What does Ozan Ata Canani - master of the Turkish long-necked lute "baglama" - have to do with Max Frisch? With Frisch's quote "We called for workers, and people came", he summed up the state of mind of countless guest workers in Germany in 1978 in the hauntingly enchanting song "Deutsche Freund" (German Friend). Sixty years later, Ata Canani's poetic-political lyrics are more topical than ever and are finally being heard in the German majority society. What no one wanted to publish back then, he has now re-recorded with the Munich jazz-kraut quartet Karaba. The great Trikont compilation "Songs of Gastarbeiter" is now followed by Ata Canani's forty-year collection of songs "Warte mein Land, warte" (Wait, my country, wait), a wonderful piece of Anadolu rock and guest worker historiography at the same time.

Text: Damian Hohl