With the Strength of Water

Selda Bagcan - Mehmet Emmi

Any song on Selda Bagcan’s 1976 debut, Selda would be a real gift of a recommendation. This morning, this Friday morning, of this strange summer, of this cruel year…this is your song.

Let’s get some facts out of the way about Selda. She was born in 1948. In 1971 she released a handful of singles that made her a national star. She was selected by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent the country in the Golden Orpheus song contest. She was jailed 3 times by Turkish authorities after the 1980 coup d’etat though, and had her passport revoked until 1987. She has since gone on to record a number of albums, done several tours and has been sampled by J Dilla and Mos Def, among others.

Now to the musings.

It doesn’t take comprehending Turkish to gut level understand what Selda is singing. But I sought a translation of these lyrics anyway:

Is a couple of oxen enough? Aha, Uncle Mehmet. Is this a good way to live? More, Uncle Mehmet.

Kids won’t sleep. Aha, Uncle Mehmet. Hungry people won’t sleep. More, Uncle Mehmet.

Easy to get why, as happens so often, the authorities felt they had to come down on her. What a pain artists, and most effectively, musicians are to power. The simplicity of Selda’s words are fortified with immeasurable strength by the depth of her voice, and the weight of the recurring bridge that first arrives at the 0:28 and is returned to throughout the song. Yes, it’s quite easy to feel the force underneath the surface of this song, as it would be quite easy to understand the force underneath the surface of the people, forced into games of power, with no power of their own.

Fela was a revolutionary, but he was “complicated”, the code word used to rationalize things that don’t line up with how progressive liberals want their revolutionary heroes to be. Revolution is seldom nice, when ideas become action, especially in the hands of men.

Selda is a revolutionary, but isn’t “complicated”. I’ve found nothing written about her that requires having to do any bit of mental contortion to explain her. Her music is revolutionary in an altogether different way. Selda is the voice of resolute determination, of compassion, of empathy. It’s the voice of generations upon generations of those who bear the burden of men’s folly the most: mothers, sisters, wives, daughters. Listen to it. Heed it, and accept it’s help to get you through this thing, whatever it is*.

*respect due to my favourite Kurt Vonnegut quote.