GERMAN-TURKISH RAP IN THE CONTEXT OF TRANSCULTURALITY

Rap music is gaining more and more popularity all over the globe; from USA to Germany to Turkey. However, the genre was far from popular when it first started as an artistic expression for the underprivileged minority groups in United States. This sentiment also became the voice of German-Turkish rappers whose lives were systematically confined to the realities of “minority ghettos”, when they started their careers in 1990s through the influence of American media. The first German-Turkish rappers were considered to be ‘Oriental musicians’, later on, the cultural term of ‘hybridity’ thought to be a well-fit for the genre and the rappers. However, hybridity is again reinforcing essentialist ideas of culture, which not only limits German-Turkish rappers in one fixed identity, but also eliminates the possibility of being part of the global mainstream music scene. That is why, Pütz’s “strategic transculturalism” is a useful theoretical tool to analyze the artistic expressions of German-Turkish rappers, and to comprehend the new cultural formations with a transcultural lens.

Keywords

German-Turkish Rap, diaspora culture, transculturality, cultural studies, strategic transculturalism