The second case file of our #60JahreMusik project entitled Hip Hop begins with our Murat Güngor interview, better known by his stage name Murat G. Murat is a musician who simultaneously pioneered and witnessed the birth of Turkish rap in Germany. He is also a researcher of hip hop culture who sees it as the successor to gastarbeiter groove.
You’ll find featured here the first Turkish rap track and album, as well as a timeline of the Germany of Metin Türkoz’s time to its current post-migratory state in regards to hip hop culture.
Cover Visual: DJ Mahmut & Murat G. Frankfurt concert, 1998 © Murat G.
English Translation by Zeynep Beler
As the 1990s approached, those immigrant workers’ children who were able to join their families in Germany were growing up in Germany in spite of their parents’ enduring hopes of returning to Turkey someday. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the ‘90s bore witness to racist attacks following the rise of the radical right and xenophobia. Houses of Turkish families were targeted by arson attacks, in 1992 in the northern city of Mölln and then again in 1993 in the northwestern city of Solingen. Three people in Mölln and five in Solingen lost their lives. These attacks were a turning point for the Turks living in Germany.
“As the second wave, we wanted to make our voices heard. We wanted to express ourselves through music and our burgeoning culture against the oppressive events of the ‘90s and the racism we encountered in school, on the street, and among friends,” explains Murat G., whose given name is Murat Güngör.
He joins us on a video call from Frankfurt, where he works as a teacher.
We are in meeting with someone who’s both a musician and a researcher of musical culture. Murat pioneered Turkish rap on Germany’s music stage between 1990-1999 as both a rapper and a producer.
He then went on to work with Hannes Loh, a fellow rapper and researcher of musical culture and also a teacher as himself. You could follow their joint instagram page from here .
They co-wrote a book on hip hop culture titled “Fear Of A Kanak Planet- HipHop zwischen Weltkultur und Nazi-Rap”. The book has helped install “music by children of gurbet which till that day had never been acknowledged by the German media” in Germany’s hip hop history. It also incited other discussions, leading to heightened interest and eventually the current-day acknowledgement of this history within the music history of Germany. Murat is also co-founder of the anti-racist community Kanak Attak.
Hannes Loh ile yazdıkları “From ‘Gastarbeiter’ to Gangsta Rapper?” (“‘Misafir İşçi’den’ Gangsta Rapçi’ye”) makalesinde, the era of hip hop is characterized as the extension of the music made by Turkish immigrants in Germany up to the ‘90s. In spite of the differences of the genres, the lyrics of both “gastarbeiter groove” and hip hop concern the same issue: the predicament of the immigrants in Germany.
From Guest Worker Tunes to Hip Hop
Telling us that he didn’t know Metin Türköz back when he made music, Murat clarifies that this is an instance of disconnect. By extension, he stresses the importance of the 2013 “Songs of Gastarbeiter” compilation by İmran Ayata and Bülent Kullukçu, which he says “changed our perspective on the lives of the estranged”. He takes İmran Ayata’s appraisal of Metin Türköz as the “first rapper” one step further, characterizing Türköz as Germany’s first freestyle rapper, and Türküola, whose founder Yılmaz Asöcal passed away recently, as its first independent record company.
The first wave of music came into Germany from Turkey, but this second wave was ushered in from New York by Public Enemy. The children of immigrants heard this sound from the USA and wanted to make their own voices heard. Islamic Force, Karakan, DJ Mahmut and I were all experiencing the same disconnect.
The Birth of Turkish Rap: “Life of a Stranger”
We rapped in English because we saw it as the native language of this music. But we decided to rap in Turkish in the name of making our voices heard in the face of racism. Our English was also less than fluent and we had a hard time writing our raps, and it also sounded strange to our ears. We could neither express ourselves sufficiently nor ensure that our audience made out of the lyrics what we wished them to.
