SİNEM

Hatun always knew what she wanted. Hatun packed her suitcase and left for Germany. Her husband stayed, only later did he and the children follow. By then, Hatun had long since found work in a village in Upper Bavaria and made herself indispensable with her cleverness, diligence and prudence. Today Hatun is old and forgetful. But she has understood one thing well, and she never forgets it: Sinem makes music, she sings and dances on stage. Sinem has now recorded her second album and it will bear her name: "Hatun". A picture of her, the young Hatun, will also be featured on the album. Sinem is her granddaughter, and she knows what she wants.

Sinem grew up in Upper Bavaria, on Lake Ammersee. She moved to Munich, where she still lives today. Her father played her western pop music, the cool version: Tanz den Mussolini. Her grandparents played and sang music from their homeland. The classics of Turkish pop culture, reinterpreted again and again, often by female singers whose names have acquired a mythical sound because they are not just singers. They interpret the lyrics of the poet-singers, the Aşıks, and they write their own. They talk about the things that matter. Of love, the unrequited, the impossible and the lost, of pain and longing. But also about what happens in the village, in the country, in the world, about injustice and resistance to it.

Sinem interpreted such classics on her first album "Köşk". What they all had in common was that they conveyed an attitude. Through their lyrics, their sound or through elegant moves like this one: Singing the song of a macho man talking about a woman. But the fact that it is Sinem's voice that sings these words and that she rolls around ecstatically on stage says more than any feminist seminar. This is Anadolu Punk.

The new album, "Hatun", begins with "Ötme Bülbül Ötme", written by Pir Sultan Abdal and interpreted by Sercan Öztürk and Hüseyin Korkankorkmaz. It is one of the songs Sinem used to listen to with her grandparents. Perhaps it told them about life in a foreign country: "Don't sing, nightingale, my garden is not happy. Out of longing for you, I am fading away." For "Hatun", Sinem has once again chosen classics by Sezen Aksu, Erkin Koray and others that have a special meaning for her and have been with her for a long time.

Sinem, the band in which Tom Wu is responsible for the music and Sinem for the vocals, has now also written its own songs. Because they come from themselves, they develop a power of their own.

The voice of tradition is answered from the present, the past forms the echo chamber for stories of today. Expectations that others place on us only make us look back to the past and forward to the future, but never live in the moment and be satisfied with what we do and what we are. Sinem has a snotty answer to this: "Bana ne", I don't care! "I did this myself. And I did that myself. What do you want to do about it? What's it to you? I don't care!" This is how Sinem raises her voice on the second track of the album over a muscular rocking track that stoically and firmly goes its own way.

It shouldn't be like this, they say. We should do what suits our role. But Sinem's narrator in "Masal" no longer seems to buy this fairy tale: A well-behaved, polite, quiet, sweet girl breaks out of her cage and transforms into a brave, free-living, winged girl. Or is this beautiful story of her liberation just another fairy tale to which the girl is again only allowed to nod dutifully?

"Asla!" is a banger, not even two minutes long. It deals with a taboo that affects women more than men. You shouldn't go too far out on a limb. "Never!" so that the other person doesn't get the idea that you think you're better because you have certain talents. "I keep the most secret words. I don't share them, I never share them. I sing the most beautiful songs. Don't look at me, don't look at me."

In "Agatha Christie", the last of the songs on the album written by Sinem herself, a searchlight is cast on those men who, in the shadow of patriarchal conditions, sometimes stare at women on the street as if in passing, sometimes quite brazenly, turning them into things to be judged and owned. "Their faces are masked, shrouded in the darkness of the soul. At every corner they wait." Agatha Christie often stayed at the Pera Hotel in Istanbul's Beyoğlu district.

Sinem also lived there for two years, walking every day under the gaze of the masked men. Now she looks back and throws off her disguise: We see you, and when we see you, you'll stop gawking.

Tom Wu has given each song its own individual touch, with various guitarists adding their riffs. "Hatun" grooves along casually and reflects the self-confidence of Sinem, who has begun to speak herself - poetically and confidently. She is now also taking her place in the words. Whoever tells what is, has the say.

Hatun is proud of her granddaughter, and her granddaughter is proud of her.

Ulrich Gutmair