turkish art music by using a Greimassian analysis of semic content. In conclusion, the abstracted, cyclical, and non-thematic nature of Turkish makam music suggests that even if elements of narrativity and modality can be identified, they serve a different function in the course of musical signification.