Esrap

When Esra and her brother Enes Özmen founded EsRAP years ago in Ottakring, one of Vienna’s outer districts, one thing was clear: they wanted to make themselves and their Turkish-born community heard. Between Esra’s hard lyrics and her brother’s melodic vocals, which are inspireted by the Turkish-Oriental genre of Arabesque, there is a highly productive gap. In this gap EsRAP negotiates all the themes that have accompanied them for years: Questions about their own identity, being foreigners in their own country as third-generation children, class consciousness and community solidarity.

Songs like “Ausländer mit Vergnügen” and “Kids of Diaspora” have become anthems, but on the current album “Mamafih” there are also quiet and almost conciliatory tones… “Kabadayi (The days are getting better)” and the nights too.