Defne Sahin

TRANSCRIPT

Greetings and welcome. Just a brief note before we begin this episode. As noted in the last post, I've been a bit overwhelmed with moving and also had complications with booking the next couple of artists. And so I fell behind in my goal to have 10 episodes for this season. Therefore, I've decided to try to uncomplicate my life. And for that reason, this will be the final episode of season one. So please don't delete hyphenated from your podcast app. Stay tuned and we will be back soon. I already have some commitments from a couple of artists for the second season which will launch in the fall. For those of you who have been following this project and for those of you who have participated in this project, I thank you. It's meant so much to me to make this audio documentary series and bring it to you.... And now on with the show.

Hi, my name is Defna Şahin. I'm a Turkish -German singer and composer from Berlin, and I'm in Berlin right now. I think my music is somewhere between jazz and pop and Turkish music. It has a lot of influences from different styles I've been listening to all my life. So it's not really one thing... but I would say I'm a modern musician.

I was born to a Turkish family and we have a strong connection to a lot of my uncles and aunts and cousins live here. so I grew up in a Turkish community.

My grandfather came first in 1971, and he worked in a factory in Hamburg. After a few years, they opened up a little bakery in Berlin, and I think coming to Germany was like a dream to them. And it was risky, of course, because they didn't know the language. they didn't know what it's going to be like to live in a different country. And my dad came in '75 for the first time to Berlin to learn the language, and he wanted to study at the university here but it didn't work out, so he had to move back to Turkey and then he studied German language. That's where he met my mother. They moved to Germany, but not together. They moved individually and met again here. And then I was born in '84.

My parents were teachers in German schools. They had German colleagues and friends and neighbors. So I would say I grew up in both cultures at the same time, although Turkish culture was a little bit stronger until I started elementary school,

All the kids had either one parent or both parents from another country, so it was a very mixed group and our teachers provided an environment to make sure that we are all part of this community. So it was really a very diverse and culturally rich environment that I grew up in. But then when I switched to high school, I realized I'm one of the few people with an immigrant background, and that's where the comments began, like, "Oh, your German is so good," or, "You are so good in school," and, "Wow, you can come party with us, you're very different.” And I didn't want to be different, I wanted to be a part of a group, of course, And being labeled as a good immigrant, on the one hand, was really working out well for me. On the other hand, I was like okay, but these people are really comparing me to my other family members who may not have the luck I had or not the privileges I had, and I love them too, so why do I have to be seen as something better as them? So it was really difficult for me to navigate between the prejudices and the privileges I had, you know?

I think my parents just always try to make me feel comfortable and at home and just be confident. And I think they really tried to – in Germany, we say integrate – integration is a big word here. So I think they wanted me to feel feel like a German kid would feel. We celebrated Christmas, but my parents didn't know what that was. So they just looked around and, you know, tried to figure out what you do on these holidays. But like, at the same time, we also celebrated Turkish holidays.

I think Christmas, celebrating Christmas just grew each year the more I got to know in school what my other classmates are doing. So I think it started simple with like celebrating Nikolaos on the 6th of December, which was really great for us because Nikolaos is from Turkey. So I had an even stronger connection to that. And I love chocolate, getting chocolate at that day was great. And then... we had a little Christmas tree to celebrate the 24th. So I taught my parents how to celebrate Christmas. I brought these ideas home and then they had to do that for me.

So yeah, it was a thing. I think it was always like trying to find a balance between these two cultures and making them. fuse naturally. And yeah, thinking about myself, it's just so complex to explain integration in a few sentences, but I don't feel, I don't ever feel fully accepted. in this country because I'm always seen as someone who doesn't really belong here – by most people, not by everyone – but just because of my name and the way I look, I'm always seen as the other and not a German.

Growing up in Germany as a German -Turkish person, as a girl, woman, I just had a really strong sense for justice, or like social justice. I think that was a big theme for me. And then I did hear, as a child, I heard these words by Nazim Hikmet, the Turkish poet. who was a political dissident, who was imprisoned for, yeah, so long. If I translate these words, “let's give the world to the children, if only for one day.” And there was a song to that poem too. And I heard it and I was so fascinated as a child. And I was like, yes, we children should own the world and we should, you know, make better decisions than the adults do. And I had this very strong feeling about this poem – and his themes are just freedom and a longing for a peaceful togetherness. And he has a strong love for nature. And I think these topics and his clear vision and language just drew me to write music to his words. And I thought that with these words and my music I can spread this message and try to contribute to a better world. I mean that's very... it sounds very childish at this point, but I think it's very essential to what I do to try to contribute to more understanding and peace.

So in university, when we were asked to write a song about the world – that was the big theme, the world – I immediately came back to this poem by Nazim Hikmet, “Let's give the world to the children.” And I wrote a song that was my first composition to Turkish lyrics. And what came out of there really surprised me because the rhythms and the scales and the harmonies, they were so different than the other songs I would write in jazz school or sing. So that opened up a whole new,

yeah, musical world to me. And so I decided to go to write more music to Nazim Hikmet's poetry. And that's how my first album came about – Yasamak.

