new trend in translation studies translation and polulation music

This book aims to shed light on how translations of popular music contribute to fostering international relations by focusing on a case study of Turkish–Greek rapproche-ment in the last

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Transcultural Intimacy in Turkish–Greek Relations

Research on translation and music has so far focused mainly on ‘art

music’ and on issues such as quality, singability and accessibility Studies

which seek to embed translation and music within their historical and

sociocultural contexts are relatively rare This book aims to shed light on

how translations of popular music contribute to fostering international

relations by focusing on a case study of Turkish–Greek

rapproche-ment in the last two decades It provides a brief account of the thaw in

relations between the two countries and then examines the ways in which

translation and music have played a role in these changes By looking at

the phenomenon through the music’s various forms of materiality (on

paper, in audio and through the internet) and the different forms the

accompanying translations take, and by drawing on a range of disciplines

(popular music studies, sociology of music, ethnomusicology, social

anthropology, comparative literature and fan studies), the book aims to

foreground the multifaceted nature of translation and music and their

wide-ranging impact on society and international relations

Şebnem Susam-Saraeva is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the

University of Edinburgh She has published extensively on gender and

translation, retranslations, translation of literary and cultural theories,

research methodology in translation studies, and translation and social

movements on the internet She is also the co-vice president of the

International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS)

and serves on the Steering Committee of the ARTIS initiative (Advancing

Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies)

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Transcultural Intimacy in Turkish–Greek Relations

Research on translation and music has so far focused mainly on ‘art

music’ and on issues such as quality, singability and accessibility Studies

which seek to embed translation and music within their historical and

sociocultural contexts are relatively rare This book aims to shed light on

how translations of popular music contribute to fostering international

relations by focusing on a case study of Turkish–Greek

rapproche-ment in the last two decades It provides a brief account of the thaw in

relations between the two countries and then examines the ways in which

translation and music have played a role in these changes By looking at

the phenomenon through the music’s various forms of materiality (on

paper, in audio and through the internet) and the different forms the

accompanying translations take, and by drawing on a range of disciplines

(popular music studies, sociology of music, ethnomusicology, social

anthropology, comparative literature and fan studies), the book aims to

foreground the multifaceted nature of translation and music and their

wide-ranging impact on society and international relations

Şebnem Susam-Saraeva is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the

University of Edinburgh She has published extensively on gender and

translation, retranslations, translation of literary and cultural theories,

research methodology in translation studies, and translation and social

movements on the internet She is also the co-vice president of the

International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS)

and serves on the Steering Committee of the ARTIS initiative (Advancing

Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies)

Translation and Popular Music

Professor Frederic Chaume

Professor Aline Remael

PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien

New Trends in Translation Studies

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Translation and Popular Music

Transcultural Intimacy in Turkish–Greek Relations

Șebnem Susam-Saraeva

PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien

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© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2015

Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland

info@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright

Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without

the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution

This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,

and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National- bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at

http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Susam-Saraeva, Şebnem.

Translation and popular music : transcultural intimacy in Turkish-Greek relations / Şebnem Susam-Saraeva.

pages cm (New trends in translation studies ; 18)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-3-03-911887-8 (alk paper)

1 Popular music Social aspects Turkey 2 Popular History and criticism 3 Popular music Turkey 2001-2011 History and criti- cism 4 Songs Texts Translating 5 Translating and interpreting 6 Turkey Rela- tions Greece 21st century 7 Greece Relations Turkey 21st century I Title ML3917.T9S87 2015

In memory of

Mediha Tunalı, for introducing me to music,

and ofFahrettin Tunalı and Cihat Susam

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I would like to thank:

Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, for generously giving support to this project through their Research Leave scheme, which ena-bled me to collect the majority of the data,

The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, UK, for the grant they awarded towards the publication of this book,

The University of Edinburgh for general academic support and the collegial atmosphere it offers,

Peter Lang series editors and commissioners for their patience with and input in the project,

St Jerome Publishing for giving permission to use some of the rial which first appeared in Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva, 2006, ‘Rembetika

mate-Songs and Their “Return” to Anatolia’, Loredana Polezzi, ed., Translation, Travel, Migration, Special issue of The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication 12(2): 253–78; and Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva, 2008,

‘Translation and Music Changing Perspectives, Frameworks and Significance’, Translation and Music, Special issue of The Translator: Studies

in Intercultural Communication 14(2): 187–200,

Iraklis Pantopoulos for his help in locating, translating and ble-checking the lyrics in Greek at the initial and final stages of this research,

dou-And last but not least, my mother, Ferda Susam, for patiently locating and collecting the printed media reports referred to within the book

I am also grateful to the following lyricists, musicians and poets who kindly gave their permission to quote from their work: Sezen Aksu, Yelda Karataş, Yalvaç Ural, Cengiz Onural and Murathan Mungan Despite all my best efforts, I could not reach Ataol Behramoğlu, Şehrazat and Natalie Rassoulis, as the copyright holder of Manolis Rassoulis’s work

Chapter 1

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy

Kalbim Ege’de Kaldı

Cıgaramı sardım karşı sahile,

Yaktım ucunda acıları.

Ağları attım anılar doldu,

Ağlar hasretimin kıyıları.

Yareme tuz diye yakamoz bastım.

Tek şahidim aydı, aman aman!

Bir elimde defne, bir elimde sevdan,

Kalbim Ege’de kaldı.

[…]

My Heart’s Left Behind in the Aegean 1 Rolled up my cig, lit my grief, then Onto the other shore I blew the smoke.

I cast the nets, memories were caught, Tears shed the coasts of my longing.

On my wounds I rubbed, not salt, but

yakamoz.

Moon as my sole witness, aman aman!

Bay leaves in one hand, sevda in the other,

My heart’s left behind in the Aegean […]

Lyrics: Sezen Aksu, Şehrazat and Yelda Karataş

Music: Atilla Özdemiroğlu

1

Sevda (sevdas),2yakamoz (diakamós),3aman.4 Impenetrable words for some

of the readers of this book, but familiar to both Turks and Greeks, despite

1 All translations from Turkish are mine, unless otherwise stated.

2 Unrequited love.

3 Bioluminescence at sea: emission of sparkling lights by tiny marine organisms as a result of a natural chemical reaction This is particularly common in temperate seas such as the Aegean and the Mediterranean Since these lights cannot be seen when there is strong moonlight, the lyrics imply that there was, in fact, no witness to the sufferings of the narrator I would like to thank the lyricist Yelda Karataş for point- ing this out to me.

