Diamanda's Speech :
The longer it takes
to address the mandate of applying Turkishness to all things good--and
good to all things Turkish, the longer it will take to redress the
financially-supported cultural disinformation spread by those institutions
and persons in Turkey who, using as a criminal mandate the necessity
to translate all aural arts (songs, poetry, theatre, and other human
ritual practices) into Turkish before they are allowed to be performed
by the general public, effectively cleanse it of its owners' names
and claim it as Turkish invention, innovation.
Once the art is performed
in Turkish it may then be claimed as Turkish, and thusly as a Turkish
art form. With the censored owners under control or in prison for
performing the work illegally (in their own languages), it can then
be safely deposited under "anonymous" or a Turkish name
into a vault that has been protected and in fact proclaimed as an
ethnically inviolate treasure, with the help of Turkey's good friends,
America and Israel.
It is no mystery that the Greeks, the Armenians, the Assyrians,
and the Kurds were for centuries expected to provide their own boys
and young men to the Turkish military (in order to ensure protection
of their families and land from the the Ottoman Republic, for example),
but this enlistment also included composers of music, performers,
singers, poets, and so on, who were NOT allowed to perform in any
tongue but Turkish. Later, when their arms were taken away and they
were slaughtered, the works they left behind were claimed as Turkish,
as are Hagia Sofia, Assyrian and Greek sculpture, and Armenian poetry.
In the obvious case
of the great blind oudist Udi Hrant, he cannot be heard on record
singing in Armenian, although he was an Armenian, and one
of the most famous Armenians who lived in Turkey. He can only be
heard singing in Turkish.
The melodies of the
amanes, amanethes, shared throughout Greece and Anatolia are now
still claimed to be shared by all the cultures who have lived in
Anatolia, since the agora of Smyrna/Izmir was the meeting place
for Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Jews, Arabs, and Assyrians. They all
shared verses and sang this music to "a god invited by despair."
The word "amanes" refers to "mana," or mother,
in Greek. In other words, it is the last cry of the soldier on the
battlefield, and it is the universal cry of the lonely. Fortunately
the word "aman" is permissable in Turkey, but how soon
will it be written in Turkish books of musical education that this
great vocal tradition is initially a Turkish one? What then will
the Greeks who hear our finest amanes singer Dalgas think in 100
years? In even 50?
As the daughter of a Maniate Spartan and an Anatolian hailing from
Smryna/Izmir, the Black Sea, and Alexandria, I find the ethnic cleansing
of art to be preposterous, but also to be dangerous. If an Armenian
is told to reject what may be his by birthright because he is later
educated by disinformation passed down through Turkish ethnic music
institutes that the music he loves is notArmenian but in
fact Turkish, what does he have left? How many dromoi/makams (scales)
does he have left to sing? This is true for all the cultures I mention
above.
Robbery is not just the robbery of money or human flesh; in involves
the soul murder of cultures which will soon die if it they have
no more songs to sing. Especially in the desert. And survival in
the desert has been proven to be perilous.
Diamanda Galás
