Relocating Popular Music

E. Mazierska, G. Gregory, E. Mazierska, G. Gregory, E. Mazierska, G. Gregory

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137463388
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Relocating Popular Music uses the lens of colonialism and tourism to analyse types of music movements, such as transporting music from one place or historical period to another, hybridising it with a different style and furnishing it with new meaning. It discusses music in relation to music video, film, graphic arts, fashion and architecture.

Part I
Soundscapes of Power

1

Spaces of Protest in Turkish Popular Music

Lyndon C. S. Way

Turkey stands on the periphery of the dominating centre of Europe, straddling the East and West politically, culturally, and geographically. Oppositional Turkish voices come from the periphery of Turkey itself, challenging the government’s political Islamist centre. ‘Özgün’ (authentic protest) music is one such voice of protest. With its roots in Anatolian musical traditions, it also borrows liberally from Western musical styles, instrumentation and even harmonies raising fears of cultural imperialism where the West is seen to dominate the rest. This chapter argues that it is useful to think of this borrowing in terms of relocating semiotic resources from both the West and Turkish culture to construct spaces of resistance. Other than musical traditions, representations of place and people in places in music videos are also relocated into a semiotic package of subversion (meaning to undermine principles and corrupt). These representations are powerful, affecting our understanding of places, reinforcing myths, and providing listeners with a sense of identity (Forman 2002). In song, analysis of settings are ‘highly revealing about the world being communicated’ (Machin 2010: 92), and ‘can be used to understand broader social relations and trends, including identity, ethnicity, attachment to place, cultural economies, social activism, and politics’ (Johansson and Bell 2009: 2).

I selected the official video for Grup Kızılırmak’s Çesmi Siyahim (My Black Eyed Beauty) for this chapter. I chose this video first because it clearly articulates protest within the Özgün music genre. Grup Kızılırmak was formed in 1990, producing 13 albums and participating in theatre productions, poetry groups, concerts, and festivals. Its Marxist political orientation is indicated by both performing at Cuban benefits and Marxist conferences and by its music which focuses on Turkey’s oppressed, highlighting their plight and offering solidarity (Grup Kızılırmak 2013). These actions have resulted in its members being arrested and concerts banned or cancelled. Due to the sensitive nature of protest in Turkey, songs even within the mainstream which may be considered subversive are shunned from airplay (Way 2012). However, with the Internet, videos by-pass the broadcasting authorities and are an important part of fans’ pop experiences. The video exemplifies this route of distribution. I also chose this video because it was released and popularised when Turkey’s Justice and Development Party were in government. Çesmi Siyahim is a cover of a folk song originally performed by Mahsuni Şerif in the 1960s. However, Grup Kızılırmak did not record it until 2002. It appeared on its album Figan, while its accompanying video was first uploaded on to the video sharing website İzlesene.com in 2007 and YouTube in 2008.

I offer a short discussion on cultural imperialism and popular music, focusing on Turkey. I then give an historical account of Turkey’s politics and mediascape in order to help understand the subversion articulated in the video. This is followed by an analysis of lyrics, visuals, and the music of Çesmi Siyahim. For lyrics and visuals, I examine the representation of place, participants in places, and how visual elements share space to suggest relations between each other. The music itself is also analysed to illustrate how musical elements from both the West and within Turkey are relocated to express protest, the desire for change, and alternatives to dominant discourses offered in Turkish mainstream music and media.

Cultural imperialism and popular music

Economically, Turkey can be described as a country embracing neoliberal capitalism. Its neoliberal economic policies, accelerated over the past decade, include both privatisation and the lifting of restrictions for international economic interests. This applies to most public/state institutions in the areas of communication, transportation, industry, and energy. Symptomatic of this shift is the migration of Turkish pop stars from national labels to the global music giant Polygram (Stokes 2003: 300). Though proponents claim neoliberal style globalisation promotes fair and equal access to world markets, there are fears over the effects this has on local cultures. One fear is ‘cultural imperialism’ which critics (such as Hall) claim leads to a ‘global mass culture’, not a two-way balanced flow of culture between ‘the West and the rest’ (Hall 1992, 1991, Lang cited in Ang 1985: 2). It is attributed to shaping ‘social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system [the West]’ in non-Western countries (Schiller 1976: 9–10).

