ötesi morötesi ve mor ve ötesi

mor ve ötesi have released their 8th studio album in 2022. (What happend to Şehir?)
Finally, after years of silence: a new album! No single, no symphony concert – a brand new story: sirenler!

Yet they somehow anticipated this long creative hiatus in the song mermiler:

„Kocaman bir boşluk var
Şimdi aramız orman
Yelkovan kuşları
Uzun yolculuk var“.

As if they knew that after a long pause they would return to tell of Odysseus‘ journey and how he meets the Sirens (who in origins were bird-like sea creatures – thus shearwaters) in the forest of dünyaya bedel where Harun’s unique soul has descended?
Did they wait 10 years for the sun that is already sung about in kis geliyor?
„Kış ortasında/ kaç kere yakar güneş?“ … and so many other songs… (can you tell?)
And had not someone already danced with bullets in iddia and danced with balls in the video for oyunbozan, while a huge ball floats above the heads of the band, as if they were also dancing with balls (min. 0:28 ff). What did they train for separately?
And why has Harun never touched this someone? And how can one split up without having touched? Haven’t they always been separated then? What’s going on there?

„bak dinledim seni, dokunmadım sana
[…] ölüm kadar rahatmış ayrılık“.

And hadn’t he always listened to the başkan in forsa? So that he knows that’s what he always wanted. But what did he actually want?
„Ağlamazsan bir çift sözüm var
Hep sen istedin
Ben de dinledim“
And what is Harun actually telling his president?

And why does the ‚flight of the bird‘ Harun lost in ‚uyan‘ actually appears in the video to deli (min. 0:02) ?

„uçan kuştaki güzelliği kaybettik, hastayız“.

Is Harun’s kardeş also the sahibi of his soul? And why is he angry and shrunken in an ancestral hall full of giants?

And is kara kuttu also about this ‚flight of the bird‘, when in the video the whole band tries to explain something to the woman with the help of a blackboard picture (e.g. min 2:18)?
And does the age song in eski şarksı have anything to do with the song from the video in uyan (min 0:48 + 3:40). How does the ‚reign of sahbaz‘ relate to the ‚flight of the bird‘? And what is the significance of the feathers here?
Has anyone ever noticed that the silence in araf is somehow also in the video for daha mutlu olamam.
And that araf, eski şarksı and dünyaya bedel play in the forest? Is it the same forest? Is it a forest at all?
And is the love narrated in araf the same as that in son sabah?

Does 23 really have anything to do with 2023, and if so, what would Harun tell us if he just let himself go?

If you’re looking for answers to these questions, you’ve come to the right place!

I’ll show you a path into the mor ve ötesi labyrinth that no one has taken before.
The main point is not to listen to what is said about the texts of mor ve ötesi. We want to go beyond that – ve ötesi – so to speak. This is about the texts themselves. We will mainly argue with and on the basis of the texts.
So that we don’t have to be told anything more, but rather, in Harun’s sense: tell it ourselves! #anlatanbenim

mor ve ötesi

So, in our first intensive study, we would like to look at the Turkish rock band mor ve ötesi.
This band has been around since 1999 with the same line-up (Harun Tekin, Kerem Kabadayı, Burak Güven, Kerem Kabadayı).

Last spring, they released their 8th studio album ’sirenler‘, which was accompanied by an elaborate concept of colour games, literary quotations and an mysterious social media appearance – which apparently gives clues to the reading as well as to the structural composition of the album.
All this can be understood as part of a clever marketing apparatus – of course.

We try to leave this out at this point, however, and want to consider the clues as well as the mysterious presentation as an overall concept.
So we give in to the album’s suggestion of presenting a coherent narrative.

Taksim her yerde Taksim

At the same time, we want to state one thing in advance:
Mor ve ötesi is certainly one of the most political bands in Turkey, which enjoys its own significance for their Turkish fans and expresses a special form of hope.
And finally, the band itself situates all its songs politically – for example, cambaz is almost regularly introduced with the sentence (to paraphrase) ‚No democracy without a free press!‘ Or they link the premiere of their concert film Tamiri Mümkün on the one hand with the protest movement to the ‚gezi park‘ and on the other hand with a strategically skilful invitation of the Istanbul mayor, who has probably actually done more for Turkey in his term of office than ‚the patriarch‘ in the last 20 years.
Accordingly, the album ’sirenler‘ also fits into this attitude and initially comes across as a soundtrack to the voting out of an outdated patriarch.
In addition, there are political allusions in their songs (ağrılar), which are really courageous.
Mor ve ötesi thus takes its role model function more than seriously and certainly contributes to the politicisation and political education of the country.
What is noticeable, however, is that as a result – to my knowledge – no one has yet taken the trouble to actually read what the texts are about. There is actually hardly any adequate analysis of their songs, as every attempt is exhausted in a Turkish political context. We think mor ve ötesi went ve ötesi to meet the world.

Our analysis doesn’t want to take anything away from their music or their fans – we want to offer another additional look at their music, texts and clips.
Those who follow our analysis will gain a new approach to their body of work, revealing how unique, clever and truly ‚Skilled‘ their art is.

mor ve ötesi have an amazing understanding of semiotics and semantics and I would love to show you how to fill in the blanks of their lyrics to really understand them.

when you put all their allusions together you get a painting of the myth that seems to have happened last year. Let’s dream a little in these dark days.

Somehow I think we will all benefit from it.

So let’s start the journey into the mor ve ötesi universe at ‚sirenler‚.

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