As a record release concert for their exceptional debut album “Köşk” on Fun In The Church, Sinem will come to Berlin in February to play a special live concert at West Germany at Kottbusser Tor.
Sinem conjures up the spirit of the she-punks and moves across the stage with lizard-like determination, as if her name were Iggy Türkpop. And this determination is not only present in every movement, but also in her singing. Anyone who has known Sinem for any length of time will have the feeling that this life has been lived so far so that exactly what is now running through our limbs takes place: Music! And as is the case with determination – it remains opaque for the longest time. Until recently, Sinem wasn’t a band at all, but something of an organizational asset in the background of the Munich underground. It wasn’t so long ago that the children of the people who came to Germany to work naturally merged their at least two identities. They are “divided into two worlds”, as Ozan Ata Canani states in his song of the century “Deutsche Freunde”.
And it is the same for Sinem Arslan Ströbel, who grew up in the countryside in Upper Bavaria and who was the only one with Turkish roots at her grammar school. “It does something,” says Sinem, and we can perhaps imagine. Many immigrants will be familiar with the phenomenon of living with two different tastes in music: One in private and one that is lived out in public with the majority society. In her own words, Sinem describes this as follows: “Everything had to be so uber-German. You had to be more German than the Germans, you had to be neatly dressed, have good grades at school and that kind of thing. And the Turkish always came when we traveled to Turkey once a year. That’s when I felt it: okay, there’s a strong longing or maybe even homesickness.” But now everything is coming together.
