The Kanaks
| The Kanaks | ||||
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| Studio album by Cem Karaca | ||||
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Publication |
1984 |
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| Label (s) | plans | |||
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Format (s) |
LP |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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| occupation | Cem Karaca, Fehiman Uğurdemir, Cengiz Öztunc, Sefa Pekelli, Betin Güneş and İsmail Tarlan ( Die Kanaken ) as well as Clemente Alfredo and Dick Städter | |||
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Studio (s) |
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Die Kanaken is the only German-language music album by the Turkish rock musician and singer Cem Karaca , which was released in Germany in 1984, and at the same time the name of the group of musicians and friends around Karaca with whom the album was recorded. “Die Kanaken” was the first ever popular Turkish music group to put an album on the market with a regular German record company ( Plans , Dortmund ).
Music genre
Stylistically, the album is a piece of rock music. Due to the language, on the one hand it can be attributed to German rock, on the other hand the influences of Turkish Anadolu Rock are musically dominant. Because the album texts are emphatically socially critical, the record is in a way in the tradition of German-speaking rock bands that emerged from the peace movement of the 1970s, such as " bots ".
History of origin
In addition to Karaca, the "Kanaks" included the Turkish musicians Fehiman Ugurdemir , Cengiz Öztunc , Sefa Pekelli , the classical musician Betin Güneş and Ismail Tarlan , who were friends with him at the time in Germany . The recordings for the only record production of this formation took place in the recording studio at the cathedral in Cologne.
In addition to the musicians from Turkey, Clemente Alfredo and Dick Städter also played on the album .
The artists had already included many of the songs on the record in the musical or theater version of Ab in the Orient Express , a story "on the subject of xenophobia" by Martin Burkert and Harry Bösecke from 1983 and 1984.
With German verses like
Come on Turk - drink German beer,
then you are also welcome here.
With cheers, Allah is dumped
and you integrated a bit
Karaca and his friends discussed the situation of the Turkish guest workers and immigrants in Germany at the time. The songs, all of which come from Cem Karaca, have titles such as Mein Deutscher Freund or Es Menschen arrived . Also in the 1985 rock musical "Kanaken" by Cem Karaca and Martin Burkert at the Westphalian State Theater. There Cem Karaca and his band partly played themselves. An additional story was invented, namely a love affair between his sister (role Nelly: Hürdem Gürel-Riethmüller) and the drummer of the band, played by his mother (played by his then over 70-year-old mother and legendary actress Toto Karaca) is viewed with great skepticism ... Directed by Herbert Hauck .
Two years after its appearance, Beim Kaffee (1986) was the only single from Die Kanaken . The Turkish-speaking Çok yorgunum served as the B-side .
Track list
page 1
My German friend
In My German Friend , Karaca praises the situation of the guest worker families of the first generation in stanzas one after the other from the perspective of father, mother and child. While the parental stanzas express a certain desolation of life in the new homeland, the children's stanza forms an optimistic conclusion: “Turkish child and German child / you should be our hope / where there are still barriers / tear them down - stamp them down ".
With coffee
The song, which will be the record company's only single release from the album, addresses the intercultural encounter between an older woman, a “German grandma”, and the lyrical self , a Turkish immigrant. The German grandmother invites him to have a coffee to talk about the immigration of her parents as Polish migrant workers to the Ruhr area, accompanied by xenophobic agitation. One day, when the father can no longer stand the abuse and shows a violent reaction, he is lynched by a crowd . Karaca draws parallels to the situation of Turkish migrant workers (“first Polack and now Turks / you can't think of anything better”) and finally, with the repeated reference to the “German” grandma as a symbol of long-term possible integration, at least a small, hopeful counterpoint.
Totally exhausted
Totally exhausted deals with unemployment and job search. The title can be applied to immigrants who feel disadvantaged when looking for a job, but with its refrain “I don't think I'm worth anything / there's something wrong” can also be applied to the general situation of the unemployed.
welcome
The title Willkommen in combination with the lyrics of the song deals ironically with the expectations Germans had of Turkish immigrants in the early 80s. The "Turk" is supposedly more integrated from verse to verse, but in fact he is only expected to be restrained, to stand back, to be as unnoticed as possible, both in clothing and customs, as well as in his job. The Turkish translation calls the song "Integration Song".
People arrived
This song begins with the quote about guest workers ascribed to Max Frisch : “Workers were called / but people arrived”, which was also used in the play Ab in the Orient Express . It describes the situation of the migrant workers after they felt more and more undesirable in Germany in the 1970s, from the point of view of those affected: “As long as there was a lot of work / the dirty work was given to us”, after that one would only be a scapegoat for "The great crisis" served. The song also raises the question of the Germans' willingness to integrate: "Only see the Turks as strangers", according to the lyrics of the songwriter.
