The Turkish band Mor ve Ötesi caused a buzz when it released a video for the track Uyan. In the video, the song was set to Andrei Khrjanovsky’s ”Glass Harmonica,” an eerie and overtly anti-capitalist Russian cartoon from 1968. A more intimate way to understand the music video is to first watch the original cartoon:
alternate sources:
The music video’s snippets from the cartoon merry well with the lyrics. In a forum, Uyan was roughly translated as follows:
Uyan(wake up)
Canım kardeşim, bak senin ellerinde hayatımız(my dear brother,look our life is in your hands)
Uçan kuştaki güzelliği kaybettik, hastayız(we lost the beauty of flying bird,we are ill)Çok sıkıldm ağlamaktan, durmaktan(l get bored to cry,to stop)
Bu ahlaksız oyunlara devam etmek günah(and go on to this immoral games,fault)Uyan artık uyan(wake up,from now on,wake up)
Uyan dostum uyan(wake up,my friend,wake up)
Uyan artık uyan karanlık uykundan(wake up,from now on from this darkness sleep)Sadece renkler vardı, sonra kayboldu onlar da(there were only colours and they were lost too)
Biz nefes alamadan(before we breath)
Ah, bu hayat anlamsız bir şaka(ah this life is unmeaningful joke)
Herkes bunu farkında(everbody aware of this)Çok sıkıldm ağlamaktan, durmaktan(l get bored to cry,to stop)
Bu ahlaksız oyunlara devam etmek günah(and go on to this immoral games,fault)Uyan artık uyan(wake up,from now on,wake up)
Uyan dostum uyan(wake up,my friend,wake up)
Uyan artık uyan karanlık uykundan(wake up,from now on from this darkness sleep)Sen yinede o yolun sonundaydın(but you were still in the end of the road)
Sen yinede hiçbir şey yapamazdın(but you still couldt do anything)
Sen, uyuşuk, tembel, yalnızdın sen.(you were numb,lazy,you were alone)
Although to the ears of honky-mericans this song might sound like an attempt to duplicate a Chevelle song, what Mor ve Ötesi lacks in musical originality is made up for by the genius of pairing it with Glass Harmonica, a cartoon fairly spatially, temporally, and culturally distant from the band’s contemporary Turkey, yet thematically harmonious.
As proof, here is the music video:
Acknowledgment: Shout-out to my friend Katja for steering me towards these works of art.
