The book “The Music of Imagined Turkey” is one of the leading investigations into music from Turkey in Germany, particularly the era up until the 1990’s. The result of eight years of comprehensive field studies, this book remains one of the most important resources in the field despite the twenty years that have elapsed.
We are delighted to share the story in short of Martin Greve, the German musicologist who has been a resident of Istanbul for many years.
Translated to English by Zeynep Beler.
I was living in Berlin and all my neighbors were Turkish. I worked up a connection with the kids of my closest neighbors. In turn they wondered what this German was up to. I played the recorder for them and then gifted them with their own. In return, they gave me two cassette tapes. One was by Ajda Pekkan and the other by Küçük Emrah. Emrah really was young - “küçük” - back then. And that’s how it all began.
As you know, between 1983-84 the German government would pay 10,000 Marks each to every family that returned to Turkey. My neighbors also took advantage of the payout to move back. As I helped them pack up, they invited me to Turkey.
Thinking as I did like a German, I took them at their word and accepted in order not to be rude. That’s how I came to Turkey for the first time. First I went to Leningrad with my father and then crossed over to Turkey in what became a very long journey. Passing through Tbilisi and into Kars, I had a shock. Then I continued onwards to the south and had another shock in Marmaris. Could Kars and Marmaris be in the same country? I joined a course in music. There we listened to old gramophone records of old Turkish classical music such as Hafız Burhan. I went back to the tapes I had been given by my neighbors to see that they were inscribed as classical music as well.
How could Hafız Burhan and Ajda Pekkan be denoted as the same? I could research it all my life and still not get the whole picture, but the joy in that keeps me carrying on.
This piece is written in the framework of #60JahreMusik project financed by Berlin Yunus Emre Institute.