4 A common interjection in Middle Eastern and some Balkan songs, meaning ‘mercy’.

2 Chapter 1

the fact that they speak mutually unintelligible languages and use different alphabets Grief and tears, rubbing salt and light on one’s wounds – the healing sentimentality of the Aegean people All the while smoking, with

no intention of healing, really; ‘we’, from the Aegean, are usually in love with ‘our’ pain, ‘our’ melancholy Longing and memories – the nostalgia for a highly reimagined past, for a past before the pain, before the Turkish War of Independence, before the Asia Minor Catastrophe, as it is called by the Greeks, and before the population exchange between the two nations The other shore emerges here as an image that haunts the people who were violently uprooted from both sides of the Aegean and sent across the sea The same image has also left its mark in almost every single work of art and literature that contributed, in its own way, to the thawing of relation-ships between Turkey and Greece through the rapprochement within the last two decades (more on rapprochement in section 1.2)

With its video clip shot on the cobblestone streets of Cunda – an iconic island for the population exchange of the early 1920s – in front

of its dilapidated Orthodox church and old Rum houses, later occupied

by Muslims forced out of the islands of Crete and Lesbos, and with the conspicuous use of Greek instruments like bouzouki and Anatolian-origin

Greek dances like zeibekiko in its chorus sequence, this song from Aksu’s

1993 album acts as a microcosm of the issues I want to raise in this book in relation to translation, popular music and the rapprochement The song may be opaque to ‘outsiders’, but for ‘insiders’ it tells the story of a woman who was forced to live away from her birthplace It tells about the reper-cussions of an embarrassing moment (or indeed, several such moments) in the region’s history within the twentieth century, which nevertheless links the two nations’ ‘ordinary citizens’ (if not the nation-states themselves)

in a bittersweet intimacy My objective in this book will be to relate this

‘transcultural intimacy’ (Bigenho 2012, Herzfeld 1997, Stokes 2010), fed

on a steady diet of nostalgia and sentimentality, arguably shared – if not in equal measures – by the peoples living on both sides of the Aegean, to an international academic audience interested in the interlinkages between translation, popular music and society

While working on this project, I often felt I had not made my life any easier by incorporating the rapprochement element to the already

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 3

complicated relationship between translation and popular music I set out

to cover not only the various forms of translation that could arise from the travels of music far from its birthplace, such as non-translation, translation

on printed material, cover versions and translation of lyrics on the web, but

I also aimed at accounting for these translations within a wide and shifting context, ranging from grassroots activist movements for peace to the successful co-optation of their goals by the nation-states themselves The deeper I have delved into the context giving rise to this music, the more translation has emerged as a lens through which the rapprochement itself could be viewed

ever-I believe that the project at hand is a particularly fruitful one; it scores the implications and significance of translational activities related to music and elicits questions that go beyond the more mainstream ones asked within current research on the subject It places translation and popular music squarely where they belong: within the intricate workings of a soci-ety and nation-state (Turkey), in this particular case vis-à-vis its immediate neighbour (Greece) The book emphasizes the often-overlooked fact that music is not only ‘cultural’ but also ‘political’, not only in the limited sense of the latter, but also in the way ‘the politics of popular music is linked to the relationships between individuals and groups in society’ (Wall 2003: 38) After all, as stated by sociologist DeNora (2000: 163), ‘music’s presence is clearly political, in every sense that the political can be conceived’ In a nar-rower sense of the word, though, music may also serve or clash with certain political and ideological purposes (Davies and Bentahila 2008, McMichael

under-2008, Meintjes 2004, Mitchell 1996, Öner under-2008, Susam-Sarajeva 2006) Translation scholars are experienced in dealing with these issues in other forms of artistic production, such as literature and film; music is certainly not exempt from similar socio-political influences

I have argued elsewhere that no other non-religious multimodal text moves people as deeply as the combination of lyrics and music, becom-ing an intrinsic part of their lives, acting as a shortcut to their memories and bearing witness to their life stages (Susam-Sarajeva 2008b) Music is also one way in which people form their self-identities, a ‘device for the reflexive process of remembering/constructing who one is, a technology for spinning the apparently continuous tale of who one is’ (DeNora 2000:

4 Chapter 1

63) Through this strong impact on individuals, music also exercises an enormous influence on the way societies work, nations are represented, cultures are constructed and passed on from one generation to the next

As Frith (2004: 1) rightly points out, ‘music is much more important in the emotional ordering of everyday life than is usually acknowledged’ And yet, ‘within modern societies, music’s powers are – albeit strongly

“felt” – typically invisible and difficult to specify empirically’ (DeNora 2000: ix) As amply demonstrated by DeNora’s (ibid.: x) sociological study,

music ‘works as an ordering material in social life’, from the level of the production of an individual’s self-identity, to organizing life experiences of groups and families, to structuring people’s environments in institutions, organizations, shops and companies It is true that music’s links to identity and subjectivity can be seen most clearly at the level of individual practice, but ‘the project of exploring how music works as an organizing device of human social life would be incomplete without moving beyond this level

to consider music’s organizing role in more impersonal and socially diffuse circumstances in public settings’ (ibid.: 130) This book hopes to add to the

growing body of research in the sociology of music that argues that music can, and indeed does, work as an ordering material at the level of society

at large and, even beyond that, in international relationships

It is worth noting here that the book does not intend to emphasize the role of translation within this rapprochement between Greece and Turkey

in terms of direct consequences or deterministic cause–effect relations Nor would the oft-repeated and rosy metaphor of translation as ‘building bridges’ across cultures be appropriate The links between popular music production, social change, technological advances and economics of the music industry are too complex to yield a simplistic picture of ‘translation and music for peace’ People choose the music they listen to at any particular time in history not only because of their own individual preferences but also because of ‘what is available to [them] and what [they] make it mean’ (Wall 2003: 37) In order to understand how and why these particular choices are made, one needs to have access to the full picture, and examine those social, economic and technical factors and how they interlink with musical (re)production, distribution, promotion and consumption Coming from

a socio-cultural approach to translation, this book will limit its scope to

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 5

the first of these factors, i.e the social, and will inevitably present a partial picture, often probably only scratching the surface Yet within popular music studies, changes in the wider society have always been regarded as the first and most important factor in explaining changes in musical taste and styles (ibid.: 37), possibly because it is much easier to access relevant

sociological data, compared to the economic and technical In the Turkish case, it is even more difficult to access information on the economic and technical developments in music industry (for a notable exception, see Dilmener 2003: 17–33)

The other reason why the book tries not to fall into the trap of a utopian take on ‘translation and music for peace’, is because the détente in question is taken with more than a pinch of salt on the Greek side, as well

as on the international platform, so as not to be trusted fully or to be seen

as long-term, let alone permanent However, there is no reason why we should be throwing the fledgling efforts, hopes and wishes of a multitude

of musicians, lyricists, producers, translators, as well as ordinary citizens, out with the murky waters of political indeterminacy I hope that the book finds the right balance between a healthy dose of scepticism and a genuine awe for people’s struggles for lasting peace

1.1 Objectives and background of research

My interest in this project initially arose out of personal curiosity and a certain degree of wonder As someone who grew up in the 1980s in İzmir, a city along the Western coast of Turkey, with access to only two TV channels

by two different national public broadcasters – the TRT (Türkiye Radyo ve Televizyon Kurumu, Turkish Radio and Television Corporation), and the

ERT (Ellinikí Radiofonía Tileórasi, Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation),

whose broadcast frequencies were strong enough to reach İzmir – I was familiar with the music of both shores of the Aegean After moving to Istanbul in the early 1990s, however, that link was severed, until – to my surprise – music in Greek slowly became part of urbanite Turks’ daily lives

