Defne Sahin

Hyphenated: Music + Identity

Just a brief note before we begin this episode. As noted in the last post, I've been a bit overwhelmed with moving and also had complications with booking the next couple of artists. And so I fell behind in my goal to have 10 episodes for this season. Therefore, I've decided to try to uncomplicate my life. And for that reason, this will be the final episode of season one. So please don't delete Hyphenated from your podcast app. Stay tuned and we will be back soon. I already have some commitments from a couple of artists for the second season which will launch in the fall. For those of you who have been following this project and for those of you who have participated in this project, I thank you. It's meant so much to me to make this audio documentary series and bring it to you.... And now on with the show.
Defne's grandparents and then her parents migrated to Germany from Turkey. And they had a dream of integration for Defne, the child born in this other country. To not just straddle between two cultures, but to be a fusion of the two. But as she grew up, it could sometimes seem more of a burden than a dream for her. On her first album, Yasamak, she turned to the words of a dissident Turkish poet who dreamed of a better world for her song lyrics. While this experiment in cultural fusion was critically acclaimed, she felt she was now boxed in as “the jazz singer who sings in Turkish.” So for her second album, Unravel, she broke out of that box singing in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, having spent time living in the States, Spain, and Brazil. On her most recent album, Hope, she “collaborated” with 19th century American poet Emily Dickenson, again marrying a poet's words to song in which she still hopes, and offers to give us hope, to keep hope alive, of that dream for a better world.

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