Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music 9781351200776, 1351200771

Citation preview

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Made in Germany

Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary German popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of German music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of popular music in Germany and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in Germany, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Historical Spotlights; Globally German; Also “Made in Germany”; Explicitly German; and Reluctantly German. Oliver Seibt is Assistant Professor of Cultural Musicology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Martin Ringsmut is Research Assistant in the Ethnomusicology Department at the University of Cologne, Germany, where he has taught courses in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies. David-​Emil Wickström is Professor of Popular Music History at the Popakademie Baden-​ Württemberg, in Mannheim, Germany.

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Routledge Global Popular Music Series Series Editors: Franco Fabbri, Conservatorio di Musica Arrigo Boito di Parma, Italy, and Goffredo Plastino, Newcastle University, UK

The Routledge Global Popular Music Series provides popular music scholars, teachers, students, and musicologists with a well-​informed and up-​to-​date introduction to different world popular music scenes. The series of volumes can be used for academic teaching in popular music studies, or as a collection of reference works. Written by those living and working in the countries about which they write, this series is devoted to popular music largely unknown to Anglo-​American readers. Made in France: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Gérôme Guibert and Catherine Rudent Made in the Low Countries: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Lutgard Mutsaers and Gert Keunen Made in Turkey: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Ali C. Gedik Made in Australia and Aotearoa/​New Zealand: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Shelley Brunt and Geoff Stahl Made in Greece: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Dafni Tragaki Made in Taiwan: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Eva Tsai, Tung-​Hung Ho, and Miaoju Jian Made in Poland: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Patryk Galuszka Made in Hong Kong: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Anthony Fung and Alice Chik Made in Yugoslavia: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Danijela Š. Beard and Ljerka V. Rasmussen Made in Germany: Studies in Popular Music Edited by Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, and Davil-​Emil Wickström

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Made in Germany Studies in Popular Music

Edited by

Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, and David-​Emil Wickström

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First published 2021 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The rights of Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, and David-​Emil Wickström to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Seibt, Oliver, editor. | Ringsmut, Martin, editor. | Wickström, David-Emil, editor. Title: Made in Germany : studies in popular music / edited by Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, and David-Emil Wickström. Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge global popular music series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020015178 (print) | LCCN 2020015179 (ebook) | ISBN 9780815391777 (hardback) | ISBN 9780815391784 (paperback) | ISBN 9781351200790 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Popular music–Germany–History and criticism. | Popular music–Social aspects–Germany–History. | Popular music–Political aspects–Germany–History. Classification: LCC ML3490 .M3 2020 (print) | LCC ML3490 (ebook) | DDC 781.640943–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015178 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015179 ISBN: 978-​0-​8153-​9177-​7  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​8153-​9178-​4  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​351-​20079-​0  (ebk) Typeset in Minion Pro by Newgen Publishing UK

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Contents

Notes on Contributors 

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Introduction: DEUTSCHLAND! –​Echt jetzt?: German Popular Music’s Complicated Relationship with German Identity  Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, and David-​Emil Wickström Rocking the Academy? Two Cold-​War Careers and the Emergence of Popular Music Studies and Higher Popular Music Education in Germany: An Interview with Peter Wicke and Udo Dahmen  David-​Emil Wickström

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Part I:  Historical Spotlights 

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1 Transnational Networks and Intermedial Interfaces in German Popular Music, 1900–​1939  Carolin Stahrenberg

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2 Nazis and Quiet Sounds: Popular Music, Simulated Normality, and Cultural Niches in the Terror Regime, 1933–​1945  Jens Gerrit Papenburg

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3 Conflicting Identities: The Meaning and Significance of Popular Music in the GDR  Michael Rauhut

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4 “Party on the Death Strip”: Reflections on a Historical Turning Point  Susanne Binas-​Preisendörfer

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Part II:  Globally German 

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5 The Krauts Are Coming: Electronic Music and Rock in the 1970s  Ulrich Adelt

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6 German Metal Attack: Power Metal in and from Germany  Jan-​Peter  Herbst

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7 German Longings: A Dialogue about the Promises and Dangers of National Stereotypes  Melanie Schiller and Jeroen de Kloet

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Part III:  Also “Made in Germany” 

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8 Peepl Rock: Post-​Soviet Popular Music in Germany  David-​Emil Wickström

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9 Made in Almanya: The Birth of Turkish Rap  Thomas Solomon

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10 G.I. Blues and German Schlager: The Politics of Popular Music in Germany during the Cold War  Bodo Mrozek

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Part IV:  Explicitly German 

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11 Neue Deutsche Welle: Tactical Affirmation as a Strategy of Subversion  Barbara Hornberger

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12 “One Day You Will Wish We’d Only Played Music”: Some Remarks on Recent Developments of Germany’s RechtsRock Scene  Thorsten Hindrichs

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13 Hallo Blumenau, bom dia Brasil! German Music beyond Germany  Julio Mendívil

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Part V:  Reluctantly German 

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14 “Meine Lieder sind anders”: Hildegard Knef and the Idea(l) of German Chanson  René Michaelsen

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15 How Munich and Frankfurt Brought (Electronic) Dance Music to the Top of the International Charts with Eurodisco and Eurodance –​and Why Germany Was Not Involved  Heiko Wandler 16 Japonisme 2.0: German Visual-​Kei Fans, Tokio Hotel, and the Popular Music Genre That Must Not Exist  Oliver Seibt

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Coda 

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17 The Germaican Connection: German Reggae Abroad  Martin Ringsmut

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Standing up against Discrimination and Exclusion: An Interview with Kutlu Yurtseven (Microphone Mafia)  Monika E. Schoop

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Further Reading  Index 

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Contributors

Ulrich Adelt is Associate Professor for American Studies and Director of African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of Wyoming. He holds degrees from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and the University of Iowa. He has published in a number of journals including the American Quarterly and the Journal of Transnational American Studies and is the author of two books, Blues Music in the Sixties: A Story in Black and White (Rutgers University Press, 2010)  and Krautrock:  German Music in the Seventies (University of Michigan Press, 2016). His current research focuses on electric guitar performance, in particular rhythm guitar. Susanne Binas-​Preisendörfer has been Professor of Music and Media Studies since 2005; she currently teaches and conducts research at the University of Oldenburg, focusing on the history and aesthetics of mediatized musical forms, music and globalization, transculturation, popular practices of listening, and historiographics of popular music. She also has experience as a musician, before 1990 (Der Expander des Fortschritts), as curator (singuhr-​gallery), as member in juries or as consultant for cultural and educational matters (e.g. as expert in the Enquete Committee “Culture in Germany” of the German Bundestag). From 2013 to 2016 she served as chair of the German-​speaking branch of the IASPM. See https://​uol.de/​ susanne-​binas-​preisendoerfer. Udo Dahmen studied classical percussion in Aachen and Cologne from 1971 to 1976 and was also trained by Dante Agostini in Paris. As a drummer, Dahmen played with various popular acts such as Kraan, Hellmut Hattler, Eberhard Schöner, Sting, Gianna Nannini, Nina Hagen, Jack Bruce, Gary Brooker, Sarah Brightman, Joachim Kühn, Inga Rumpf, Charly Mariano, Achim Reichel, Lake, Herb Geller, Georg Danzer and many more. From 1983 to 2003 Dahmen was Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. From 1995 until 2015 he was the president of the European drummers’ association “Percussion Creativ.” Since 2003, Dahmen has been vice president of the German Music Council as well as the artistic director and CEO of the Popakademie Baden-​Württemberg in Mannheim. Jeroen de Kloet is Professor of Globalization Studies and Chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is also a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication, Communication University of China. He has published widely on popular music in China and Hong Kong, but also on cinema, boredom,

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digitization, failure, nylon stockings, and his mother’s struggle with Alzheimers. This chapter is part of the ERC funded project ChinaCreative (no. 616882). See also http://​jeroendekloet.nl and http://​chinacreative.humanities.uva.nl. Jan-​Peter Herbst is Senior Lecturer in Music Production and Director of the Centre for Music, Culture and Identity at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He has written the books Network Sound: An Educational Challenge of Popular Music (Wissner, 2014; translation) and The Guitar Distortion in Rock Music. A Study on Playability and Aesthetics (LIT, 2016; translation) and is currently working on his third book, Heavy Metal in Germany, exploring the German metal scene with its music and culture. Before joining Huddersfield, he taught popular music studies, music production, music analysis, empirical musicology, music history and music theory at the universities of Paderborn, Bielefeld, Münster, and Berne (Switzerland). Thorsten Hindrichs is a faculty member in the Department of Musicology at Johannes Gutenberg-​University (JGU) in Mainz. He received his PhD with a dissertation on guitar music in Germany ca. 1800, but has specialised in extreme right-​wing music for many years. He is a member of the “Counselling Network against Right-​Wing Extremism” of the state of Rhineland-​Palatinate and lectures as a freelance author in political education against right-​ wing extremism. Barbara Hornberger studied cultural studies and aesthetic and applied arts at the University of Hildesheim and specialized in popular culture, especially popular music. She received her PhD with an exploration of the topic “New German Wave” (Neue Deutsche Welle). Currently, she is Professor of Popular Music Didactics at the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrueck. Her research focuses on popular culture and music, on popular culture history and popular music and education. Julio Mendívil is a Peruvian author, musician, and ethnomusicologist living in Austria. From 2008 to 2012 Mendívil led the ethnomusicological department of the Institute for Musicology at the University of Cologne, Germany. Between 2012 and March 2016 he was Chair of the Association for the Study of Popular Music, Latin American Branch and between 2013 and 2015 director of the Center for World Music at the University of Hildesheim. He was Professor for Ethnomusicology at the Goethe-​University Frankfurt between 2015 and 2017. He is currently a Full Professor for Ethnomusicology at the University of Vienna. René Michaelsen received his PhD, on self-​reflexivity in the music of Robert Schumann, in 2011 and has researched on topics from Beethoven to Keith Jarrett. From 2007 to 2016 he worked as a research assistant at the Institutes of Musicology at Universität zu Köln and Goethe-​Universität Frankfurt am Main. Since 2016 he has been employed as dramaturg at Cologne’s Theater im Bauturm, and he currently teaches jazz history at Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. Bodo Mrozek is a contemporary historian. His monograph, Jugend  –​Pop  –​Kultur. Eine transnationale Geschichte, on the history of youth pop culture, analyzes the interrelations between the US, Great Britain, both German States and France during the 1950s and 60s (Berlin 2019). Mrozek is also a co-​editor of two collective volumes on the history of popular

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culture (Popgeschichte. Theorie und Methoden /​Zeithistorische Fallstudien, 2014) and an editor of the multi-​language blog pophistory.hypotheses.org. He was a research fellow at the Max-​ Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin and the Center for Contemporary History Potsdam. He taught cultural history at universities in Germany, Great Britain, and Switzerland. In 2018, Mrozek represented the Chair for Theory and History of Popular Music at Humboldt University of Berlin. Currently, he is a fellow at the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies. His research interests are transnational history, popular music, and sensory studies. Jens Gerrit Papenburg is Professor for Musicology/​Sound Studies at Rheinische Friedrich-​ Wilhelms-​Universität Bonn. He is the co-​editor of Sound as Popular Culture. A  Research Companion (MIT Press 2016)  and member of the editorial board of Sound Studies. An Interdisciplinary Journal (Routledge). His current projects include the monograph Listening Devices. A Sound and Music History of Records, Jukeboxes, Sound System (to be published by Bloomsbury). Michael Rauhut studied musicology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and was a founding member of the Center for Popular Music Research. Since 2008, he has been Professor of Popular Music at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. Book publications include:  Beat in der Grauzone:  DDR-​Rock 1964 bis 1972 (BasisDruck, 1993); Schalmei und Lederjacke:  Rock und Politik in der DDR der achtziger Jahre (Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1996); Rock in der DDR 1964 bis 1989 (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2002); Das Kunden-​Buch:  Blues in Thüringen (Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen, 2011); One Sound, Two Worlds: The Blues in a Divided Germany, 1945–​1990 (Berghahn Books, 2019). Alongside academic activities, Rauhut works as a radio journalist and filmmaker. Martin Ringsmut is an ethnomusicologist, musician, and lecturer in ethnomusicology and popular music studies at the University of Cologne and the Saarland University. He holds an MA in musicology, philosophy and German literature from the University of Cologne and is currently finalizing his dissertation on Cape Verdean music titled Cape Verdean Rhythms –​On Kolá San Jon and the Making of Social Space and Time. At the same time, he is engaged with musical memorializations of German Sinti and Roma World War II victims in the research project “Sounding Memories”. Between 2016 and 2020, he served as national representative in the executive committee of the IASPM D-​A-​CH branch. Melanie Schiller is Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Popular Music at the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), and the author of Soundtracking Germany –​Popular Music and National Identity (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018 and 2020). Schiller is on the executive board and is a national representative of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) Benelux branch, and member of the academic advisory committee of the German Society for Popular Music Studies (GfPM). She has published widely on German popular music, amongst others in Popular Music and Society (2014) and The European Journal for Cultural Studies (2018). Her current research focuses on popular music and populism in Europe and Sweden in particular, in the international research project “Popular Music and the Rise of Populism in Europe” (funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, 2019–​2022).