6 Chapter 1

towards the end of that decade The proliferation of recordings in Greek distributed in Turkey, of joint concerts and duet songs by Turkish and Greek musicians, of archival compilations of rembetiko music,5 which I shall come back to in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3, and the increased visibility of Turkish cover versions of contemporary and historical Greek music seemed to have followed a from-the-political-margins-to-the-com-mercial-mainstream trajectory, all along embedded within a discourse of détente, friendship, fraternity, co-operation and peace I began to wonder why music, along with literature and film, had become so prominent in the hitherto taboo Turkish–Greek friendship How could literary and artistic outputs reflect a détente between two countries which had been in long-term conflict? How could such outputs, in turn, influence this process? Most importantly, from my disciplinary point of view, what was the role and boundaries of translation in these exchanges? And who were the intercul-tural mediators? Why were some of them more conspicuously present (such

as megastars like Aksu, popular bands like Yeni Türkü, and lyricists like the renowned poet Murathan Mungan) than others who preferred to remain relatively on the margins (such as Muammer Ketencoğlu, Bosphorus and Anadolu Feneri, and Cengiz Onural, respectively)? Answering these ques-tions would hopefully help me and my readers understand how translation and popular music could be interwoven into the socio-political fabric of

a society, how they could then be linked to intercultural relations beyond borders and why they bear the importance they do

It would be fair to say that this kind of research on translation and music, focusing on the socio-political and (inter)cultural, is relatively a new phenomenon within translation studies Until recently, translation-oriented research within the context of music would have been mainly associated with translating, subtitling or surtitling canonized genres such

5 There is no consensus on the transliteration of the Greek word ‘ρεμπέτικα’ in English The variations are rebetiko, rebetika, rembetiko and rembetika I will use the form rembetiko in this book, except in quotes from other scholars and titles of recordings

in Turkish Section 3.2 will look at rembetiko music in more detail

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 7

as opera, operetta or lieder.6 Or, translation would have been taken up as

‘intersemiotic translation’ in its Jakobsonian sense, referring to the switch from one art form to another (e.g depicting music in painting and vice versa) This tendency seems to continue even within the more recent and much valuable endeavours The compilation Music, Text and Translation

(Minors 2012), for instance, offers fifteen contributions, seven of which focus on ‘art music’, mainly opera, four on intersemiotic translation and one on ethnomusicology Popular music (and film) features in only three

of the contributions (Bosseaux, Kaindl and Harrison) There is indeed a rising interest on the topic of music and translation, with specialized con-ferences and seminars,7 and international network projects Nevertheless,

in the majority of these endeavours, the emphasis remains on classical music and its accessibility by people with sensory impairments, as well as

6 For comprehensive bibliographies on translation and music, and on opera translation, see Susam-Sarajeva (2008b) and Matamala and Orero (2008), respectively See also the resources collated by the Translating Music Network Project at <http://www translatingmusic.com/styled-7/index.html> (last accessed 12.5.2015).

7 E.g Tenth Portsmouth Translation Conference: Translating Multimodalities, 6

November 2010, University of Portsmouth, UK; Translation in Music: An International Interdisciplinary Symposium, 25–6 May 2014, Cardiff University, UK; How Is Music Translated Today? Intersemiotic, Interlingual, Intralingual and Intersensorial Transfers across Musical Genres, 15 July 2015, Europe House, London, UK.

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(Öner 2008) to the staging of local productions of international musicals (Mateo 2008), analysis of multilingualism and code-switching in popular songs (Davies and Bentahila 2008), subtitling, dubbing and voiceover

of musical films and TV series (Bosseaux 2008 and 2012, Di Giovanni 2008), translation of contemporary popular songs (Kaindl 2005 and 2012, McMichael 2008), translations in album inserts, liner notes and track list-ings (Susam-Sarajeva 2006) and translations carried out as part of research

in ethnomusicology (Swijghuisen Reigersberg 2012) This book aims to add on to these promising developments with a particular case study that foregrounds the far-reaching repercussions of translational activities in

popular music Scholars within translation studies have been working with

cultural and sociological approaches for at least two decades now, and have come to view translations as inevitably embedded in their historical and socio-cultural milieus The same should be true for translations within the context of music

Given the topic and scope, this book inevitably crosses the ries of several disciplines, such as translation studies, popular music stud-ies, ethnomusicology, Turkish and Greek studies (or, more generally, Mediterranean studies), sociology of music and fan studies It therefore draws on theoretical frameworks derived from some of these disciplines: popular music studies (Eckstein 2010, Wall 2003), sociology of music (DeNora 2000, Frith 2007), ethnomusicology (Bigenho 2012, Stokes 2010, Koglin 2008), social anthropology (Herzfeld 1997), comparative literature (Boym 2001) and fan studies (Gray et al 2007a, Hills 2002, Lewis 1992), with a view to opening up the debates within translation studies on transla-tion and music to wider issues, as discussed above, as well as contributing

bounda-to some of these disciplines with insights from translation studies.The book’s contribution to popular music studies is multi-fold First

of all, it draws attention to the oft-forgotten aspect of the ‘translatedness’

of songs, of the circulation of music through interlingual exchange and of the presence of language mediation at various stages of production and distribution of popular music Even in recent publications within popular music studies that approach their subject matter from a cultural studies angle (Clayton et al 2012, Wall 2003), discussions on interlingual exchanges

in and through music are virtually non-existent This may partly be due

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Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 9

to the ‘the longstanding prejudice against lyric analysis in music studies’ (Straw 2012: 231), shifting the focus away from the songs’ lyrics to music itself; nonetheless, I would contend that this lacuna has more to do with the hegemonies prevalent in global music circulation Most of the relevant research in popular music studies focuses on either what is referred to, rather controversially, as ‘world music’, or on the travels of Anglo-American popular music to other countries, without being translated, or of foreign music into Anglophone countries, again without being translated The rest of the world’s popular music, how they develop and borrow from each other seems to be relegated to ethnomusicology; therefore, I believe those ethnomusicologists who focus on the Balkans and the Mediterranean will also find the book relevant

Upon earlier calls for gathering and presenting more ethnographic data and micro-sociological detail, a generation of ethnomusicologists have come

to be interested in world popular music, and ‘the 1990s seemed to evidence

a watershed in the cultural study of music A concern with particular social categories (class, gender, ethnicity, age, subculture, counterculture, and so on) was replaced with a more embracing and pervasive concern with iden-tity’ (Shepherd 2012: 245) Popular music studies, too, has shown consider-able interest in the role of music in establishing, contesting and enlarging national identities in particular (Young 2002) According to Bohlman (2012: 34), music usually ‘acquire[s] the potential to articulate nationalism

by representing place’ – a particular land, often a country associated with that land and nation Chapters 2 and 3 will discuss in more detail this link between the land and its people, and how music comes to represent them metonymically Music’s ideological power, however, is not only harnessed during national conflicts (ibid.: 35), but also when it comes to the resolu-

tion of international ones While most popular music research focuses on the connections between music and a single nation or ethnic group, this study poses the question of how music is enlisted within international and intercultural relations, and more often than not, through translation.Beyond popular music studies, the contribution of the book to music studies in general might be its underscoring of the links between music and culture, which are rare to find within that discipline, as the historiography

of Western art music clings ‘to the counterintuitive assumption that music

10 Chapter 1

and culture are separate’ (ibid.: 30) The traditional focus on ‘classical’

music, with its alleged superiority due to its similarly alleged immunity to cultural and social forces (Shepherd 2012: 240), must have been a contrib-uting factor and it seems to be difficult to shake off this legacy of art music within music studies in general Music, however, is a ‘social construct […], something that ha[s] to be understood both socially and culturally’ (ibid.:

