Kirmizi_ada

Silence is plastic, and I regret that there has been a lot of it on this blog in the past months. But if anyone remembers how naggingly incomprehensible the last pages of _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_ were, maybe the laconic latter-days of Kirmizi Ada will also make sense. There is less to talk about as you sail closer and closer to an edge of the world. Things turn frightfully portable, geometrical. I fold the words up softly and set them by the door.

The edge of the world here is August 18th, when Lufthansa takes me and my two suitcases back to Oakland. I hope there will still be some good tomatoes left at the farmers market there, maybe even a Valencia Pride Mango or two.

I just got done with a translation that has a lot to do with Berlin and my time here. It's the liner-notes to a new CD by DJ Ipek Ipekcioglu, an MC at the SO36 club in East Kreuzberg. The text is a longish fusion of many voices, shout-outs, and grateful critiques. The CD is called IMPORT EXPORT A LA TURKA, and comes out in October.

Goodbye, Almanya! See you soon, Cali!


FOREWORD

To assemble all the Turkish music from Germany onto one single CD in a meaningful way is a hopeless endeavor indeed. There is an endless number of good groups, but who knows all of them, who can manage to take in this boundless chaos of pop müzik, G-rap, arabesque, Ottoman art music, Anatolian folk songs in every imaginable language, belly dancing, lounge, jazz—all fused with one another and interpreted anew. There is far too much individuality, far too little fame, far too many musicians, who are permanently reinventing their identities and their music. So it would be futile to expect a representative selection. But an exploratory journey—certainly.

The usual suspects on the track list are at once eye-catching: Aziza A of course, and Muhabbet— but also the hip-hop pioneers from Fresh Familee. Good, danceable, soulful pop seems to form the underlying tone of the journey, but that is not entirely accurate. Muri starts off in the spirit of Sezen Aksu, but then shifts to Tarkan, and Hülya’s “Ayrılık” sounds like a light pop tune, but is actually an Aseri folk song. VolkanikMan takes us over to ragga, and then the Taşkafalar take us to ska with a side-trip to hard rock. Nurê makes a big first impression with Anatolian intonations in the track’s opening section, but the soprano saxophone then shifts the piece away from Kurdish folk toward jazz. And Beser Şahin’s folk dance keeps getting funkier and funkier. But like I said, no journey can include everything. Only first impressions— but enough to give a sense of the endless worlds that lie behind them.

And then, while waiting for Muhabbet, something unanticipated happens: Sema Mutlu’s German arabesque tune— an arduous yet light waltz with an inlaid, improvised gazel, rife with vocal shifts like those in the old art songs of Istanbul from fifty or sixty years ago—full of pain and lost time. It is so private that the tour guide remains speechless; not even he has heard something so full of soul—he too will have to tell his friends back home about this.

So it seems the true foundation of the CD is woefulness—a subtle, hidden pain that the listener only discovers on the second time through. There are of course innumerable German-Turkish rappers in Germany, but Ipek shows us the way to the newest sound: arabesque has become German. It is lighter than the original, but always full of irony and fused with other musical forms, as in the R&Besques of Muhabbet or Muri. Fresh Familee broke up a long time ago, and even their memories of the guest worker period have become wistfully nostalgic. Aziza A., now far afield from the “Oriental Hip hop“ for which she first became known, has shifted to funk and soul, and Sultan Tunç’s “Hâlâ” even ends with a heart-rending movie-soundclip. Derya, known for years in the Berlin world music scene, also picks up the arabesque sound, and then Ahmet Gündüz: who knows where Sezen Aksu’s melancholic song Belalim will go from here? And of course Muhabbet: “I know you will never belong to me/ But give me a sign sometimes/ you were so beautiful.”

Next comes the classic: Esterabim, the hymn to Istanbul. But this time around it is coming from Germany: harder, more danceable, and a thousand times better than the original by Erkin Koray.

