Abstract
This article deals with the relation between recent manifestations of arabesk music (nostalgic arabesk albums by popular figures and Serkan Kaya, a new singer of arabesk) and the transformation of Turkey’s sociocultural climate during the 2010s. Drawing from concepts of nostalgia and neoliberal consumerism, it examines how contemporary arabesk music turned into a retro product or a nostalgic commodity to correspond to consumers’ constant desire for ‘new’. We compare Kaya’s lyrics and melodies with classical arabesk songs to reveal ruptures and continuities between classical and contemporary arabesk. Based on our findings, we initially claim that nostalgic arabesk albums, which simply reproduce a golden arabesk past, embrace restorative nostalgia through turning classical arabesk songs into historical souvenirs rather than reflecting on what contemporary arabesk may become. By the same token, Serkan Kaya’s version of arabesk somehow questions how to interpret this musical trajectory to capture the Zeitgeist and, in this connection, accommodates reflective nostalgia. Since both new manifestations of arabesk in the 2010s are products of/for the entertainment industry, fueled by neoliberal consumer culture, and replicate classical arabesk songs in a nostalgic manner, we argue that they lose their ability to create something new in the complete sense of the term.
Arabesk music with its unusual sounds that include elements from various eastern and western musical genres, and lyrics about grand themes like love, fate, (in)justice, hope and melancholy (hüzün) has been a major source of popular music in Turkey since the early 1970s. Until the 1990s, arabesk was a battleground between passionate arabesk listeners and equally passionate others who desired its banishment from Turkey’s cultural landscape. In the late 1980s and 1990s, however, we see a phenomenological turn in two senses. First, rather than simply taking sides in the arabesk controversy, scholars from sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, ethnomusicology and political science attempted to explore the emergence and rise of this hybrid musical genre in relation to society and state. In addition, musicians, journalists and arabesk singers and producers initiated public debates to understand and explain the meaning of this phenomenon as part of Turkish popular culture. Arabesk movies with tragic stories (starring arabesk singers) based on arabesk songs were replaced by movies that focused on the arabesk event itself. 1 Second, while the arabesk debate was at its peak in the 1990s, contradictorily arabesk music entered into a phase of great difficulty, especially with a lack of inventiveness and creativity on the part of classical arabesk singers, and the mushrooming of bad quality songs by people who sought their fortunes in arabesk music, thereby giving way to the rise of pop music, another major genre of Turkish popular music, and its golden age. The constant decay of interest in arabesk music eventually led to a change of question in public and academic debates from how to make sense of the ‘arabesk event’ to the question of whether arabesk was dead in the 2000s.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, however, arabesk music regained its place in the music and entertainment industry. Responding to revitalized interest in arabesk music, pop music voice contests were replaced by new voice contests where selected candidates performed predominantly classical arabesk songs. 2 Although a lack of creativity and originality in arabesk music production continued in this era, two significant developments are observable: the appearance of nostalgic arabesk albums and new arabesk figures. To begin with, various singers from different genres started to sing arabesk songs (including duets with prominent arabesk singers) and published nostalgic arabesk albums in the form of covers. In addition, there was another equally significant development in the arabesk scene of the era: new arabesk singers, appealing to the contemporary youth by adjusting the form and content of their songs based on the musical preferences of young generations, appeared.
This double movement in arabesk music of the 2010s has not drawn enough attention in the academic circles. Since the current situation of arabesk music is not debated as much as its history, our article is precisely an invitation to understand contemporary arabesk music, not on its own, but in relation to the current sociocultural climate of Turkey, which we address as one of the dimensions within the multilayered changes and transformations in the society narrated by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as the story of ‘New Turkey’. 3 Acknowledging the multilayered and diverse content encapsulated within this narrative, in this article we use ‘New Turkey’ only with reference to the transformation of Turkey’s sociocultural climate and with a special focus on new lifestyle and consumption practices. Our study diverges from existing studies on arabesk not only in terms of the time period that we focus on (late 2000s and 2010s), but also the approach and theoretical framework. Our discussion draws from and contributes to the literatures on memory studies, studies on popular culture and neoliberal consumerism. Trying to make sense of the recent manifestations of arabesk music in Turkey, we argue that it is part of a larger process of commodification and consumption of the past in the form of an empty nostalgia, for neoliberal consumers and the entertainment industry. In other words, arabesk music is one of the cultural phenomena of Turkish collective memory, which is reconstructed and redesigned as a commodified retro product to correspond to consumers’ constant desire for ‘new’ in the neoliberal age.
