Artist: Talya Feldman
Sound Design: Carlos Ángel Luppi
Featuring: Ozan Ata Canani, Berivan Kaya, and Microphone Mafia
Voice Excerpts: Mitat Özdemir, Mevlüde Genç, Aynur Satır, Gamze Kubaşık, Orhan Çalışır, Cihat Genç, Sibel İ., Fatma Ceylan, Malek Ahmad, Solidaritätskreis Mouhamed Lamine Dramé, Árwy (Piano), and Esther Bejarano 
Research Support: Ali Şirin, Kutlu Yurtseven, Bengü Kocatürk-Schuster, Birgül Demirtaş, Hatice and Kâmil Genç, Orhan Çalışır, Fadila Ahmad, Katharina Ruhland, Michi Sturm, Anke Hoffstadt, and Jelle Post


“Listen To Me: This Song is a Monument” is a sound collage of protests, city soundscapes, instrumentals, interviews, speeches, and musical recordings by local musicians and legends Ozan Ata Canani, Berivan Kaya and Microphone Mafia. By amplifying the audio so often excluded from historical archives and the public space “Listen To Me: This Song is a Monument” offers an alternative narrative to the history of North-Rhine Westphalia that spans over the last several decades. It expresses sound and listening as political tools for overcoming structures of power, those all too quick to silence marginalized communities fighting for equality, justice, and remembrance.
Berivan Kaya’s adaptation of ‘Rose Marie’ originally performed by Bora Ayanoğlu in 1979 hints at the history of the Gastarbeiter in NRW, their feelings of homesickness, their music as a means for self-empowerment and connection, and their arrival by train from countries like Turkey and Greece to the factories where their fight for worker’s rights led to a series of strikes in 1973 later known as the ‘Wildcat’ strikes. These protests changed the course of history in NRW, as did the racist arson attacks in Duisburg, Solingen, and the NSU murders and bomb attacks in Dortmund and Cologne. With the emergence of rap in NRW there also came an outlet for anger, grief, and resistance against the continuities of racist and antisemitic violence being witnessed throughout Germany. Microphone Mafia, founded in 1989, became a rap group for remembrance. Marking these attacks, and every point of German history and politics through their lyrics, they also record the memories of their parents, cities, and communities. ‘Denkmal’, featured in this collage, was first released by Microphone Mafia in 2002 and was written by group member Kutlu Yurtseven’s own father, a leader in the 1973 strikes.
In Ozan Ata Canani’s recording with Berivan Kaya of ‘Vom Bosphorus bis zum Rhein’, first released in 2022, he asks to be heard in both German and Turkish. Understand us, he says, even when we are burnt to ashes – we are here, and we belong here. We are a part of you, Germany. With the most recent arson attacks in Solingen in March 2024 that killed a young family of four and in June 2024 that injured many, these words become even more critical for our time.
This work, therefore, acts as a monument to the many injured and lost to racism and antisemitism in NRW but also to the many who stood before and to the many who stand now in resistance, resilience, and solidarity. Their vocal demands for recognition, justice, and change are clear and strong. Listen to me, they say. It is time to be heard.

For more information, visit: https://stopp-zuhoeren-begegnen.de/sound/

HÖRT MIR ZU: DIESES LIED IST EIN DENKMAL (LISTEN TO ME: THIS SONG IS A MONUMENT)

Talya Feldman