OZAN ATA CANANI & DIE DEMOKRATIE

popanz
OZAN ATA CANANI & DIE DEMOKRATIE (Fun in the Church)
OPEN AIR (in case of bad weather in the club)
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Bumann & Sohn, Cologne
Admission 19:00, start 20:00

Tickets: https://popanz.ticket.io/1qqgh2my/

We had already taken her for granted. We thought it would live forever. Now we have to fight for her again. We have to fight for her not to die. That it is not murdered by all those who want to force us into a new age of fear, into a new age of hatred, into a new era of dictatorial rule. We must fight for democracy: "It's clear to everyone, democracy didn't fall from the sky", sings Ozan Ata Canani in the title track of this album: "Democracy doesn't come for free either".

Fifty years have passed since Ata wrote his first songs, in the mid-seventies, when he was just 13 years old and had moved from his Anatolian birthplace to Germany, where his father worked as a "guest worker" in heavy industry. To make the move easier for his son, his father bought him a bağlama, a long-necked lute whose history can be traced back hundreds of years, to the Ottoman court and to the songs of Turkish bards; in the Turkish rock music of the sixties and seventies, it celebrated a renaissance in electrically amplified form. The young Ata taught himself the instrument, performed at Turkish wedding parties and began to write lyrics in German. His first song was called "Deutsche Freunde" (German Friends) and was about the fate of people who eked out an existence in Germany "as unskilled laborers, as dirt and garbage workers"; and it was about the fate of their children: "divided into two worlds".

Ata's musical career ended in the mid-1980s and it took almost three decades for him to be rediscovered. He re-recorded "Deutsche Freunde" for a compilation entitled "Songs of Gastarbeiter" in 2013, after which he began to play concerts and compose regularly again. In 2021, when he was 58 years old, his late debut "Warte mein Land, warte" was finally released on the Fun In The Church label.

"Die Demokratie" is the second coup from this astonishing, youthful, highly topical work of old age. Ata still uses the bağlama as his guiding instrument. He is accompanied by the Cologne band Locas In Love and the London percussionist Renu; Komba Coşkunel, a Turkish-Bulgarian virtuoso on the Arabic goblet drum darbuka, and the German-Turkish singer Sinem can be heard in the choir; Jerome Bugnon, the trombonist of the Berlin dancehall band Seeed, contributed the brass arrangements. This is how "Western" and "Turkish" styles meet, and the present and the past come together. In the song "Freund / Dost", Ata sings about being a stranger in a hostile society and longing for home. It dates from 1979, and the recording also features the voice of the then 18-year-old: Istanbul-based DJ Bey ripped it from the YouTube recording of a television program and used it as the basis for his arrangement.

Ata sings some songs in Turkish and some in German. The messages he sends are universal. They are messages that are addressed to all people: no matter what language they speak; no matter where they come from; no matter which God they pray to or not. They could all be friends. But too many allow themselves to be set against each other again, by racism and nationalism and by the delusion of a misunderstood religion. The song "Pir Sultan" is named after Pir Sultan Abdal, a Turkish poet of the Alevi faith from the 16th century. The Alevis are despised by many Muslims as heretics; for centuries they have been discriminated against and the victims of attacks and pogroms. "The souls burned brightly, in Madımak only ashes remained", says the song. In 1993, an Alevi cultural festival was being held at the Madımak Hotel in the Anatolian city of Sivas when an Islamist mob stormed the hotel and burned it down. 35 people lost their lives: "False believers", sings Ata: "a disgrace to humanity".

Why can't we be friends? Why can't we discuss our differences and settle them peacefully? "Come, my brother, don't hold grudges, let's make peace, you and I," sings Ata in the song "Gel Gel" ("Come on"): "Let's meet in the middle, on democratic ground". The center, democracy, understanding: all of this is more threatened today than it has been for a long time. In Germany, democrats have to fight against the "brown barbarians" of the AfD, whom Ata sings about in the title track of this album. In Turkey, they have to fight against a president who throws the opposition in prison and tries to become a dictator for good. But the fight is not lost, and hope is not in vain, in March 2025 millions of mostly young Turks took to the streets against their president and his dictatorial policies, courageously, resolutely, bravely. Perhaps the Germans, who face a similar threat, can learn something from these young Turks? "Standing still doesn't solve problems," sings Ozan Ata Canani: "Let's walk into a hopeful future, you and me. Let's make peace."