Rap in Arabesque
The sounds of music rising from modified jalopy cars, as you walk through the old slums, is dramatically changed over the years. Even in my own personal history, I witnessed a noticeable differentiation. When I was in middle school, I was working as an ironer in a garment workshop. There was always an arabesque music in background that cannot be suppressed with the overlock and sewing machines and the high-pitched sound of the iron-boiler. While starting the day amid the smells of dark-brewed tea, cigarettes and chemical textile materials is something that absorbs enough life energy, both the melody and the words of the music playing in the background would push people into a deep pessimism. When I left the workshop at the end of the day and breathed the fresh air, I felt like I was born again. While I was sleeping at night, the sounds I had heard all day hung in my ears as a hum. When I talked to one of my friend with whom I was working at that time, he said that the music was good and he did not understand what I did not like. When I asked him what he really liked, he looked at me as if questioning how I couldn’t understand, and he said “well, the lyrics?” I was seeing people from the neighborhood somehow trying to add depth to the conversation by citing a song that was popular in those days. Limited vocabulary then, was augmented by quoted lyrics and proverbs. I always remember how music is at the center of lives as a form of consumption.
In the early 2000s, the city center of Kayseri where I was born and raised, a group of friends would gather and dance in a public park on the weekends, with large stereos powered by 9-volt batteries, and their clothing styles that I was sure no one around me had. Even though they didn’t seem to mind the strange “gaze” around, they knew that they were somehow stuck in that park. That kind of “novelty” was seen as a clear example of social corruption, as could be understood from the murmurs that rose up around. The beats ascendant from the stereo became inaudible after a while. I was going to see people wearing those clothes again, much later, when Ceza was popular.
Lyrics have always been very important to me. There have been many times that I have overcome the situations that I could not give the meaning, on an emotional level, through music — and especially with lyrics. It was always talked about in the circles of friends that music was a great shelter to deal with the unstable emotional stages of adolescence during the high school years. I memorized the entire discography of Teoman, Şebnem Ferah and more. Whatever was in the wide world of meaning that music opened, the value of that thing was so sure that the desire to share this valuable thing could become an open message. However, at the same time resisting a counter-declaration and marking your own side could become a kind of defense of the field. A conflict situation prevailed in the rapper-rocker binary distinction, which I remember very clearly.
Defining one’s identity through a musical genre was never a strong enough sign of character on its own. It was also necessary to listen to the names within that genre that were agreed upon that they were doing good deeds. And a common expression of disdain was “he is a wannabe”. In other words, everyone knew that genres were imported and an extension of cultural imperialism, but names were appreciated when they could produce original works that overturned this hidden meaning in their works.
It’s pretty interesting to be observing a continuum. The change in styles or genres did not make any difference in the subjects mentioned or the way of narration in works that could keep the pulse of the time. Years later, my friend, with whom we worked together in the clothing workshop, started listening to Arabesque Rap. Someone who listens to arabesque needed this transition to switch to rap music. It was a very original genre, and performing this music was considered grounds for excommunication within the rap community. While the genres developed under the pioneering of people who have proven themselves in defined and rigid fields, these sub-productions were cursed. It has never been industrialized and as it is not a professional occupation, it has not been suppressed by the wheels of the market and has become an example of a clear class language in terms of its lyrics. It has always been stigmatized as an intermediate form between these two defined genres, but little attention has been paid to how it exists in its own right. It looks like it’s starting to fade now.
The great effect of migration in Arabesque lyrics was initially seen in the form of longing for the countryside and describing the city as a place of “gurbet”, then the themes of not being able to settle in the city, exclusion and alienation at a later stage. Rap’s adventure of localization and the segments of society where it was produced and supported were more urban than arabesque was. The instruments and local idioms used produced an acceptable hybridity. What we understand from “original song” refers to a deviation from the main genre that is global in any case. A global production of locality. To sell the experience.
In conclusion, I tried to explain that, although I expressed a little messy, the inability of the local dynamics to resist cultural imperialism does not guarantee that the voice produced will support the imperialist discourse. Most of the time, lyrics cannot look at issues from such a large scale anyway. Its main concern is to make the most visible description of the problems that occur on the surface and to declare that it is against the context. For this reason, as genres change, we can observe an unbroken continuity in the definitions of the main social problem.