Hence, the aim of this article is to focus on the manifestations of arabesk music in Turkey during the 2010s both by analyzing the reappearance of classical arabesk songs through nostalgic arabesk albums by popular figures and by investigating the new generation of arabesk singers. For this purpose, first, we explore 19 nostalgic arabesk albums of 13 popular singers which appeared in the 2010s, and explain how such nostalgic albums contribute to the construction of restorative nostalgia in the Turkish music and entertainment industry. Second, we turn to new singers who locate themselves in the arabesk genre. Among them, we particularly analyze the songs of Serkan Kaya, who is featured as the sole successor of classical arabesk singers by the Turkish media and entertainment industry. Albeit not as mainstream and arguably popular as Serkan Kaya, there were other ‘new faces’ in the arabesk scene during the 2010s, such as Ferman Toprak and Rubato. It is also well worth acknowledging that sub-genres of arabesk music like arabesk-rap have appeared in this context, an important development which deserves a separate study. We prefer Serkan Kaya because we think that his image, singing style and songs provide an excellent source for our investigation of contemporary arabesk music from the lenses of nostalgia and neoliberal consumerism. Unlike other arabesk singers of the 2010s, Serkan Kaya builds his public appearance by – perhaps unwittingly – engaging in a reflective relationship with classical arabesk music, thereby drawing a different route between arabesk music, nostalgia and neoliberal consumerism. In this respect, instead of making broader and all-encompassing generalizations regarding arabesk music during the 2010s, by looking at nostalgic albums and the songs of Serkan Kaya, we aim to underline certain connections between contemporary arabesk music and the uses of nostalgia as an initial feature of neoliberal consumerism in Turkey.
We will analyze these recent manifestations of arabesk music by developing our argument in three parts. In the first part, we are going to present a brief arabesk history together with a body of literature that sheds light on agonistic – albeit sometimes peaceful – encounters between arabesk music and Turkey’s sociocultural turns and transformations from its republican foundation to the early 21st century. In the second part, we are going to develop our theoretical framework in which we will pursue a theoretical and conceptual analysis that juxtaposes contemporary arabesk music with the concepts of nostalgia and neoliberal consumerism. In the third part, we will discuss our empirical findings demonstrating the close relationship between the transformation of Turkey’s sociocultural climate, and the contemporary manifestations of arabesk music in the past decade. In this section, by focusing on nostalgic albums and the songs of Serkan Kaya, we will explain how contemporary arabesk music as a retro product or a nostalgic commodity constitutes an excellent case study to observe the process of commodification and consumerism being rooted in Turkish society.
The journey of arabesk music
Several academic works have examined different manifestations and transformations of arabesk music in the last four decades. Scholars have analyzed the arabesk phenomenon in a number of ways, such as its place in Turkey’s modernization (Işık and Işık, 2013; Özbek, 2010; Yarar, 2008), in the Turkish political landscape where arabesk journeys from the 1960s to 1990s were a resilient agonist 4 against official reform policies on Turkish music (Özgür, 2006; Yarar, 2008), as a cultural and spatial practice (Stokes, 2016), and as the bottom-up, spontaneous emergence and rise of a popular culture as opposed to the state’s attempted central planning in music (Erol, 2012, 2019; Tekelioğlu, 1996). Although small in quantity, there are also studies that draw parallels between arabesk music and other musical genres in Turkey and the West. Clifford Endres (1995: 39) diagnoses parallels between arabesk and American country music, but he does not develop this argument. Yalçınkaya argues that arabesk music shows some similarities with British punk in terms of how both genres as subcultures challenge dominant ideologies and ruling classes. According to his account, arabesk and British punk ‘both preached a lack of hope for future . . . and fans of both music styles enjoyed hurting themselves physically’ (Yalçınkaya, 2008: 6).
Just as with any other concept, it is difficult to provide an all-encompassing definition and a single history of arabesk music. As it stands at the intersection of various fields and disciplines from sociology to ethnomusicology, it has multiple layers for analysis. On this note, Ayhan Erol (2019) precisely underlines that ‘[n]o single, all-embracing definition is possible, since arabesk is, and means, many different things’ (p. 163). It is also difficult to draw a single line of historical arabesk trajectory. A number of scholars trace the origins of this phenomenon to the illicit entry of Egyptian movies and songs that encountered a keen audience in the country despite cultural policies of surveillance in the early years of the Republic (Stokes, 2016; Tekelioğlu, 1996; Yarar, 2008). However, there are also writings that stretch the time of its emergence back to the 19th century by musicians experimenting arabesk-like syntheses between Eastern, Western and Ottoman palace sounds (Erol, 2019).
