SINEM - Hatun Release Tour

Hatun always knew what she wanted. Hatun packed her bags and left for Germany. Her husband stayed behind; he and the children only joined her later. By that time, Hatun had long since found work in a village in Upper Bavaria and made herself indispensable through her intelligence, diligence, and prudence. Today, Hatun is old and becoming forgetful. But one thing she has understood well, and she does not forget it: Sinem makes music, she sings and dances on stages. Now Sinem has recorded her second album, and it will bear her name: "Hatun". A picture of her, the young Hatun, will also be featured on the record. Sinem is her granddaughter, and she knows what she wants.

Sinem grew up in Upper Bavaria, at Lake Ammer. She moved to Munich, where she still lives today. Her father had played western pop music for her, the cool version: Tanz den Mussolini. At her grandparents' home, the music of the homeland was played and sung. The classics of Turkish pop culture, interpreted over and over again, often by female singers whose names have eventually acquired a mythical resonance because they are not just singers. They interpret the lyrics of the poet-singers, the Aşıks, and they write their own. They speak of the things that matter. Of love—unrequited, impossible, and bygone—of pain and longing. But also of what happens in the village, in the country, in the world, of injustice and resistance against it.

On her first album, "Köşk", Sinem interpreted such classics. They all had in common that they conveyed an attitude. Through their lyrics, their sound, or through elegant moves like this: singing the song of a macho talking about a woman. The fact that it is now Sinem's voice singing these words, while rolling ecstatically on stage, says more than any feminist seminar. This is Anadolu Punk.

The new album, "Hatun", begins with "Ötme Bülbül Ötme", written by Pir Sultan Abdal, interpreted by Sercan Öztürk and Hüseyin Korkankorkmaz. It is one of the songs Sinem heard at her grandparents' house. Perhaps it told them about life in a foreign land: "Do not sing, nightingale, my garden is not joyful. I am wasting away with longing for you." For "Hatun", Sinem has once again taken on classics by Sezen Aksu, Erkin Koray, and others that hold a special meaning for her and have accompanied her for a long time.

Sinem, the band in which Tom Wu is responsible for the music and Sinem for the vocals, has now also written its own songs. Because they come from within themselves, they develop a power of their own. The voice of tradition is answered from the present, with the past forming the echo chamber for today's stories.

Expectations that others place upon us only make us look back into the past and forward into the future, but never live in the moment and be content with what we do and who we are. Sinem has a sassy answer to that: "Bana ne", I don't care! "I did this myself. And I did that myself. What are you going to do about it? What is it to you? I don't care!" Thus, on the second track of the album, Sinem raises her voice over a muscularly rocking track that walks its own path stoically and with a firm step.

It is not supposed to be that way, they say. We are supposed to do what fits our role. But Sinem's narrator in "Masal" no longer seems willing to buy this fairytale: a well-behaved, polite, quiet, sweet girl breaks out of her cage and transforms into a courageous, free-living, winged girl. Or is this beautiful story of her liberation just another fairytale to which the girl is once again only allowed to nod politely?

"Asla!" is a banger, not even two minutes long. It is about a taboo that affects women more than men. You shouldn't stick your neck out too far. "Never!", so that the counterpart