Turkish Music Hits German Cinemas

Akin had been dreaming of this film for a long time. The shooting for his award-winning drama "Head On," which partly took place in Istanbul, is what gave him the final impulse.

Together with Alexander Hacke, the bass player of the German avant-garde band "Einstürzende Neubauten," Akin returned to the Turkish cultural capital to find out what makes Istanbul a city of dreams and love songs, and above all, a musical metropolis.

Kitted out with a laptop and hi-tech equipment, the two men made their way through the loud, hectic and hot city in order to portray the musicians that lend Istanbul its musical identity.

A Turkish music medley

What they came up with is a medley of many different musical directions, oscillating between hip hop and arabesque, Turkish grunge and Roma folklore, electro beats and melancholy street music.

Unobtrusively and yet with a close-up view, Akin follows the musicians and the film's narrator, Alexander Hacke, through the narrow streets of Istanbul, into the studios, on a boat trip. No fancy camera scenes, no staged drama take away from the film's musical core.

But "Crossing the Bridge – The Sounds of Istanbul" is not just a survey of the city's music scene. It is a documentary film in which the musicians and their understanding of music and their identity play the main role.

There's Rapper Ceza, for example, whose quick-rapping songs are reminiscent of Sean Combs, aka P. Diddy. But Ceza would reject any comparison with American role models.

"Knowing where you live gives you music and identity," says the young musician. And for this Turkish rapper, that doesn't have anything to do with drugs, money and fast cars. Even his father sees it this way.

"Turkey needs hip hop," he says looking straight into Akin's camera.

Flower power and 1001 nights

The rather surprising support offered by the older generation did not exist in the 1960s and 70s for the eccentric musician Erkin Koray. He was one of the first to play Turkish music on electrically amplified instruments, to cover the Beatles and the Stones, and to inaugurate the Beat era in Turkey.

With this kind of Western influence, he faced rejection in the Turkish Republic, but for the next generation, he had opened the door to a new understanding of music. And for this he is still a role model today.

The same is true for bands like "Baba Zula," who play a mixture of Oriental sounds and jazz-oriented psychedelic, thereby expressing the notion that Istanbul is neither in the East nor West, but is made up of different ethnic influences.

That's why in Akin's film, the band doesn't play in Istanbul but on a traditional ship on the Bosporus, the strip of sea that separates Asia from Europe. For the "Baba Zula" musicians, the borders are fluid in the most literal sense.

The freedom of identity

The title of Akin's film, "Crossing the Bridge," thus has many meanings. It's not just about a bridge between East and West, Islam and Christianity. In the world of music, these definitions do not exist. One of the musicians portrayed in the film puts it like this: "I don't believe that Asia begins at the Bosporus and ends in China and the West begins in Greece and stretches to Los Angeles."

Music and identity also form a painful symbiosis in the life of Kurdish singer Aydur. Long banned from the stage, she is now allowed to play for her audiences once again, combining Kurdish music with modern sounds.

"Crossing the Bridge – The Sound of Istanbul" documents 12 bands in the melting pot of Istanbul, its various cultures and their unique music, including the experimental.

This has led to a new sense of self-awareness, one that --given the possibility of Turkey's entry into the EU -- cannot be lost, according to Akin.

"Every place looks so much the same in the EU -- everywhere the same shopping chains and the same products," he says.

For Akin, who lives in Hamburg and whose mother is from Istanbul, the city on the Bosporus and its music scene are very significant. It is his second home, one that compels him and to which he has dedicated a love song with his latest film.