Translation, Travel, Migration

v. 12/2: Special Issue of the Translator

Loredana Polezzi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134951604
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The connection between travel and translation is often evoked in contemporary critical theory, both practices seen as metaphors of mobility and flux linked to globalized 'post-modern' society. Travel is a multiple activity, encompassing temporary and voluntary displacement, repeated movement, exile, economic migration, diaspora. Places of origin are often plural and unstable, in spite of the enduring appeal of traditional labels such as 'mother country' or 'patrie'.

The multiple interfaces between translation, travel and migration are the focus of all contributions in this special issue. Starting from different points of view, and using a variety of methodologies, the authors raise fundamental questions about the way in which we perceive the link between language, national or ethnic identity, and individual voice. Topics range from the interaction between travel, travel narratives and translation in early English representations of China, to the special role played by interpreters in mediating the first contact between a literate and a non-literate culture; from the multiple functions and audiences addressed by contemporary Romani literature and its translation, to the political as well a cultural implications of translating popular music across the Bosporus. A number of the articles focus on detailed textual analysis, covering the intersection between exile, self-translation and translingualism in the work of Manuel Puig; the uses and limitations of translation in the works of migrant authors; or the impact on figurations of Europe of experimental work embracing polylingualism. Collectively, these contributions also underline the importance of a closer examination of our assumptions about who the translators and the interpreters are, and what roles they play in our society.

Rembetika Songs and Their 'Return' to Anatolia*

ŞEBNEM SUSAM-SARAJEVA
University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Abstract. This article examines the representation of rembetika music in Turkey since the 1990s. As a genre which is closely intertwined with migration, rembetika has multilingual and multicultural origins, encompassing Ottoman-Greek, Ottoman-Turkish, Greek, Arabic, Slavic and Balkan elements, dating back to the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries. Its recent revival within the Turkish music scene has as much to do with a renewed interest in the music of the minorities as with the so-called ‘thaw in relationships’ between Greece and Turkey. However this revival raises certain questions as to the choice and presentation of songs in the recent rembetika recordings issued in Turkey, the liner notes included with the recordings, and the decision to translate or not to translate the songs’ lyrics. The article argues that in the context of rembetika in Turkey, the existence of translations/rewritings of lyrics indicates an ‘othering’ process, while simultaneously ensuring an ‘after-life’ for rembetika songs in a land which reputedly gave birth to them in the first place.

People torn away from İzmir [Smyrna] and heaped up in Paşalimanı [Pasalimani] and Hiotika … The fugitives of the Afyon war, and the Rums¹ of Bergama [Perghamos], Ayvalık [Aivali], Bornova [Bournova] and Soğukkuyu…

For years they wandered around, without any job or proper food. On this shore they were scorned as “the Rum giaour”, on the other shore as “the seed of the Turk”.

Upon their migration, the population of Greece increased one-third, reaching eight and a half million in a couple of weeks. They lived in poverty for many years.

In despair and, more importantly, in longing for their motherland they turned to drink, hashish and music. In their music, they sang of their memories and yearning. It is this music which is called rembetika or rebetika.²

While listening to it, try to imagine their lives. Think about fetching a few belongings, wrapping them up in a bundle, and leaving, with the shadow of death following you. Kids wailing and sobbing … A cloth doll forgotten in the courtyard … Half-cooked beans left on the fire … The house you were born into is left behind, never to be repossessed, even never to be seen again … Scuttling away on cobble-stones …

Think! What kind of a life is this you are listening to?

Today, all that remains from them is the maddening noise of İzmir and Athens, and the old, dusty, scratchy 78 rpm records on the shelves of second-hand music shops.

The old Rum songs, singing of sorrow in a misty voice, and maybe, gently moving you to tears …

January 1991, Istanbul From the liner notes of Rebetika (1993), written by Serdar Sönmez

The story of rembetika is intrinsically linked with a story of migration: the 1920s exodus to Greece of the majority of the Rum population of the young Republic of Turkey. Focusing on eight recordings produced in Turkey between 1992 and 2000, this article explores the retelling of this story of migration, the national and ethnic identity issues surrounding rembetika, and the (non)existence of translation within the revival of rembetika in modern day Turkey. I will first provide some background information on the 1920s ‘population exchange’ and on the history of rembetika, before turning to the re-emergence of rembetika in modern day Turkey, with particular emphasis on the packaging of the eight recordings in question (liner notes, track listings, illustrations, etc.) and the role translation plays in this re-emergence.

With their multicultural and multilingual origins, rembetika songs are a particularly fertile ground for researching the translation of lyrics – a topic which, as yet, has attracted limited attention within translation studies³ – especially from the point of view of examining a collective identity and social memory which are informed by the experience of diaspora and forced migration. By looking at the representation of rembetika in Turkish music, we can examine how ‘the familiar/vernacular’ (in this instance, the Rum and the Turk) and ‘the other/exotic’ (the Greek) are constructed, maintained, challenged and/or merged in this particular form of cross-cultural encounter. We can thus understand the nature of the mediation that takes place today between these two communities through the efforts of musicians and producers of music. Music here emerges as a form of intercultural communication which does, at times, involve translation, but is by no means limited to it.

