GET DEUTSCH OR DIE TRYIN'

One summer, one youth, one beat. Adra and his mates Bojan, Danny and Sava? spend their days on a bench at the train station, dealing weed, whistling as girls walk by and dancing in the sun with half-baked Nazis. What they can’t know is that this will be their last summer together. When one friend after the other disappears, Arda is forced to confront his own biography. Amongst the chaos of the 1980 Turkish coup d’état he discovers a family history striated both by a feeling of continually being forced to flee and a vague sense of having arrived.

Here, Necati Öziri peruses a colourful, varied array of German identities, a Best Of compilation about integration. Accompanying the upbeat A-Side track about the four young lads is a minor-key B-side exploring the family history. Get deutsch or die tryin’ is music for mothers who like Columbo and vodka, for fathers whose revolution failed, for friends deported to countries that no longer exist, for birthdays spent in the corridors of the local government office for immigrants; it’s about Hip Hop, Soul and violence and reveals what it’s like living in a language that’s not your own.