Paper short abstract:

Kurdish music production was legally and normatively restricted in Turkey throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s. However, home-recorded or illegally smuggled Kurdish music cassettes provided a soundtrack for daily life, and helped embody identity and resistance throughout this period.

Paper long abstract:

Until 1991, the production, distribution and broadcasting of Kurdish music were illegal within the borders of the Republic of Turkey. However, a vibrant cassette culture in the 1970s and 1980s formed the backbone of an under-the-table music market. This paper looks into how cassettes were important tools for resistance, communication, and identity politics for an ethnic community mostly living in poverty - and whose rights for cultural expression have been heavily restricted by regulatory, normative, and cultural measures. Cassette-tapes recorded in makeshift studios, home sessions, or wedding celebrations were reproduced by hand and distributed among social circles. More professional productions were imported from countries populated by Kurdish diaspora, or neighboring countries with indigenous Kurdish communities. Along with tea and tobacco, music tapes were heavily circulated in the black market in Southeastern provinces, with products arriving from bordering countries such as Iraq and Syria. Moreover, letters and songs were recorded onto tapes and sent to loved ones living in other cities or countries. Cassettes were usually played in homes, behind closed doors, and were often buried underground in backyards, but at times played loudly in the face of military enforcement officials. I argue that cassettes were actively used as a means to promote and protect ethnic identity by those who were socially, legally, and economically oppressed, as well as to maintain personal, musical relationships with loved ones. I argue also that this cassette culture formed a material basis for a legally recognized Kurdish music market in Turkey after 1991.