Have you ever heard of Şubadap Çocuk?

Şubadap Çocuk is a children’s music band from Turkey that has released 45 songs in 7 albums since its foundation in 2013. We make songs on such themes where children’s needs coincide with those of society. Therefore our songs are mainly on social issues such as peace, ecology, freedom, dreaming, labor, children’s rights, gender roles, discrimination, unity…

What makes Şubadap Çocuk unique in Turkey?

When the theory of evolution was removed from the national curriculum in Turkey, in 2017, we said ‘If the concept of evolution is out of the curriculum, then it will be in our songs!’ and composed various songs to tell about evolution to children. Just like that, our songs mostly seek to break the capitalist way of thinking, racism, sexism, homophobia, human-centered thinking that is boosted by the general political structure in Turkey.

Who plays in the band?

In a concert, at least 4 musicians are on the stage. However, if you go to a Şubadap Çocuk concert 5 times in a row, you might see that this number becomes 5, 6 or even 7, and both the musicians and the instruments differ. The band consists of not ‘good musicians only’, but people who dream to transform the world. In our records, children who participate in our music activities, sing the songs. Among them, the ones who consistently participate in our activities for long periods, join the band as musicians as they grow older. Therefore, we highlight our songs and the instruments rather than musicians during our concerts. When our fans ask for a signature, we don’t give any, instead we ask them for theirs 🙂

How do we reach children?

We tour across Turkey and play particularly in rural areas, state schools and places where access to arts and culture is seldom. Until now we have performed more than 500 concerts in Turkey. We have published all of our songs and their karaoke versions online, they can all be downloaded for free.
Outside of Turkey, we have also performed in Germany, Netherlands and Cyprus. In order to introduce our songs to more kids in the world, we translated our songs to English, French, German, Arabic and Kurdish.
How do we reinforce the content of our songs?
We created several video-clips and published children’s books with reference to the stories told in our songs. All of our books are available on our website free of charge.
We prepared different education materials such as music books, body percussion videos of our songs, for educators’ use. These materials are also available on our website for free.

And now?

To be able to say our word freely, we do not receive any funds nor accept any advertisements. We make money through concerts and crowdfunding.

Last year we published a new album, a new book, as well as various video content, and our brand new album is yet to come.

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Web: subadapcocuk.org
FB: facebook.com/subadapcocuk
IG: Instagram.com/subadapcocuk
E-mail: [email protected]