Popular music is one area which has experienced globalisation in a form of cultural imperialism more dramatically than other mass communications. Reasons cited are that it is ‘less dependent for its comprehension upon language, education, and the acquisition of a sophisticated body of knowledge’ than other media, allowing its unhindered global consumption (Negus 1997: 271). This is evident in the spread of ‘global’ formats from the West such as rock and rap, the global movement of music and instruments, and the ‘spectacular inequality in the economic rewards and prestige’ of Western pop products outside the West compared with non-Western recordings in the West (Burton 2005: 158; Born and Hesmondhalgh 2003).

Despite these concerns over cultural imperialism, critics including Cunningham and Jacka (1997) question its usefulness as a concept across a variety of media. With reference to pop, it is an oversimplification to make a ‘simple correlation’ between the global spread of some music and the activities of Western-based multinationals (Stokes 2003: 301). For one thing, these ‘majors’ do not entirely control music markets due to the role of the independents. Stokes (2003) also claims that reducing the circulation of global genres to the sales of recordings ignores other aspects of music such as live music scenes and listeners’ use of music including Internet radio, ipods, and downloading. Finally, the majors have ‘real histories of time and place’ which shape their way of business including the music they package and sell (Stokes 2003: 301). Other critics of cultural imperialism note that simply mapping the flow of music globally is not enough. Instead, these flows create ‘complex patterns of cross-fertilisation and cultural hybridity’ (Shepherd 2003: 75). I see this ‘cross-fertilisation and cultural hybridity’ as the relocating of semiotic resources from centres of power, such as the West, to produce new packages of semiotic meanings. This is evident in Japan where youth ‘took rock and did something with it, within their own musical sensibilities and needs for social resistance’ (Burton 2005: 158). Punk in non-Western countries is transformed into forms of protest in ‘particularised local conditions and circumstances’, while rap and hip hop are used to ‘reflect and engage with local issues in different cities and regions around the World’ (Bennet 2001 in Burton 2005: 157).

Relocating Western musical references in Turkey goes back as far as the later Ottoman era. In 1826, the state formed a new modern army complete with a European-style military band which played a Western repertoire and officially used Western musical notation and instruments. Stokes describes how in the 1970s and 1980s ‘rock radicals looked to the Anglo-Saxon World for inspiration’ (Stokes 2010: 18–19). In the 1990s, Turkish rap and hip hop ‘borrow[ed] energetically from North American models’, while the popular genre of Arabesk music is celebrated for its Eastern and Western hybridity. Western sounds and influences are ‘localised’ by Turkish musicians to express their own concerns. For example, hip hoppers in Istanbul have indigenised rap with local genres of Turkish popular music to ‘construct a specifically local identity’ (Solomon 2005: 1). As will be discussed below, Özgün music also borrows from the West to subvert the Turkish authorities.

But centres of power can also be local. Turkey’s political and Islamist centres of power are being challenged by a more heterogeneous periphery which includes minorities and those opposed to the government’s emphasis on Islam and neoliberal economics. Özgün music is one such peripheral voice. Semiotic resources are relocated from the West but also from Turkish mainstream culture to the protesting periphery to enhance messages of subversion. This is seen, for example, in instrumentation and melodies (see below) which have been taken from more government-friendly genres. Özgün music, which emerged with democracy after Turkey’s three-year military government following the 1980 military coup, has its roots in Turkish folk music with traditional Turkish instrumentation being a key identifiable element. Though music which may be considered subversive is incorporated into a variety of musical genres, Özgün music is renowned for its politics of protest. This chapter will examine how Grup Kızılırmak relocates Turkish and Western semiotic resources with an emphasis on representations of places and people in places to reveal how they articulate protest against Turkish political centres of power.