1. Historical background

1.1. The population exchange

In 1923, following the First World War and the Greco-Turkish War, and upon the recommendation of the League of Nations, a compulsory exchange took place between the Turkish nationals of Greek Orthodox religion established in the Turkish territory (the Rum people), and Greek nationals of Muslim religion established in the Greek territory. These people were not to return to live in Turkey or Greece without the authorization of the respective governments. Only the Greek inhabitants of Constantinople and the Muslim inhabitants of Western Thrace were exempt from these conditions. The criterion for inclusion in the exchange was mainly religion – not language or culture. Many refugees did not even speak the language of their host country. Nevertheless, about one and a half million Orthodox Christians living within the borders of Turkey and half a million Muslims living within the borders of Greece were uprooted from one side of the border and ‘transplanted’ in the other. Although this move allegedly saved the lives of many people in the areas concerned, the exchange was met with fierce opposition in both countries and was condemned vigorously at an international level.

The majority of the immigrants from Asia Minor arrived in Greece with few means to support themselves and had nowhere to live but the poverty-stricken and overcrowded slum settlements surrounding Athens and Piraeus. Many of them suffered unemployment, famine, racism, police oppression and criminality. These people brought along their music, which, though often referred to simply as smyrneika (Smyrna/İzmir style), actually comprised many styles and types of songs, including popular and traditional Ottoman music. This music is regarded as one of the two main sources of what is today known as rembetika.

1.2. Rembetika's roots

Rembetika’s origins are not ‘pure’, whether linguistically or culturally. Nor is its definition a clear-cut matter.⁴ The fact that its roots lie in an aural tradition, not necessarily recorded in all its regional and diachronic variety, complicates the matter further. What we know today about this genre is largely based on the recordings made after the 1920s.⁵ The majority of songs were anonymous; some, however, were later recorded by well known musicians and singers and came to be associated with them rather than any known composer.

Rembetika was a product of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, emerging as part of the urban sub-culture of Greek and Ottoman cities such as Athens, Piraeus, Syros and Thessaloniki (Selanik), and of the entertainment world associated with the ‘oriental’ cafés of Smyrna (İzmir), Istanbul and Athens.⁶ This style of music also travelled with the Greek diaspora to far-flung places such as the United States, Canada and Australia. Several early recordings of rembetika were in fact carried out in the US.⁷

The main instruments of rembetika were bouzouki and baglamas, but other Turkish, Greek and Arabic traditional instruments were also used, such as santouri, kanun, laouto and oud/ud. The music was often accompanied by dances of various origins: Slav, Cossack, Albanian, Greek, Turkish and ‘Gypsy’. Tsifteteli/çiftetelli, zeibekiko/zeybek, hasapiko/kasap havası and karsilamas/karşılama are among the main styles that came to be associated with rembetika. As evidenced by the variety of instruments and dances involved, what is today referred to as rembetika music has a complicated and mixed ancestry, tracing its roots to the East Mediterranean and comprising Greek folk music, Byzantine church music, Turkish folk music, and Turkish and Arabic classical music.⁸ To these one must add the influence of Albanian, Bulgarian, Slavo-Macedonian, Jewish, Serbian, Armenian and ‘Gypsy’ music (Petropoulos 2000:74).

In spite of this complex history, in the literature on rembetika one frequently encounters a distinction between what is often referred to as the Piraeus-style rembetika and the smyrneika style already mentioned above. Piraeus-style rembetika was in fact born well before the population exchange. Its major sources were Ottoman popular music sung in ‘Café Aman’s’⁹ in various Greek cities before the 1920s; jail songs in Greek; and the songs associated with the ‘hashish dens'¹⁰ scattered around the Greek ports. As such, Piraeus-style rembetika was the music of the manges and the rembetes,¹¹ singing about simple people, about their suffering, loves, longings, sorrows and anti-authoritarian sentiments, the latter often expressed in humorous and defiant tones.

The population exchange that took place between Turkey and Greece added the so called ‘Symrna-style’ music to this already variegated picture. Some (ethno-)musicologists such as Risto Pekka Pennanen (2004:4) argue that the two main styles actually represent two distinct traditions, and that the development of rembetika cannot be totally attributed to the influence of the refugee musicians coming from Smyrna in the 1920s. The music brought along by these refugees was considered to be more elaborate, sophisticated and professional than its Piraeus-style counterpart (Holst 1994:27). Others maintain that “this polarization between bourgeois ‘Ottoman’ Smyrna and sub-proletarian ‘Greek’ Piraeus is an ideological construct” (Daniel Koglin, personal correspondence, 27 October 2005). According to them, “neither the people nor their music can be clearly kept apart from each other, neither before nor after the population exchange” (ibid.).

The lyrics of rembetika bear testimony to this inseparability and also to the linguistic diversity of the Ottoman Empire. The distribution of languages across the ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire was far from being clear-cut: “Many Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians spoke Turkish as their first language, and Turkish was written in Greek and Armenian characters. There were also Turkish-speaking Slavs, Armenian-speaking Greeks, Greek-speaking Jews, and Greek-speaking Levantine Catholics” (Pennanen 2004:16-17). This language situation was reflected in the recordings of the early 20^th century, as the songs

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translation, Travel, Migration
• Travelling Toward True Translation: The First Generation of Sino-English Translators
• Between Literacy and Non-Literacy; Interpreters in the Exploration and Colonization of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Alaska
• Translating Gypsies: Nomadic Writing and the Negotiation of Romani Identity
• Rembetika Songs and Their 'Return 'to Anatolia
• 'Writing in the Foreign Migrant Sexuality and Translation of the Self in Manuel Puig's Later Work
• Mimicry or Translation? Storytelling and Migrant Identity in Abdulrazak Gurnah's Novels 'Admiring Silence'and 'By the Sea
• Look Who's Talking? Multiple Worlds, Migration and Translation in Leila Aboulela's 'The Translator'
• Scribes of a Transnational Europe: Travel. Translation, Borders
• Revisiting the Classics
• Book Reviews
• Recent Publications
• Conference Diary