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Monika E.  Schoop is Assistant Professor for Popular Music Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany and co-​coordinator of the research project “Sounding Memories: Nazi-​ Persecution and Anti-​Nazi Resistance in the Music of Contemporary Germany,” funded by the German Research Foundation. She holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Hildesheim and an MA in musicology, philosophy and English studies from the University of Cologne. Her research interests include music and memory, protest music, music industries, scenes, gender and queer studies and popular music in the Philippines. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Philippines and in Germany. Oliver Seibt has been Assistant Professor of Cultural Musicology at the University of Amsterdam since 2016. He previously taught ethnomusicology and popular music studies at the universities of Berne, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna, and Zurich, and worked as a post-​doc researcher at the DFG founded Cluster of Excellence, “Asia and Europe in a Global Context,” at Heidelberg University, where he conducted a multi-​sited research project on the globalization of Japanese visual-​kei. Seibt is author of Der Sinn des Augenblicks: Überlegungen zu einer Musikwissenschaft des Alltäglichen (Bielefeld 2010) and numerous book chapters and articles on (the global spread of) Japanese popular music. His current research focuses on everyday life music studies and the role of the imaginary in the production and consumption of popular music. He is co-​founder and from 2013 to 2016 acted as general secretary of IASPM-​D-​A-​CH. Since 2019 he has been chair of the Benelux branch of IASPM. See www.uva.nl/​profiel/​s/​e/​ f.o.seibt/​f.o.seibt.html. Thomas Solomon is Professor of Musicology in the Grieg Academy–​Department of Music at the University of Bergen. He has done field research in Bolivia on musical imaginations of ecology, place, and identity, and in Istanbul on place and identity in Turkish hip-​hop; he has also published on various theoretical topics in ethnomusicology and popular music studies including postcolonialism, diaspora, and popular music analysis. His publications include ­articles in the journals Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Yearbook for Traditional Music, as well as numerous chapters in edited volumes on topics such as music and indigeneity in highland Bolivia, gender and voice in Turkish rap, music and race in American cartoons, and Turkey’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest. He is also editor of Music and Identity in Norway and Beyond:  Essays Commemorating Edvard Grieg the Humanist (2011) and African Musics in Context:  Institutions, Culture, Identity (2015). Carolin Stahrenberg is Professor of Musicology at Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz, Austria. She studied at the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hannover, where she gained her PhD in 2011 with a thesis about popular music in Berlin between the wars. Stahrenberg worked as a research assistant at the Research Centre for Music and Gender in Hannover, at the ZPKM (Research Institute for Popular Culture and Music) in Freiburg im Breisgau, and at different universities in Austria (Alpen-​Adria-​University Klagenfurt, University of Innsbruck). In 2018 she was appointed Junior Professor for Musicology/​Gender Studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Stahrenberg’s research interests are in popular music, musical theatre, music and gender studies, music and migration and musical life in the Weimar Republic.

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Heiko Wandler, following his studies of musicology, sociology, philosophy, multimedia, and music informatics, worked at the University of Music Karlsruhe, where his doctoral work was on the influence of electroacoustic music instruments and studio technology on the sound and the sound ideal of popular music. His areas of focus include the history and theory of popular music, sound synthesis, music production, acoustics, and music and media technology. Currently he is degree program administrator for the master’s program “Popular Music” at the Popakademie Baden-​Württemberg in Mannheim and lecturer for popular music at the Popakademie Baden-​Württemberg and at the University of Music Karlsruhe. Peter Wicke held the Chair of Theory and History of Popular Music and Director of the Center for Popular Music Research at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin until 2016. He is a founding member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, a member of the editorial boards of the journals Popular Music and Popular Music History, a member of the international advisory boards of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association and the Norwegian Journal of Musicology Online and of the advisory board of the International Institute for Popular Culture, University of Turku, Finland. Since 1998 he has been a member of the German Music Council. Wicke has written books and essays on the theory and history of popular music in more than twenty languages, amongst them Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics, Sociology (1990), Music and Cultural Theory (1997), From Mozart to Madonna (1998), Rammstein (2019). David-​Emil Wickström studied Scandinavian studies, musicology, and ethnomusicology at the Humboldt-​Universität zu Berlin, University of Bergen and University of Copenhagen. He currently is employed as a Professor of Popular Music History at the Popakademie Baden-​ Württemberg. His areas of research are Norwegian traditional vocal music and the Ragnar Vigdal tradition, post-​Soviet popular music, music and transnational flows, as well as higher music education –​especially power relations. Among his numerous publications are also two books: Rocking St. Petersburg: Transcultural Flows and Identity Politics in Post-​Soviet Popular Music (ibidem Press 2014) and A War of Songs –​Popular Music and Recent Russia-​Ukraine Relations (co-​authored together with Hansen, Rogatchevski and Steinholt -​ibidem Press 2019). He is a founding member of IASPM D-​A-​CH where he served on the association’s board from 2013 to 2016 and the chair of the AEC working group “Diversity, Identity, Inclusiveness.” Kutlu Yurtseven is the co-​founder of the Cologne-​based hip hop group Microphone Mafia. Founded in 1989, Microphone Mafia are one of the first German hip hop groups. The group is well known for addressing the experiences of second-​generation immigrants and speaking up against racism, xenophobia, and discrimination of all types. Since 2008 Microphone Mafia has collaborated with Esther Bejarano, musician and survivor of the concentration camps Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, under the name Bejarano und Microphone Mafia. Besides his music activities, Kutlu Yurtseven works a teacher and has appeared as an actor in critically acclaimed theater pieces on the authorities’ failures in the investigations of right-​wing terrorist group NSU (Die Lücke), on religion and belief (Glaubenskämpfer), and the impact of the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016 (Istanbul).

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Introduction

DEUTSCHLAND! –​Echt jetzt?: German Popular Music’s Complicated Relationship with German Identity Oliver Seibt, Martin Ringsmut, and David-​Emil Wickström

Ich erinner’ mich an alles, sogar noch an den Krieg. Der Deutsche ist erst zufrieden, wenn jemand am Boden liegt. Und dann lobt er sich selbst und tritt noch mal rein, fühlt sich moralisch überlegen, denkt “Genau so soll es sein!” Hier geht es nicht nach Walhalla, das ist die Bundesstraße Vier, und der Nestbeschmutzer ist mein Lieblingstier.1 Thees Uhlmann –​“Fünf Jahre nicht gesungen” (2019) As the title of the song cited in the epigraph explains, it is five years since Thees Uhlmann last sang. And it is also five years since Pegida,2 a far-​right political movement (and registered voluntary association), was founded. Since its establishment in December 2014, Pegida has organized anti-​Islam demonstrations every Monday in the city of Dresden which its organizers belittle as an “Abendspaziergang” (evening stroll). Uhlmann’s choice of the “Nestbeschmutzer”3 as his favorite animal might well be understood as a defiant commentary on the political climate in Germany that, due to the public agitation of xenophobic movements like Pegida and the right-​wing political party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), has dramatically changed during this last five years. Among the most visible symptoms of the increasing division of German society that has occurred since then is the drastic change of language use in public discourse. Words like “Gutmensch” (literally “good human”) or “Gender Mainstream” are used in the derogatory terminology of the political right to fight against liberal and multiculturalist policies. In the center of an escalating “cultural war” stands the ongoing European refugee “crisis” that sparked a renewed public debate on Germany, its moral status and self-​image. In its wake, right-​wing politicians and activists who claim to speak in the name of “the people” call for a revision of German history, which in their opinion must be freed from the so-​called “guilt complex,” and demand a patriotic redetermination of what it means to be “German.”

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Popular music definitely is one of those discursive sites where German identity is negotiated, but Germanness is not a topic that is routinely addressed openly in German popular music. Therefore, it is all the more surprising that our work on this book was framed by two public debates in German media, both of them triggered by the publication of a popular music video that made an explicit statement about what it means to be “German.” Shortly before we initiated this book project and started to discuss its overall structure and contents in the summer of 2016, German comedian Jan Böhmermann caused quite a stir with the presentation of his latest video, “Be Deutsch!” in his weekly TV show Neo Magazin Royale. Now that we are completing the publication by writing this introduction three years later in the summer of 2019, Rammstein –​the notorious band that no academic text about German popular music can do without and that Böhmermann had spoofed in his music video –​caused another public outrage with the publication of a 35-​second teaser on the band’s YouTube channel. After ten years of absence, Rammstein thus announced the forthcoming upload of the music video for the first single from their new, self-​titled album, called “Deutschland.” For this introduction, both videos and the public debates they sparked will serve as examples to illustrate the complex and problematic relationship of (what is often uncritically considered to be) “German Popular Music” and diverging ideas of Germanness. In the very same Neo Magazin Royale show in which he recited a “Schmähgedicht” (dispraise poem) about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, causing an international diplomatic crisis,4 Jan Böhmermann also presented his latest music video “Be Deutsch!,” which in the show’s aftermath was discussed on a national scale. The video5 shows Böhmermann dressed and singing in the fashion of Rammstein’s front man Till Lindemann. The band, arguably Germany’s internationally most successful group at the moment, is notorious for its persistent provocations and has repeatedly been criticized for the ambiguous use of fascist aesthetics. Despite its ominous title “Be Deutsch! [Achtung! Germans on the rise!],” the song’s English lyrics that Böhmermann, wearing steel-​blue contact lenses, intones with an over-​articulated German accent could not be less fascist. The video is explicitly directed against the growing acceptance of the right-​wing populist political party AfD and against those so-​called “besorgte Bürger” (worried citizens) protesting Angela Merkel’s allegedly too liberal refugee politics during Pegida’s Monday demonstrations in Dresden. Challenging their claim to speak in the name of “the [German] people” –​“Wir sind das Volk” –​, Böhmermann has his own take on defining what it means to “be Deutsch”: we are/​deutsch  –​ nice/​deutsch  –​ liberal/​deutsch  –​ compassionate/​deutsch  –​ considerate/​ deutsch –​ reasonable/​deutsch –​ social/​deutsch –​ temperate/​deutsch –​ peaceful/​Say it clear, say it loud/​We are proud of not being proud! Though he also makes some ironic allusions to the stereotypic trademarks of the middle-​class “Gutmenschen” whom the Pegida supporters have chosen as their imaginary antagonists –​such as bicycle helmets, “Dosenpfand” (can deposit), and Birkenstock sandals –​Böhmermann obviously means what he sings: Wake up, Deutschland, sleeping beauty Can you hear your call of duty

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 DEUTSCHLAND! – Echt  jetzt?   •   3

The world has gone completely nuts That’s why we’re back to help, mein Schatz Achtung! Germans on the rise But this time we are fucking nice. The video received enormous media coverage. When we wrote a first letter to the volume’s authors to explain the book’s structure in July 2016, the video had garnered almost six and a half million views on YouTube, and the majority of German newspapers (and some from other countries, too) commented on it. It was enthusiastically shared by several hundred thousand Facebook users and met with exuberant approval by some journalists: “Böhmermann has come to save Germany. No, the whole world!,” Sophie Albers Ben Chamo (2016) wrote in the weekly Stern, therefore “we now love him even more.” Carolin Ströbele (2016) in the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT ironically but benevolently commented: “Dear Germany, breathe! We are fucking nice. Fortunately, with Jan Böhmermann we have a eulogist beyond any self-​doubt.” But the video also provoked a lot of fierce critique, and not all of it came from the political right. Influential blogger Sascha Lobo, who generally considers Böhmermann a “ray of hope in the German media scene,” as he explains right in the first sentence of his Facebook post,6 calls the song “an arrogant message to the whole world” because it not only shows pictures of right-​wing politicians and protesters from Germany, but also includes images of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, and Beata Szydło. Lobo attests a “feel-​good chauvinism with a nationalistic sound” to the song and is shocked by the fact that so many of his Facebook friends are sharing the video and so obviously subscribe to this “friendly side of the same coin that on its dark side has the inscription: ‘70 years after the end of war, it’s enough. Born after the war, I am no longer guilty of all this Hitlering [Hitlerei]’ … This is unacceptable!” For the Berliner Zeitung’s commentator Philipp Fritz (2016), the video provides a good opportunity to finally enumerate “Four good reasons not to like Jan Böhmermann.” According to Fritz, Böhmermann’s humor is “deutschtümelnd” (untranslatable, negatively connoted term for stressing Germanness), prissy, provincial, mainstream, and middle-​class. Böhmermann’s intention is quite obvious:  He disputes the legitimacy of the right-​ wing demonstrators and politicians who claim to represent the people to define German identity –​“you are not the people, you are the past” is his reply to the Pegida protesters. Instead he sketches an ironic but genuine antagonistic image of what it means to “be Deutsch,” stressing positive qualities and thwarting stereotypic images of Nazi Germans (ironically performed in a Rammstein-​like style that, as said above, is often associated with the provocative use of fascist iconography). In doing so, Böhmermann and his editorial staff are well aware of the fact that it will seem strange to some that of all peoples it should be “the Germans” who now claim moral superiority (what Sascha Lobo in his Facebook post called “ethical advantage through Hitler”). This is testified by the description –​in German and English –​accompanying the video on Neo Magazin Royale’s YouTube channel: The world is going completely nuts! Europe feels threatened by 0.3 percent refugees, the USA are about to elect a man, of who no one really knows who is pulling the strings under the toupee and just as if that was not bad enough, Germany of all nations has to disabuse the world of how to behave morally right. I mean GERMANY! They did not even win one single world war in history!