No matter where the origins of arabesk are hidden, the relatively liberal environment of the 1950s and the post-military coup of the 1960s was a turning point: official cultural and musical projects 5 aimed at building a Western-looking, monolithic Turkish culture were gradually abandoned, and the new political and cultural environment opened up a fertile ground for musical experiments and innovation (Gedik, 2018: 4). Özbek (1997) refers to that period, especially after the military coup, as the time of Turkish cultural renaissance which ‘was a product of diverse struggles and cultural projects of earlier decades, and it culminated in the strengthening of democratic principles and fundamental human rights in the 1961 Constitution, and in a more equitable distribution of income’ (p. 214). Parallel to the rising plurality of voices, this period witnessed a liberalization in music and entertainment industry. Classical Turkish Music, which was suppressed by the republican cultural elite, reappeared with certain modifications 6 as well as with a new name: Turkish art music. It was performed in an increasing number of urban entertainment venues called gazino (nightclub with food and drink). New fusions were experimented with Western pop music, leading to the birth of Anatolian pop and rock genres (Baysal, 2018). Turkish folk music found spaces of performance outside the heavy influence of the state. Finally, Özbek (1997) points out, such experimentations and innovations were found appealing by the society and facilitated an expanded market space with a growing record industry (p. 214).
The birth of arabesk music coincides precisely with this pluralistic environment in which the founding musicians of the genre, such as Suat Sayın, Ahmet Sezgin and Orhan Gencebay, produced their first arabesk songs, followed by new arabesk composers and singers (Yıldırım Gürses, Vedat Yıldırımbora and Mine Koşan, to name a few) in early 1970s (Küçükkaplan, 2013: 187–208). With the joining of Müslüm Gürses and Ferdi Tayfur, two of the ‘fathers’ of arabesk youth together with Orhan Gencebay, by the end of 1970s, arabesk music had already established itself as a defining element within the undercurrent flow of popular culture in an agonistic relationship with the hegemonic cultural projection of the state. 7 In this relationship, the latter tried to explain the arabesk phenomenon through simplistic views, locating arabesk within the confines of the gecekondu towns as the music of the ‘uneducated’ migrants from rural areas. Commonly narrated as a degenerate and corrupt cultural development, arabesk music was also excluded from state radio broadcasting to prevent its consolidation in the society (Dilmener, 2006: 253, 260; Meriç, 2006: 47, 66, 74; Tekelioğlu, 1996: 211). But as Tekelioğlu (1996) underlines, in the late 1960s, arabesk ‘went beyond its status as a musical genre to become a way of life’ (p. 196).
In 1980s, arabesk music continued to increase its popularity with new stars such as Emrah, Ceylan, Selami Şahin, Kibariye, Muazzez Ersoy, Adnan Şenses and Bergen. Ahmet Kaya also gained recognition as the singer of ‘revolutionary arabesk’ (Özbek, 1997: 221). İbrahim Tatlıses, who first appeared as a folk singer in the late 1970s shifted to arabesk songs and was advertised by the media as İmparator (the Emperor) next to the three fathers of arabesk. The possibility of mass production and circulation of cassettes, various concerts in different corners of Turkey and Europe, and advertisement through film productions, all together rendered arabesk music the most popular genre of the decade. Moreover, due to the wave of populism after the 1980 military intervention, followed by further liberalization and privatization of mass media (Gürbilek, 2016b: 13; Yarar, 2008: 59–61), and televisions becoming widespread, arabesk singers started to appear on cover pages of newspapers and magazines while arabesk music became a major topic of public debate on television. In this atmosphere, the social meaning of arabesk changed (Özbek, 2010: 120–136; Yarar, 2008: 69); it was accepted by the government as opposed to the exclusionist attitude of the previous governments. With this acceptance, arabesk began to lose its critical tone and became something pragmatic and instrumental, simultaneously gaining more audience, especially the ‘newly expanding middle class . . . began to listen to arabesk’ (Yarar, 2008: 66).