What DJ Ipek has assembled here is not another collection of music from parallel worlds. No purely Turkish folk music, no vocals from the Ottoman sultans, despite the fact that these forms are certainly living on today in Germany. And yet the old music of Turkey can be felt everywhere on the compilation— the arabesques, the Anatolian rock legends of the 1970s, the folk melodies, and occasionally even some old schmaltzy films or Ottoman art tunes. But the languages have changed: German has now moved into the foreground, though Turkish still gets the respect it deserves, as do the lives and histories of the older generation—the first generation of Turks in Germany, with whom all of this began. Politics is everywhere, especially in the tracks by Fresh Familee and Aleksey, and the fact that the two Anatolian titles are in Kurdish is in itself a political claim. They all sing what must be said: honestly, painfully, with anger, and time and again with self-irony, as in the pseudo-oriental wails of VolkanikMan or in Ahmet Gündüz’ broken German.

Right at the end, the ney appears: the mystical flute of the Mevlevi dervishes, embedded in a synthesized fog of sound. And far back behind it, Islam and the Sufis. Then, Turkish tunes mixed with Indian drums and Iranian melodies, like the sounds coming up out of the Shisha-Lounge. There is no return from this long journey, only a final, dreamlike coalescence. Much later, when you awake, you might think: I have to go back there. But next time for longer.

Martin Greve, musicologist and journalist, has been writing about Turkish music in Germany for over ten years. He teaches musicology at various universities and music schools. He also directs the Program in Turkish Music at the Conservatory of Rotterdam. His book The Music of an Imaginary Turkey: Music and Musical Life in the Context of Migration from Turkey to Germany appeared in 2003.


INTRODUCTION

IMPORT EXPORT A LA TURKA — Turkish Sounds from Germany is actually the pre-history to Ipek Ipekçioğlu’s 2006 compilation Beyond Istanbul—Underground Grooves from Turkey, with its survey of the most important contemporary sounds in and around Istanbul. The new compilation demonstrates how Turkey is a multi-ethnic state (with Kurds living there too, for example!), how immigrants to Germany have come from the most diverse social contexts, and how these immigrants have generated a great deal of creativity and change over the decades and generations. Through music, this compilation indicates a great vitality and capacity for transformation. It dauntlessly defies the cliche of the melancholic immigrant who will be “going back home again” one of these days.

Because of their great success, films by Fatih Akın and books by Feridun Zaimoğlu have become part of the German cultural legacy. What has been lacking thus far, however, is a broad musical foray through the Kanak sound cosmos in Germany.

DJ Ipek Ipekçioğlu, MC of transcultural understanding, narrates an emblematic immigration history with 19 pithy songs about:

• How the first Mohicans made it to Germany/Alamanya (Ahmet Gündüz I–II);
• What music they brought with them (Gönül, Ax lê yeman Çaçanê, Separation);
• How their descendants maintained this musical legacy and developed it further (Why Can’t You Love Me?, A Lovely Little Song);
• How they carried these sounds into society and passed them on to other people (İstanbulBerlin, ZDK, DJ Shazam);
• How these new sounds changed and shifted toward new sounds (A Song for Us); and
• How ideas from Alamanya re-pollinated the Turkish music scene (Neymane, Hâlâ, Estarabim, Mamani).

DJ İpek İpekçioğlu, longtime host and resident DJ of Berlin’s legendary Gayhane parties, known internationally for her wild, unpredictable “Eclectic Berlinistan” DJ-set, takes creative inspiration from more than just her rich musical repertoire. The daughter of immigrants of Turkish descent, she grew up in Germany and has become a public educator on migration and “imported cultures.” It is no coincidence that the sequence and selection of songs on this compilation tend to generate intense curiosity about where this game of musical expectations will take us next, because the newly created relationships between the pieces reach beyond the collection itself. Will there be a happy end between the country and the migrant?