4

4   •   Introduction

Despite these self-​mocking words, for some of its commentators Böhmermann’s well-​intentioned draft of a positive contemporary German identity was still too nationalistic. On March 26, 2019, a 35-​second teaser was uploaded to Rammstein’s official YouTube channel to announce the publication of the band’s forthcoming music video “Deutschland” –​the band’s first new release in ten years. Before the song’s title is presented in a symbolically highly loaded Gothic script, the camera passes the five musicians standing in a row at the gallows with the noose around their necks. They are identified as concentration camp prisoners by virtue of their clothing and the badges on their chests that were used by the Nazis during the holocaust to distinguish different inmate groups.7 The day after, Germany’s biggest tabloid newspaper Bild listed some immediate responses to the teaser. For the Federal Government Commissioner of Antisemitism Felix Klein the depiction of the Rammstein musicians as moribund KZ prisoners [was] the breach of a red line. If this just serves the merchandising of the new album, I regard it as a distasteful exploitation of artistic freedom. Charlotte Knobloch, holocaust survivor and former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, found it “frivolous and abhorrent … how the suffering and assassination of millions was abused for entertainment purposes.” And Jewish historian Michael Wolfssohn called the teaser “a form of corpse defilement. Completely unacceptable!”8 Other comments cited in the same article were more biding: Iris Rosenberg, speaker of The World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, stated that Yad Vashem doesn’t generally criticize works of art evocative of the holocaust. We think that a respectful artistic depiction of the subject can be legitimate, as long as it doesn’t insult, degrade, or defile the holocaust and doesn’t serve as a tool to attract publicity. This is why Yad Vashem appeals to artists to act in a responsible way and to respect the memory of the holocaust victims and survivors. Alexander Graf Lambsdorf, the German Liberal Party FDP’s foreign affairs specialist pointed out that the Shoah is not suitable for advertising, no matter what for. We have to wait and see if this is an excerpt of something with that Rammstein wants to contribute to the “Aufarbeitung des Holocaust.”9 When the teaser was published, the German public was already sensitized to anti-​Semitism in German popular music. Due to the ECHO scandal that had occurred the previous year there had been an ongoing discussion concerning the “Grenzen der Kunstfreiheit” (limits of artistic freedom): On April 12, 2018, the German Federal Music Industry Association BVMI awarded the ECHO in the category Hip-​Hop/​Urban to Kollegah and Farid Bang for their album “Jung, Brutal, Gutaussehend 3.” In addition to more than 10 million streams the album sold more than 200,000 copies and took the top position in the German, Austrian, and Swiss charts. In the run-​ up to the award ceremony, the International Auschwitz Committee had already protested against

5

 DEUTSCHLAND! – Echt  jetzt?   •   5

the honoring of the two musicians who publicly recite lyrics like “Mein Körper definierter als von Auschwitzinsassen” (my body more defined than that of Ausschwitz inmates, Farid Bang in “0815”) or “Ich mach’ mal wieder ‘nen Holocaust, komm an mit dem Molotow” (I’ll do another holocaust, (I’ll) arrive with a Molotov (cocktail)), and that of all days on the Holocaust Remembrance Day Yom HaScho’a. During their acceptance speech, Kollegah and Farid Bang were booed by the audience,10 and the critical media coverage in the aftermath of the ceremony eventually forced the BVMI to completely abolish the ECHO that for 26 years had been the most important German music (industry) award. Rammstein’s publication of the music video “Deutschland” on March 28, two days after the teaser had provoked accusations of anti-​Semitism, did not silence the critical voices completely. But it definitely slowed down the speed in which comments were made and gave way to more sophisticated analyses. The elaborately produced video, aesthetically reminiscent of high-​quality TV series such as Game of Thrones or Babylon Berlin, was directed by Specter Berlin.11 It shows a “rampage through German history,” as one (enthusiastic) commenter put it (Broder 2019), set in at least seven different time layers that repeatedly blend into each other during the video’s remarkable 9 minutes and 22 seconds of playing time. The first scene is the only one that is explicitly dated, showing a group of Roman soldiers who in the year “16 A.D.” in a nighttime forest somewhere in “Germania magna” stalk a mysterious figure. The figure, accompanied by a wolf, is kneeling under a huge tree from the branches of which dead bodies are hanging. When the soldiers get closer, the figure turns around revealing herself as a black woman dressed in animal hides holding a knife in her left hand. Under her right arm she holds the severed head of Rammstein singer Till Lindemann which she had just cut off. The sight of the “national allegory Germania” (Balzer 2019) –​as the end titles identify the woman, played by Berlin-​born actress Ruby Commey –​provokes the soldiers to attack. But the fight itself is not shown. Instead, the scene changes, and we see five people in space suits carrying a glass coffin. That the coffin bearers are the musicians of Rammstein and that Germania is lying inside is suggested by the following scene. Here we see the latter, still holding Lindemann’s cut-​off head in her arms, sitting in a wheelchair that is pushed by the five musicians, now wearing suits and long coats reminiscent of the fashion of the 1920s. And indeed, the subsequent scene depicting a brutal fist fight between Lindemann and Rammstein guitarist Richard Zven Kruspe with brass knuckles handed to them by cheerful Germania is obviously set in “the back room of a hoodlum’s pub in Franz Bieberkopf12-​Germany” of the Weimar republic, as another (rather critical) commentator put it (Balzer 2019). In an unpredictable and associative manner, the video jumps from one time layer to the next … to the Middle Ages where the musicians dressed as monks cannibalize a lethargic and still alive Germania lying on a table … to a SED party office in the GDR where the musicians as SED functionaries celebrate an orgy while Germania in uniform functions as a disciplined standard bearer … back to the Middle Ages where Germania is shown in golden armament on a battlefield while Lindemann is dying nearby in his shiny knight’s armor, pierced by several swords … to the “German Autumn” of the late 1970s, where the musicians dressed as RAF terrorists (and Lindemann in drag), are holding a desperate Germania hostage … to the concentration camp that was already shown in the teaser –​identified now as Mittelbau-​Dora by the V2 rockets starting nearby. Here we see the musicians standing as moribund prisoners under the gallows, Germania in a SS uniform unemotionally smoking a cigarette while she observes their execution. Again and again, the time levels blend into each other, for example when a SWAT team of today’s German police tries to knock down a prison riot during the times of hyperinflation in the German Reich from 1919 to 1923, symbolically dated by money raining down on the fighting

6

6   •   Introduction

inmates and prison officials. And this is just the beginning … What is shown in the video is much too complex and allusive, the number of actual references and possible associations too numerous, to be completely outlined here. The interpretations that were published in every major newspaper and innumerable online forums during the following days were accordingly diverse, though most commentators in the light of the whole video agreed on the inappropriateness of the accusations of anti-​Semitism that had been voiced with regard to the teaser. While Daniel Hornuff considers the reactions to the teaser a calculated effect, he deems the initial outrage disproportionate, stating that Rammstein’s “short movie celebrates the art of irony” in the liberal newspaper DIE ZEIT: On closer inspection, it becomes obvious that the band does not use the concentration camp reference for the purpose of an easily includable provocation. Crucial are the lyrics that singer Till Lindemann is reciting in this context: “Germany, I can’t give you my love” (Deutschland, meine Liebe kann ich dir nicht geben) –​one of the reasons for that is the very existence of the concentration camps. […] Yes, the band remains […] semantically fluid. There indeed is no “clear message.” But this is the role that inheres in an ironically broken attitude. Irony […] shies away from confession, thwarts doctrines, and deliberately circumvents ideological one-​sidedness. It therefore is wrong to accuse Rammstein of relativism or even historical revisionism. (Hornuff 2019) Unlike Hornuff who does not see a “clear message” in the video, Arno Frank on Spiegel Online and Sonja Zekri and Felix Stephan in the left-​wing Süddeutsche Zeitung notice a “virtually striking” distancing from patriotism and nationalism on the part of Lindemann: Even for Rammstein, the love of Germany is a topic today, with regard to that the band does not want to be misunderstood. (Zekri and Stephan 2019) Never before did Rammstein distance themselves from nationalism that clearly.

(Frank 2019)

In a comment for the conservative newspaper Die Welt, German publicist Hendryk M. Broder, who comes from a Jewish family, implicitly absolved the band from the accusation of anti-​ Semitism by calling the video “a provocative masterpiece in service of enlightenment”: Entire libraries were written about the question why “the Germans” are as they are and why they are losing the fight against themselves over and over again, on the battlefield and while trying to be a model to the world. You shouldn’t put too much under the control of artists, but this video might be the missing link between “Mein Kampf ” and [Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich’s] “Unfähigkeit zu trauern.” Megalomania on the one hand and eternal innocence on the other are close relatives. (Broder 2019) Confirming Barthes diagnosis that “the author is dead,” the video was also praised by parts of the extreme right. Under the heading “Why do Nazis like Rammstein? –​Update ‘Deutschland’,”

7

 DEUTSCHLAND! – Echt  jetzt?   •   7

Simone Rafael on the online platform Belltower.News gives an overview of interpretations she found in the discussion threads of extreme right online forums. This includes an unspecified “video channel” run by conspiracy theorist Oliver Jahnich where commenters (anonymized by Rafael) declare that the song “Deutschland” “reflects Germany’s decline very well,” and remark that no seeing person can seriously not have noticed this? Exactly the same what happens in every second TV advert … the white man everywhere is made into a degraded sucker. Rammstein stayed true to his provocation line and kept pace with the times” [sic!].13 Rafael summarizes Jahnich’s own comment on the video as follows: Oliver Janisch appreciates that ‘communism’ is criticized (GDR scene). He takes favorable note of the fact that of all the concentration camp inmates only the Jew, identified by the yellow star attached to his clothes, is hung (the other Rammstein members indeed are identified by other markings as inmates for political reasons or because of their sexual orientation). The black Germania, of course, isn’t pleasant, but firstly she is eaten and then she also is a symbol: she carries the cut-​off head of a white man in her hands, kisses it and then gives birth to a dog that is a symbol for the white race as “Köterrasse.”14 This “Köterrasse” (first, the dog and later the band) is shown around by her on the leash, as black peoples want to subjugate white peoples. In the end, it is she who wears the crown, who shouts “Deutschland,” she has won. (Rafael 2019) Writing for the online journal www.blauenarzisse.de which belongs to the so-​called “Neue Rechte” (New Right)15 in Germany, Johannes K. Poensgen has a more plausible explanation for black Germania being repeatedly depicted with Lindemann’s severed head. Well-​acquainted with black US-​American popular culture, director Specter Berlin might indeed have taken the inspiration for this motif from African American artist Kehinde Wiley. In 2012, Whiley exhibited his two variations of Caravaggio’s famous painting Judith beheading Holofernes, both showing black women dressed in elaborate robes reminiscent of Elizabethan England, holding a knife in one hand and the severed head of a white female in the other. Whiley himself described the two paintings as “a play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing” –​a play that should stir quite an uproar five years later when Barack Obama chose Whiley to paint his official presidential portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.16 Though Poensgen might well be right about the video’s point of reference, his eventual evaluation of this likely quotation clearly shows the racist ideology of which his negative critique of “Deutschland” is an expression: The whole motif can only be explained by the American (and to a lesser degree by the British) race situation. It is a fantasy of black people against the white people who allow them a reasonably civilized life that they cannot ensure themselves and against whom only pure hatred remains. The fad to let black actors play figures from occidental history has a double aim: to steal the identity from white people and to fob black people off with some chunks for their self-​respect. (Poensgen 2019) But on the other side of the political spectrum, too, the video was met with firm criticism. In a second commentary to the video published in DIE ZEIT, Jens Balzer contradicted Daniel

8

8   •   Introduction

Hornuff ’s diagnosis that “Deutschland” had to be read as an ironic statement on German identity. He interprets the fact that Germania is the only female character as the key to a critical psychoanalytical understanding of all the violence depicted in the video: Germany is a woman, that is the central statement of the nine-​minute short movie. And this woman puts generations, epochs and genealogies, clans, tribes and empires of men in the state of unresolvable erotic tension. All of them would love to do nothing else but copulate with Germany […] But German men are too sexually repressed to do so. […] Therefore, they have to direct their energy, their libido and power against each other in an endless hand-​to-​hand fight. […] One has tried to refer to the very attitude that underlies [the video’s] aesthetic strategy as irony. […] But the concept of irony also includes the capacity for mental loosening and reflection; both cannot be found with Rammstein. Instead, they […] offer a true reflection of a society that in a free-​for-​all battle continuously frays out and that simultaneously is longing for a collective identity. (Balzer 2019) What could be more illustrative of the fraying self-​image of current German society diagnosed by Balzer than these inconsistent interpretations of Rammstein’s “Deutschland”? When we discussed the possible contents of this volume, we soon realized that there is a certain tension between its title, if taken literally, and the content-​related expectations it raises. Without a doubt, “Made in Germany” was intended to become the volume within the Routledge Global Popular Music series that was about “German popular music,” but not all popular music that is “made in Germany” is considered to be “German popular music” and not all popular music that is considered to be “German” is necessarily “made in Germany.” Though popular music does not have any officially granted nationality, of course, the problem we faced was very much reminiscent of the two mutually exclusive principles that nation-​states worldwide apply to regulate the provision of citizenship. According to jus solis or “birthright citizenship,” everybody who is born in the territory of a nation-​state is entitled to citizenship. Following this principle, we could have taken the volume’s title at face value and included popular music that is actually produced in the territory of the German nation-​state, irrespective of the fact if it was considered to be “German” or not by those who produce or listen to it, and irrespective of the actual nationality of its producers or listeners. The fact that from 1949 to 1990 there were two German nation-​states and that during the historical period we planned to cover in the volume the territory of the German nation-​state(s) was subjected to considerable changes made such an approach complicated enough. Alternatively, we could have followed the model of jus sanguinis or the “right of blood” principle and included only articles about popular music that is considered to be German due to its producers’ German nationality, irrespective of its actual place of production. The case of German (by nationality) singer Nico who was born in 1938 as Christa Päffgen in Cologne illustrates the far-​reaching consequences a decision between these two approaches might have yielded. If we had opted for “the jus solis approach,” the music of one of the arguably internationally most influential German popular musicians would have been outside the scope of this volume. But the fact that for the longest time in her career she did not live and work in Germany, but in Paris, London, Ibiza, and in the United States where most of her English-​language songs

9

 DEUTSCHLAND! – Echt  jetzt?   •   9

were produced by US-​American producers would not have been in conflict with her inclusion in the volume if we had followed “the jus sanguinis approach.” Though Nico in the end did not make it into the book, these considerations made us decide to not choose between the two principles but to make them antipodes on a coordinate system’s horizontal axis that we would use to structure the volume’s contents:  popular music actually “made in Germany” (no matter by whom or how it was identified) on the left versus popular music considered to be “German” (no matter by whom, but most often by audiences outside of Germany) because it was “made by people considered to be ‘German’ citizens” on the right. (The terms “left” and “right” are meant geometrically, not politically.)

