Tuesday, September 27, 2022 - 12:00pm
Turlington Rm. 3310

Rapping.the.German.Turkish.Experience

Ekrem Bora, better known by his stage name as Eko Fresh, was born in 1983 in Cologne, Germany, to a family of Turkish-Kurdish immigrants. Since the early 2000s, Eko Fresh has been active as a rapper and has released ten studio albums and more than a dozen singles. While some of Eko Fresh’s earliest works were so-called diss tracks, since the early 2010s, Eko Fresh’s music has become increasingly political. Some of his songs like “Quentürke” (2013) discuss the challenges of individual mobility, others – most notably the piece “1994” (2020) – are emphasizing social stigma that generations of immigrants from Turkey have been facing in Germany. In his presentation, Armin Langer will offer an analysis of the representation of ‘Turkish’ immigration and integration in Eko Fresh’s music and discuss these aspects in context of migration and integration research. lunch provided.