‘Kanak for life’: The question of cultural appropriation in music education and performance in the context of Turkish-German bilingualism

Kurzfassung/Abstract

Music education might be a useful tool to support bilingual language acquisition and learning environments (e.g. Liu & Kager, 2017; Lozada, 2023; Neumann et al., 2024), with Turkish-German bilingualism in Germany serving as one illustrative case (Inceel, 2018; 2023a; 2023b). In practice, however, the question arises as to whether a truly cultural exchange in multilingual music environments is possible under conditions of asymmetrical power relations (e.g. Bates, 2022; Josties & Gerards, 2019). This paper therefore explores whether Turkish-German bilingualism in music education and performance in Germany can be understood as a form of cultural appropriation and if so, how. To address this, various educational and performance-based examples, as well as hypothetical scenarios, will be examined using Rogers’ (2006) framework on cultural appropriation and Beveridge’s (2022) adaptation of this framework to the field of music education. Finally, the paper considers where the boundaries of cultural appropriation lie and which factors should be taken into account for it to be sustainably embedded in education settings.

• The title refers to the song “K4L” by rapper Ebow (2019).