As a qualifier, the term “German” has a number of different though interrelated meanings. Beyond a nationality that is a rather factual property and is based on bureaucratic acts performed by government authorities and ideally provable by official documents, the term “German” is also used to signify different kinds of identities that are not that easily verifiable because they are not objectively given but fundamentally contested. The much-​discussed case of professional soccer player Mehzut Özil is a good case in point: He was harshly criticized by German media for a picture that shows him and his team colleague İlkay Gündoğan together with Turkish international Cenk Tosun and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, published in the run-​up to the Turkish elections and the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. This case illustrates the crucial difference between German nationality and German national identity. Though both players indisputably and verifiably are of German nationality, the photo was interpreted as a public display of Özil’s and Gündoğan’s identification with the Turkish nation and thus perceived as a proof of their lack of identification with the nation-​state that they as German internationals were meant to represent. Both later proclaimed their German national identity during a public meeting with German president Frank-​Walter Steinmeier but refrained from distancing themselves from their meeting with the Turkish president. Officials of the German Soccer Association (DFB) publicly implied that Özil’s public appearance with Erdoğan might have been one reason for the German team to ingloriously fail the preliminary round of the 2018 World Cup. This accusation eventually led to Özil’s resignation from the national team and triggered a heated media debate about integration and racism, in German soccer and beyond. This debate clearly illustrates that there not only is a difference between nationality and national identity, but that the term “German” also designates different forms of identity –​and that Özil’s accusation of racism against the DFB was not completely unjustified. The main reason why the German Soccer Association and the German public so urgently expected Özil to explicitly distance himself from his meeting with Erdoğan and to publicly proclaim his German national identity was that due to his Turkish background he is not considered to be what comedian Muhsin Omurca ironically called a “Biodeutscher” (lit. “biological German”). When a comparable picture showing former German international Lothar Matthäus together with Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose politics are as controversial in Germany as Erdoğan’s, was published during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, it was also met with criticism. But nobody required Matthäus to publicly proclaim his identification with the German nation-​state because in contrast to Özil and Gündoğan, he is not just a citizen of Germany but also identified as ethnically German.

10

10   •   Introduction

The term “Biodeutsche” was popularized in 2015 by Cem Özdemir, former chairman of the German Green Party who like Omurca and Özil also has a Turkish background. He jokingly used it in a public speech to designate “Deutsche ohne Migrationshintergrund” (Germans without migration background). Omurca had coined the term in ironical allusion to the “Bio” label that is used in Germany to distinguish organic from conventionally produced food. In doing so, he willfully wanted to label those Germans who in public discourse usually do not have to be specified by the use of an additional label. Most “Biodeutsche” don’t like at all to be called “biodeutsch.” That is not only because of the word itself that admittedly is reminiscent of unsweetened oat cookies. They equally don’t like to be called “autochthonous,” “indigenous,” or “German-​German.” What they find disturbing about these labels isn’t the wording itself but the very fact that they are labelled at all. They are “just ordinary” Germans. There is no need to add anything! (Sezgin 2016) Ironically, the ironic intention of the term sometimes passes unnoticed so that one occasionally will also find it used by well-​meaning “Deutsche ohne Migrationshintergrund” as an allegedly non-​offensive, “politically correct” self-​designation. Of course, the otherwise obviously racist term is also used in a deliberately discriminatory way, for example by the Greifswald professor of law and AfD parliamentarian in Mecklenburg-​Vorpommern Ralph Weber. On his Facebook profile, Weber demanded that all “Biodeutsche with two German parents and four German grandparents” stand up for a Germany that “in 30  years from now is still characterized and formed by a German ‘Leitkultur’.”17 The term “Leitkultur” (guiding or dominant culture) in turn was coined by (non-​“bio-​” but Arab-​German) sociologist Bassam Tibi in his 1998 book Europa ohne Identität (Europe without identity). It figured prominently in a debate that was triggered by an article by Friedrich Merz, the former leader of the conservative CDU/​CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, which was published in the conservative newspaper Die Welt in 2000. In this article Merz, who had just proposed an annual immigrant quota capped at 200,000 people, asked all immigrants to pledge to adopt Germany’s basic cultural values. What these values might be and who would have the right to define what a “freiheitliche deutsche Leitkultur” (liberal German guiding culture)18 entails, the term points to cultural identity as a third kind of identity that is designated by the qualifier “German” and that is more encompassing than national identity. While for right-​wing extremists such as Ralph Weber it is the exclusive obligation of “Bio-​Deutsche” to guarantee the dominance of German “Leitkultur” in Germany, for Merz “German” is something that he expects immigrants to do. Even immigrants who are not German citizens can not only participate in the “German Leitkultur,” but are obliged to adopt it. National identification certainly is one aspect of what Merz expects of the “performative Germans” he thus wants to produce by legal means, but his idea definitely goes further and also includes fluency in the German language, loyalty to the German constitution, and the further acceptance of “German norms and values.” To better understand the complexities of the German discourse about what it means to be “German” and to develop a better comprehension of the discussed music videos and the media reactions they sparked, it is necessary to systematically and consequentially distinguish the various but interrelated meanings of the qualifier “German.” As an adjective, “German” can equally designate

11

 DEUTSCHLAND! – Echt  jetzt?   •   11

a nationality, a national identity, an ethnic identity, and a cultural identity –​as well as a language, of course, the command of which is one of the main indicators of German cultural identity. It is not very difficult to identify the two opposing groups of people depicted in “Be Deutsch!” with two contradictory ideas of what is constitutive for German national identity. The video’s first scene is a restaging of the infamous attempt of about 100 German protesters shouting xenophobic slurs and “Wir sind das Volk” (We are the people) to prevent 15 refugees from Syria, Iran, and Libya who had just arrived in a bus to move into the recently completed refugee accommodation in Clauswitz, Saxonia, on February 18, 2016. In the video we see a greyed-​out group of white males and females (completely dressed in grey) hatefully banging against the windows of a bus in which a father and his crying son are sitting in fear. Later, this group is shown standing next to a heterogenous group of people depicted in full color that under Böhmermann’s lead takes the initiative and chases the grey group away. While the first group clearly stands for a racist idea of German ethnic identity, the second group, including Black, Jewish, Muslim, gay, and transsexual individuals, represents a performative understanding of a cultural German identity that everybody is able to participate in. The lyrics leave us in no doubt that the cultural values that are constitutive for this German identity are not pre-​given but negotiable. The colorful group led by Böhmermann is, however, absolutely unwilling to negotiate what is and is not “German” with the “grey” opponents of an inclusive and liberal German society. In the case of Rammstein’s “Deutschland” the picture is less clear. It is hard to understand the casting of Germania with a black actress in any other way than as a definitive rejection of the idea that German identity is based on a racial foundation. Rightwing readings such as those cited above that understand black Germania as a symbol for an alleged ongoing gradual replacement of an “ethnic” German population by immigrants from Africa completely ignore the video narrative’s temporal dimension. In “Deutschland,” Germania is black from the onset. She is black already when Germanic tribes –​who did not think of themselves as “Germanic” at that time but were turned into a group by virtue of a Latin exonym –​fight the Roman invaders of “Germania magna.” She is already black when the Germanic tribes become “Deutsche” in the Late Middle Ages, again by virtue of a Latin exonym: Before “die Deutschen” [“Germans”] defined themselves as “Deutsche”, they were called Theotsci [in Italy]. The word derives from the Old High German diutisc, that is an adjective to diot, “Volk” [“people”]. It means nothing but “volkssprachlich” [“vernacular”]. It became a name about 1.000  years ago when Ottonian troops invaded Italy. They crossed the Alps in tribal communities. Individual combatants most probable said “We are Franks, Saxons, Alemanni, Bavarians, Bohemians. For Italians, all of them were “Deutsche”  –​people who didn’t speak Latin but the “language of the people.” (Historian Johannes Fried in an interview with Christian Staas, 2015) Though these eras are not depicted in the video, Germania accordingly was already black when “in the 15th century the idea arose that ‘die Deutschen’ descended from the Germanic (tribes)” (ibid., also see Fried 2015). She was also black when nineteenth-​century nationalistic German writers and public figures such as Ernst Moritz Arndt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and “Turnvater” Siegfried Ludwig Jahn in a fit of what the Jewish writer Saul Ascher in 1817 labeled “Germanomanie” laid the foundation for the anti-​Semitic ideology of Nazism (see Staas 2010). Even during the Third Reich, Germania, wearing a SS uniform, is black.

12

12   •   Introduction

Already the video’s opening scene thus points to the imaginary constitution of an ethnic German identity. Far from being an accurate historical representation, the portrayal of a Germania “with migration background” is much better backed by recent archeogenetic findings than any nationalistic claim that something like an uncontaminated, pure German “Volk” ever existed (see Krause and Trappe 2019). Unlike Böhmermann who also rejects the idea of an ethnic German identity, but explicitly advocates an inclusive and disputable cultural German identity, Rammstein eventually rejects any form of identification with Germany. Even though Lindemann’s or the lyrical subject’s strong feelings towards “Deutschland” are ambivalent,19 the song ends with an unambiguous statement that stands in clear contrast to Böhmermann’s appeal to performative Germans to “Be Deutsch!”: “Deutschland –​deine Liebe ist Fluch und Segen /​Deutschland –​meine Liebe kann ich dir nicht geben” (Deutschland –​your love is a curse and a blessing /​Deutschland –​I cannot give you my love). Ironically, Rammstein’s eventual rejection to positively identify with Germany perfectly complies with the most central quality that characterizes the performative Germans Böhmermann envisions –​to “take pride in not being proud.” As mentioned before, the explicitness with that Böhmermann as well as Rammstein take a stance with regard to what it means to “Be Deutsch!” is rather exceptional in the field of German popular music. Completing the coordinate system that structures this volume, we positioned this outspokenness about Germanness in the north of the vertical axis and opposed it to the far more common downplaying or deliberate concealment of German identity in “German popular music.”

Following the model of Rammstein’s “Deutschland,” Part One of this volume turns its spotlight on four different eras in the history of German popular music. According to the structure outlined above, Part Two then focuses on those musicians and bands that from an outsider (though not necessarily from an insider) perspective are found to be most representative for “German popular music.” While the music discussed in Part Two is perceived to be German due to the nationality of its songwriters, musicians, or producers, Part Three covers popular music that is or was actually “made in Germany,” but that is not necessarily perceived as “German.”

13

 DEUTSCHLAND! – Echt  jetzt?   •   13

Part Four focuses on such music that explicitly claims its Germanness, be it for nationalistic or for other reasons, be it produced and consumed in Germany or elsewhere, while Part Five covers popular music that was actually “made in Germany” but that refuses to identify with and more or less tries to conceal its place of origin. Like all volumes in the series, this volume includes a Coda and, in this case, two Interviews. The volume’s main part is opened by an Interview with Peter Wicke and Udo Dahmen, two central figures in the academic institutionalization of popular music and popular music studies in post-​War East and West Germany. Following an oral history approach, the interview is meant to contribute to a history of popular music studies in Germany that still has to be written. The Coda rounds off the book’s chapters by focusing on German Reggae Music and its reception outside of Germany. The volume eventually concludes with an Interview with Kutlu Yurtseven, founding member of the multilingual rap group Microphone Mafia from Cologne. Detailed information about the individual chapters included in the book’s five parts can be found in the respective preambles. Notes 1 “I remember everything, even the war/​The German [collective noun!] only is contented if someone is lying on the floor/​Then he praises himself and kicks [the person lying on the floor] one more time,/​feels morally superior, thinks ‘This is how it should be!’/​This isn’t the road to Walhalla, it’s Bundesstraße [federal road] 4,/​and the ‘Nestbeschmutzer’ is my favorite animal.” (All translations in this introduction are by the authors) 2 Short for “Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung Des Abendlands” (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident). 3 Untranslatable, deprecative term describing someone who is befouling his own nest; sometimes restrictively translated as “whistleblower”. 4 The episode was first broadcast by the ZDF offshoot channel ZDF Neo the 31st of March 2016 (see https://​www. youtube.com/​watch?v=NYY18sP2brM, last access September 25, 2019). A day later, on April 1, ZDF’s main channel broadcasted an edited encore presentation that no longer included the Erdoğan “Schmähgedicht”. The subsequent diplomatic and juridical debate became known as the “Böhmermann affair” or “Erdogate” (for more information, see https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Böhmermann_​affair). 5 The music video can be watched on Neo Magazin Royale’s YouTube channel, https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v= HMQkV5cTuoY, last access September 25, 2019. 6 Sascha Lobo on Facebook, April 1, 2016. See Lobo’s Facebook page https://​www.facebook.com/​SaschaLobo/​. On this post see also Küllenberg 2019. 7 https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=q36Zon01v5k, last access September 29, 2019. 8 https://​www.bild.de/​unterhaltung/​leute/​leute/​rammstein-​schockt-​mit-​kz-​video-​darf-​man-​die-​nazi-​zeit-​fuer-​pr-​ benutzen-​60907904.bild.html, last access September 29, 2019. 9 Ibid. That we found ourselves unable to find an adequate English translation for “Aufarbeitung des Holocaust” says a lot about the specificity of the German discourse about the nation’s past. “Aufarbeitung” usually translates as “reconditioning,” “reappraisal,” “refurbishment,” “catching up,” “rehabilitation,” or “renovation”. But none of the processes designated by the English terms is thinkable with regard to the singular crime against humanity that the holocaust is. The German term “Aufarbeitung” in this context can only designate pursuing the disclosure of the atrocities committed against Jews and other minority groups by the Nazis. It is this imperative of a self-​critical engagement with Germany’s past that the head of the AfD parliamentary group in Thüringen and seminal leader of the extreme right “Flügel” (wing) of this generally right-​wing populist party, Björn Höcke, attacked when he called for a “180 degree turn in memory politics” in a speech he gave in Dresden in 2017. He bemoaned with regard to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin that “the Germans are the only people in the world that planted a memorial of shame in the heart of its capital” and so pushed the boundaries of what was utterable until then in German public discourse.