In the 1990s, arabesk was a genre with a great influence on other popular genres. As Yarar (2008) explains, in this period, Turkish art singers, such as Zeki Müren and Müzeyyen Senar, and Turkish pop singers, like Sezen Aksu and Kayahan, ‘began to sing their songs in an arabesk form or style, or to sing arabesk songs’ (p. 65). Arabesk music’s encounters with other genres also led to its diversification in various forms which Yarar (2008: 66–67) identifies as nihilism (especially in the songs of Emrah and Ceylan), narcissism (represented in the songs of İbrahim Tatlıses in the 1990s) and radicalism (the songs of Müslüm Gürses and Ahmet Kaya
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that appealed to marginalized people) (pp. 66–67). Technological developments in music industry also provided arabesk producers with a much better technical infrastructure for mass and ‘flexible production to cater for the market demands of a more fragmented social order’ (Yarar, 2018: 186). It was therefore predictable that such a fragmented society with different tastes would demand sounds closer to their liking rather than a standardized form of arabesk. As Yarar presents, the 1990s and 2000s witnessed such a mutual transformation and fragmentation in arabesk music and Turkish society. Arabesk music was broken up into subgenres such as folk arabesk (İbrahim Tatlıses, Küçük Emrah, Ceylan, Ferdi Tayfur), taverna (nightclub) (Nejat Alp, Cengiz Kurtoğlu, Ümit Besen, Ferdi Özbeğen), sanat müziği ağırlıklı arabesk (Turkish art-style arabesk – sometimes called fantazi arabesk), oryantal arabesk (oriental arabesk), sol arabesk or devrimci arabesk (left-wing or revolutionary arabesk) (Ahmet Kaya) (Yarar, 2018: 186).
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The mass and fragmented production of arabesk music went in parallel to the fragmented society in which social groups were in the rapid process of transformation into ‘consumers with distinct demands and lifestyles’ (Yarar, 2018: 186).
The period of the 1990s was also the time when arabesk music increased its presence in academia, although the long-lasting silence ended in the mid-1980s, when Meral Özbek began investigating arabesk music as a constituent element of popular culture. Drawing from content analysis of Gencebay’s songs, Özbek (2010: 103) conceptualizes arabesk music as a ‘semantic map’ with an emotional vocabulary that generates a symbolic and discursive outlook on everyday life and individual interactions. It shapes collective dispositions while prioritizing ‘affective experiences’. Özbek’s research was followed by Martin Stokes (2016: 143), who analyzed arabesk as an urban music that, like the metropolitan city itself, represents plurality, heterogeneity and diversity. For Stokes, the arabesk singers and musicians who developed this genre have a cosmopolitan horizon: their musical performance manifests their excellence across Indian, Egyptian/Arabic, Ottoman, Turkish folk and Western musical traditions. This eclectic form is not just a simplified version of such traditions. Rather, the arabesk music of the 1970s had a deep complexity and affective substance in its musical notation, orchestral diversity, instrumental harmony, choral characteristics, vocals and star solo performers. This enabled arabesk to establish a whole new tradition ready to transform both Turkey’s established musical practices and its sociocultural and urban landscapes.
Although few publications on arabesk appeared in the past decade, they still locate arabesk as a musical form that represents an oscillation or synthesis between East and West, rural and urban (migrant poor vs urban elite), modern and traditional, as well as subculture and mainstream in the modernization process of Turkish society and state. 10 There seems to be a great neglect of the emergence of arabesk covers in the past decade by singers and bands from other genres as well as the rise of new singers who pinpoint themselves squarely within the boundaries of arabesk music. 11 We contend that this development deserves attention. Such an analysis of the recent situation of arabesk music cannot be conducted by relying on the existing tools and perspectives, although they were quite successful in understanding the social and historical progress of arabesk until the 2000s and 2010s.
Theoretical framework: nostalgia and neoliberal consumerism
We study arabesk music of the 2010s by constructing a theoretical framework at the intersection of the concepts of nostalgia and neoliberal consumerism. As such, our study contributes to the growing body of interdisciplinary literature that weaves together memory studies, media and cultural studies and neoliberal transformation and new consumerism in Turkey. We analyze how recent manifestations of arabesk reproduce the ever-increasing ethos of consumerism by creating a myth of a golden arabesk past (the image of arabesk perfection) as a cultural artifact and then by putting it next to a large selection of retro products for consumption. Nostalgia in this particular sense is no longer an experience of emotional reconstruction of the organic past in individual or collective memory; but a ‘clever instrument of the merchandizers’ toolbox’, as Appadurai (1996: 78) rightly puts. 12 Appadurai’s (1996) re-conceptualization of nostalgia in the contemporary era signals a direct link to consumer capitalism: ‘[T]he issue is no longer one of nostalgia but of a social imaginaire built largely around reruns’ (p. 30). This new understanding of (Ersatz) nostalgia, ‘nostalgia without memory’ (Appadurai, 1996: 82), does not construct an immediate relationship between individuals or collectives and their past, but is rather a manufacturing of consumer capitalism which creates a new ethos of consumption, shifting the practice of consumerism from an activity of leisure toward pleasure.
