freemuses 3rd world conference held in

freemuse's 3rd world conference held in Istanbul

Freemuse's 3rd World Conference on Music and Censorship

by

Susannah Tarbush

It was particularly appropriate that the Danish organisation Freemuse,

which campaigns for freedom of musical expression, chose Istanbul as

the venue for its recent 3rd World Conference on Music and Censorship.

Istanbul has one of the most exciting and diverse music scenes of any

city in the world today, as shown by the acclaimed 1995 documentary

film "Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul" directed by Fatih

Akin.

But at the same time numerous Turkish musicians, and others involved

in the music industry, have over several decades suffered censorship,

restrictions, and in some cases arrest, imprisonment and exile.

The two-day conference was held at Bilgi University. Professor Turgut

Tarhani, dean of the faculty of law and director of the university's

Human Rights Law Research Centre, described the conference as "one of

the important events on the Turkish social and human rights scene in

recent years and the months or the years to come."

On the second day of the conference a new Turkish initiative was

launched named `Sanatta Sansure Son (SSS)', meaning `End to Censorship

in the Arts'. Marie Korpe, the executive director of Freemuse, said in

her speech: "The new initiative started among young musicians, but is

not limited to music, because other branches of the arts also need

such an initiative." Korpe noted that Turkey is now the only country

of the 22 countries represented at the conference to have a specific

organisation defending the right of musicians and artists to free

expression.

The session on Turkey was one of the most moving parts of the

conference. It was presented by the composer and song writer Sanar

Yurdatapan, spokesman of the `Association for Freedom of Expression'.

Yurdatapan has been imprisoned three times and continuously harassed,

and for some years he was exiled in Germany and stripped of his

Turkish citizenship.

During the session some 15 Turkish singers, musicians, composers,

broadcasters and music producers ascended to the platform one by one

to give their personal testimony (above). They included the Kurdish

singer Selda Bagcan who was known in the 1970s as `the Turkish Joan

Baez'. She was arrested, tried and imprisoned after the 1980 coup and

as recently as May this year was prevented by the authorities at

Ataturk airport, Istanbul, from travelling to Canada for a concert.

Another Kurdish singer, Ferhat Tunc (below left), has been banned and

imprisoned several times and is still facing court action. Members of

the band Grup Yorum, known for its political songs, have been put on

trial and imprisoned many times.

Gulten Kayat, widow of the Kurdish poet, singer and artist Ahmet Kaya

told of how he went into exile in France in 1999 after announcing at a

concert that his next album would be in Kurdish. In March 2000 he was

sentenced in absentia to a prison term. He died of a heart attack in

Paris in that year and Gulten told the conference: "The only reason he

died at the age of 43 was that he was exiled."

Selda Yesiltepe, editor of the Voice of Anatolia radio station, which

is described as "the voice of the oppressed", spoke of the pressures

on the station from the Radio and Television Higher Board. For example

the station was closed for three months in 2001 for broadcasting a

programme on hunger strikers in prison and in 2003 it was closed for a

month for broadcasting a song by Ahmet Kaya.

From an earlier generation, the 87-year-old writer Vedat Turkali told

of the five years he spent in prison with the late singer and musician

Ruhi Su in the 1950s. Turkali said: "He suffered a lot; they took away

his musical instruments."

The conference was attended by more than 200 musicians, composers, and

scholars from 22 countries. It focused on music censorship in

countries ranging from Cuba, Zimbabwe and South Africa to Indonesia,

China and Afghanistan. In addition, there were sessions on North

Africa and the Middle East, and on West Africa.

The conference was also the occasion for the launch of Freemuse's

latest special report, on Belarus. The authors of the report, Lemez

Lovas and Maya Medich, found that the regime of President Lukashenko

has a "fear of music as potential fuel for revolution and unrest, as

in the Ukraine in 2004." This has led to "restrictive broadcasting

legislation and the reinvigoration of a huge bureaucratic system of

censorship that is pushing independent musicians back into the role of

Soviet era dissidents."

The conference was opened by wonderful unaccompanied singing from the

Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat and her sister Marjan (below, right).

Several of the speakers included live musical performances as part of

their presentations. The Ivory Coast reggae star Fadal Dey (below

right) walked onto the conference platform singing in French, and

later performed his new song "Free Iraq".