14

14   •   Introduction 10 See https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=VUiqCH48ztg. 11 Specter Berlin is the pseudonym of graphic artist and director Eric Remberg who co-​founded the first German gangsta rap label Aggro Berlin in 2001. 12 Franz Bieberkopf is the name of the main character in Alfred Döblin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz that was published in 1929. 13 Our English translation reflects the linguistical errors of the original post. 14 The term “Köterrasse” (“Köter” is a pejorative term for “dog,” and “Rasse” the German word for “race”) is one of several possible translations of a Turkish word that was used in a Facebook post by Malik Karabulut, a former board member of the Turkish Parents’ Association Hamburg, in an angry reaction to the so-​called “Armenien-​Resolution”. On June 16, 2016, the German parliament had officially declared the Turkish massacres of the Armenian people in the years 1915 and 1916 a genocide. Because of his word choice, Karabulut was accused of “Volksverhetzung” (incitement to hatred). Much to the anger of the AfD and extreme rightwing groups such as the Identitäre Bewegung, the charge was eventually dismissed by the Staatsanwaltschaft Hamburg. Since then, the term is often used as a sarcastic self-​designation by rightwing writers (for more information see https://​www.spiegel.de/​panorama/​justiz/​hamburg-​ deutsche-​als-​koeterrasse-​beschimpft-​keine-​volksverhetzung-​a-​1136813.html, last access October 3, 2019). 15 “Neue Rechte” is a designation for various (groups of) right-​wing activists in Germany, distancing themselves from explicit Nazism and trying to bridge the gap between bourgeois conservatism and the extreme right. 16 See Telegraph Reporters, “Obama Portrait Artist’s Past Work Depicted Black Women Decapitating White Women,” The Telegraph, February 13, 2018 (https://​www.telegraph.co.uk/​art/​artists/​obama-​portrait-​painterkehinde-​wileys-​ past-​work-​depicted-​black/​, last access October 3, 2019). 17 Weber’s formulation is reminiscent of the “Ariernachweis” (Arian certificate) that was used by the Nazis to prove a citizen’s “Arian heritage” and functioned thus as a way to discriminate against those not considered “Arian” such as Sinti, Roma and Jews. For his posting Weber not only received a public warning by the Greifswald University but also by his own party, the AfD (see Göken and Lorenz 2017 or Pergande 2017). 18 With the term “freiheitlich” Merz’ formulation refers to the “freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung” that plays a central role in the German constitution. 19 E.g. “Deutschland, mein Herz in Flammen/​Will dich lieben und verdammen” (Germany, my heart on fire, I want to love and to damn you) or “Ich will Dich nie verlassen […] Man kann dich lieben […] und will dich hassen” (I never want to leave you … One can love you … and wants to hate you).

Bibliography Albers Ben Chamo, Sophie. 2016. “Guten Tag, die echten Deutschen sind da!,” Stern, March 31. Accessed September 29, 2019. www.stern.de/​kultur/​tv/​jan-​boehmermanns-​neuer-​song-​be-​deutsch-​6772502.html. Balzer, Jens. 2019. “Ein lauter Schrei nach Liebe,” ZEIT ONLINE, March 29. Accessed September 26, 2019. www.zeit.de/​ kultur/​musik/​2019-​03/​rammstein-​video-​deutschland-​provokation-​holocaust-​sexualitaet/​komplettansicht?print. Broder, Hendryk M. 2019. “Dieses Rammstein-​Video ist ein Meisterwerk,” Welt, March 29. Accessed September 26, 2019. www.welt.de/​kultur/​pop/​plus191061909/​Deutschland-​Dieses-​R ...ideo-​ist-​ein-​Meisterwerk.html?wtmc= socialmedia.twitter.shared.web. Frank, Arno. 2019. “Eine Falle.” Spiegel Online, March 28. Accessed June 17, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​2ITqdwy. Fried, Johannes. 2015. Die Anfänge der Deutschen: Der Weg der Geschichte. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag. Fritz, Philipp. 2016. “Vier gute Gründe, Jan Böhmermann nicht zu mögen,” Berliner Zeitung, May 19. Accessed September 29. www.berliner-​zeitung.de/​kultur/​kommentar-​vier-​gute-​gruende-​-​jan-​boehmermann-​nicht-​zu-​ moegen-​24087290 Göken, Manuel, and Pia Lorenz. 2017. “Jura-​Professor wehrt sich gegen Abmahnung aus eigenen AfD-​Reihen,” Legal Tribune Online, April 24. Accessed June 14, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​2Ki0hhu. Hornuff, Daniel. 2019. “Kann dich lieben, will dich hassen,” DIE ZEIT, March 28. Accessed September 16, 2019. https://​ www.zeit.de/​kultur/​musik/​2019-​03/​rammstein-​video-​deutschland-​holocaust?print. Krause, Johannes and Thomas Trappe. 2019. Die Reise unserer Gene. Eine Geschichte über uns und unsere Vorfahren. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag. Küllenberg, Bastian. 2019. “Jan Böhmermann und »BE DEUTSCH«.” INTRO, April 1.  Accessed September 29, 2019. https://​www.intro.de/​kultur/​jan-​bohmermann-​und-​be-​deutsch-​wohlfuhlpatriotismus-​vs-​ironie.

15

 DEUTSCHLAND! – Echt  jetzt?   •   15 Merz, Friedrich. 2000. “Einwanderung und Identität.” Die Welt, October 25. Accessed June 24, 2019. https://​www.welt.de/​ print-​welt/​article540438/​Einwanderung-​und-​Identitaet.html. Pergande, Frank. 2017. “AfD mahnt Abgeordneten ab,” FAZ, April 27. Accessed June 14, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​2XKD1M1. Petrusich, Amanda. 2019. “Rammstein’s Heavy and Cathartic Camp.” The New Yorker, May 20. Accessed June 3, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​2WFoP9U. Poensgen, Johannes K. 2019. “Rammstein: Deutschland über allen,” Blaue Narzisse, April 2. Accessed October 10, 2019. https://​www.blauenarzisse.de/​rammstein-​deutschland-​ueber-​allen/​. Rafael, Simone. 2019. “Warum finden Nazis Rammstein gut? –​Update ‘Deutschland‘,” Belltower.News, April 3. Accessed September 26, 2019. https://​www.belltower.news/​analyse-​warum-​finden-​nazis-​rammstein-​gut-​update-​ deutschland-​83233/​. Sezgin, Hilal. 2016. “Das Privileg der Etikettenlosen,” Die Tageszeitung, March 12. Accessed June 14, 2019. www.taz.de/​ Debatte-​Biodeutsche/​!5281243/​. Staas, Christian. 2010. “Einheit durch Reinheit,” ZEIT Geschichte Nr. 3, August 24. Accessed October 9, 2019. https://​ www.zeit.de/​zeit-​geschichte/​2010/​03/​Nationalismus-​Deutschland-​Arndt/​. Staas, Christian. 2015. “Kommen die Bayern aus dem Orient?.” DIE ZEIT, October 29. Accessed October 10, 2019. https://​ www.zeit.de/​2015/​44/​deutsche-​abstammung-​migration-​geschichte-​mittelalter-​johannes-​fried/​. Ströbele, Carolin. 2016. “Die guten Deutschen,” DIE ZEIT, March 31. Accessed September 29, 2019. http://​blog.zeit.de/​ teilchen/​2016/​03/​31/​jan-​boehmermann-​be-​deutsch/​. Tibi, Bassam. 1998. Europa ohne Identität? Die Krise der multikulturellen Gesellschaft. München: Bertelsmann. Zekri, Sonja and Felix Stephan. 2019. “Alles nicht so gemeint,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 20. Accessed September 26, 2019. https://​www.sueddeutsche.de/​kultur/​rammstein-​video-​antisemitismus-​1.4386853.

Discography Kollegah and Farid Bang. Jung, brutal und gutaussehend 3 (Young, Violent, Good-​looking 3). Banger Music, BMG, 2017. Rammstein. Rammstein. Rammstein, Universal, 2019. Uhlmann, Thees. Junkies und Scientologen. Grand Hotel Van Cleef, Indigo, 2019.

16

Rocking the Academy? Two Cold-​War Careers and the Emergence of Popular Music Studies and Higher Popular Music Education in Germany

An Interview with Peter Wicke and Udo Dahmen David-​Emil Wickström

The following transcript is based on an interview with Peter Wicke (born 1951 in Zwickau) and Udo Dahmen (born 1951 in Aachen).1 Both Wicke and Dahmen have played a central role in the academic institutionalization of popular music (studies) in Germany. As the first professor for popular music theory and history (Theorie und Geschichte der populären Musik) at the Humboldt-​ Universität zu Berlin Wicke can be considered the founding father of German popular music studies. An important drummer (amongst others for Kraan, Charlie Mariano, Nervous Germans, and Rufus Zuphall) and producer of German popular music, Dahmen has also been a central figure within higher popular music education. He is also the founding director of the first state-​ funded German popular music conservatory, the Popakademie Baden-​Württemberg, where this interview was conducted on May 16, 2017. Wickström:  Good evening! I’m happy to see so many people here today. With us, we have Professor Dr.  Peter Wicke, who held a university chair [at the Humboldt-​Universität zu Berlin] until last year and now is an emeritus professor, and who was instrumental in developing research on popular music in Germany. On my other side, we have Professor Udo Dahmen, who is not only the CEO and artistic director of the Popakademie Baden Württemberg in Mannheim, but also the head of the drum department. In addition to his work as a lecturer, he has also played the drums in various bands and on numerous recordings throughout the 70s and 80s. In order to give us a better idea of where you both come from, (Prof. Wicke) could you tell us a bit about your musical background and how you were influenced by your hometown? Wicke:  My background is actually the opposite of what I did later. I was originally trained as a classical pianist, which had been my lifelong dream. In the GDR, there were certain paths that made it possible, so you could complete high school and then train at a conservatory at the same time. Despite my teachers’ best efforts to reason with me, I practiced to the point of 16

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 Interview with Peter Wicke and Udo Dahmen   •   17

injury just before my exams. With tendonitis, it was clear: I could no longer pursue my dream of being a pianist. The alternatives included becoming an accompanist at the theater or a piano teacher, but none of that even seemed like an option to me at the time. With great conviction, I decided on musicology, the theoretical examination of music, and went to Berlin to study. Coming from Dresden, a city filled with various theaters and cultural offerings, I was instilled with a strong sense of identity in relation to classical music (and still feel that way today). But then I encountered the GDR rock scene, which had already been established there in 1970, and that was that. I was so fascinated by it that I said: Well, this is how you can put up with musicology –​that is, by always doing the opposite of what is expected, but by doing it so well that you don’t get kicked out. And then I spent those early years as one of the first rock promoters in the East. I organized international rock concerts and more or less did my studies on the side. But, as it turns out, that’s where I ended up anyway. Wickström:  Udo, you come from the opposite end of the country  –​from Aachen in West Germany. What is your musical background and how did your city shape you? Dahmen:  No musical background! That’s the interesting thing. Essentially, music had no real place in my parents’ house, except for Schlager music on the radio.2 My father also had a guitar and played hiking songs [Wanderlieder]. Then it became my guitar and I played until I was around 13 or 14. Somehow, it didn’t really do much for me –​though I liked playing any song with three chords, in the end I was actually just playing the drums on the guitar. I’m a real late bloomer –​I started playing the drums when I was 15, exactly 50 years ago, and I joined my first band half a year later. From then on, I always played in bands. I did all of it myself, I had no lessons and I took it all from records. That’s how the first two years went. Interestingly enough, I graduated high school with a business diploma and that was actually my plan at the time: I’ll be a business student. I didn’t know any better. Then I started an insurance apprenticeship and, on the first day, the best musician in the city came to me and said: “you play the drums, you can join us.” That month, it was August, I played every night at the club and worked every day. The band was like an Amon Düül group3 –​we just improvised on stage and one song would last around 45 minutes or so. From then, things moved really fast. We had our first major deal a year later with the next band, which was a Krautrock group called Rufus Zuphall. For the most part, we played in Holland, in Belgium –​ the Benelux countries –​and toured in France. We only played in Germany occasionally. Then, during that internship, I took drum lessons and two years later started to study classical percussion: The music college had accepted me. Wickström:  What was it like to study then? Where did you study? Dahmen:  First in Aachen and then in Cologne. At the time, there was the Musikhochschule Rheinland (Rhineland music college) network. It included the institutes in Cologne, Dusseldorf, Wuppertal, and Aachen, and you could also switch between them. There was the Jazz Lab with Manfred Schoof from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays at the music college in Cologne. There, we were about six to eight drummers who all wanted to participate on the three or four tunes that were played over the course of the two-​hour session. It was a very exciting line up –​and not only the drummers. The trumpeters included Markus Stockhausen and Hugo Read, who is now a professor of saxophone. Various other people from the scene came, like my friend Michael Küttner and Mike Herting. Wickström:  Let’s stay on the topic of studying with you, too, Dr. Wicke. Musicology was very art-​music-​heavy in the beginning. Has that changed? Was there any popular music or jazz in the course of your studies?