Turkish Özgün music and politics

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won three consecutive federal elections since 2002. It is an economically liberal and socially conservative political party founded by members of Islamic and conservative groups. It is seen as an alternative to Kemalism which views Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (the founder of the modern Turkish Republic) as the symbolic leader and hero of Turkey, a champion of secularism, modernisation, and closeness with Europe (Mango 1999). AKP has pursued a socially and religiously conservative agenda, symbolically and legally changing Turkey’s secular laws and distancing itself from Western cultural practices. For example, rules on wearing the Islamic headscarf in public institutions which was previously banned have now been relaxed. Also, AKP members do not drink during public functions while they openly talk against alcohol consumption (Hürriyet 2011). AKP emphasises its Islamic roots and future. On its website, AKP claims ‘Our party considers religion as one of the most important institutions of humanity’. Religious references are used regularly as in ‘May Allah be the beloved and assistant of our nation?’ In February 2012, Prime Minister Erdoğan caused controversy by telling reporters that AKP was bringing up a new generation of even more religious AKP politicians (Radikal 2012). By emphasising Turkey’s Islamic and non-Western traditions while de-emphasising its European ambitions, many secular Turks are concerned (Mango 1999).

Turkish pop has felt the effects of AKP’s time in government. Turkish music production is a multi-million pound industry involving both major global record companies and independents. The majors dominate the market while independent music production is confined to local record labels and distribution. The dominance of the majors has been enhanced by the 1990s liberalisation of broadcasting and the market in general which saw an increase in foreign investment. Stokes notes how Polygram, in collaboration with Turkey’s RAK ‘signed up nearly every major pop and rock star for a global market by the mid-1990s’ while less known groups remained with more ‘national’ labels (Stokes 2003: 300).

Özgün groups such as Grup Kızılırmak remain locally produced and distributed. Though this may not be a major obstacle for distribution within Turkey, Özgün musicians or musicians deemed to be subversive by the government face many obstacles. There are dozens of examples of censorship (Bülent Ersoy, Ibrahim Tatlises), arrests and exiles (Cem Karaca, Ahmet Kaya, Grup Yorum) resulting from pop’s politics. Live performances as well as recordings are subjected to scrutiny and censorship by the government. Authorities can refuse to grant permission for concerts. When granted, concerts may be cancelled at the last minute despite being organised and paid for by the band and its supporters. These actions are usually accompanied by band members being arrested for spreading ‘propaganda’. Furthermore, for a recording to be officially released, it must first get a ‘bandrol’. This is a sticker issued by the Turkish Ministry of Culture which indicates the product’s manufacturer has paid the required tax. However, this branch of the government uses bandrol to censor music, tightly controlling and refusing their issuance for reasons including ‘political content, such as song lyrics perceived to advocate violence,[or] political views the government would rather not see expressed’ (Solomon 2005: 6).

Another obstacle facing Özgün music is its lack of access to broadcasting. There are over 1,100 radio and 200 television stations, though most are in the hands of state-run TRT and five private media conglomerates. According to the European Journalists Association (EJA), Turkey’s mediascape is heavily dominated by large multi-sector groups controlling the media and the distribution of popular music. The EJA observes that ‘Kral TV and Number One TV are music channels which broadcast, rank, and promote music-clips and in this way to a certain extent manipulate the music market in Turkey’ (Barış 2010).

Relations between these media conglomerates and Turkish politics are very close, characteristic of Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) Mediterranean Model. Turkey has a politically oriented press, high political parallelism in journalism, and the state plays a significant role as owner, regulator, and funder of media as it oversees a high degree of ideological diversity and conflict in society. Turkish media conglomerates ‘use the media to manipulate other economic or political interests’ resulting in a ‘notorious interlocking of interests between the media, politicians and the businesses’ (Özguneş and Georgios 2000: 414). The resulting mediascape is one of tight political and big business influence and control, even more so than in nations where governments are not as close to the media, like Britain and North America. This situation has been exacerbated by AKP’s unprecedented grip on media control where much is owned or controlled by the government and its supporters (Jenkins 2012: 1). It is in this context that Turkish protest music articulates subversion.

Çesmi Siyahim

Çesmi Siyahim’s style of protest is not one of direct references seen in Green Day’s American Idiot, but more suggestive. The visual narrative represents a voyage by the band which travels to a Turkish village where band members witness the working and living conditions of villagers. Then, they travel back to perform in front of a large crowd. Likewise, the lyrics also describe a journey. This time somebody is leaving a place to go to the mountains. While Turkish settings of the road, a village, a concert and mountains, alongside the Turkish lang...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Setting Popular Music in Motion
• Part I Soundscapes of Power
• Part II Music, Place and Tourism
• Index