Gurbet Türküleri

Gurbet Türküleri ( German Turkish songs from abroad ) is a folk music genre in Turkish music that was most recently largely shaped by Turkish labor migration after the Second World War . In particular, the Alamanya Türküleri (Turkish songs from Germany) emerged after the Federal Republic of Germany recruited Turkish workers in the 1960s .

history

The folk song researcher Ali Osman Öztürk regards the earliest Turkish folk songs from Germany, of which he was able to collect 115 for a scientific study, as "an oral pioneer of Turkish emigration literature ".

Beginnings

As early as the mid- 1960s , the feeling of homelessness in Germany was expressed musically, initially in songs that were only passed on orally and whose lyricists are partly unknown. These were initially only sung with Saz accompaniment or a cappella . An early star of this direction in Germany was Metin Türköz . Longing for home, thoughts of returning, relationships with German women, anger about working conditions (see Ganz unten , 1985), and later sometimes also the situation of the exile, shaped these first representatives of what is now called Gurbet Türküleri , who emerged from the immigrant group . Yüksel Özkasap was the most successful interpreter with such songs in the early 70s.

The name Gurbet Türküleri is explained by the fact that the Turks recruited as so-called “ guest workers ” originally planned only a limited stay in Germany themselves (cf. e.g. Thinking of Germany - We forgot to return , 2001): many looked at them The Federal Republic therefore initially not as their new home, but as a “foreign country”.

According to Ali Osman Öztürk's investigations ( Alamanya Türküleri , 2001), the birth of the Turkish “Songs from Foreign Countries” can be seen in 1972; as early as 1976 there were numerous pieces from this area and some recordings of the “Turkish German Songs” (Öztürk ), whose interpreters who are known to this day in Turkey z. B. Mahzuni Serif and Murat Cobanoglu are.

Influences on German music

When it was created, the “Lied aus der Fremde” was also a part of the inspiration for German popular music: the Greek wine (1974), with the melody of Udo Jürgens, which was written by the German Michael Kunze in the manner of “Gastarbeiter” songs, became one of the greatest hits of 1975 and is now considered one of the most famous Greek folk songs from abroad, despite the German authors. Five years later, Freddy Quinn made it into the German charts with a song that was sung partly in Turkish and partly in German in the style of Gurbet Türküleri ( Istanbul ist far , 1980). With Cem Karaca , a famous Turkish artist also released an album in German.

Increasing xenophobia inspires new songs

In the 1980s , when xenophobia, especially towards Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany, became increasingly open, everyday racism moved into the focus of the song counts of the Turkish workers abroad, as did suppressed aggression against Germans. On the other hand, the former “guest workers” had become so foreign to their original homeland that they sometimes met with just as little acceptance there. This new situation between two cultural identities also became the theme of the "Songs from Foreign Countries " and was expressed in lines of text such as Helmut diyor pis yabanci, Tugrul diyor Alamanci : "Helmut calls him a dirty foreigner, Tugrul calls him" German lander ".

After the murder attacks in Mölln and Solingen , a younger generation made music, some of which had previously dismissed the often plaintive "guest worker" songs of their parents as "whining", in the Gurbet-Türküleri style: the Cartel groups became particularly well known in this context and Nefret , who wrote linguistically looser texts and for the first time also addressed taboo topics such as sexuality in Germany. The singer Sah Turna also became known.

Well-known artists

Most of the interpreters of the Gurbet Türküleri have also written texts for this musical genre themselves. Are particularly well known in the German context

literature

Ali Osman Öztürk: Alamanya turküleri. Türk göçmen edebiyatının sözlü / öncu kolu. Kültür Bakanlığı, Ankara 2001 - ISBN 975-17-2647-6 (Germany songs . Oral pioneer of Turkish emigration literature )

Abdullah Eryilmaz: Guest Workers Songs: İşçi Şarkıları. German Turkish. Major Müzik Yapım Ltd. Şti (1990), bilingual cassette edition from the area of Gurbet Türküleri