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HASRETİM (“My longing”) is a musical search for cultural identity.
In 2010, guitarist and composer Marc Sinan embarked on an unusual journey. The route led from the Black Sea, his grandparents’ homeland, to the border of Armenia.
For weeks, he and his fellow travelers find and film traditional musicians, try to penetrate their art and perhaps find the last musical documents of another present. As everywhere else, traditional music is a dying art. The tradition of oral tradition is breaking down. The former Asiklar Kahvesis, clubs for singer-songwriters, are now simple teahouses. It is rare to come across young musicians such as kemençe player Mesut Kurt from Trabzon or singer Asiye Göl from Ordu. Very few of them make a living from music, but they play with great ease and virtuosity. Their music is characterized by restlessness and temperament and bears the traces of Anatolia’s cultural and ethnic richness in its diversity. In HASRETİM, the musical finds and video recordings of Marc Sinan’s journey meet his own contemporary music.
The revival ten years after the premiere is imperative in times of escalating geopolitical crises and wars in the region. Even more than in 2010, ethnic minorities and opposition forces in Turkey are under pressure. HASRETİM remains an important artistic plea for the strength of cultural diversity and the unifying power of music and art.
The new arrangement of HASRETİM is for an international ensemble of eight musicians. Awarded the special “World Horizon” prize by the German UNESCO Commission in 2011.
An event as part of the “Studio Bosporus” festival in cooperation with the SPREEHALLE Berlin