242), and, I would add, transculturally

As for the book’s contribution to Turkish/Greek/Mediterranean ies, the existing works on recent Turkish–Greek relations are mainly col-lected volumes focusing on political developments and tend to be based within the disciplines of politics, economics, history and social anthropol-ogy However, the rapprochement between the two countries is not limited

stud-to the political or economic spheres The literary, cultural and artistic actions between them have played an equally – if not more – visible role in shaping the opinions of the ordinary citizens towards each other In order

inter-to fully understand the rapprochement, a comprehensive account of these interactions needs to be presented, and this project is a step in that direc-tion Having said that, the focus of the book falls squarely on translations from Greek into Turkish, and not the other way around, in line with the mother tongue of the researcher and the impossibility of doing full justice

to the other side of the coin within one and the same book-length work

In my research, I have used tapes and CDs collected over a period of ten years, between 2004 and 2014, as well as relevant news items published during this period.8 I will, however, stick to the accepted terminology within popular music studies and refer to ‘records’ to cover both formats The fact that I am focusing on records does not mean that I am oblivious to other ways of popular music consumption, such as ‘listening on radio, watching

on video, television and film, swapping tapes with friends, ing MP3 files, dancing at clubs and attending concerts’ (Wall 2003: 201)

download-8 The majority of information gathered from the media concentrated on years 2006–7, during the time when the rapprochement was still at its peak and I was car- rying out fieldwork thanks to the Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Leave Scheme, UK

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 11

Turkish people have surely had access to the music in question through all these means and, whenever possible, I will refer to other forms of popular music transmission and consumption, to supplement the main arguments

As Stokes (2012: 109) observes:

musical style in the modern world travels along other vectors [than a particular form of mediation, the sound recording]: with people via aural/oral transmission, with instruments and technologies, and with social institutions that connect people globally – sport, religion, political organizations, and so forth.

Nevertheless, ‘the primary text of popular music remains the recording Records are also the central commodities of the music industry, where most other activities are thought of as promotional tactics for selling records’ (Wall 2003: 201) The discography at the end of the book includes 36 such recordings This is by no means an exhaustive account of all the music pro-duced within the intersection of Turkish and Greek languages and cultures since the early 1990s Throughout the years I worked on this project, a new album was coming up on at least a monthly basis Nevertheless, I believe that all relevant major recordings are addressed and some more striking ones are duly singled out in this project

1.2 A brief history of the rapprochement

Since the 1990s there have been concentrated efforts between Greece and Turkey to achieve what is often referred to as a ‘thaw in relationships’ These efforts – more conspicuous in Turkey than in Greece within the context of Turkey’s long-hoped-for European Union accession, and fortunately lack-ing the much more deeply entrenched antagonism against an arch-enemy prevalent in Greece – have not been limited to the political and economic spheres, but have included other areas such as tourism, sports and educa-tion The re-establishment of cordial relations between the two countries, although quite cautious and relative, have also been both reflected in and catalysed by various art forms, apart from music: films (joint productions,

or the horrors of the Greco-Turkish War) Before offering more detailed information on these endeavours, however, it would be useful to briefly sum up the historical and political situation between the two nations before the 1990s, at the risk of some inevitable oversimplification (for more information on Turkish–Greek relationships, especially since the 1990s, see Aydın and Ifantis 2004, Karakatsanis 2014, Ker-Lindsay 2007, Keridis and Triantafyllou 2001, Moustakis 2003, and Rubin and Çarkoğlu 2004):

• Ottoman rule over Greek territory for four centuries, mainly until 1832;

• Greek army’s ‘invasion’ of the Aegean coast of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War and the Turkish War of Independence against the Allies (1919–23), which included the Greco-Turkish war, referred

in Greek as the Asia Minor Catastrophe;

• Forced population exchange that followed, which caused 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

to be uprooted from one side of the border and ‘transplanted’ on the other side;

• Further exodus and deportations from Turkey to Greece following the 1955 and 1964 incidents;

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 13

The key events of the rapprochement, on the other hand, could be listed

as follows, though not necessarily in chronological order:

• Davos peace process which was initiated in 1988 but did not achieve particularly significant results;

• stantial threat to regional security and therefore forced the two coun-tries’ leaders to try and address the situation, especially that of the refugees;

NATO air strikes in former Yugoslavia (1999), which posed a sub-• Change of politicians in both countries, namely, the retirement of the Greek prime minister Andreas Papandreou in 1996, who was known

to be adamantly anti-Turk, and the more progressive work of his son George Papandreou, as the foreign minister of Greece (1999–2004), and Ismail Cem, as his counterpart in Turkey (1997–2002);

• ism, environment and organized crime;

Initiation of a direct dialogue on non-contentious issues such as tour-• Greek government’s new and supportive attitude towards Turkey’s efforts to join the EU;

• quarters of the two countries’ Air Forces in an attempt to defuse ten-sion over mutual allegations of air space violations over the Aegean Sea;

Agreements to establish direct communication between the head-• Most notably but unfortunately, the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Greece in August and September 1999, respectively, and that gave way to the so-called ‘earthquake’ or ‘disaster diplomacy’, generating

an outpour of sympathy and generous assistance by ordinary Greeks and Turks in both cases

In the accounts of the rapprochement, there has been a tendency to overemphasize the impact of the earthquakes and to understate the diplomatic efforts which preceded them According to Ker-Lindsay (2000: 216), ‘this impact has been most pronounced not in the formula-tion of policies to foster rapprochement but in the creation of a positive environment in which to implement such policies’ The people and the media, both highly involved in the search, rescue and aid efforts, and

fears [by the ordinary citizens] seemed to pale to insignificance and a bond of understanding developed’ (ibid.: 229) Section 1.4 will discuss

this particular emphasis on the role of the ordinary citizens and their projected desire for lasting peace For the time being, let me highlight the changing public opinion following the earthquakes through a quote from Ker-Lindsay (ibid.: 225):

Over the following weeks and months, the level of contacts between the citizens

of the two countries rose dramatically Whereas in previous times those Greeks and Turks who had tried to promote greater understanding and communication between their two countries had needed to keep a fairly low profile, following the disaster there was a proliferation of groups established that sought to bring together the two peoples No longer was participation in such groups viewed with suspicion In fact, groups started springing up all over the two countries and new efforts were made to develop contacts amongst the academic, business, artistic, professional, and media communities in the two countries as well as amongst a number of municipalities.