Discounting Barış Manço or MFÖ’s rap-containing songs from Turkey or, from Germany, Yarınistan’s track we touched upon in our interview with them, Turkish rap was heard for the first time in the track “Bir Yabancının Hayatı” (Life of a Stranger) by the Nürnberg-based band King Size Terror. Starting off in English, the track pivoted to Turkish after the lines:
Now let me kick it in my own language, so my Turk bros can understand my message
(Şimdi Türk kardeşlerim mesajımı anlasınlar diye, kendi dilimde devam edeyim…)
The vocals were by AK, who would later be known as Alper Ağa and go on to found Karakan along with Kâbus Kerim. The track “Defol Dazlak” (Buzz Off, Skinhead), known by heart by Turkish children during the era when Turkish homes in Germany were the targets of arson attacks, would be released in King Size Terror’s 1994 album Ultimatum as feat. Karakan.
“Turkish Rap was a baby born to Germany”
Murat and four friends, DJ Mahmut, Volkan T. and KMR, wanted to make not only a single rap song but an entire album. Released in Frankfurt in 1994, said album came out under their own label, Looptown Records: “Looptdown Presents Turkish Hip Hop”. Murat recounts how, upon seeing pirated copies of their album in Istanbul markets, he thought, “Nice! Keep it up, guys, make our voices heard in Turkey. Let everyone listen to the tape!” According to him, this album was instrumental in the forming of hip hop culture in Turkey.
The band Advanced Chemistry, which came out of Heidelberg in the ‘90s, has a fundamental place in Murat’s musical life. Starting out as a fan, he then forged a friendship with them and they eventually even went into the studio together.
“In their Piemont studio in Heidelberg, MC Torch recorded vocals for our track Garip Dünya, which impressed us deeply. Boulevard Bou was also frequently present in the studio in order to accompany Advanced Chemistry as they worked on their album. He was both the owner of the studio and the sound engineer on our record. Through our friendship we influenced each other, supported each other. We grew together and contributed to one another’s music. There was no competition between us. We never competed with Islamic Force either, for example. We were able to perform together on one occasion. That concert was a huge deal for us. We treated each other as friends, not competitors…”
Murat sums up his musical proclivities at the time with the words, “For Mahmut and I, the East Coast and New York were important, not gangsta rap.” With DJ Mahmut, they recorded their first solo album Garip Dünya in 1997. Shortly afterwards they decided to close Looptown and went their separate ways.
The track Garip Dünya (Weird World) in particular resonated in Turkey in 1998 as “it also had a video”. Murat and DJ Mahmut’s Istanbul concerts were attended by future prominent rappers, such as Ceza.
“Turkish rap was a baby. Its fathers were Islamic Force, Karakan, DJ Mahmut, Volkan T., KMR, Cartel and myself. … It was born in Germany and extended its roots here. It made a huge impact in Turkey. It’s a great impact, because what we started endures. I’m proud of it.”
Looking at the Transformation of Germany Through the Lens of Hip Hop
Murat imparts that hip hop adapts to culture in a unique way in each different country. “In France, for instance, they rapped in French from the beginning. In Germany, it was first adapted through English, before the immigrants brought Turkish, Yugoslavian, Greek etc. into the picture. Rap matured here with different languages and multicultural elements. All of this, then, was once again blended until multiple languages were being used in a single track. From Haftbefehl to Capital Bra, language-wise the realities of young people here are being expressed.”
The resulting tracks are neither Turkish or German but a new language:
Young people in Germany do not speak a single language. When they speak, they use several different languages in tandem. They speak in different languages simultaneously. New words thus emerge, which in turn enrich German.
According to Murat, the transformation of German manifest in hip hop culture is indicative of Germany’s overall transformation. “People of different ancestries have begun identifying as German; they are no longer Turkish or Greek but children of this land. They are a new generation. And the children of this land are creating something new. A new Germany.”
This piece is written in the framework of #60JahreMusik project financed by Berlin Yunus Emre Institute.