Turkish Hip Hop - Aesthetics and Local Significance

Aesthetics and Local Significance

In addition to rapping in the language of their ancestral homeland, Turkish hip hop is aesthetically different from German hip hop. Primarily, Turkish hip-hop artists choose to sample Arabesk music in their songs drawing upon a mythic Turkish past. Arabesk is folk music style that originally appeared in Turkey during the 1960s as a reflection of migrant workers first experience of immigration inside the homeland As Brown writes, “With its bittersweet longing for a homeland left behind—a homeland most Turkish-German youngsters could never have seen expect perhaps on vacation—Arabesk expresses a nostalgia and cultural pessimism that dovetails perfectly with hip hop’s invention of community through stories of displacement” (Brown, 144). In describing Turkish music, Mc Boe-B from Islamic Force tells the narrative, “boy comes home and listens to hip hop, then his father comes along and says ‘come on boy, we’re going shopping.’ They get in the car and the boy listens to Turkish music on the cassette player. Later, he gets our record and listens to both styles in one” By incorporating Turkish melodies into his hip-hop style, Mc Boe-B appeals to Turkish youth in Berlin torn between two nationalities and begins the process of localization.

Furthermore, album artwork and lyrical content enable hip-hoppers and fans to identify commercially and express individually their Turkish identity. In order to see a comprehensive picture of the cultural groundwork Turkish hip hop accomplishes, it’s important too take a closer look at the origins of the movement as well as specific examples of local artists. Oriental hip hop owes much of its origins to hip-hop groups that were briefly mentioned earlier: Islamic Force and Cartel. Islamic Force (now KanAK) was founded in the 1980s as a way to give ethnic minorities in Germany a voice and is often recognized as the spark that started Oriental hip hop. Along with hip-hop artists DJ Derezon, the group released their first single, “My Melody/Istanbul in 1992 to fight racism towards Turks in Germany by combining Western and Turkish cultures (Hip-Hop Culture). By rapping in English and mixing African-American hip-hop beats with Turkish Arabesk, Islamic Force is a perfect example of Boe-B’s kid who listens to both Turkish and American cassettes in his father’s car. Although they initially focused on American hip hop by rapping in English to gain Western acceptance, an increase in the groups popularity in Turkey led them to eventually switch to rapping in Turkish. By rapping in their native language, Islamic Force connected directly with Turkey as a country as well as their cultural background while simultaneously merging a global genre (hip hop) with a local culture (Turkish traditions) According to Diessel, “The synthesis of Turkish musical idioms and language with hip hop was successful in appealing to a young audience. For Turkish youth in Germany, Oriental hip hop is at once profoundly local and simultaneously global; it imagines, through the evocation of the far reaching ‘Orient’ and the cohesive language of hip hop, multiple possibilities of resistance to the politics of exclusion”