Sertlik Kanında Var Hayatın

Artist: Sagopa Kajmer

Country: Turkey 2017

A Chelbi Film

 A reaction by Rachel, Helen, Dave and Gill.

All of these statements are true reactions to Sertlik Kanında Var Hayatın by people who don’t consider themselves to be professional musicians or ethnomusicologists.   

So… Who is he?

Yunus Özyavuz or  Sagopa Kajmer (meaning ancient pyramid) was born on 17th August, 1978. He was born and raised in Samsun (a city on the north coast of Turkey) where he graduated from high school. He went on to study Persian Language and Literature in Istanbul but knew that music was his first love, having worked on a local radio station whilst back home in Samsun. Because of this, in 1999, he set up his studio named Kuvvetmira (meaning Strength). Alongside this studio he became part of the rap group ‘Unarmed Force’, releasing five studio albums with the group. After seven years of working with the band, Kajmer decided to split and create his own work, and this has been the case ever since. With albums such as ‘Pesimistine Tears’ and ‘Romantizma’, Kajmer was rapidly becoming a house-hold name… In Turkey at least. As well as releasing his own albums, Kajmer was still producing and collaborating with other artists, with his sound ever-evolving to suit the needs of his audience. Kajmer himself has said that he has always been influenced by traditional Turkish songs, with his early working even including samples from Anatolian melodies and traditional musics. He later admitted that he had to stop using these sounds due to the aggressive, political messages his songs were beginning to portray. Kajmer’s influences fall from many different genres of art: Omer Hayyam , Firdevsî and Mevlana Celâleddîn-i Rûmî ‘s but the genre he considers himself as being part of is rap.

So… What’s the song?

Sertlik Kanında Var Hayatın or There is Hardness In Your Blood is the second song on Sagopa Kajmer’s re-released 2017 version of his 2014 album Ahmak Islatan. The song doesn’t feature on the original 2014 album but is by far the most popular song on the re-released album.  With 25 million hits on Youtube and 4 million streams on Spotify, the song has been incredibly popular not only in Turkey but the world. The song is a politically driven commentary on the street and social inequality in Turkey but uses a boxing ring both in its lyrics and video as a metaphor for such. Kajmer chooses to question society with lyrics such as ‘Ben, kaçıyorum karakterinin yetmediği yerlerden’ (I am running away from places where being good is not enough) and ‘ben bu soğukkanlı fedaiyim’ (I am this cold-blooded federation). He is perhaps underlining the sad reality that everybody is part of the war, whether or not you believe yourself to be. The song provides a commentary alongside a music video which perhaps reflects the failed Turkish uprising which took place in July 2016 using the metaphor of the boxing ring to comment upon the violence and pain that was felt by all.