Neukölln prodigy

With its call shops, kebab stands and junk stores, Karl Marx Strasse in Berlin's down-at-heel Neukölln neighborhood is an unlikely habitat for a wunderkind.

But this is the regular stomping ground of Turkish-born musician and composer Sinem Altan, and it's not surprising that an artist with influences and tastes as eclectic as hers should feel at home in the most international part of Berlin.

She's lived in the German capital for 15 years now, and has become one of relatively few artists with an immigrant background helping shape its mainstream cultural landscape.

The first of many labels

Even though she's now 26, the child prodigy label is hard to shake. Altan was seven when she first began writing music, going on to become a private student at Ankara's Bilkent University with Azerbaijani composer Arif Melikov and landing a scholarship to study at the prestigious Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin by the time she was 11.

After scooping up a string of awards, she made her debut as composer-in-residence at the Neuköllner Oper - Berlin's smallest opera house - with "Türkisch für Liebhaber" (Turkish for Lovers) in 2008. A 21st-century revamp of Benedikt Schack's 1791 work "The Beneficent Dervish," it was hailed as a new genre: the contemporary singspiel.

She's been pursuing projects that explore the meeting of German and Turkish culture ever since.

Broad influences, multiple identities

Altan cites influences that range from Russian composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Igor Stravinsky to Turkish tango and the Sufi music of the Mevlevi Order founded by the followers of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet.

Her own identity is as much a hybrid as her music. Even though she admits she sometimes gets tired of being asked about her roots, she also understands that her artistic development benefits from this kind of self-questioning.

That doesn't, however, make her self-absorbed, and while more narcissistic artists might resent having social responsibility foisted upon them the way it inevitably is on a talented young Turkish woman, she's willing to rise to the challenge.

"I can't ignore the social dimension of my role as a creative artist with an ethnic background and there were times when all I wanted was to be able to concentrate on my work," she said. "But these days I'd actually say it's become an integral part of what I do."

She's worked with socially-disadvantaged teenagers and, more generally, she's helping attract new audiences to Berlin's stages.

Going beyond clichés

In the German capital, says Altan, Turkish people don't tend to go to the theater. "They see it as some sort of luxury," she laughed. "They'd rather go to a wedding."

Now, not least thanks to her efforts, they're starting to change their minds. "We get people from the neighborhood, we really do," said Altan. "The thing is, my music isn't homogenous - it's bang in the middle of the battleground, drawing on all sorts of influences, and it appeals to people from all sorts of generations and backgrounds, including immigrant milieus."

She's at the vanguard of what's known as the "post-migrant theater" that is currently packing in crowds not just at the Neuköllner Oper and the nearby Heimathafen Neukölln theater, but also the Atze Theater in the culturally diverse district of Wedding and the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in rough-and-ready Kreuzberg.

These plays and musicals tell the stories of second and third-generation Germans, going beyond the usual clichés about ethnic minorities to raise a completely novel set of questions about integration and assimilation, roots and tradition.

"I journey between different identities, eras and cultures. Not just to mix and match and see what happens when they collide, but because I'm interested in seeing what they might once have had in common, what made them drift apart, what their shared roots might be," explained Altan.

The result is a cultural crossover - but it's also something in its own right.

"It gives rise to something completely new, something that isn't recognizable," she said. Whatever it is, we'll be seeing much more of it in the future.

Author: Jane Paulick

Editor: Kate Bowen