Reynolds (2011) underlines how Ersatz nostalgia was injected into pop culture in the 2000s and argues that ‘[t]he 2000s were dominated by the “re-” prefix: revivals, reissues, remakes, re-enactments’ (p. xi). Although in every era societies showed interest to the past, he claims that this time is unique in fetishizing cultural artifacts from music to clothing so much that it is an excessive interest in one’s immediate past. Reynolds refers to this obsession with the concept of ‘retromania’. It is a peculiar fusion of the past and present consumerism, an inevitable return to archeological digging to serve for the desires of novelty on account of consumers and their fast consumption habits that turns all cultural artifacts into ephemeral objects.
In addition to Appadurai and Reynolds, Svetlana Boym underlines the potential productive power of nostalgia. Two forms of nostalgia, Boym (2001) notes, ‘characterize one’s relationship to the past, to the imagined community, to home, to one’s own self-perception: restorative and reflective’ (p. 41). Restorative nostalgia attempts to reconstruct ‘the lost home’ in different time zones; it adapts the sociocultural world of the past to the present time and conditions for the sake of establishing the ‘true’ past in the present. Since the past experience or phenomena are already lost, being nostalgic in this sense is tragic, passionate and bittersweet (Bolin, 2016: 252). Reflective nostalgia, however, presents an ethical challenge by problematizing how we interpret and relate to the experiences and sociocultural phenomena of the past. While restorative nostalgia tries to re-construct traditions and past experiences in accordance with the necessities of the present, reflective nostalgia makes room for critical reflection to understand the phenomena in question by avoiding turning them into perpetual monuments (Boym, 2001: 49–50).
As such, nostalgia establishes a new relationship with time and space by stimulating a critical approach to the re-invention of tradition as well as to the modernist idea of progress. In a world shaped by globalization, this relationship appears especially in re-creation of cultural artifacts as ‘ready-made’ commodities for market (Boym, 2001: xvi–xvii). The story of arabesk music in Turkey is no exception. Responding to various turns and crises in the sociocultural climate, arabesk music has been re-created with varying forms and contents. We, therefore, approach arabesk phenomenon in a nuanced manner by distinguishing between past and present meanings.
Re-creation of arabesk music during the 2010s as a nostalgic artifact coincides with the introduction of a neoliberal consumer culture. Since the adoption of a free market economy in the 1980s, Turkish society has rapidly integrated into neoliberal global markets and global popular culture. This rapid change established present sociocultural landscape. Since the 1990s, shopping malls and fast-food chains (Emrence, 2008: 56), luxury hotels, gated communities and foreign cuisine restaurants have mushroomed around Turkey, while global fashion brands have entered the market (Kravets and Sandikci, 2014: 129, 138). Once state control over media and cultural life loosened, alternative discourses found various channels for expression (Ergin, 2005: 80). In addition, the corporatization and commodification of the entertainment industry has resulted in the segmentation of entertainment habits along income and spatial lines (Eder and Öz, 2015: 285, 291). All these developments have created constant change in the lifestyle and consumption patterns of Turkish society.
New lifestyle and consumption practices are coupled with a new subjectivity among Turkey’s urban middle class, which pursues hedonistic desires with a strong ‘global orientation’ (Emrence, 2008: 59). This new middle class comprises ‘well-educated, financially comfortable, and well-travelled’ people (Kravets and Sandikci, 2014: 136); yet simultaneously they struggle to survive in a flexible and precarious economy, integrated into consumer culture that ‘connotes individuality, self-expression, and stylistic self-consciousness’ (Featherstone, 2007: 81) that urges fragmentation of consumption practices (Arslan, 2018). In addition, fast consumption and consumers’ constant desire for new products triggered throw-away consumption practices (Ozdamar-Ertekin, 2016: 6, 12, 21).
We contend that due to the growing fast consumption practices, Turkish music industry has offered new products and this response of the industry has played a pivotal role in the emergence of two different manifestations of arabesk music in the 2010s: nostalgic arabesk albums, and Serkan Kaya who is depicted as a successor of classical arabesk singers. In the following section, we will discuss these manifestations in relation to the concept of nostalgia and neoliberal consumerism. The coupling of rapid consumption tendencies with certain technological improvements 13 may trigger at least two forms of relationship to the nostalgic past. On one hand, artists may create their original style through a reflective approach to the past for exploring ‘brave new frontiers’ through immanent critique. On the other hand, the same replication and reproduction process may end up with the restoration of the past as an immediate consumption material that turns into a burden upon a musical genre of its history. Although there are numerous other alternatives to, and gray zones in, our relationship to the past, we contend that both manifestations of contemporary Turkish arabesk pose a good example for the second option.