As the studies from different countries showed, music censorship is a

complex subject. It is for reasons including politics, religion,

sexuality, ethnicity or history. It takes various forms, including

government legislation and other measures, social pressures and the

policies of broadcasters and the recording industry. Added to this is

the pervasive and damaging phenomenon of self-censorship.

The Zimbabwean government of Robert Mugabe has adopted a particularly

tough and blatant approach towards music censorship. The Zimbabwean

journalist Maxwell Sibanda explained: "In 2001 the government decided

to record music itself. It put aside some money and said it was going

to record music to promote its policies."

The then information minister Jonathan Moyo coordinated and recorded

four music albums, and a fellow minister recorded two music albums and

sang on some of the songs that appeared on videos. In all, the

government recorded more than 10 music albums. It banned all foreign

music from radio, and foreign films from television, and blacklisted

all musicians singing against its policies. As the government owns

Zimbabwe's one TV station and all four radio stations, one song

produced by the government might be broadcast 72 times in one day,

Sibanda said.

The Zimbabwean singer Thomas Mapfumo moved with his family to live in

the US for safety reasons after criticising the government in his

songs. Musicians from other countries have also been forced into

exile. The exiled Uyghur composer, musician and poet Kurash Sultan

from East Turkistan (the Xinjiang province of China), who took refuge

in Sweden in 1999, had been due to speak at the conference but he

suddenly died of a heart attack on 29 October at the age of only 47.

Sultan was imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese authorities and many

of his songs, which called for freedom, were banned in East Turkistan.

The China session of the conference was dedicated to his memory, and

his brother Kaiser Abdurusul travelled from Sweden to give an

emotional address about him and to play a video of his virtuoso

playing of the stringed lute known as the duttar.

Jeroen de Kloet of the University of Amsterdam noted that in China

censorship has loosened tremendously over the past 10 years. For

example since 1997 there has been the annual three-day Midi rock

festival in Beijing. "China doesn't really exist - there are many

Chinas," De Kloet said. Thus a musician not allowed to perform in

Beijing may be allowed to perform in South China.

But De Kloet referred the complicity of the West in Chinese

censorship, with Google for example agreeing to censor sensitive

material on its China service.

The session on South Africa was remarkable in that it brought together

on the same platform the white musician Roger Lucey and the former

secret policeman Paul Erasmus who in the 1980s successfully destroyed

Lucey's musical career as a political folk singer performing songs

against apartheid. In 1995 Erasmus went public and admitted what he

had done, and in 2001 he was granted amnesty by the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission for his activities against Lucey.

Alongside Lucey and Erasmus on the platform were Freemuse's Programme

Officer Ole Reitov and Michael Drewett of Rhodes University, South

Africa. Reitov prompted Freemuse to fund an extraordinary film

entitled "Stopping the Music: a story of censorship in apartheid South

Africa" which tells the story of Lucey and Erasmus, and in which the

two men meet for the first time. Drewett researched, co-wrote and

produced the film.

In Indonesia the musician Ahmad Dhani, a founder in 1986 of the highly

popular rock group Dewa 19, has been challenging religious extremism

through his recent music. Andrew Fuller of the University of Tasmania,

Australia, explained that Dhani is opposed to the violent ideology of

groups such as Front Pembela Islam (FBI) meaning `The Front for

Defenders of Islam' - and `Laskar Jihad' (Soliders of Jihad).

In November 2004 Dewa 19 released the CD `Laskar Cinta' meaning

`Soldiers of Love'. In February this year it released the CD `Republik

Cinta' or `Republic of Love'. "What Dewa and Ahmed Dhani are doing is

using their music to confront the conservatism of a large portion of

Indonesian society," Fuller said.

In addition to the examples of music censorship given during the

conference, musicians have been facing increasing problems in getting

visas and travelling since the terror attacks in the US on September

11 2001. Freemuse's executive director Marie Korpe said that the

tightening in visa procedures is "a threat to musicians" and is

hitting musicians travelling from developing countries, as was seen at

Freemuse's 2nd world conference in Copenhagen in 2002 and now at the

Istanbul conference. For example Fadal Dey, the singer from the Ivory

Coast, had to travel to Senegal and wait a week for his Turkish visa.

And Mario Masvidal, the speaker from Cuba, had to deal with Cuban,

Turkish and finally French and Schengen bureaucracy.

Korpe said: "What lies ahead is difficult to say but the question is

whether in the future it will be possible to gather people from across