I love just the collaboration – I call it collaboration – between me and a poet. Although Nazim Hikmet doesn't live anymore, but just reading so many of his poems and exploring his history and then, you know, just investigating a lot of time with his words, made me feel like we are collaborating. And I get so much of his vision and imagery that puts me into a different world, like as if I was composing music for a film or something. That's how I feel with poems that I get a story and a feeling from another person and, of course, I interpreted it but it still wouldn't be the same if that person was be there, then I couldn't. So it is a nice fictive collaboration.

I think the concept of not being allowed to express yourself, like he was, I mean, he was in danger and he was in exile for most of his life. He couldn't live the life he wanted to. And I kind of, I mean, I'm not in exile, but I know the feeling of not being completely accepted. And yeah, I just, I felt that that feeling of... discomfort, that feeling of not being relaxed and not being able to be and express what you want. I think that's what drew me to Nazim Hikmet's poetry a lot. And that big longing for a very long time. peaceful place.

I think there is a theme of trying to find myself musically, and the way that people saw me after the first album was very different than I saw myself. Like I was seen as” the Turkish jazz singer,” or “the jazz singer who only sings in Turkish.” And to me that was not appropriate to the different music styles I love and want to explore still.

So yeah, then I moved to New York in 2012 to do my masters and kind of in the beginning I knew that I don't only want to be a student there but I want to live there for a little bit longer and explore. So I lived there for three years and that's when I composed the songs for my second album Unravel. And before I left I knew I have to take something special with me from that city, from that feeling of living there, the music I created, the people I've met, the musicians I've met, and so I decided to record this album.

I think it was a surprise to a lot of jazz club presenters or journalists that I wasn't seeing Turkish again. And that was interesting to experience being put in a box. But I think it was a conscious decision, definitely a conscious decision not to continue the Turkish music because I feel like I'm so much more than only a Turkish singer and that wouldn't be true to who I am as an artist to just produce things to please a certain expectation. But also I feel like there is a lot of Turkish identity in songs that are not perceived that way. For example, some melodies very much influenced by my Turkish heritage. One song called "Walk With Me". It also has very Turkish music influenced melodies. And the story behind “Lubna,” for example, is about the Gezi protest. in Istanbul in 2013. She was hit by a tear gas canister on the head. I wrote a song about her story. So there is always still my identity in that, but it's maybe not through language and maybe not through titles.

But I'm a little bit offended when people say, "Oh, so you don't do Turkish music anymore?" But I don't even know what Turkish music then is, because I do my music and I'm an artist that is not only German-Turkish, but I'm a human being, and like a sponge I'm getting influences from all over the place. Why not put everything that I have in that moment into the music I have or I create?

Emily Dickinson was the first poet that I wrote music to her lyrics. That was "Hope is the Thing with Feathers" during music school. That was my first. interaction with her poetry. And then I think her poetry was just around ever since. And I knew that the poems fit so well into songs because of the way they are written – they're almost like verses and choruses. So yeah, Emily Dickenson, lived in the 19th century. She spent most of her life, more or less, in isolation, that she chose that for herself. It's said that she was just up in her room writing a lot of poems. And due to the time she was living in, she wasn't recognized as a poet. Yeah, still had the drive and energy to create so many beautiful poems.

When I moved to New York, my roommates there, each week they put a different poem in the bathroom. Very, very artsy. And then one poem was "Heart! We Will Forget Him" and I wrote music to that poem in my apartment.

It was very natural during the pandemic actually when I was struggling with... you know, being separated from people you love, also with separation from friends. Like, I lost a friend. She died. And then I lost another friend due to a big conflict. And I broke up with my boyfriend. So there was a lot of separation during that time, in a time that was tough already. And I just thought of Emily Dickinson.

One of her big themes in the poetry is death. She was really fascinated by death, how to deal with death and make it, yeah, make it a part of life. And what I tried to do is keep the people alive in my mind and in my soul, and to keep their spirit alive, and enjoy that presence through the spirit they leave on this planet. And I felt her poems really helpful for that to kind of demystify and untaboo – is that even a word? – to untaboo death, and the grief really that goes along with that.

I think that the album Hope is a little bit like a soundtrack for life, for my life and also for life in general. And I think hope is just the thing that keeps me going and to keep believing in a good life, and to also just embrace things that are not good in life – because that's just nature, right? You're not gonna be able to just live a positive life from A to Z, but it's great anyways. That's what I hope that this album can be for people. The feeling of not being alone with what you're going through because we all have to struggle at some point, but then there is also always the light that comes along. I think hope is like a continuing thing. And I have a loop in that song, and hope should be that – like a never-ending infinity sign that goes through your life and you are kind of moving with that infinity sign, so you don't get out of the loop of hope. I wish people would spend their time to work not only for their own hopes but for the hope for the whole bigger world, you know? Yeah.