Arabesk music in Turkey during the 2010s: classical arabesk with a ‘New Face’?
Arabesk prevailed in popularity in the new millenium, contrary to claims that it ‘died in [the] 2000s’. 14 Along with new albums by well-known arabesk stars, a couple of new elements appeared in the post-2010 Turkish arabesk scene: nostalgic arabesk albums by popular figures; and Serkan Kaya, a new singer of arabesk. 15 Since both demonstrate a new relationship pattern with the past, they deserve further analysis to situate changing sociocultural meaning of arabesk in the global wave of nostalgic revival and neoliberal consumer culture. We argue that these recent manifestations capture the Zeitgeist and, as reproduced commodities, they have become key elements of the entertainment industry as restored stories of the past.
As Kozanoğlu reminds us, in the time of globalized capitalism and neoliberal consumerism symbolized by supermarkets, the only option for small grocery stores to survive is by invoking a nostalgic feeling (Cabas and Kozanoğlu, 2018: 156–157). This is one of the tendencies in the arabesk scene during the 2010s: 19 nostalgic albums consisting of 177 covered songs appeared in 8 years. 16 Most of the recurring songs 17 in those nostalgic albums can be classified as classics as they define arabesk with their constitutive quality toward which one cannot remain indifferent – a description of ‘the classic’ in the inspiration of Italo Calvino (1999: 3–9). The question is how to situate nostalgic arabesk albums onto the sociocultural landscape. What is their meaning?
Nostalgic arabesk albums are theoretically nostalgic in at least two senses. Primarily, all the songs in these albums are re-vitalized cultural commodities for a new consumer capitalism. Although their musical arrangements may vary, their meanings remain unchanged because the lyrics are the same. In this sense, they stand at the intersection of Appadurai’s ‘Ersatz nostalgia’ and Reynold’s ‘retromania’. While re-enacting an old sentiment of home, these albums turn once-groundbreaking songs into ready-made artifacts for consumption; a process that encourages a culture of repetition instead of inventiveness (Appadurai, 1996: 68). Hence, nostalgic arabesk albums have become a major element of ‘consumer-entertainment complex’ through reminding ‘the novelties and distractions that filled up our youth’ in the intersection between mass culture and personal memory (Reynolds, 2011: xxix–xxx).
The restorative quality of nostalgic albums reveals itself in this connection. Classical arabesk songs recurring in these albums are presented as completely available and desirable souvenirs for globalizing marketing strategies of an entertainment industry ‘that tricks consumers into missing what they have not lost’, a transformation where ‘[t]he past eagerly cohabits with the present’ (Boym, 2001: 38). In a time when the golden history of arabesk is far away, nostalgic albums provide ‘a transhistoric return to origins with the help of’ contemporary musical forms. Thus, nostalgic arabesk albums embrace restorative nostalgia through compensating the spatial and temporal gap between past and present in a way that turns classical arabesk songs into historical souvenirs rather than reflecting on what contemporary arabesk may become. These restored versions of classical arabesk songs supply society with a shelter to invoke a common sentimental universe expressed in new digital platforms (YouTube, Spotify, Fizy) as well as gentrified entertainment venues (Jolly Joker, Günay, luxury hotels) replacing gazinos.
Encountering a somehow alternative approach to arabesk music is possible in Serkan Kaya’s interpretation which is considered to have revitalized arabesk music (Hürriyet Kelebek, 2016) as his popular songs have around 382 million views on YouTube as of July 2020 and have been downloaded numerous times on digital platforms. 18 Comparing all the songs in his albums 19 with the classical arabesk songs in nostalgic albums and abstaining from making a negative or positive judgment regarding the quality of his music, we contend that Kaya brought a different shape to arabesk music during the 2010s while his performance caught the Zeitgeist as well as the concept of nostalgia, this time in a somehow reflective fashion.