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Wicke:  No, that was completely left out. It was 100  percent classically oriented. The GDR was such a strange entity. It seemed very monolithic and solid and controlled by the party, so there were hardly any alternatives. But that was only one side of it. On the other, there was a lot of chaos and a lot of openness that you wouldn’t expect. And, as I mentioned, that openness included simply organizing [popular music] concerts without asking. You just did it. Everyone looked the other way, so that they wouldn’t be connected to anything that might lead to trouble. And that was also the case at the university, which is to say, none of it [popular music] officially took place; instead, they saw in the music played on the radio a symbol of musical decline. Of course, the radio played the same stuff as everywhere else, not entirely music from the West, but even that was a relatively high percentage. There was a statutory rule that 40 percent could be from the West and 60 percent had to be from the GDR or socialist countries. Incidentally, the radio never actually stuck to it. We studied it ourselves at the Forschungszentrum populäre Musik (Research Center for Popular Music) at Humboldt University –​in the end (1988), 85 percent of youth radio in the GDR was from the West and 15 percent was from the East. And that 15 percent was underground. As I said, it was all possible. And it was also possible that, on the one hand, music was officially happening, but on the other, there was, well… You can’t really call it an underground scene, since it was not exactly underground if they just turned a blind eye and tolerated it. That isn’t the same thing. It wasn’t encouraged, but there has been a rock scene –​just like in the West –​since 1964.4 The Puhdys, the representative GDR band, were founded in 1964 and they still exist today. Well, until last year –​now they’ve stopped playing. At the same time, the official verdict on this music –​and the eastern offshoot of it –​on the radio and at the universities and conservatories was absolute condemnation. To be fair, however, there was jazz, which developed differently. In Dresden, Günter Hörig was at the music college. He was a very poised bandleader in the GDR, very distinguished. From 1971, he managed to establish what was called a dance music class, but it was actually jazz. The whole thing was always called dance music, even though it was rock later. So, many of the distinguished GDR musicians came from the conservatory and went through training as dance and pop musicians there, which is a bit absurd. Of course, that’s not actually what they did, but that’s just what it was called. Wickström:  And if musicology studies only included art music, did you organize other things at the university as a rock promoter? Wicke:  It started with a concert series that played a very significant role in the development of GDR music. It was called “Beat im Audimax” and started in 1971, shortly after I began my studies. It was very important in that it was held at a university in the capital. The youth radio was not allowed to broadcast music like that at the time and the fact that it was suddenly happening in the auditorium at Humboldt University served as proof for the radio people: “It must be authorized, otherwise it wouldn’t be happening at the university right in the capital.” So, they came with their broadcast vehicles and broadcasted the event live. That went on until there was trouble –​at least three years without any problems. That was one thing. I have to confess that everything really annoyed me during my studies, and this job as a rock promoter also had a very attractive financial side. You got to meet interesting and exciting people, and that was also a bit different than school, of course. I saved myself during

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 Interview with Peter Wicke and Udo Dahmen   •   19

my studies by approaching all of the assignments –​such as analyzing a piece and demonstrating a particular method of analysis –​in a particular way… I would always select a piece from the Beatles or something similar and then put all of my effort towards it. If they were going to forbid it, then it would be for political reasons, not because it was too bad. So, a bad grade, sure, but they would have to actually take a political stance to stop me. Of course, they never did it. They were always worried that they would be held accountable if something like that appeared within their sphere of responsibility. It would lead to questions about what kind of political work they were doing to make the students stray like that. That was already very exciting during my studies. And then the official relationship to music changed at the time and, although there wasn’t a trace of that change in musicology, I did ultimately owe my university career to it. As of 1972, the relationship had changed to the extent that it was no longer possible to ignore the music scene. At the time, in 1973, the “Weltfestspiele der Jugend und Studenten” (World Festival of Youth and Students) took place in Berlin. It was a big, cosmopolitan event that was used as a backdoor means of gaining recognition for the GDR, which worked out to some extent. Of course, it was impossible to suggest that an important youth culture scene did not officially exist. That couldn’t work, since all of the visitors would have noticed it immediately –​especially in Berlin. So, they tried to integrate it along with the parallel world that had emerged: GDR rock music was now officially integrated in the media and promoted through the socialist youth party (FDJ). At that time, demand also started to rise in universities: if that’s what we have now, then it has to be included as part of musicology and musical education in particular, and the music educators that we had at the institute also had to be trained in it. Then they came up with a very brilliant idea that essentially made my entire trajectory possible. They thought my political profile was linked to my connection to rock music –​ including international music that came from the West and not the East  –​so there was nothing to do in relation to the party. That meant a stunted career from the start. So, they thought:  musicology is harmless, because his career is so impaired and, at most, he will do what he is told and nothing else. And that’s how it was. Then I had a very long, 20-​year period with the very privileged status of being employed at the university and teaching two hours a week, but only every other year. During the off years, I was paid to keep my mouth shut and not show my face if possible. That left me with so much freedom that I could pursue my other interests and then still had enough time to found a research center for popular music with a number of students who also thought something had to be done about musicology. No one said anything and I didn’t ask anyone because I knew how the system worked. That is, don’t ask –​wait until it’s banned. But it was never banned. It was almost a death sentence during the reunification. It was never banned, but it was also never officially integrated into the existing structures. After 1989, they looked into what structures actually existed at the East German universities and, of course, we didn’t come up, since we didn’t officially exist. Well, we still exist now, so the whole thing did actually come to a positive end. Wickström:  How was it for you, Udo? You finished your studies and then? Dahmen:  No, no degree. My head was always full of pop and rock music, though I actually did play in the orchestra for four seasons during that time. But that was not really my lifeblood. I was just there, I did it, but I played in my bands at the same time and concentrated on jazz quite a bit.

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At the same time, I studied with Dante Agostini in Paris for another year. I could do it from Aachen, no problem. I drove to Paris once a month, stayed there for two days, and had two days of lessons with him: first I did my lessons, then I stayed and watched all the others. I thought it was awesome. At the time, he was the only drummer in Europe [teaching popular music and jazz] –​at least for us in the West, in the East they had the dance music department. It was the only school in Europe where you could learn drums, real jazz and pop drumming, and Dante was my teacher. Dante played in the Moulin Rouge and in other orchestras all over the world, but he had also written 25 drum method books. He ran this private percussion school with Kenny Clarke, who lived in Paris at the time, and we were three drummers from Aachen who always drove there. We went once a month and then I was given enough to practice for a whole month. Then I would go back. That went on for a year. I learned a crazy amount in that time and was able to quickly improve and progress. Then I  played in bands and we formed our own band in ’74. It was called OUT and included Hendrik Schaper  –​the keyboarder from Udo Lindenberg’s band. The bassist’s name was Micki Meuser. Some of you may have already heard of him, he later became the producer for Ideal and Ina Deter and so on. These days he’s mainly a film music composer, but that’s another story. Wickström:  Let’s come back to you [Dr. Wicke]. So, you graduated in ’74 and then also got hired as a lecturer at Humboldt University. Wicke:  Yes, I studied from ’70 to ’74 and then was hired in 1974 with the mentioned stipulation; that stayed like that until 1989. I used the time until 1981 to do my PhD and my habilitation. Not with the musicologists –​I did my PhD with a cultural scientist, and my post-​doctoral qualification with a media scientist. That’s what worked in the GDR, since the party apparatus looked over everything. In 1991, the situation had developed so much that it was known that there is someone at Humboldt University, who conducts research in this field and publishes in this field. I was also never stopped from publishing outside of the country. So, of course, there was a lot of attention in the beginning. I was also fortunate enough that a West Berlin radio journalist had noticed my existence and followed me over the years. I first met him personally in 1986, but he actually played a very important role in my career –​whether he really knows that, he never told me. That was Olaf Leitner, who later wrote a book about the GDR-​rock scene. By ’81, the number of students had grown immensely. The internal pressure was so high that I thought I couldn’t manage it alone anymore, even though I had a lot of time. There were already the first doctoral students. Now, I had no status at all, I was an assistant and stayed as such until 1989, so I essentially had no academic power. Since it was already impossible to stop it, the professors had to accept dissertations in this field, too. It essentially looked like this: I supervised them, I wrote the evaluations, and they put their John Hancock underneath. […] And with that, some semblance of normalcy was recovered –​at least when you consider the particular conditions at Humboldt University in the GDR –​it just involved being very cautious. That is, to avoid committing any political blunders. On the other hand, it was relatively easy for me, since hardly anyone else spoke English well, especially not the inspectors. So, I focused on my international contacts in the English-​speaking countries instead of the GDR. That went rather smoothly, there were never any problems.

21

 Interview with Peter Wicke and Udo Dahmen   •   21

Wickström:  And when were you abroad for the first time? Wicke:  That was in 1982. It was the 75th invitation, I remember it well. I don’t know why the first 74 had been rejected. I also don’t know why the 75th was approved. It was just such a gamble. In the late seventies, policy towards private travel –​not business travel –​ was noticeably relaxed to make up for the lack of foreign exchange. That meant that more and more trips were approved in the hope of an increase in non-​material imports. That is, they were hoping to import knowhow. Of course, that could only happen if contacts were allowed and networks were possible. It didn’t necessarily play a central role for pop music; it was more of a side note. I think financial gain was the deciding factor but, for example, in the natural sciences it played a very important role –​up to the point of proven cases of industrial espionage. Naturally, everything was very well organized, but it required them to relax it. But I still don’t know exactly why it was specifically this one, which was a trip to Italy with a colleague named Franco Fabbri, who you [David-​Emil Wickström] are still in touch with today. He issued the invitation. So, it was his invitation that led to that first trip to the West. And from then on, when I came back… Of course, it was clear that you had to meet certain conditions, especially if you were not in the party. You needed to at least have a child and a wife as a sort of collateral, or you wouldn’t be let out. That was enough motivation to come back, so no one ever actually asked again from then on. Wickström:  And how was it for you, Udo, when was your first time in East Germany? Dahmen:  Oh, it was much later. I had actually been in East Berlin already –​you could drive over for a day or so –​but the first time I went for musical reasons was in 1987. In the meantime, I had started doing much more in terms of pedagogy. In ’74, I went to Hamburg. In that time, I played with Kraan, one of the legendary Krautrock bands. I played with them until ’85, but I also played a lot in Hamburg with very different groups that time. Among them was also a band called Lake, which was very successful in the 70s and 80s. And then in ’87, two years before the reunification, we played a tour. It actually began with three concerts in the Werner-​Seelenbinder-​Halle, the largest hall in East Berlin –​we actually saw each other there… Wicke:  …We saw each other without knowing each other. Dahmen:  It was a festival and we were the headliners. But Pankow, City, and two or three other bands were also there. We played three days in a row and it was hugely successful. Of course, there were a lot of “blue shirts” (FDJ)5 there. They were everywhere and very well organized. That meant that we were already playing large-​scale concerts when we went on a full-​length tour later that year and had some of our shows in halls and stadiums. For example, we played at the soccer stadium in Weimar. The tour was actually organized back in the GDR by the office of culture and we always had a sort of chaperone. Whenever we arrived at a city, everything had already been arranged and regulated. We would say: “Sure, come, you’re from the Stasi.” We were relatively casual about it. But his actual role was always unclear. He came from the official apparatus, but he drove a new Lada with Rally stripes. You couldn’t have that kind of thing if you simply had nothing to do with the system, we knew that much. Then he invited us to his home at the end of the tour. It immediately became clear that he had also been trading in antique furniture at the time, which he collected from Czechoslovakia and Poland and everywhere else. Although it was quite inconspicuous from the outside, his house had rooms full of

22

22   •   David-Emil Wickström

stylish Empire furniture and this and that. He even had the newest computer that you could get then at the end of the eighties. It became relatively clear what had happened from the official side. Wickström:  You also mentioned that you started with music pedagogy. When did that start and how did it go? Dahmen:  At the time, my old friend Uli “Dionys” Kube and I  both went to Hamburg and founded a private drum school in 1980. It was the first one in West Germany. At the time, I played a lot of live shows and did a lot of studio work, so the idea was to create something to fall back on and to share knowledge. I only taught one day a week. When I was on tour, I always had a sub. But then we quickly grew to roughly 80 or 90 students. That was within a year. We couldn’t believe how well it went –​it shows that there was really no option to learn that sort of music at the music schools or conservatories. There was such high demand, that we taught everyone from amateurs and six or seven-​year olds to future professionals in that time. We then passed the drum school on to former students, but it also led to considerations about the possibility of creating a degree program at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (the College of Music and Theater in Hamburg). That is, couldn’t Hermann Rauhe, who had been president of the college at the time, create a similar program. It had a sort of predecessor: It was a one-​week course for pop musicians called Spielraum in Hamburg. I was a teacher there for two years in a row –​in ’80 and ’81. So, that happened almost in parallel with the founding of the school. And then, in ’82/​’83, the Modellversuch Popularmusik [Pilot Course in Popular Music] was founded. This new creation of [the term] Popularmusik (popular music) gave the whole thing an academic element  –​it was actually always just called pop music before. With this new popular music element, I was asked to teach there, starting in ’83 as a drum teacher. With academic support and similar resources, we were guiding the pilot course towards a specific outcome –​making it permanent. From there, the Kontaktstudiengang Popularmusik [Contact Degree Course in Popular Music] was created and still exists today as the Popkurs. I was a lecturer and part of the team for the first ten years. In the next ten years, before coming here, I acted as a spokesperson for the department (at the music college) and as a concept creator, etc. with the people there. Wickström:  How was it for you after the fall of the wall? Wicke:  After the reunification, there were fewer problems because the structure remained in place and it was basically treated like everything else. So, professors had the same status regardless of what field they represented. Because of that, I can’t say that it necessarily would have been a disadvantage or led to similar issues. One thing that was different was the professional organization –​the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung (German Musicological Society). I joined in 1991 and then left again in 1993 because I felt like I was being used as little more than a fig leaf. I was hired [at the Humboldt University] in 1993 and remained hopelessly buried in the student masses until my official retirement last year. There were always too many, that was the problem, not so much the status –​that sorted itself out. It also sorted itself out in society. In the seventies and eighties, there was still the social consensus that “pop music must somehow exist, but it’s worthless.” That has since changed a lot. Wickström:  You unknowingly saw each other at the festival in Berlin. When did you first knowingly see each other?

23

 Interview with Peter Wicke and Udo Dahmen   •   23

Wicke:  It had to do with the birth of this institution [Popakademie]. Out of the blue, I got a letter from a man whose name I had never heard, even though I had seen him on stage without realizing it. He asked if he could visit me. He wanted to discuss experiences in the field of dance and pop music and pop music education in the GDR. It was Udo Dahmen. He came to my office in Berlin and presented his plans here. That is, the idea to open such an institution. Of course, the experience in the GDR was somewhat negative. The decisive element that made the experience so negative actually had to do with the institutionalization of teachers in the field. The problem is that pop music is a very fast-​paced field. When you first hire teachers, you are hiring people who are at the height of their abilities. At the time that teachers are hired, everything is great in terms of (contemporary) music history and music trends and so on. Five years later, the music world looks completely different. But now there are people holding on to positions for a lifetime, despite the fact that their musical ideals are actually increasingly opposed to the zeitgeist. It’s death for this type of education. And that’s how it was in the GDR: some of the teachers were good musicians when they were hired… and then ideas started to clash with the rise of punk music in the GDR. They had these art rock stories in their heads, so that’s what they thought belonged in an educational program. Then there was the evolution of new wave, punk, and then electronic dance music  –​of course, in their minds, that was all unacceptable. I had the impression that it was a fundamental problem. It never really occurred to me that it could be solved in the way that the Popakademie handles it. It didn’t occur to me that you could just not hire people for life and instead only keep them employed for as long as they are doing something good for the music. Questions from the audience Audience:  Mr. Wicke, did you request your Stasi file? Wicke:  No, but I have had assistants evaluate it and it has also been officially evaluated. So, I know what’s in it, but I haven’t had the time to look into it yet. It’s very extensive. Audience:  I would think so. Do you suspect that there is anything in there that could completely surprise you? Wicke:  Well, I actually had one surprise already. I have to go back a bit: It was just before the end of the GDR and it annoyed me a lot because it shouldn’t have happened to me. In the mid-​eighties, I got a call from the Ministerium für Hoch-​und Fachschulwesen (the Ministry of Higher Education) in the GDR, which suddenly… As I mentioned, the research center that was founded in ’81 had never interested anyone, no one asked about it, and I liked that I could just do whatever I wanted. Suddenly, I got this call and it was very positive. They had heard about it and would love for me to come in. I thought, well, why not. One is also a little vain, so I was also pleased that they had noticed that something was going on. I went in and actually should have already noticed on that first visit. Usually, if you were summoned into administrative offices like that, an individual’s power was demonstrated in relation to the size of his desk and the distance between you and him. It was a requisite –​it always went that way. In this case, a young man had suddenly come up to me, but led me into a normal meeting room instead of his office. As I said, that was very unusual, but I didn’t really register it at the time.

