Wednesday, May 8, 2013
New Proposal
"Art is the only social force that doesn’t have to make compromises, whereas politics and economics always have to make compromises. Politicians have to think about getting re-elected after a legislation period, economists have to worry about benefit. Art, however, is the only societal movement which may discuss problems and issues of migration and identity without compromises. Art is not required to tackle problematic issues, but at least it has the potential to do so.”
Shermin Langhoff
Inspired by this quote I am rethinking my original proposal.
My new proposal for the final project is an investigation of Turkish-German hip hop artists and the issues they address via music. Hip hop is considered as a genre to raise issues about identity and belonging. Although not a genre ı am most familiar with, throughout the semester's readings and videos I feel compelled to see how Turkish German artists use this media to show their experiences in the society.
Especially in Berlin, Turkish artists use what we may call "oriental hip hop". Some of the music/groups/artists I have found include:
A group called Cartel, founded in 1995, who raises issues about discrimination of Turks in Germany.
King Size Terror's album "Bir Yabancının Hayatı" (Life of a stranger)
Gangway Beatz Berlin
Erko
I am mostly interested in lyrics and personal interviews with the artists. I want to focus on how music helped with their frustrations and its effect on Turkish community as a whole..
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A couple of quick comments. You will need a particular focus for this topic, which is a big one. What is the question you want to answer by looking at these group(s)? And will you have time to do interviews? Does it make more sense to focus on their lyrics? Or are there published interviews you can use?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. As you know I have been having a pretty unlucky time coming up with a project topic. I've looked into Turkish-German associations but couldnt find any that was both active and can be related to the topics we discussed that well. For this topic I thought I would focus o a problem like belonging or racism they discuss in the lyrics. There are interviews with the artists on internet so I'll watch them as well.
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