Kaya incorporates most of the classical features of arabesk music. The themes in his songs, his performing style and the use of instruments all manifest a continuation of the arabesk past. At the same time, however, there are remarkable differences between his lyrics and classical songs. Since lyrics play the dominant role in Turkish songs compared to composition and interpretation (Güngör, 1993: 161–163; Yarar, 2008: 54) and a song usually aims at transmission of meaning (Stokes, 2016: 191), our analysis will predominantly focus on what the songs say. Common themes of classical arabesk songs in nostalgic albums are separation from the beloved (with a negative connotation – the lover is upset with the break-up), separation from the beloved (with a positive connotation – the lover accepts separation), fate, declaration of love and unrequited love. 20
In classical arabesk songs, love is the dominant theme, especially the painful side of romantic relationships: separation, abundance, begging the beloved or God, cursing fate and hopelessness. This evidence confirms a common interpretation of arabesk as ‘music with pain’. 21 Love is mostly a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence (‘They say love ends one day/Mine didn’t, I couldn’t get it/I couldn’t forget, whatever I did’ – Müslüm Gürses, Kaç Kadeh Kırıldı), as if a gift from God, that should be kept whatever happens; because in this ‘cathartic state of being, nothing but love matters’ (Yarar, 2018: 183). Hence, love is an overarching and abstract concept encompassing greater and existential aspects like justice, equality, sharing, spontaneity and continuity (Özbek, 2010: 115; Yarar, 2008: 66). Even when love is unrequited, the lover cannot help but continue loving (‘I loved her so much/She doesn’t love me at all/ . . . /I have my hands tied, my God, I’m desperate’ – İbrahim Tatlıses, Bir Kulunu Çok Sevdim). By the same token, separation, whether willingly or in a twist of fate (‘Is this a trick of my fate/ It took my beloved, gave suffering instead’ – Orhan Gencebay, Kaderimin Oyunu), makes the lover desperate and hopeless. There is hardly ever a protagonist that is distinguishable from others, as if all the stories are about the same anonymous person in sorrow or abundance – yet still the high-minded, big-hearted wishing that the beloved be happy (‘The only wish I have is your happiness’ – İbrahim Tatlıses, Mutlu Ol Yeter; ‘Let your troubles be mine/Happiness be yours’ – Orhan Gencebay, Dertler Benim Olsun).
Given the lack of a protagonist, fate is personified as cruel, treacherous, ominous and untrustworthy. The singer-storyteller curses fate as it makes life harder and banishes the lover from the beloved (‘I cannot come to you, my love/Fate doesn’t allow’ – Ferdi Tayfur, Huzurum Kalmadı). Sometimes, although rarely, fate resembles God that makes the person love, hope, or disappointed (‘Recreate me over again, by ruling out the grief’ – Neşe Karaböcek, Sürünüyorum). While the lover usually oscillates between her beloved and the love of God (Özbek, 2010: 185), the subjectivity of the lover blurs. Such an overlap of love and fate with reference to God resembles a Victorian-inspired account of intimacy in the sense that ‘[l]ove was seen as a holy pursuit and was believed to be a means to self-knowledge’ (Jong and de Collins, 2017: 85). Pain, in this connection, was recognized as one of the ‘essential and even unavoidable’ elements of romantic love (Illouz, 1997: 47).
As Table 1 shows love, also dominates Serkan Kaya’s songs, with over half (59%) of them concerning separation from the beloved. Some of the lyrics are more than familiar as if they repeat older songs (‘Why I’m wistful is obvious/I can’t bear it without you/I tried over and over/I cannot love someone else instead of you’ – Gönül Bahçem). However, his attitude toward separation differs as he injects a strong (masculine) subject, a capable lover, as opposed to someone whose life is determined by fate (‘Don’t think I cannot bear, I will/ If necessary, I can be with someone fake/You may go to wherever you wish’ – Tarifi Zor). Thus, two significant innovations are observable in his lyrics: first, the existence of the lover as the protagonist; second, the elimination of fate as decision-maker. The lover asserts himself as the main subject of stories in the sense that he is vocal about his subjectivity. Unlike arabesk classics, love is no longer a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence and the lover is unhappy with the pain that accompanies love; she or he is ready to move on (‘From now on, I will attach weight to the ones who deserve it’ – Ederi Kadar). Consequently, the appearance of a strong subject erases the role of fate as the intermediary between beloved and lover who kept crashing into fate in classical arabesk songs. The Introduction of the strong, impervious subject along with the elimination of fate’s role in romantic relationships changes the reception of love so that love was defined with reference to enjoyment – an idea promoted by entertainment industry of late-capitalism, which entails ‘commodification of romance’ within the framework of neoliberal consumer culture (Illouz, 1997: 50–54). Contrary to classical arabesk songs, Kaya’s emphasis on endless possibilities in life invokes the idea that one can still have fun. Thus, arabesk no longer carries its former gravity and depth. Instead, it has turned into an ephemeral commodity, marketable to and consumable by the new middle classes.
