Love, Deutschmarks and Death
Cem Kaya
A documentary about the independent – and still unknown – music of Turkish guest workers and their grandchildren in Germany
In the early 1960s, so-called guest workers from Anatolia and other parts of Turkey were recruited by West Germany. From the start, they carried with them an essential element of their culture: their music – a piece of home in a foreign land. Over the years, independent musical strains developed that had never existed in their mother country.
“The music of Turkish immigrants is unknown to many in Germany. Love, Deutschmarks and Death reveals how this music reflects the history of migration."
"This film is a gift. It lets us discover a world that has been largely ignored in Germany.”
What is really meant in Germany by the term “Turkish music”? or is the term itself too imprecise? Aren’t there countless styles of Turkish music? What about the music of the Kurds, Greeks, Armenians and Yezidis from Turkey who live here? It’s difficult for me to talk about a homogeneous Turkish music culture in Germany, as it’s so diverse, even among the different regions of Germany. The musical scenes in Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg should be viewed as distinct from one another, as should those in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Nevertheless, they are part of a Turkish-influenced cross-genre European pop culture that took a completely different direction in West Germany compared to in Turkey, the mother country. The music is unique – it has its own slang, its own rituals and creates its own stars.
The music scene among Turkish exiles in Germany was patriarchal. Nonetheless, several female performers achieved extraordinary levels of popularity, among them former factory worker Yüksel Özkasap, who became known as the Nightingale of Cologne, and, more recently, the Berlin-based Derya Yıldırım. “There is a misperception about the roles of the women who came here [to Germany]. A lot of people think the women came after the men... that the guest workers, when they’d decided to stay here, brought their families over,” the director explains. “But that’s not true.”
- Interview by Geoffrey Macnab
Director CEM KAYA
Producer MEHMET AKIF BÜYÜKATALAY, STEFAN KAUERTZ, CLAUS REICHEL, FLORIAN SCHEWE
Writer CEM KAYA & MEHMET AKIF BÜYÜKATALAY
Camera CEM KAYA, MAHNOUD BELAKHEL, JULIUS DOMMER, CHRISTIAN KOCHMANN
Editor CEM KAYA Sound FAITH AYDIN, ARMIN BADDE, TARIK BADAOUI, THORSTEN BOLZÉ, DALIA CASTEL, TIM GORINSKI, CEM KAYA, KRIS LIMBACH, JULE VARI