Exactly one week before istanbulberlin's first ever event Frühstück Alla Turca, this Sunday, August 29th, Festsaal Kreuzberg is getting ready to be rocked by other sounds of Anatolia. I asked my questions on the long awaited first edition of the "Festival for New Anatolian Music" İç İçe, to the founder and curator of the festival Melissa Kolukısagil.
Translated to Turkish by Ayşe Hümeyra Demirci and Sedef İlgiç.
Melissa Kolukısagil © Livia Kappler
What kind of a need did İç İçe come to life from?
When I started hosting and booking music events, I noticed how white and hierarchical the music scene also in Berlin is. When the idea for the festival came to me, it felt like I had an idea for the first time in my life. The access to FLINTA and BIPoC music communities gave me strength to develop the vision and the idea of İç İçe.
Anatolian musical heritage and how it is inspiring many artists today..And it transmits certain message. We believe creating spaces like that can really help building a more equal community. And a more respectful one. Doing it via music, therefore became a great idea to work for, to be honest.
The İç İçe Festival wants to represent the many voices of their community and make them socially visible, so that Anatolian music and its cultural spaces in Germany get the space they deserve.
Festival brings the "hybrid sounds of Anatolia" with a wonderful line-up. Tell me what it means "the sound of Anatolia" for the festival?
It is somewhat complicated to explain Anatolian music with proper definitions and boundaries; because it is very difficult to know where it begins and where it ends, which cultures it has influenced and been influenced by. If you go to a Greek taverna, you can hear songs in Greek that exist in exactly the same way in Turkish. But if you go to southeastern Turkey the music is more geographically consistent with that of northern Syria or Iraq.
It is music that does not belong to any nation, to any population group, it does not belong to the Turkish people, nor to the Greek, Kurdish, Armenian, Arab, Christian, Muslim or Jewish people. But somehow it also belongs to all of them, all of them can find elements in it that have contributed to their identity.
So the first characteristic is the incredible diversity that organically results from the centuries-long heritage of all the people who live together on this tiny piece of land.
Next to that, it is folk music. The people of Anatolia have always taken music with them wherever they went to tell their stories and carry news. And it is a rebellious music.
The Aşıks (nomads) who traveled around Anatolia playing their saz told people's stories, their pains, their goals and their hopes. The whole Anatolian history, the history of the Kurds, the Turks, the Greeks, the Armenians: everything can be found in the Anatolian music. The struggles of the people, their rebellion, their anger against inequalities, but also their fears, their love for their loved ones, their love for God, for the universe, for each other.
All different genres. Do all groups/musicians included in the programme see their music as "new Anatolian music“?
It is not very easy to speak for their names, but also I am not sure it is a “genre” that you can identify completely; like being a ‘jazz’ musician. It is more like a giant melting pot, with musical culture from everyone that has been passing through the land. And well, it is a thousands years old migration geography.
That is why it is not like ‘doing anatolian music’ I guess but more like getting inspired from there, growing your music with its rhytm, harmony, instruments, messages.
We will have many musicians on stage playing or sampling Anatolian instruments or using the old songs and making something new out of it.
Gazino Neukölln for example performs a dream that brings the arabesque-kitsch aesthetic of Gazino with feminist rage and hope, peppered with queer humor. Their songs revolve around their problem with everyday racism, heterosexist lyrics of queer repertoire, charity instead of solidarity and orientalist white queer politics.
Lilly and Kazan represent the spirit of İç İçe through their love for each other and their music wich they are producing since they fell in love in Istanbul.
Gaddafi Gals represent for me representatives of a future in which I feel represented and want to live.
Karmatürji consisting of the great musicians Ceyhun Kaya, Petra Nachtmanova and Ipek, create their very own sound aesthetics between Türkübar and nightclub.
How would you describe the interest in "new Anatolian music" in Germany?
Anatolian music is getting more and more fans worldwide. Since the late 60s, an independent style has developed whose psychedelic charm lies precisely in the mix of traditions and modernity. Cem Karaca, Selda Bağcan, Barış Manço, Moğollar, Erkin Koray are responsible for a fusion of psychedelic Anatolian rock and folk in the 70s/80s.
Contemporary representatives such as Derya Yıldırım or Altın Gün play songs of the above mentioned artists of the 70s and 80s. In addition, they rearrange traditional songs, which they take from Europe to the whole world and bring together diverse audiences in sold-out concert halls in Germany as well.
At the Fusion Festival, which is predominantly white, I experienced two very wild concerts with these same representatives in two consecutive years, which first inspired me to create our festival. When I suddenly had to play translator on the dancefloor and felt this energy and enthusiasm of people moving to the songs we all grew up with, To create such a space where this is possible and we can make our contribution to this positive development is a dream that will finally come true on August 29th.
