Bizim Taraf

Song Stories · Legends of Crimean Tatar Folk Songs · Research by Arsen Bekirov

A song the people consider their own

There is a highest accolade for a song — when the people forget it has an author. Bizim Taraf — "Our Land," "Our Home" — is exactly such a song. During the years of deportation, this melody became the unofficial anthem of the Crimean Tatars in exile; it was sung in every home, at every celebration, and almost no one thought to ask where it came from. Many today still believe it is a folk song.

But Bizim Taraf has authors. And not just one pair, but two generations of authors — because this song lived two entirely different lives. And the second life, the one the whole people knows today, is the work of Server Kakura.

First life: a paradise land and dancing (1966)

The story begins in 1966. Composer Turgut Shinikarov and poet Ali Saidov create the song "Jennet yery — bizim taraf" — "Paradise land, our home." It is an anthem of love for the native land, full of warmth and light. The melody is like warm sunshine, the lyrics like a letter home.

The song is unusual in form: strophic, without a refrain — a story that flows like a river. It was recorded in two versions simultaneously: instrumental — for dancing, and vocal — for the soul. Bizim Taraf was released on gramophone records, and they scattered across the world — including to Uzbekistan, where deported Crimean Tatars lived in the 1960s.

There, the legendary Kaitarma ensemble picked up the song and carried it across the cities of Uzbekistan — Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara. Cheerful, dance-like, sunny. But it was precisely this sunniness that became the turning point.

Second life: Tashkent, 1980

Let us transport ourselves to Tashkent, July 1980. Server Kakura, a student at the Tashkent Conservatory — a young musician studying folklore, taking his first steps as a composer. His elder brother Yunus Kakura, a mature vocalist who sang at Crimean Tatar weddings, comes to him: "Server, have you heard this song?" — and hums Bizim Taraf.

And here the brothers grasp the essential truth: this melody, all about happiness and dancing, sounds dissonant with the mood of the people in exile. Crimea is far away, longing tears at the heart — and the song calls you to dance. And they decide to rebuild it from scratch.

Yunus, as a poet, gives birth to new words: "Qara denyzylynnda — tatarlaryn vyetany bar..." — "By the Black Sea — the homeland of the Tatars..." Tenderness, pain, longing for the homeland. And Server takes on the music: he writes an introduction, adds a refrain, slows the melody, makes it deep and sorrowful — so that every chord cries out: "We are pining for our homeland."

It is this, the second version — with music by Server Kakura and words by Yunus Kakura — that is the Bizim Taraf the whole people knows and sings today. The first to perform it were the brothers themselves, Yunus aga and Server aga. A song that had recently been for dancing became an anthem of longing for the native land.

Coming home (1989)

In 1989, upon the people's return to Crimea, Bizim Taraf was heard on native soil for the first time — performed by Alim Osmanov and the Kara Deniz ensemble on Crimean state television. And then the real explosion began: the song definitively became part of the people's soul.

Everyone sang it. Rustem Memetov, the rock group Merjan in the 1990s with their own version, Elzara Batolova — with such tenderness that tears well up. And later, the world star Jamala. Each performance is a new shade of the same feeling. It went so far that some were ready to claim authorship for themselves — and that is the best indicator that the song struck the heart precisely.

Listen: one song, different voices

The best way to feel how a song lives is to hear it in different performances. Compare for yourself:

Why it matters

Bizim Taraf has long been considered a folk song — and that is the highest praise for a song: it means it struck the heart and settled in the soul. But behind this "folk" melody lies an extraordinary journey: from a sunny dance song of 1966 — through Tashkent exile, where Server and Yunus Kakura rebuilt it into a song of longing for the homeland — to a symbol of coming home. To return to the song its true authors and its true history — that is the purpose of the Song Stories series.