DJ Ipek Ipekçioğlu has a vision in mind. On this CD, she calls together the culturally sovereign “Alamancıs”—a mildly pejorative Turkish label for migrants of Turkish descent in Germany. Here, these musicians have the chance to show their sometimes disapproving but increasingly curious brothers and sisters on the Bosphorus some brand new and different paths in music.

Into the Future!
“Social change always begins with the outsiders—who know what is necessary.” (Robert Jungk (1913-94, Austrian author and futurist

Kenan Zöngör, essayist, lyricist, and creative director, lives in Cologne. He studied business management and has a weakness for bitter chocolate and arabesques. www.nAn-coeur.de & www.cArt-al.de.


1. Radio Free Rockets—Istanbul Berlin

“Die Sonne scheint und wir haben nichts drunter.”

“The sun is shining, and we have nothing beneath it.”

When you close your eyes and listen to the track “IstanbulBerlin,” your spirit will wander through an idyllic Kreuzberg. The track emits that particular Berlin charm that arises out of its own enclave of successful multiculture. Fresh, unselfconscious, and romantic all at once, the lyrics sketch out a multicultural utopia unscathed by qualms about Guiding Culture and the sobriety of domestic politics—a utopia that doesn’t feel too far away.

Behind the scenes of Radio Free Rockets are Emma Ott and Stefan Machalitzky, who, with this track “IstanbulBerlin” from their second album in 2006, have conjured up an idiosyncratic Orient-poprock with passages often reminiscent of Page & Plant’s “No Quarter” album. Hip-hop veteran, radio moderator, and actress Aziza A. contributes some Turkish guest-rhymes that fit perfectly within the unmistakable Berliner flair of the track.

2./16. Fresh Familee – Ahmet Gündüz I & II

«Ich stinken von Knoblauch, Du stinken vom Trinken.»

“I stinks like garlic. You stinks like drink.”

Ahmet Gündüz is German music history. “Ahmet Gündüz I”, which appeared in 1993 on Fresh Familee’s debut “Bad Politics,” is actually the first German rap burned onto compact disc— long before the Fantastischen 4 and the Konsorten.

Coming from the so-called social powder-keg of West Ratingen, the Familee members “Tachi” (Tahir Çevik) and “Plattenpazt Jöak” rapped about their experiences with drugs, violence, and discrimination. “Ahmet Gündüz I” begins with Tachi’s own lines, which, though based in the broken German of the first Turkish immigrants, quickly defy expectations with their pointed repartee. He then of course switches into High German in order to demand respect. Even Konrad Adenauer gets a chance to speak—on a sample. In its refined form, the restrained optimism of these old-school rhythms opens up space for the rapped message to unfold. Gündüz’ initial dreams have failed, his children born in Germany don’t take him seriously. Germany remains cold and abrasive.

A track off Fresh Familee’s second album “Alles frisch,” “Ahmet Gündüz II” closes the arc from an initially awkward immigration to eventual despair, honoring the lost generation of parents who were caught up in the in-between world of transfigured homelands and the eternal foreignness of material and social coercion. Fresh Familee split up after four albums in 1998. Vey, Deutschland, Vey…

3. VolkanikMan – Oriental Lady

“VolkanikMan kafayı kaçırıyor.“

“VolkanikMan is going out of his mind.“

VolkanikMan a.k.a. Volkan Aykaç went through the compulsory musical apprenticeship of any Kanak: first hip-hop, then R&B. In 1994, he was one of the first to shift to ragga, which he sung back then in Jamaican patois. Alongside the German texts, Volkan also raps in Turkish on “Oriental Lady.” He also dabbles during the chorus in the arabesque, crooning out the song title and imitating the women’s warbling applause in Anatolian folklore.

Along with “Katıl bana,” “Oriental Lady” is one of VolkanikMan’s contributions to the benefit sampler “InaDem— in the Name of Humanity.” Now increasingly known as Mr. Char-raggae-ity, this prospective physician has been bringing in donations since May 2006 and working with assistance projects in Africa. Time after time, he takes a clear stand against war and racism—a position that isn’t always standard fare in the macho-genre of ragga.