Activists, artists, writers, filmmakers, translators and musicians, as well as other individuals in medicine, education, sports and catering, were quick

to avail themselves of these new and more direct forms of communication between the citizens of Greece and Turkey Literary exchanges between the two countries have arguably predated all other cultural production Several novels, poetry collections and children’s books came to be written

in Turkish or translated from Greek for the Turkish audience, with a ticular emphasis on trans-Aegean identity formation Poetry was one of the first genres which gave the Turkish audience a glimpse of ‘the other side

par-of the coin’, by explaining the Greek point par-of view par-of the events par-of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through rather unusually exten-sive use of paratextual material (e.g footnotes, prefaces and introductions)

in the Turkish translations of the poetry of Constantine Cavafy, Yannis Ritsos and George Seferis (Susam 1994) Trans-Aegean novels, written in

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 15

Turkish9 or translated from Greek into Turkish,10 continued the efforts

to unearth unofficial historical narratives These novels have dealt with forced migrations, wars and the shared history of the Turkish and Greek peoples Most of them have a particular emphasis on the Aegean Sea and its islands as plot settings, and most involve a love story between a Greek and a Turk, often doomed from the very beginning

Children’s literature is not to be left out of this picture A Bridge of Sea, written in Greek and English by Lia Karavia and translated by Serpil

Ural into Turkish as Köprü Olan Deniz was published in 2001 as a

trilin-gual edition and marketed as the ‘outcome of a co-operation which aims

at friendship between Greeks and Turks’ (from the blurb) The book was also ‘approved by the National Education ministries of both the Hellenic republic and the republic of Turkey’ and was ‘recommended as a supplement

9 Feride Çiçekoğlu, Suyun Öte Yanı [The Other Shore], 1992; Sabâ Altınsoy, Kritimu: Girit’im Benim [Kritimu: My Crete], 2004; Ertuğrul Aladağ, Maria: Göç Acısı [Maria: The Sorrows of Migration], 1999; Ahmet Yorulmaz, Savaşın Çocukları Girit’ten Sonra Ayvalık [Children of War Ayvalık after Crete], 1997 and Kuşaklar ya da Ayvalık Yaşantısı [Generations Or Life in Ayvalık], 1999; Sergun Ağar, Aşkın Samatya’sı Selanik’te Kaldı [The Samatya of Love is Left Behind in Thessaloniki], 2001; Fıstık

Ahmet Tanrıverdi, Atina’daki Büyükada [Büyükada/Prinkipos in Athens], 2007, Hoşçakal Prinkipo [Goodbye Prinkipo], 2004, and Zaman Satan Dükkan [The Shop that Sells Time], 2003.

10 E.g Anastasia Kalyoncu, Bana Veda Etme [Μη μου λες Αντίο, Don’t Tell Me Goodbye],

trans İro Kaplangı, 2004; Dido Sotiriu, Benden Selâm Söyle Anadolu’ya [Ματωμένα

Χώματα/ Bloody Earth, translated as My Greetings to Anatolia by Atilla Tokatlı,

first published in 1970s, then later in 2001] and Ölüler Bekler [Οι νεκροί περιμένουν, The Dead are Waiting], trans Kriton Dinçmen, 2003; Georgios Andreadis, Tolika/ Bacikam al beni [Τολίκα, Tolika/ Sister, take me with you], trans Tanju İzbek, 1999

and Tamama/ Pontus’un Yitik Kızı [Ταμάμα: Η αγνοούμένη του Πόντου, Tamama/ The Lost Daughter of Pontus], trans Ragıp Zarakolu, 2011; Stratis Dukas, Bir Esirin Anıları [Ιστορία ενός αιχμαλώτου, Memoirs of a Prisoner of War], trans Osman Bleda,

2003; Pandelis Prevelakis, Girit’te Bir Şehrin Hikayesi [Το χρονικό μιας πολιτείας,

translated as The Story of a City in Crete by Osman Bleda, 1997]; Elsa Hiu, İzmirli Nine [Η Νενέ η Σμυρνιά, The Gradma from İzmir], trans Müfide Pekin, 1999; Stratis

Myrivilis, Midilli’den Arnavut Vasil [Βασίλης Αρβανίτης, translated as The Albanian Vasilis from Lesbos by Cem Kaşkarlı, 1997]

16 Chapter 1

to the curriculum’ (Karavia 2001: 2) The Books to My Neighbour is a

simi-lar project.11 In 2007, the Turkish and Greek National Sections of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) co-operated in order to enhance the friendship between Turkish and Greek children (aged 7–8) through picture books, in line with the general objective of IBBY A year earlier, in 2006, the Greek Embassy in Ankara had published a col-lection titled Life is a Journey [Hayat Bir Yolculuktur], another trilingual

edition in Greek, Turkish and English, which collated real life stories of disabled children from both countries

Films and TV series with a considerable impact on Turkish–Greek relations were the latest addition to this picture In 2004, a Turkish TV series became the symbol of the rapprochement in the eyes of the general

public: Yabancı Damat [Foreign Son-in-Law] It portrayed the seemingly

impossible love story of a Turkish girl and a Greek boy, who nevertheless managed to overcome the hurdles presented by their families and societies

in general The series became a quick success in Turkey, began to be cast in Greece in 2005 under the title Ta synora tis agapis [Borders of Love]

broad-and went on to 106 episodes in total, receiving highly favourable ratings, especially during its first season.12 It was followed in Greece in 1,000,226 houses, in a country of then 10 million population (Kırbaki 2005: 6) Upon the success of Foreign Son-in-Law, new TV series on similar topics began to

be produced (e.g Ölümüne Sevdalar [Love to the Death]), and other highly

popular Turkish TV series which had nothing to do with Greek–Turkish relations began to be exported to Greece (e.g Asmalı Konak [Mansion with the Grape Arbour]) In 2006, Mi Mou Les Antio / Bana Veda Etme [Don’t Bid Me Farewell], adapted from Anastasia Kalyoncu’s novel of the same title,

became the first Greek TV series broadcast in Turkey The series was about

a Greek Muslim of the west Thrace and a young Greek Christian who fell

in love and, despite all odds, tied the knot Other TV series produced in Turkey made its own Greek minority more visible, with conspicuous sup-porting characters of Rum origin (e.g Adada Bir Sonbahar [An Autumn

11 <http://www.ibby.org/index.php?id=941> (last accessed 12.5.2015)

12 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabanci_Damat.> (last accessed 12.5.2015).

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 17

on the Princes Islands, 2000], Üzgünüm Leyla [I’m Sorry, Leyla, 2002] and Havada Bulut [Clouds on the Sky, 2003]).

The films concerned can be regarded as counterparts to the Aegean novels mentioned above, although, except for one of them (Suyun Öte Yanı [The Other Side of the Waters]), none are based on the novels

trans-themselves.13 Most of them are co-produced by artists from both sides of the Aegean and several of them depict Romeo and Juliet style love sto-ries between Turkish–Greek or Muslim–Christian couples Biket İlhan’s

Kayıkçı (Kaiktsis [The Boatman] 1999), for instance, tells the ‘true’ story of

the secret love between a deaf and mute Turkish boatman and a Greek girl

he happened to have met at the Çeşme-Chios Festival, and of his attempt

to swim across to Chios (Sakız) Island to see her, only to be caught by the Greek police and then to be shunned by his own people on suspicions of being a spy Another love story, this time not only of a childhood sweet-heart, but of a whole city, Istanbul, was told in Tassos Boulmetis’ Politiki kouzina (Bir Tutam Baharat [A Touch of Spice] 2003), grossing more than

1.5 million viewers by 2006 in Greece alone

Productions in other forms of art followed similar patterns but music has arguably remained the most influential form of art within the Turkish–Greek rapprochement Even the success of the films and TV series was complemented and enhanced by recordings In fact music emerges as a theme in itself in the movies: the first time the boatman sets his eyes on Evdokia is when she comes up on to the festival stage in Çeşme to sing

an old rembetiko song The composer of the soundtrack of The Boatman,

13 Suyun Öte Yanı [The Other Side of the Waters], Tomris Giritlioğlu, 1991; Sen de Gitme Triyandafilis [Don’t Leave, Triandfilis], Tunç Başaran, 1995; Sinasos [Sinasos], Timon

