Basmane

Historically, Greeks, Armenians, and Levantines who were engaged in trade in İzmir, a harbour city on the western coast of Turkey, lived in Basmane. The neighbourhood got its name from the concentration of Basma fabric ateliers in this area in the 1800s. Basmane has become a settlement for internal migrants throughout the Republic’s history, mainly forcibly displaced Kurds in the 1990s. It has hosted international refugees and People on the Move (PoM) since the 2000s, becoming a hub for refugees due to cheap accommodation, its central location in the city and the services that facilitate migration. Here, the borders between business and solidarity are blurred. This Generative Narrative Workshop (GNW) was realized in March 2024 in cooperation with Yaşamak-Social Space and Solidarity Association in Basmane. Rebetiko, the music of migration and exile developed between the two sides of the Aegean Sea, shaped the idea of GNW. Two musicians, Serap Çiğdem Şahin and Murat Küçükaslan, collaborated with a group of Somali PoMs. During four workshops, the rhythms of Rebetiko clashed with the stories and the chants of the Somalian participants to create a new composition. In this GNW, amidst restrictions on people’s movement, we reinterpreted Rebetiko’s migration DNA through the lyrics and rhythms of refugees. The visual work by director and filmmaker Michele Cinque, who participated in the last meetings of the GNW, added a further layer to the creative extent of the project.