It would come as no surprise if VolkanikMan were to have some serious impact on Turkey’s still rather meagerly populated reggae scene. After hip hop and Anatolian Rock, this would signal a major hat-trick of cultural exportation (or re-importation?) from Germany to Turkey.

4. Hülya – Ayrılık/Separation

«Her bir dertten ağlar yaman ayrılık.»

“From every sorrow springs a terrible rift.”

Aseri tunes and melodies from Azerbaijan are among the subtlest in Turkish music. Azerbaijan’s trans-Caucasian setting gives its culture an Oriental tone, and its music is intimately related to that of Persia and Turkey. In the Mugam, the typical composition of the Aseri, the strict form and poetic content pose a major challenge to singers and musicians. Attempting an Aseri piece indicates great self-awareness. “Ayrılık” may sound familiar, since most Turkish singers have interpreted it at one point or another. For this reason, the song presents all the more potential for failure.

The guitar accompaniment that Hülya Kandemir reintroduces in her version is superb, because she finds the perfect mix of pathos and elegance that befits the almost spiritual longing of the piece.

Born in a village in the Upper Palatinate, she discovered her interest in music early. She dropped out of school at 16 and devoted herself entirely to music. With songs inspired by Turkish music that deal with her feelings and experiences in Germany, she quickly developed a growing listenership that went beyond the immigrant subculture. She opened for Joan Baez, Konstantin Wecker and Angelo Branduardi and has inspired great expectations as a songwriter.

So it is all the more regrettable that Hülya Kandemir does not produce music anymore. Since 2004, she has been living according to the rules of Islam, which, in her opinion, are not commensurable with a singing career. She has written about her motivations in her book My Path from Popstardom to Allah.

5. Metin Candan – A Song for Us

“Mach’ mir doch Mut!“

“Give me some courage!“

When you hear this piece, you will most certainly think of the German band “The Sons of Mannheim”—most people do. They think they recognize the delivery, arrangement and lyrics. But if you listen a little closer, you’ll notice it is not diffuse spirituality that you hear, but the urgent topics of ecological and economic exploitation. The comparison with the Söhne Mannheims does not do justice to the multi-facetedness of Metin Candan, who—along with the Berlin label 44 Degrees—has put together an album that reconciles jazz, Latin and soul with German lyrics. Even though German as a language for vocals has long since fled the cage of the 1960s hit parade, there are still too few interpreters with enough soul in their voice. “Give the German Volk some soul!” Metin Candan has plenty of it.

6. Aziza A. – Elektrik

«Dokunma… Oh no!»

«Don’t touch… Oh no!»

Aziza A.— singer, actress, Multikulti moderator at Radio Berlin-Brandenburg, rapper of the first order, and ambassador for Berlin straight-talk—is singing more and more on her new albums and is ramping up the funk and soul in her songs. But her self-possessed stance and demand for cultural and sexual self-definition remains, especially here in “Elektrik,” where she guides the seduction with a steady hand.

Though she continues to moderate her Saturday program “Haydi Hop” at RBB, she mostly lives in Istanbul— a brain-drain with palpable consequences. Yet another successful cultural export from Germany to Turkey!

7. Beser Şahin – Mamani

«Cizire, cizire»

This Anatolian Çepki round dance, sung in North Kurdish Kurmanci, literally revolves around the word “Mamani,” or mama’s boy. An overblown ney, or reed pipe, begins the piece in traditional fashion along with davul rhythms, but then a heavy bass sets in after a few bars, accentuated by the chugging wah-wahs of an E-guitar that gradually shifts the piece from Anatolian folk to hypnotic funk.

Sung in Beser Şahin's distinctive voice, the enchanting melody reinforces the hypnotic effect of the audio-loops, with their modifications and subtle improvisations. With its six-minute running time, the piece and its trance aspects make it good competition for electronic dance music, which only seldom achieves the warmth and depth that this track does.