Koulmassis, 1997; Sevgilim İstanbul [Istanbul, my Beloved], Seçkin Yaşar, 1999; To Monon, tis zois tou taxidion [The Only Journey of His Life], Lakis Papastathis, 2001; Bulutları Beklerken [Waiting for the Clouds], Yeşim Ustaoğlu, 2004; Ayın Karanlık Yüzü [The Dark Side of the Moon], Biket İlhan, 2005; Loafing and Camouflage: Sirens

in the Aegean [Loufa kai parallagi: Seirines sto Aigaio, Ege’nin Seksi Kadınları], Nikos

Perakis, 2005; Akamas [Akamas], Panicos Chrysanthou, 2006; Rüzgarlar [Winds],

Selim Evci, 2009; Evdeki Yabancılar [Strangers in the House], Ulaş Güneş Kaçargil

and Dilek Keser, 2013.

18 Chapter 1

Yannis Saoulis, would go on to make two more co-production albums,

Karşıyakadan Güldeste [An Anthology from the Other Shore, 2009] and Son [The End, 2012] The soundtrack of A Touch of Spice came to be well

circulated both within Greece and Turkey Its Greek composer, Evanthia Reboutsika, later produced the soundtrack of the Turkish films Babam ve Oğlum [My Father and my Son, 2005] and Ulak [Messenger, 2008] and was

given the 2006 World Soundtrack Award for Discovery of the Year. The TV series Foreign Son-in-Law’s soundtrack was compiled in Gökhan Kırdar’s

highly successful Üstüme Basıp Geçme [Don’t Walk Out On Me, 2005],

well-received in both Greece and Turkey Songs from the Greek film Don’t Bid

Me Farewell, as well as the soundtrack of the Turkish film Sevgilim İstanbul

[Istanbul, my Beloved, 1999] similarly gained popularity in Turkey.

Music also either directly gave way to various associations and unions

of peace, friendship and co-operation formed between the two countries,

or featured predominantly in events with the same aim In 1997, the United Nations organized a concert on Cyprus’s Green Line, which divides the Greek-Cypriot south of the island from the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.14 It was a joint concert by the Turkish pop idol Burak Kut and Greek star Sakis Rouvas The UN apparently distributed free tickets, 3,000 going to each side, and also provided the much needed security On the day, some 4,000 people crossed into this UN-controlled no-man’s land

to hear the singers’ ‘emotional show of reconciliation’, in an event which marked ‘the first time such a large group of people from both sides have come together since the division of the island in 1974’.15 Prior to the con-cert, Kut’s bus was reportedly stoned as it passed through North Nicosia, the Turkish-Cypriot side of the divided capital, and both singers allegedly kept receiving death threats from their own compatriots,16 but the concert itself was seen as a success by both the representatives of the UN and of

14 ‘Peace Concert on Cyprus Takes Place despite Violence’ <http://search.proquest com/docview/973613?accountid=10673> (last accessed 12.5.2015).

15 ‘Turkish, Greek Artists to Hold Cyprus Show’ <http://search.proquest.com/

docview/972939?accountid=10673> (last accessed 12.5.2015).

16 <http://www.geocities.com\\Athens\\8945\\cyprusconcert.html> (accessed 27.7.2004).

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 19

the musicians in question, and later received the Abdi İpekçi Peace and Friendship Prize,17 which honors people and organizations that work to improve the relations between Greece and Turkey

Zülfü Livaneli and Mikis Theodorakis, two eminent composers from Turkey and Greece respectively, were among the first to kickstart the rap-prochement process through music, together with renowned Greek singer Maria Farantouri In 1987 the composers established a Turkish–Greek Friendship Society, which operated for several years and negotiated with the governments on various issues, including the abolition of visas on both sides (Livaneli 2008: 313) Another institution, Heybeliada International Sound Centre, dedicated to ‘research, education and artistic production dealing with cultures of Anatolia and the Mediterranean Region’18 was initiated by Nikiforos Metaxas and Vassiliki Papageorgiou, two Greek musicians of Anatolia–origin, who made their modest fame in Turkey through their music with the bands Bosphorus and Anadolu Feneri The annual Çeşme-Chios festival, which periodically hosted musicians from both countries, including Theodorakis and Livaneli, were held within the framework of Turkey’s EU harmonization process, with the EU promis-ing to allocate €300,000 for the organization of the 2005 festival.19 There have been numerous other festivals in the region since the beginning of the rapprochement, many of which involve co-operation between the municipalities of a Greek island and its neighbouring Turkish town, such

as Kaş-Kastellorizo, Ayvalık-Lesbos, and even between bigger islands and cities, such as Rhodes and Antalya Almost all the festivals have involved live concerts by musicians from both sides At a more international level, in June

2011, the 10th annual Daphne Turkish–Greek Friendship Festival was held

in Strasbourg, taking place in central Europe for the first time, co-organized

by the Turkish-based Defne Turkish–Greek Friendship Association and

Greek-based Nea Dafni Greek–Turkish Friendship Association The

three-day event included not only a panel on cross-cultural dialogue, featuring

17 <http://arsiv.ntvmsnbc.com/news/277207.asp#BODY> (last accessed 12.5.2015).

18 <http://www.halkicentre.org\\Default.aspx?PageID=83> (last accessed 12.5.2015).

19 GRTRnews.com, 12 July 2005, <http://www.grtrnews.com> (accessed 25.8.2005).

be perceived as a desirable aspect of a music that travels.

Another reason behind music’s prominence within the rapprochement

is that politics, whether national or international, has never been foreign to the musicians of the region As Stokes (2010: 3) observes, ‘mass-mediated popular culture, and popular music in particular, has played an important role

in sustaining public life in Turkey’ There is a long tradition amongst Turkish popular musicians, at least since the 1970s, of ‘think[ing] of themselves as politically positioned intellectuals and as professionals – in others words, serious public figures’ (ibid.: 117) The same is true about several Greek musi-

cians, amongst whom are Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Loizos, who have both come to be well-known in Turkey As Karakatsanis (2014: 53) observes:

Music, songwriting and poetry both in Greece and Turkey had been a terrain of gles over hegemony and the Left had played a definitely hegemonic role in this in the 1970s […] Music and especially political songwriting became the link not only between the political grammars of the Left, the call for democracy and peace, but also the affective grammars of a growing feeling of a ‘unique’ Greek-Turkish cultural similarity.

strug-20 strasbourg-123728h.htm> (last accessed 12.5.2015).

