The unbending ones from Istanbul

The Oriental Dub band Baba Zula has been making noise against censorship for 30 years

In his central work "Prisoners of Ourselves" from 1992, the psychologist Gündüz Vassaf describes people as prisoners of themselves in the routines and rules of everyday life. He highlights night and art alone as areas in which creative freedom, critical thinking and imagination can develop. It is not known whether the members of the band Baba Zula Vassaf, founded in Istanbul in 1996, read. In any case, his theories could certainly be understood as the source of ideas for the band's music, which is at the same time playful and humorous as well as very serious. Baba Zula not only shares Vassaf's work with an affinity for the night as a space of possibility beyond obligations and control, which the subcultural music scene in particular has traditionally claimed for itself, but also that both appeal to independence and the courage to protest.

Over the course of their career, Baba Zula's songs have addressed all sorts of things, for example pain and suffering resulting from flight and expulsion as well as exaggerated Turkish nationalism ("Gariplere Yer Yok", 2014) and the hopeful dream of another world ("Başka Bir Alem", also 2014). In “Özgür Ruh” (2005), frontman Murat Ertel sings about irrepressible free spirit, while in “Aşıkların Sözü Kalır” (2007) the power of words is evoked by poets as governors of the weak and lawless. The band also drew attention to poverty and dealt with the fatal effects of rampant inflation in Turkey (“Yok Haddi Yok Hesabı”, 2024).

The band has reported several times in the past about obstacles to the distribution of their music. Some radio stations in Türkiye don't even include them on the program.

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