Such baffling insights into the commonalities between Kurdish folklore and European electronica have only become possible in German exile, since spoken or sung Kurdish has been officially banned in Turkey for a long time. So it was not by choice that many Kurdish artists from Turkey have first performed Kurdish-language folk songs and original compositions publicly here in Germany. Lively exchange with domestic music scenes gave rise to a European style of Kurdish music, recognizable through its rock, reggae, and even funk influences.

Just as German-Turkish rap has made contemporary hip-hop in Turkey possible—both in terms of content and production—the German-Kurdish sound has echoed back into the slowly developing scenes in Turkey. There, amid growing domestic political acceptance of the Kurdish language and culture, the innovative impulses from Germany are being gratefully received and zealously reworked.

8. Stoneheads / Taşkafalar – Doğayı bozmadan

“Doğayı bozmadan (…) büyüyen yavrumuza emanet etmeliyiz.”

“We must entrust the natural world to our children without destroying it.”

To call yourself “Germany’s only Turkish hard rock band” is pretty daring, given the stiff competition from at least one competitor, the Hannover band “Ünlü” (see track 15). But Ünlü has broken up, and the other Turk-Rock bands mostly play covers, and only seldom in fixed locations. Yet here are the Stoneheads: the name may refer to drugs and rock, but perhaps also to the Mithras on Nemrut Mountain in Southeast Anatolia. Since getting together in 1992, the band has been playing melodious rock, ballads, and even ska, which—like Metin Candan’s “A Song for Us”—call for more environmental consciousness.

9. Aleksey featuring Ozan – ZDK (nasty mix)

“Ne zaman bitecek bu savaş zamanı?”

“When will the war-time end?”

As a contribution to the 2003 compilation “The Best of Turkish Rap and R&B: Vol. 1,” this piece sounds like bouncy, dance-floor R&B on first listen, with the typical bleeps and basses that could easily have come out of the USA. An enterprising Dhumbi sample, redolent of the Bhangra Hits of Panjabi MC, gives it all a mild Asian-European tone.

This is why the Turkish refrain “When will the war-time end?” is so surprising. After a few listens, one also notices the critique of US foreign policy, which would be nothing without “bin Laden and Saddam.” Aleksey goes even further. He juxtaposes the economic crisis in Germany with the increase in global violence to stress how the RAPublic must take action against this bleak and threatening scenario.

Aleksey confronts expectations in three ways. He is rapping against his soft-focus image as an aesthete. This R&B, sometimes slandered as “Kanak-Disco,” is not coming out of the West Coast of the US, but rather from Germany. It has a Turkish refrain, and it isn’t all about cars and women, but about respect and taking political stances…

10. Derya – Gönül

«Ömür yaşlanır da gönül yaşlanmaz.»

«Life grows old, but the heart does not.»

After the strike of the darbukas in the dramatic intro, the drum machine comes in and makes the arrangement almost fit for disco.

While dancing, you realize that the singer Derya is actually singing a melancholic tune in the classic türkü style, telling how his search for happiness has been in vain.

Derya conceives of himself as a modern “Aşık,” a kind of Anatolian-Alevite minstrel, who sings of love, everyday life, and the problems of the common man. In recent decades, aşıks have increasingly critiqued societal inequities and political failures. The aşık traditionally accompanies himself with the bağlama, the Anatolian long lute. Here, Derya extends his bağlama melody by way of a small orchestra and electronic rhythms that counteract the sorrowful substance of the song. The listener dances in sadness, but in a good mood nonetheless, realizing that although some essences may seem irreconcilable at first glance, they may nonetheless grow intertwined. Long live contradiction!