<http://www.dunya.com/turkish-greek-friendship-festival-marks-10th-year-in-Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 21

Being outspoken critics of their respective governments, including their historically far-from-reconciliatory policies towards each other, certainly offered the Greek and Turkish musicians an opportunity to go beyond what was regarded as politically and socially possible and to start musical co-operation at grassroots level Such co-operation was mostly anathema

to the politicians of the time but was met with considerable enthusiasm from the ordinary citizens in both nation-states

It would be generally acceptable to argue, however, that the most nificant factor underlying the strong impact of music on the Turkish–Greek rapprochement is the commonality in musical forms, styles, instruments and rhythms between the two musical traditions themselves, which fur-ther helps to substantiate the claims to a regional (trans-Aegean) identity Even though this has been a highly sensitive argument within Greece, it should be pointed out that both traditions owe a lot to a variety of musi-cal influences coming from the Middle East and the Balkans (see section 3.2) In what follows, I will present a brief overview of musical traditions

sig-in Turkey, with a view to providsig-ing the backdrop for the musical tions discussed in the subsequent chapters

produc-1.3 Musical genres in Turkey

Like in many contemporary cultures, music in Turkey is differentiated roughly along the generic lines of ‘art’, ‘folk’ and ‘commercial/ popular’ music Musical discourses and genres in Turkey, too, ‘are situated in a field

of conflicting ideologies pulling either toward artistic refinement and siveness (art), commercialisation and entertainment (pop), or authentic-ity and communal practice (folk)’ (Eckstein 2010: 56–7) However, there are certain local particularities First of all, the art music referred to here,

exclu-Türk sanat müziği [Turkish art music], is not classical Western, but

clas-sical Ottoman music Second, and more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, what is referred to as ‘popular music’ in Turkey may com-prise a variety of ‘vernacular and mass-mediated’ genres (Stokes 2010: 15),

22 Chapter 1

some deriving from the art tradition, others from folk (Türk halk müziği

or simply türkü), such as fasıl (popularization of the art music repertory), arabesk (Arabic-style music), and Anadolu rock and Turkish pop, both

Western-style, and yet more often than not with distinct Turkish traces (ibid.) To complicate the picture even further, ‘most of these [genres] use

an eclectic array of local, regional, and global instruments […] and engage

an equally eclectic array of musical styles’ (ibid.).

The music in this case study comes from all three genres and, more often than not, falls into one of the intersecting or hybrid categories The rather crude, but often uncontested, distinction between popular music,

as industrialized and professionalized music produced for mass tion, and folk music, as organic and communally produced, does not hold true in the majority of world cultures, and certainly not in Turkey, where folk music may be performed with instruments associated with pop music, and the latter, almost since its inception, has drawn heavily from musical forms and practices associated with the ‘folk’ Yet, mostly due to the sheer ‘popularity’ of the music I am examining here, I will refer to it generically as ‘popular music’ Therefore, it would be useful to say here

consump-a few words consump-about whconsump-at the term itself mconsump-ay meconsump-an in different contexts.Popular music means different things to different people For most, it

is the music that sells, with the accompanying stardom and fandom This definition does not necessarily carry any negative or positive connotations For others, however, popular music has been a bane, something that has to

be eradicated, as it is seen as an easy fix to life’s more complex issues, such

as socio-economic inequalities And, still for others, it can be an identity marker for a particular scene of music, which produces and consumes this kind of music for purposes of self-defining and self-sustaining In these pages, the term ‘popular music’ is understood as defined by Wall (2003: 2):

Music produced by a highly organised music industry and distributed by an equally structured system of media networks, constituted as a set of sounds and images, consumed by people who make it a significant part of their lives and their own identity, but derided by others.

It is rather ironic, of course, that ‘art music’ could easily be defined in exactly the same terms (Kotarba and Vannini 2009: 2), but for the purposes of my arguments here, this definition will suffice

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Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 23

Within the book, readers will encounter certain distinctions made by the musicians themselves between ‘mainstream’ music and the more ‘mar-ginal’, ‘underground’ type of music One should be cautious when using these terms in an unquestioning fashion, as the give-and-take between the margins and the mainstream is quite complex (Wall 2003: 13) It seems to be generally agreed within popular music studies, however, that the ‘margins’ provide the ‘mainstream’ with new sounds, genres and stars Greek-origin music within the Turkish context seems to have followed a similar trajec-tory, emerging first in the margins rather inconspicuously, mostly in the form of anonymous folk music, then gradually moving into the mainstream Turkish popular music and gaining more visibility during the peak of the rapprochement Sections 2.3 and 4.7 will elaborate on this shift from the periphery to the centre within the Turkish music scene

As the book focuses on the role of translation within music and rapprochement, the emphasis is inevitably on a form of popular music which carries with it at least some linguistic material: songs Songs are the ‘dominant form of popular music’ and the ‘most common basis for composing and performing’ it (ibid.: 124) They are ‘so widespread that we

often take [them] for granted, and use the term as a synonym for popular music as a whole’ (ibid.) The popularity of songs, and the consequent

ubiquity of lyrics, however, should not undermine their artistic and/

or political significance: ‘Any literary or cultural history that excludes lyrics from its scope presents a dramatically lopsided view of verbal art, and by extension, modern culture’ (Eckstein 2010: 14) What may come across as ‘banal’ on paper, and therefore ‘negligible as a poem’ when seen from the perspective of literary studies might ‘be intricately functional

at the intersection of sonic, social, bodily and medial discourses’ (ibid.)

Throughout the book, examples will be provided as to how lyrics and the way they are translated, packaged and circulated have certain impli-cations both at the level of a given society and beyond By exerting their modest influence on lay people, on a regular and sometimes daily basis, song lyrics have the power to change and shape opinions on a much wider scale than, say, novels or poems This influence is linked not only with the iterability and memorizability of songs but also with the fact that music seems to accompany a wide range of people’s daily activities, consciously

or unconsciously

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24 Chapter 1

1.4 Music in the everyday life of the ordinary citizen

The present book approaches the experiences, desires and likes of the ined ordinary citizen through two rather different but, in this particular case, intertwined strands of argument The first one concerns the role of music in everyday social life, as music ‘is in dynamic relation to social life, helping to invoke, stabilize and change the parameters of agency, collective and individual’ (DeNora 2000: 20) If ‘music has transformative powers’ and if it ‘“does” things, changes things, makes things happen’ (ibid.: 48) at

imag-the level of individuals, imag-then it is no wonder that imag-the power of music upon individuals is often harnessed by activists, as well as by the powers that be, and called upon for purposes of social change throughout the world The second argument arises directly from the case in hand The overarching narrative within the Turkish–Greek rapprochement has been that of the power of the ordinary citizens, their yearning for lasting peace, their use of various means, including art, and especially music, as tools for mitigating the tensions caused by the two countries’ official policies See, for instance, the following quote from Dinos Haritopoulos, former mayor of Sapes province

in Thrace, Greece, regarding the Turkish TV series Foreign Son-in-Law:

TV series like [Foreign Son-in-Law] express the wishes of the common men and

women for peace, friendship, fraternity, cooperation, mutual aid and support between the two nations Through the actors and the characters they play, walls are torn down, prejudices are overcome, and new factors are introduced into the relationship between the people in both countries 21

Here the picture depicted is that of the ‘common sense’ of the ‘common people’, triumphing over the apparent blunders of inefficient and sometimes downright aggressive leaders Similar depictions can be found in the major-ity of the artistic endeavours within the rapprochement, and the artistic as well as the socio-political discourses they are embedded in Zülfü Livaneli’s autobiography, for instance, presents engaging testaments to the joys and