Page 2
snoop
Schnüffler is a critical song about the “big brother who is watching you” in Germany without a specific connection with migrant life in Germany, but references to George Orwell 1984 , which was discussed again in the year the record was released, are recognizable: “Schnüffler can be found everywhere / in the department store and at the masked ball / in the streetcar and in the office / maybe even in your loo ”.
Orient express
Orient-Express is the theme song of the play / musical Ab in the Orient Express on the topic of xenophobia. It deals with slogans “on the walls”, of which the phrase “off to the Orient Express” is the “last Turkish joke”. The song is directly related to measures taken by the German federal government to “promote the willingness to return” of foreigners.
What are you saying
The existential fears of the Germans and the Turks in Germany in the early 1980s are juxtaposed in this song. In the refrain, Karaca takes a step towards the German with all the different points of view by saying that he likes him and in return asks the question: "What are you saying?"
Ayse, Meral, Semra
The piano ballad with the alternative title Wie ein Vogel processed u. a. Karaca's own situation as a political refugee. Lamented here are the lack of freedom in the Federal Republic of Germany and the lack of freedom in Turkey, as well as his fear of being arrested during a long visit from friends. The song is probably related to the death of Karaca's father a year after he fled to Germany, at whose funeral in Turkey the persecuted artist was unable to attend.
Çok yorgunum
Çok yorgunum , whose title can be translated in German as “I am very tired”, is the only Turkish-language song on the otherwise German-language album Die Kanaken . It was also the B side of the only single released. The text comes from Nazim Hikmet's exile work .
Cover
Most of the album cover is a representation of a light blue to white sky. In the middle of the upper third of the plate pocket is a rectangular reproduction of an oil painting, which dominates the overall picture, in an upright orientation. This ("Zwei unter uns" by Hanefi Yeter ) shows a couple sitting by a campfire on a hill: the man is lying, the seated woman is holding the man's head. The depiction of the clothes and faces suggests that the couple has a Mediterranean, possibly Turkish origin. A tree with colorful foliage rises behind him. To the right of the reproduction of the painting, the album title can be read in large italic capitals, filling the entire remaining space, and to the left the name of the artist in the same way. In the bottom eighth of the cover you can still find the label of the record company in the middle.
Translations of all texts into Turkish are on the inner sleeve. The Turkish song is translated into German.
Further meanings and effects
Although Karaca had already published in Germany after his escape to the Federal Republic (on the Cologne migrant label Türküola ) Die Kanaken is his first and at the same time only German-language work.
Nedim Hazar , music journalist and founder of Yarinistan , sees the Plans album for Turks in Germany as the first small “opening of the door” to the German music market. A subsequent "birth of the kebab culture" and also the success of his own band (their first album was also in German and received the German Record Critics' Prize in 1986 ) in the second half of the 80s is, in his opinion, directly related to the work of the " Kanaken ”, which can be described as the initial spark for the emergence of the most diverse Turkish and German-Turkish popular musicians in Germany, even if they initially had only moderate commercial success.
Parts of the album can also be found in the soundtrack of the German-Turkish family series Our Neighbors, the Baltas , which was written by Karaca.
The piece Ab in den Orientexpress , in which the majority of the songs on the album are still used today (by the band itself in the first performances), is still performed and is currently available from Deutsches Theater Verlag. For the performances without Karaca and his friends, the musician Ulrich Türk , known a. a. through his collaboration with the reciter Lutz Görner , the album title was later reworked.
The album Die Kanaken , which was not later re-released, achieves top prices in some cases on record markets today.
The song Mein Deutscher Freund was used in the film Mein Freund, der Deutschen by the Turkish director Bilal Bahadır and is also the title giver of the film.
swell
- ↑ a b c Nedim Hazar : "The pages of the Saz in Germany." In: Aytaç Eryılmaz, Mathilde Jamin (ed.): Fremde Heimat: A history of immigration. Klartext / DOMiT , Essen, February 1998.
- ↑ a b c Deutscher Theaterverlag: "Brief information on Burkert / Bösecke - Off to the Orient Express" (PDF; 38 kB) ; Internet presence, March 2007
- ↑ German Music Archive: Entry on Cem Karaca , website, March 2007
- ↑ Ekşi Sözlük : “Die Kanaken, Albumtexte” ; Sourtimes Entertainment; Internet presence, March 2007
- ↑ MY FRIEND THE GERMAN | HOME OF FILMS . In: HOME OF FILMS . ( home-of-films.com [accessed April 27, 2018]).