11. Muri featuring Pegah Ferydoni – Karagözlüm

“Karagözlüm – meine schwarzäugige Schöne”

“Karagözlüm – my black-eyed beauty”

The inspiration for this light, summery composition came from the death of a teenage boy’s girlfriend, who died of cancer at age 16. In Turkish, Muri sings about the memories that overwhelm him at night and about how he will never forget the lovely times he spent with his “Karagözlüm.” The refrain speaks in the present tense: “I look into your heart, you are not alone.” Singing in German with the suppleness of 70s funk-soul is Pegah Ferydoni, who has recently been hailed for her acting role in the German series “Turkish for Beginners” and has collaborated on Neco Çeliks staging of “The Black Virgins.”

This careful arrangement dissolves the ostensible contradiction between bittersweet emotions and dynamic, light sounds. Muri calls this style “R&Besque,” a fusion of pathos, plaintive vocals, and the sound images of modern R&B. For many who grew up with the arabesques of their parents and the rap and R&B of the streets, this sound hybrid is the expression of a contemporary self-awareness: “Something new and sovereign that carries the flavor of the Tigris and Euphrates, but also the Rhine, Ruhr, and of course the Spree.”

12. Nûrê & Nûbun – Ax lê yeman Çaçanê

«Da shirini, da sherbeti, dur ba dile min terketi»

Kurdish artists in Germany take up Anatolian traditions and interpret them anew with the tools of other music styles. The singer and her all-women band Nûbun (Kurdish for “Renewal”) play an acoustic jazz version of a halay, an Anatolian round dance. The various influences on the musicians—jazz, rock, Indian traditions, and Kurdish folklore— remain recognizable, but they coalesce into a stable amalgam that holds its own amid the leaps of the dancers.

13. Bremen Immigrant Orchestra, featuring Sema Mutlu – Why Can’t You Love Me?

«Du warst schon da, bevor ich noch wusste, dass es Dich gibt.»

«You were already there before I knew you existed.”

Though R&Besque’s modern R&B arrangements and narratives about experiences in Germany have made the headstrong arabesque style more accessible, the original Turkish still doesn’t translate. For those who did not grow up with the gürbet blues, arabesque remains altogether incomprehensible. Attempts to transmit its underlying, essential feelings often falter amid the lack of irony in the lyrical performances of arabesque’s most well-known interpreters, like İbrahim Tatlıses and Müslüm Gürses. From the outset, these pieces have been routinely misunderstood as parody.

Sema Mutlu’s piece off the Bremer Immigrant Orchestra’s 2006 album remains unique for this reason. She succeeds nearly seamlessly in translating all the plaintive melancholy into German, so that even lay-people here in this country can experience this otherwise unfamiliar melodrama. Even more remarkable is her incredible vocal control, a balancing act amid authentic lamentations beyond European euphony and US soul. This is all accompanied, in proper style, by a large orchestral ensemble, which has won over crowds in Turkey as well. No longer can anyone in Germany say he doesn’t know what arabesque is!

14. Muhabbet – A Lovely Little Song

«Ich weiß du wirst mir nie gehören, ich weiß! Ich weiß!»

“I know you will never belong to me. I know, I know!”

In Turkish, muhabbet means “relaxed, pleasant conversation.” This is the stage-name that the Cologne-based Murat Ersen gave himself early on – his songs are generally characterized by a relaxed pose. His first songs found a broad listenership in 2003 over the Internet, in keeping with the trends of the era. It was primarily second- and third-generation Turkish youth who brought his R&Besque tunes into schoolyards and public places. He found his artistic home at Plakmusic in Berlin, where he now lives. Muhabbet is now a Turkish-German popstar, bringing a credible Turkish aroma into the music industry.

15. Grup Ünlü – Estarabim

“Çok memleketler gezdim; neler gördüm görmedim.”

“I have traveled many countries; I have seen so many things.”