21 GRTRnews.com, 6 August 2005, <http://www.grtrnews.com> (accessed 25.8.2005).

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 25

sorrows of his co-operation with Maria Farantouri and Mikis Theodorakis, which goes back to 1979 – when a rapprochement between the two nations was not even a distant dream – and offers readers a glimpse into the con-temporary public opinion Livaneli and Farantouri’s very first joint concert

in the same year in Istanbul was ‘positively reviewed in the Turkish press’, despite the fact that ‘it was a time when any form of Turkish–Greek friend-ship was considered a taboo’ (Livaneli 2008: 222) While Livaneli’s music was banned on Turkish radio and TV for several years and his records were taken off the market due to his ‘left-leaning’ political beliefs, he was enjoying popularity in the neighbouring Greece, through concerts, live TV broadcasts by the ERT and other TV programmes, mainly together with Farantouri (ibid.: 255, 271) The 1982 recording by Farantouri singing songs

composed by Livaneli was highly praised and regularly aired in the Greek media (ibid.: 259) Livaneli eventually won a prize reserved for ‘musicians

with the biggest impact on Greek music’ (ibid.: 242), as the only non-Greek

composer on the list The less palatable facts of the co-operation, however, ranged from letters sent by the Turkish side to Farantouri, claiming that Livaneli was a Turkish spy and she should not be working with him (ibid.),

to pressures on her by the Greek government so that she would read a laration during the joint concerts on the official viewpoint of the Greek Cypriots, which she subsequently declined to do (ibid.: 297–8) However,

dec-Livaneli stresses that the negativity and pressures hardly ever came from the common people In their co-operation, which lasted for over thirty years and involved concerts not only in Greece and Turkey, but all over Europe and the United States, Livaneli and Farantouri seemed to have been rarely met with hostility, apart from two isolated instances, both of which involved local governors: Greek Cypriot authorities and the mayor of the Kalymnos island following the territorial dispute concerning Imia/Kardak in 1996 (ibid.: 315–19) The ordinary people of Greece, on the other hand, seemed

to have shown only ‘respect and love’ to Livaneli (ibid.: 315), approaching

him on the street with favourable comments on his songs, offering to pay his bills in restaurants and pouring into the backstage to get a glimpse of him or talk to him

Livaneli’s introduction, in English, to the insert of his joint album with Theodorakis, Together! (1997), is a proof of this strong belief in the

Theodorakis joins in by expressing similar sentiments, yet pointing his finger at different groups of culprits when referring to the media-fuelled military tension of 1996, during the sovereignty dispute over certain unin-habited islets in the Aegean, most notably Imia/Kardak:

The concert in Berlin was not the first I have done with Zülfü Livaneli Late last summer [1996], however, as we decided on this tour, a climate of extreme war will- ingness and hysteria dominated in our two countries like never before The raging preachers of hatred, who have been and will be tirelessly supported by the mass media with the backing of the international arms dealers, played a part on both sides We had to react to that.

Here a wide range of groups and institutions are accused of inciting lence: politicians, military, businessmen, international arms dealers and the mass media The activist musicians and the common people, on the other hand, are presented as the guardians of peace, staunchly opposing this hysteria This brings the discussion to the seemingly paradoxical relationship between the ordinary citizens and the nation-state – with all its accompanying institutions, such as the military and the media – addressed in-depth by social anthropologist Michael Herzfeld in his

vio-1997 book Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State Herzfeld

(ibid.: 34–5) argues that even the most outrageously state and

anti-law actions of the citizens inevitably reify the existence and power of the state Blaming the state, both by the citizens and the officials themselves, ironically ‘gives definition and authority to its shadowy power’ (ibid.: 10)

Citizens are often accomplices in the justification and continuation of the state’s existence: ‘The state is caught on the horns of its own reification

To achieve at least an illusion of stability it must command the active

Translation, popular music and transcultural intimacy 27

involvement of ordinary people; and ordinary people reify, all the time, everywhere’ (ibid.: 24).

In this particular case, there is of course not one single nation-state, but two – if not more, as the picture would not be complete without the involvement of arbitrator states, such as the United States, and suprana-tional institutions such as the EU or the NATO As I shall explain in more detail in Chapter 3, the ordinary people in these two nation-states, especially

in Turkey, seem to have chosen to focus on the nostalgic aspects of the Turkish–Greek relationship, harking back to a time when the Greeks and Turks co-existed, more or less peacefully, both in Istanbul and mainly in Anatolia, thus rewriting the official mythology of wars and hatred, which had effectively infiltrated even primary school history textbooks in both countries during the second half of the twentieth century These ordinary people relate to and hold on to music within the rapprochement as a pow-erful reminder of this historical co-existence, and use their own agency to bring about and sustain social change Nonetheless, in their peace-building efforts which implicitly or explicitly question the nation-states’ policies towards each other, they have inevitably reified both the legitimacy and power of their own nation-states and a regional identity which seems to

go beyond the two, as shall be discussed below

1.5 Transcultural intimacy

As Herzfeld (ibid.: 26) observes, social life consists of not only ‘processes

of reification and essentialism’, but also, rather fortunately, ‘challenges to these processes’; the initial activists efforts within the rapprochement were certainly poignant examples of such challenges Despite all the pretence

of nation-state and its institutions, there is ‘no single “national view”; to act as though such a thing existed beyond the strategic defense of cultural intimacy is unthinkingly to accept the essentialism of the nation-state and simultaneously to reject the lived experiences of its citizens’ (ibid.: 171)

Herzfeld (ibid.: 30) goes on to note the

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provisionality inherent in all official forms of permanence: because national ideologies are grounded in images of intimacy, they can be subtly but radically restructured by the changes occurring in the intimate reaches of everyday life – by shifts of meaning that may not be registered at all in external cultural form.

Music, within the Turkish–Greek rapprochement, has precisely worked within these ‘intimate reaches of everyday life’, bringing about initially almost imperceptible changes to, if not a ‘single “national view”’ held by the people in general about their neighbour, then to the ‘lived experiences of [the] citizens’, and slowly but surely, came to be ‘registered […] in external cultural form’ as well Therefore it would be fruitful for this discussion to follow up on Herzfeld’s arguments regarding intimacy ‘Cultural intimacy’,

a concept which guides most of his work on the relationship between ordinary people and the nation-state, refers to (ibid.: 3):

the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality, the familiarity with the bases of power that may at one moment assure the disenfranchised a degree of creative irreverence and at the next moment reinforce the effectiveness of intimidation.

Herzfeld (ibid.: 3–4) argues that for the anthropologists, cultural (or social)

intimacy ‘becomes manifest in the course of their long-term fieldwork [as] forms of rueful self-recognition in which people commonly engage’ Although much of Herzfeld’s work seems to have arisen from the nation-state, his overall case in point being Greece itself, he does not present the concept of ‘cultural intimacy’ as an exclusively national level phenomenon (for a fascinating account of the workings of ‘cultural intimacy’ within

Turkish popular music, see Stokes 2010) Hence Herzfeld’s rejection of the suggested term ‘national intimacy’ (ibid.: 174) For him, ‘cultural intimacy’

could emerge in communities smaller than the nation, say, within the moral community of co-villagers in Crete, and by extension, bigger than the nation-state I would therefore argue that a form of ‘transcultural intimacy’22 exists

22 My use of the term ‘transcultural intimacy’ is akin to but independent from that of the ethnomusicologist Bigenho (2012) In section 2.2 I will come back to one of the

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