Themes of covered songs and Serkan Kaya’s songs.
Kaya, thus, claims that he ‘modernized’ and ‘softened arabesk’ as young people are not interested in pessimistic damar (painful) songs, unlike past generations who, in his words, were ‘drinking a lot or slashing themselves with a razorblade’ (Hürriyet Kelebek, 2016; Vural, 2017). As he believes that his audience is the youth (Demir, 2017; Vural, 2017), Kaya presents a marketing strategy on one hand; 22 and builds a binary opposition between passionate and ‘corrupt’ fans of ‘old arabesk’ and bright new generations fond of positive rhythms and lyrics on the other hand. In this sense, he introduces himself as a rupture. 23 His ‘softened arabesk’ 24 fits well to the desire of entertainment in neoliberal consumer culture. In addition, a shift in the venues of arabesk music is observable. Serkan Kaya performs at ‘elite’ nightclubs of Etiler where he meets university students as well as upper middle-class individuals – a deliberate strategy that touches upon the segmentation of entertainment industry.
How can we locate Serkan Kaya within the fragmented arabesk subgenres? At a glance, Kaya’s songs oscillate between what Erol depicted as pop-like arabesk and folk arabesk, while his appearance (dressing, hair style and mustache), singing style as well as the tone of his voice mimic İbrahim Tatlıses, who was successful in adapting to the Zeitgeist. Tatlıses, who performed mainly arabesk and folk songs in the 1980s, included pop music in his albums during the 1990s and 2000s. Replacing the universal themes of Gencebay songs, Tatlıses represents the repressed desires unleashed; he was no longer the conscience of the masses that we find in Gencebay, but he rather appeared in the image of the masses (Gürbilek, 2016a: 17, 2016b: 98). As Yarar explains with the concept of narcissism, his songs in 1990s ‘signify another way of tactic or making life meaningful: satisfying desire not through love in an abstract sense, but through material means’. In his songs, Yarar (2008) continues, ‘the main character is . . . a protagonist who disposes him or herself directly and loudly and who also wants to achieve material means in the world of “Others”’ (p. 67). In this sense, what Serkan Kaya is excessively doing at present was already present in Tatlıses’ music of the 1990s and 2000s.
We contend that Serkan Kaya is part of an arabesk trajectory drawn by Tatlıses with a strong link to neoliberal consumer culture rather than posing a rupture in relation to the arabesk past. Unlike nostalgic cover albums, which simply reproduce the golden arabesk past, Kaya is rather critical of the very same arabesk history. However, this presents only one aspect of the story. From a different angle, Kaya (perhaps unwittingly) engages in an interpretative relationship with more recent forms of arabesk music although he tries to detach his music from the classical arabesk of the 1970s and 1980s. Here, finding a reflective nostalgia in his music is possible. His persona somehow questions how to interpret arabesk in accordance with rapidly changing sociocultural condition of the 2010s which subsisted on retro products for fast consumption. Moreover, unlike nostalgic cover albums, which simply treat arabesk history as a ‘perpetual monument’, Kaya unintentionally puts into question this way of remembering arabesk music.
Conclusion
What happened to the classical arabesk stars in the 2000s or what have they become? These are very important questions deserving a detailed study. However, against the current, in this article, we asked other questions: what were the new manifestations of arabesk music during the 2010s? Were they really new? And, how can we situate this supposedly new arabesk onto the sociocultural landscape of Turkey? Nostalgic arabesk albums, which dominated a decade and the music of Serkan Kaya were a novelty in the sense that new faces and voices appeared in the arabesk scene. Since they are products of/for an entertainment industry fueled by the neoliberal consumer culture and replicate classical arabesk songs in a nostalgic manner, we argue that they lose their ability to create something new in the complete sense of the term. Despite their nostalgic quality, they imprison themselves within the walls of the here-and-now, the never-ending present time of consumer desires – a perspective which cannot be understood thoroughly without elaborating the encounter between the concept of nostalgia and neoliberal consumerism. The past they seem to revive, in this context, cannot become a reality and passes by like an unidentifiable sound in the wind. One may love it at the moment one hears it, but one does not remember it ever again. Thus, in the 2010s, arabesk music in Turkey fell into a state of exile in a different manner: despite its wide acceptance by the public, it was divided between its past and present.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