Grup Ünlü is Hannover’s most successful rock export—after the Scorpions. In 1996, the cover version of the song “Estarabim” off the album “Son defa” became one of the year’s most successful songs on the Turkish hit parade. Ünlü led a renaissance of Turkish-language rock music by picking up the original version by Erkin Koray, the icon of 1970s Anatolian rock. Previously, rock fans in Turkey had been critical of classic rockers like Erkin Koray, Barış Manço und Moğollar for their latter-day flirtations with pop, claiming that they had betrayed true rock. Turkish was also still thought of as uncool and retrograde.

It was only because of Ünlü’s easy-going engagement with Anatolian motives and Turkish lyrics in Germany, where the group had already enjoyed a 14-year long punk career and could now try out something “new,” that the export of the song “Estarabim” could stimulate a re-discovery of its own founding principles in Turkey. Since then, Anatolian rock has been growing in leaps and bounds, becoming a well-known feature of cultural life in Turkey. Sadly, Ünlü broke up at the end of the 1990s, but they are certain to go down in the annals of Turk-Rock.

16. See track 2. Fresh Familee – Ahmet Gündüz I & II

17. Sultan Tunç – Hâlâ

«Saat on birde istasyonda bekleyeceğim onu.»

“I will be waiting for her at the station at 11 o’clock.”

Sultan Tunç has been around the block a few times. By the mid-1990s, this Hessian had already brought his Turkish rap onto the German stage. In 2001, he enjoyed his first major recognition in Colognie, with the debut “Saygı Değer Şarkılar/Songs of Respect.” The track “Deliloy” was an ever-popular hit in Turkey and in the European world-music cosmos. Local media eventually came to regard Sultan Tunç as a standard-bearer for Turkish hip-hop.

But Sultan Tunç is also able to go beyond the credibility anxieties of hip-hop, opening his music to other genres. With the track “Hâlâ” from his debut album, he creates a pleasing tune with a harmonic refrain that shouts out to the Turkish music titan MFÖ.

18. Spark (DJ Shazam & Adamatics): Escape from Alamut

SHAZAM! With this incantation, Billy Batson morphed into Captain Marvel in the eponymous super-hero comic strip. Since then, the word has become a synonym for sudden metamorphosis and surprising discoveries. It is fitting that DJ Shazam, the cornerstone of Berlin’s Asian BreakBeat, heats up his own Drum & Bass by applying his discoveries to the music of the Orient. A bassist himself, he pays close attention to the samples he uses and how they must be handled. Going beyond the merely decorative use of interchangeable exotic soundbytes, Shazam vigilantly leads his dancers through unfamiliar sounds, inspiring fresh interest in the music—and in the people behind it.

With the New York rapper Adamatics, he makes up the duo Spark. They work together sporadically alongside their respective main projects Nomad Soundsystem and the US-based Adamatics.

The title of the track included here refers to the flight from the Persian fortress of Alamut, the center of the Nazari Ismaelites. The members of this Shiite sect saw it as a religious duty to kill their enemies and, because of their marijuana use, were also dubbed “Hashashini” or “Assasini.”

19. DJ İpek İpekçioğlu – Neymâne

If you close your eyes once again, as you did at the beginning with “İstanbulBerlin” and listen to the mildly alienating city sounds, overlaid with a languid trip-hop rhythm, it may be difficult to orient yourself to any one place. Even the melancholic Ney-Taksime improvisations on the reed-pipe only give the slightest hint of a fixed location. In Istanbul at sunrise on a passenger ferry after a gig? Or in Berlin after a hectic day? Or in Shanghai in a taxi?

At the end of this compilation, the music frees itself of any attempt to identify its regional origins or producers. (Where is that from? What does it taste like? Do you eat pork?) The music becomes a virtual homeland, waking longings and ensuring arrivals. The question of the future is not whether something is German. Instead, the question is: what cultural commonalities can serve as tools for facing the challenge of overcoming borders?

A society that cares for and promotes its inner diversity and multilinguality can more effectively join in on any given conversation. With its immigrants, Germany has built the best radio console for good reception on a global scale. Now we just have to turn the dial to the right station. And when we find it, “Import Export” will be playing day and night in heavy rotation.