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24   •   David-Emil Wickström

It was all very positive. It developed in a positive way without anything concrete happening until one day he came to me and said: “You know what? I think this whole ministry is so terrible, so bureaucratic, can’t I just do something with you?” He had actually been an art historian and just landed in this ministerial bureaucracy. It was around the time that things had gotten started with music videos and I thought, yes, I could actually use art historians. In addition, there are also record covers, that is also an art historical task, but I have no jobs. Then he said, oh, well that’s no problem, I’ll bring my position with me. That is the second thing that really should have made me aware that something was going wrong. Then he was working for me and the third thing happened and I was completely blind to that, too. He didn’t do what he was supposed to, but instead started looking into the underground instead of his art historical research. Of course, we had very good connections to the underground. Then, because he had totally changed his outfit and assimilated –​at over 30 years old, he was running around like a 17-​year-​old punk –​I thought: well, maybe he’s making up for his youth or something. Then people from the scene contacted me to ask: is one of your people running around here and asking all sorts of questions? Who is he and what is he doing here? It wasn’t until then that I realized what was happening. There were also tips from other corners and then I told him: “You know what, I think I figured out what’s going on here. One of us has to go, either you or me. If it’s your assignment, then you go. Otherwise, I’ll go.” Then he disappeared and I never saw him again. After that, we did a research project on pop music and the Stasi. It was a big project. Within that context, one of my assistants saw the files and then told me that there was even mention of an officer who had been sent on special assignment. It wasn’t directed at me, but the scene. If you had an institution that was highly trusted, something like that was deadly because we operated outside of the political apparatus, had many international contacts, and many international guests that were also interesting for the scene… I suppose this should also be mentioned –​in 1989, I had my final experience with the GDR, in a manner of speaking. I came up with an idea: There were people in the East who weren’t permitted to go to the West, especially all the grassroots labels that existed in the East then, the organizers. I thought, well maybe someone should use Tony Hollywood to bring the West to the East. As the organizer of Live Aid, he was politically unobjectionable. You could sell that to the authorities there –​that you were having a big conference with a man like that. So that was the idea: we would hold a conference called “Looking East” and invite all of the businesses from the West. Everybody. All of the media, all of the labels from all over the world that were relevant to the pop industry. It worked. It was a large conference with almost 3,000 participants  –​all of the major media and labels from the USA and Western Europe. They were all there. The tragedy was that the conference took place on November 6–​9, 1989. I was actually not at all aware of it when the wall fell because we were sitting in this hotel, shielded from the rest of the world, and only interacting with each other. The news certainly made its way through, but it was impossible to fully grasp its relevance. What Schabowski said at the press conference had reached us, of course, but I was so tired when I drove home at 4 a.m. after the closing reception. I was just surprised to see Schönhauser Allee in the East with all the cars and everything. I thought that the proletariat was really getting to work early. 4 a.m. was not a typical time for me to be out on the street. In the end, of course, it was clear that the conference

25

 Interview with Peter Wicke and Udo Dahmen   •   25

actually hadn’t been necessary. It was quite amusing; you met a lot of people and they also found it humorous. More than anything, I still get emails telling me how memorable the conference was. From the viewpoint of an American, being in Berlin on the day the GDR government resigned (Monday, November 6), that is, being in Berlin on the day the wall fell, is a once in a lifetime experience. Wickström:  Professor Wicke, Udo, thank you very much for this interesting interview. Notes 1 This interview was conducted in German and has been shortened and edited for clarity. The English translation was made by Sharmila Cohen. 2 See Mendívil’s chapter for a discussion of Schlager. 3 See Adelt’s chapter for a discussion of Krautrock. 4 See Rauhut’s chapter for a discussion on popular music in the GDR. 5 Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) –​the GDR youth organization

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27

I

Part 

Historical Spotlights

Just as Rammstein’s video “Deutschland” shows different episodes from Germany’s history, the first part of this volume gathers four perspectives on German popular music history: chronologically ordered, the chapters deal with different aspects of German popular music. As the reader progresses through this section, it becomes evident not only that the notion of Germanness has its complexities, but that the German history spotlighted through these four chapters is also a history of different German nation-​states. Starting in the aftermath of World War I Carolin Stahrenberg’s chapter centers around one of the most influential German popular music groups during the time of the Weimar Republic: The Comedian Harmonists. Stahrenberg traces the transnational trajectories of the Harmonists while situating them in the context of Berlin of the 1920s that she portrays as a cosmopolitan city. This paves the way for a German popular culture that from its very beginning was a product of transnational networks and transcultural processes of migration, mediation and exchange. Jumping forward to 1933, when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party NSDAP came to power, Jens Gerrit Papenburg’s chapter explores sound technologies and the use of public address systems in Nazi Germany. Especially the sound of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin provides an entry point for Papenburg’s analysis of the entangled co-​development of ever more powerful sound technologies and the culture of masses cultivated by the Nazi regime. Papenburg’s chapter uncovers the counter-​intuitive dominance of soft and quiet sounds during the Nazi period. He consequently shows how these soft sounds amplified through new sound technologies were employed to produce a sense of normality in Nazi Germany. Michael Rauhut gives an overview of the emergence of rock and blues in the GDR. Following the Russian occupation and the subsequent installation of a one-​party socialist system, he discusses an America-​derived cultural expression in a nation from the opposite block of the cold war. Along the way, Rauhut’s detailed historical narrative offers insights into the inner workings of the GDR’s cultural policies and its regulatory machinery that not only impacted on rock and blues musicians but on all aspects of musical production. Finally, Susanne Binas-​Preisendörfer offers a personal and first-​hand account of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent German reunification. Her chapter explores what was probably the most significant moment in recent German history and how it impacted on music and musicians in this revolutionary time. Focusing on her own experiences as a musician, her account adds a personal dimension to the history of popular musical in the GDR. Together, the chapters cover over 70 years of German history, spotlighting popular music from the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, Post-​War East Germany and Reunified Germany. 27

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1

Transnational Networks and Intermedial Interfaces in German Popular Music, 1900–​1939 Carolin Stahrenberg

As early as 1900, popular music in Germany was tightly interwoven with transnational networks, linking European capital cities like Paris, Vienna and London. It even crossed the ocean to New York or Buenos Aires. The rapid growth of industrial production and music distribution meant that the latest sounds from abroad crossed the borders of the national state and were translated for a German speaking public, and popular German tunes were transferred to other countries and reached an international audience (see Lange 2014, Frey 2014, Scott 2014, Becker 2013, Clarke 2004 and Lotz 2007). Songs were popularized via different media channels, first mainly through sheet music, military and dance band performances and popular musical theatre. Later gramophone records captured the market. In the late 1920s, an elaborated intermedial network had been established, synthesizing marketing strategies, performance cultures, record production and public perception (Stahrenberg and Grosch 2014). Not only western models were important for German popular culture in the 1920s. Besides the cross-​cultural network of entertainment capitals, people from eastern Europe had an enormous influence on early German popular music production: In great numbers talented and proficient musicians emigrated from Russia, Poland and other East European states, rapidly adopting the latest musical styles and  –​many of them being conservatory trained  –​, merging it with their musical background. Dance band leaders like Dajos Béla,1 Edith Lorand, Paul Godwin2 and many more, all proficient violin virtuosos, made names for themselves during the Weimar republic and forged the sound of popular Schlager music. Schlager was rediscovered in the 1990s, notably by singer Max Raabe and his Palastorchester, and was marketed as a typical “German” music phenomenon, for example by the Goethe Institut in its series “Deutsche handverlesen” (Hand-​picked Germans) (Goethe-​Institut e.V. 2009). “The Germans love it. Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester are a German pop-​phenomenon –​but, different from Kraftwerk or Rammstein, looking back into history.” (Ibid.) But how “German” has this “German pop-​phenomenon” (ibid.) of the Weimar republic really been? Through focusing on transnational connections, I  will show German (and especially Berlin) culture of the Weimar period (and forerunners from 1900) as a transcultural phenomenon, presenting the beginning of a German popular music framework beyond national

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30   •   Carolin Stahrenberg

ideologies. First, I will concentrate on the beginning of the twentieth century and trace the way of one popular song, Victor Hollaenders “Schaukellied” (Swing song), from a Berlin revue through different places to the Ziegfeld follies in New  York. The term Schlager will also be discussed. Then, I will depict the Prussian capital in the 1920s as a place of international cultural exchange and a melting pot. Finally, I will take a closer look at transnational and intermedial aspects of the popular music group Comedian Harmonists, reaching out to the 1930s and the end of the Weimar period. Swinging Round the World in 1905 –​Victor Hollaender’s “Schaukellied” in an International Perspective In 1905 a Jahresrevue (annual revue) with the title Auf ins Metropol (Let’s go to the Metropol) was staged at the Berlin Metropoltheater. The genre of the revue de fin d’année (year-​end revue), linking songs, dance numbers, comic scenes, and tableaux vivantes (living pictures), which addressed events from the year before, derived from Paris, where it had been produced since the second half of the nineteenth century (see Völmecke 1997). Like many French concepts, it came to Berlin after it had been successfully established in Parisian cultural life. In Berlin, this genre started in the 1890s, with revues, extravaganzas, and local operettas by composers like Paul Lincke (who had performed at the Parisian Folies Bergère before staging operettas at the Berlin Apollotheater), Walter Kollo, and Victor Hollaender. The latter was the main composer of the Metropoltheater and, with lyricist Julius Freund, he authored the year-​end revues at this theatre. He also scored some hit songs (Schlager) out of its musical material. The German term Schlager has different meanings relating to the historical context of its use. Often it is attributed only to popular songs after 1950, but the word was used long before then: thought to have originated in Austria in the nineteenth century, it was said to have been named for a well-​selling product and was transferred to a musical sphere to indicate popular tunes, such as those of the Viennese Strauß family, as early as 1867 (see Linke 1987, 204). But already before, in 1845, it was labeled as a term from theater jargon, from the “Coulissen-​und Statistensprache” (Schindler 1845, 2), as a reviewer noted in the review of a play. The first reference of the term Schlager in a musical context that I have been able to trace can be found in a review of a performance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in Vienna, 1843, when the unnamed reviewer complained about the loss of Schlager-​effects in the performance, because of the translation from Italian to German (Sfd. 1843, 3).3 Since 1860, then, the term was used more broadly to name a popular song or Couplet (Anonymous 1860, 1).4 But only in the 1890s had Schlager finally been established as a generic term and found its way into the (sub)title of compositions (Hofmeister 1894, 59).5 Thus, at the turn of the century, Schlager meant a hit song, well-​known and fast-​selling, and the dramaturgy of popular musical theater was attuned accordingly to place those hit numbers (Grosch 2009). It became the main goal of theater composers and authors to score a hit song, which would sell beyond the limits of the theater performance. In 1905, Hollaender and Freund had been lucky to score such a Schlager with a slow waltz named “Schaukellied,” which had been part of the Revue Auf ins Metropol. Within the revue, it underscored a number in which ballet girls sat on oversized swings and flew towards the audience during the performance. Friedrich Hollaender, Victor’s son and a composer and lyricist himself, described in his memoirs the erotic consequence of this staging idea: “One sees under the swinging skirts of the ballet girls.” (Hollaender 2001, 66). Julius Freund’s lyrics played with this

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 German Popular Music, 1900–1939   •   31

stage idea, mentioning the pink-​colored garters of the girls revealed by the swing –​also a popular icon of erotic postcards at the turn of the century (see Becker 2013, 18). The song was published in sheet music form the same year (Hollaender 1905a; Hofmeister 1905, 647, 650, 651), and other recordings were also made. Singer Max Steidl recorded the song in 1905 with composer Victor Hollaender himself conducting the orchestra of the Metropoltheater (Hollaender 1905c). Tenor Oscar Braun recorded it for Odeon (Braun 1905),6 and a military band conducted by Anton Kutschera recorded the song in Vienna in 1906 (K.u.k. Infanterie-​ Regiment 51 1906)7 –​just after the former Berlin revue was transferred to the Austrian capital, where it was staged with a “localized” (Anonymous 1905a, 3) libretto in Danzer’s Orpheum, a well-​known entertainment venue in Vienna. Of course, the show had a new title here, in keeping with the changed situation: Auf ins Orpheum! (Anonymous 1905a, 7).8 Even the then famous art whistler Guido Gialdini,9 who performed in variety shows, recorded the song in 1905, indicating the transfer from the revue format to other theatrical productions (Gialdini (1905)). This fact is further supported by sources locating the song as an entr’acte in other revues, operettas or farces (Anonymous 1906, 10; Anonymous 1907a, 4)  or as one number in anniversary performances (Anonymous 1907b, 6). The “Schaukellied” was not only transferred to Vienna, it was quite popular in Britain, too: Chappell London published it as sheet music in the same year, 1905, under the title “Swing song” (Hollaender 1905b). It also was adopted in the USA by Florenz Ziegfeld in his Follies 1910. According to a sheet music cover (Hollaender and Macdonald 1905) and a review in The New York Times, the stage design was similar to the Berlin production: “The swings with their human freight flew to and fro over the auditorium and the heads of star-​gazers, while the girls by a series of cords manipulated a chime of melodious silver bells.” (New York Times, 21 June 1910, cit. Ommen van der Merwe 2009, 45). Not only the song, but the whole revue staging was acquired by the theater managers and transferred to the US market. Thus, an international dimension of popular music enterprise had already unfolded before the Great War, comprising sheet music, artists, and complete theater numbers. Popular music in Germany was adapting, influencing, and competing with international forms of popular song on an aesthetic level, and was part of an international management system. As tunes that first appeared in Germany were transferred to international markets, songs from abroad were sung, translated, arranged, and adapted in Germany –​it was a truly transnational phenomenon from the beginning. Meeting Place or Melting Pot? Berlin as a Center and Crossing “Live in Berlin. People from all over the world meet here” (Anonymous 2010) –​that’s how the German capital characterized itself on its official homepage in the year 2010. Indeed, even before the rapid growth of the city in the nineteenth and twentieth century, Berlin had been a magnet for foreigners. The immigration of Lutherans and Calvinists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was followed by the admission of the French-​speaking Huguenots who had a significant influence on Berlin’s cultural life. Their acculturation-​process changed the everyday life of the Prussian capital already during the eighteenth century: The first public garden bars were opened by Réfugiés around 1750 close to the Brandenburg Gate, leading to Café concert-​like entertainment venues, the Sommergärten (summer gardens). French crafts such as the silk industry, goldsmithing, and watchmaking moved into the city, and the inhabitants of Berlin learned to

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32   •   Carolin Stahrenberg

appreciate French food and culture (Escher 1987). In the twentieth century Berlin still was, at least in the elitist Berlin West, considered to be Francophile, and the cultural life found itself in a contradictory relationship of exchange and demarcation to the competing metropolis of Paris (Metken 1979). Kurt Tucholsky reported news from the French capital in Berlin newspapers, and magazines observed the developments in Paris fashion. The French chanteuse and revue star Mistinguett toured Berlin (Bertaux 1987). But it was not only the theatrical revue that formed popular culture in the first half of the twentieth century; the novel French art form of cabaret had already reached Berlin at the turn of the century, and still after the Great War cabaret was based on the tradition of Montmartre. A  lot of popular songs were created on the theatrical stage, some after French models, either in operetta, revue, varieté, or cabaret performances (see Stahrenberg 2012). German singers like Trude Hesterberg or Rosa Valetti had studied in Paris with French chanteuses before starting their own cabaret performance venues after the Great War (see Budzinski 1985, 259). The Revue Nègre with Josephine Baker came from Paris to Berlin in 1925/​26 and gave celebrated guest performances. “La Baker” premiered in a show at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm where she performed in her famous banana costume –​matching German colonial phantasies and staging the exotic female “other.” Her reception was quite ambivalent: On the one hand, as a black woman, she became the embodiment of “primitive culture” and was thus seen as a counterpart to modernity –​but as an American woman, on the other hand, she symbolized the very latest craze. As Nancy Nenno concluded, in her performance “she succeeded […] to embody all the contradictions of the ‘Berlinische Moderne’ ” (Nenno 1999, 137). In the 1920s and 1930s, a fierce Americanism debate fanned fears of the potentially threatening other, and at the same time aroused subliminal fascination (see Lüdtke, Marßolek, and von Saldern 1996). In the 1920s, America was at the core of German dreams. Intellectuals saw the future in the democratic system of the USA, and the embodiment of the technical age in the American way of life. America became a projection screen for dreams, a utopia of the German modern age: “For every age and part of the world, there is a place about which fantasies are written. In Mozart’s time, it was Turkey. For Shakespeare, it was Italy. For us in Germany, it was always America” (Anonymous and Weill 1944, 16–​17), said Kurt Weill, at the same time confessing that the Germans knew little about the country of their dreams yet. The American influences on culture and music were varied. Theater director Erik Charell adapted elements of Broadway shows for his revues at the Großes Schauspielhaus (see Jansen 1987, 128–​170).10 Thirty-​five percent of all Schlager titles the entertainment industry had sold in 1929 came from the USA (Schär 1991, 67), and the importing of dance forms from overseas, which had already begun around 1900 with the Cakewalk, experienced a considerable growth in the 1920s with the Foxtrot, Shimmy, Charleston, and Black Bottom (ibid. 77–​97, see also Pollak 1922). US-​American culture and German dreams of America merged with the cultural influences that a large number of immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia, fleeing the war and the Russian Revolution, brought to Berlin.11 In the 1920s, the capital was known as the “Ostbahnhof Europas,” a gateway to the East: “All German routes to Russia in this century led over Berlin, and all Russian routes to Europe went via Berlin. Berlin was the scene of German-​Russian activity and a turning point for the fate of countless Germans and Russians” (Schlögel 1998, 8), as historian Karl Schlögel described the scene. Approximately 400,000 Russians lived in Berlin in the early 1920s. The city was frequently mentioned to be only a stopover or a short-​term stay before returning home –​but many stayed, whether voluntarily or by the force of circumstances. Thus,

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 German Popular Music, 1900–1939   •   33

in the interwar period, especially at the height of immigration from 1921 to 1923, a flourishing Russian cultural life unfolded in the capital: Russian publishing was unique in Berlin, Russian theaters were established and –​like guest performances –​reached a transnational audience of Russian immigrants and Germans. Furthermore, immigrants created a vivid musical life, not only in the Cabaret Blauer Vogel and the popular music scene, but also in Western art music (see Weiss forthcoming). After the Great War, popular music was even more strongly influenced by transnational networks than it had been before the war (see Stahrenberg and Grosch 2014, 187–​200). During the 1920s, the biographies of many musicians in popular music were shaped by a wide variety of cross-​cultural influences –​Russian, Polish, American, German, French, Austrian, British, and many others. Particularly dance band leaders and musicians were an international group whose mobility gained them experiences in multilayered genres. Alex Hyde, who played and recorded with his New  Yorker Original Jazz Orchestra (which consisted of German and American musicians) in Germany in 1924/​25, was born in Hamburg and raised in the USA (see Bergmeier and Lotz 1985). Bandleader Paul Godwin was born in Poland, raised in Vienna, and studied in Budapest and Berlin. His recordings of polkas, waltzes, foxtrots, and tangos, mostly made with Berliner Grammophon, were enormously popular in the 1920s and 1930s. So was Edith Lorand, a female band leader of Hungarian origin, who had studied with classical violinist Jenö Hubay in Budapest and became a bandleader and recording artist for Lindström in Berlin in 1923 (see Stahrenberg 2011). Julian Fuhs, born in Berlin, went to the USA in 1910; when he came back to Germany in 1924, he became an important bandleader, often considered to be the German counterpart to Paul Whiteman. And Friedrich Hollaender, the son of the aforementioned composer of the “Swing Song,” who in the 1920s became a well-​known musical theatre-​and film-​music composer, was born in London and raised in Berlin. He lived in New York when he was eighteen years old and moved to Prague a year later, before returning to Berlin. There are many other examples of similarly cosmopolitan life histories in the popular music scene (for German dance orchestras and jazz musicians see Wolffram 2001 and Lotz 1982). Thus, dance bands formed by internationally experienced musicians were at the heart of popular music culture in Germany. Migration and mobility were an important factor for creative music industries in the German “Roaring Twenties,” leading not only to the physical movement of people, but to movement of musical styles, forms, and ways of interpretation, as will be demonstrated by the example of the Comedian Harmonists. Transnational and Intermedial Aspects of a National Popular Music Group in the 1920s: The Comedian Harmonists In 1924, the American banjo-​player Michael Danzi arrived in Germany to record with various German orchestras and to give concerts at the Barberina nightclub  –​he would stay until the outbreak of World War II 1939. Eventually, in 1929, he became a member of the orchestra of the musical revue Zwei Krawatten (Two Bow-​Ties),12 composed and conducted by Mischa Spoliansky, a Russian Jew who was raised in Königsberg and Vienna and later studied in Berlin (Stahrenberg 2012). Part of this play was a vocal ensemble that had made its first appearance the year before, also in a revue show (Casanova): The Comedian Harmonists.13 The sound of this popular vocal group was described by the Austrian journal Die Bühne as “beautiful singing” with some “witty imitations of instruments” (Anonymous 1929) –​following the American example of the Revelers,

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34   •   Carolin Stahrenberg

the Comedian Harmonists included a piano in their compositions, mixed close harmony with solo sections, had comic effects in their arrangements and featured a prominent bass and soprano line. At one point during their career, the group was even labeled the “German Revelers” (1928/​ 29), a marketing strategy that obviously appealed to the audience in the late 1920s. The Comedian Harmonists also recorded some of the popular songs from the Revelers’ repertoire in German translation and their own adaptations, for example “So blue,” 1927 (in German: “Ninon,” 1928), or “When Yuba plays the rumba on the tuba,” 1931 (in German: “Der Onkel Bumba aus Kalumba tanzt nur Rumba,” 1932).14 The early career of the Comedian Harmonists provides a most striking example of both the adaption of international popular music styles and of intermediality (For the career of the Comedian Harmonists see Fechner 1988; Czada and Große 1993; and Friedman 2010). Intermediality studies focus on the relationship between media and medial elements that are conventionally considered distinct but in certain contexts connect through specific communicational systems (see Grosch 2009). As stated before, the Comedian Harmonists started their career in the context of the revue show Casanova in 1928, performing an entr’acte. In Zwei Krawatten of 1929, they were integrated into the musical setting, functioning either as a supportive or commenting “opera chorus” or performing comic cabaret numbers. Both productions linked the theatrical performance of the group –​not yet stars –​with the performance of songs. The success of the production of Zwei Krawatten had a strong influence on their career, encouraging them to sing full concerts (see Fechner 1988, 200). This format was unusual then for a popular singing group. The boosting effect of theatre productions on the group’s career was later replicated by film. The Comedian Harmonists appeared in more than ten movies, which spread their popularity and contributed to the box-​office success of their shows (Friedman 2010, 271–​4). In the era after the Great War, while the record industry was reestablishing itself and the market demand for Western, particularly American, popular music was rising significantly, the gramophone record became the most important medium for popular song. The Comedian Harmonists, who more and more concentrated on concert performance, were staged in close cooperation with gramophone companies. The concerts were organized mostly by local promoters working with the relevant local branch of a record retailer (see Comedian Harmonists papers, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, N. Mus. Nachl. 86, B, 10, 76). The physical gramophone disc and its sound were integrated into the Comedian Harmonists’ act, both as an image on stage and as a pre-​performance introduction to the show. Harry Frommermann, a member of the group, recalled a concert performance in Berlin in 1932: Before our entrance, the Electrola played one of our records. The gramophone stood in the corner of the stage and was amplified by a loudspeaker. After that, we went on stage in single file, like we were used to, and were greeted with great applause. (Cited by Fechner 1988, 217–​18) Thus, the concert performance was closely linked to the commercial distribution of the recorded music. At this early stage in the career of the Comedian Harmonists, industry advertisements were already trademarking the group’s image, linking it closely to the gramophone disc. The latter was used emblematically, both to help identify the individual singers as members of a group and to connect them to the technical phenomenon of the record. The advertisement also emphasized how the record functioned as intimate communication, bringing the voice into the

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 German Popular Music, 1900–1939   •   35

personal domain of private living rooms via the gramophone.15 The gramophone disc also played an important role in the formation of the group, a circumstance that also points to a transnational element:  The group, at the beginning forming under the name The Melody Makers, modeled their way of interpretation after recordings of the American vocal ensemble The Revelers, which they admired and heard over and over again (Fechner 1988, 168). Thus, the specific style of the Comedian Harmonists was characterized by intermedial and transnational influences. When the group was forced to split up in 1935 because of the anti-​Jewish legislation of the Nazis, the members Harry Frommermann, Erwin Collin, and Roman Cycowski formed a new group in exile, variously named Comedian or Comedy Harmonists. They recorded and toured quite successfully until 1939, but they had to stop their efforts one year later in the United States due to failure. Since the American Revelers’ fame was also decreasing since 1934, the close harmony style was not popular anymore, and the group could not live up to their earlier success. In Germany the Comedian Harmonists continued in a new formation, too, now called The Meistersextett  –​former Comedian Harmonists. They continued to perform and record their own compositions, folk songs, and translated American repertoire (for example some songs by Irving Berlin, “The piccolino,” “Cheek to cheek” and “Let’s face the music and dance,” 1935/​36, or “There’s A  New World” in 1938)16 until 1939, when they stopped due to internal quarrels, trouble with authorities, and tightening problems with conscriptions of ensemble members into the army. Conclusion As a synthesis, we can say –​as exemplified just by some specific but representative case studies –​ that transnational networks and transcultural processes were both the fundaments and results of a multi-​layered interlocking of media, migrations, styles, and genres. These dynamics in culture cannot be comprehended adequately without considering the sociocultural change in production and reception, public demand, generation shifts, intermedial change, and dispositif basic structure of cultural production and medial performance. Notes 1 Real name: Leon Goltzmann. 2 Real name: Pinchas Goldfein. 3 “Mehrere sogenannte Schlager oder Effektdrücker gingen noch obendrein wegen der spröden deutschen Sprache verloren.” 4 “Das Entrée in den hiesigen Vorstadttheatern wird auf allen Plätzen auf 10 Nkr. [Neukreuzer] herabgesetzt. Dafür gehen aber nach jedem beifällig aufgenommenen ‘Gspaß’, Kouplet oder sogenanntem “Schlager” mehrere Bajazzos mit Büchsen auf den verschiedenen Plätzen absammeln herum.” 5 “Philip, Joh., Schlager-​Marsch für Orch. arr. v. Anton Faulwetter.” 6 See CHARM (AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music), http://​charm.rhul.ac.uk, accessed 16 November 2018. 7 See CHARM (AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music), http://​charm.rhul.ac.uk, accessed 16 November 2018. 8 First performance December 22, 1905. 9 Real name: Kurt Abramowitz. 10 For example Erik Charell (born Erich Karl Löwenberg) engaged Paul Whiteman in Berlin for the season 1923/​24. 11 See Wickström’s chapter for a discussion on Russian and (post-​)Soviet migration to Germany.

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36   •   Carolin Stahrenberg 12 Zwei Krawatten premiered at the Berliner Theater, with Hans Albers, Marlene Dietrich et  al. A  “Train-​Song” (the opening number of the second act) is dedicated to the “Six Comedian Harmonists” (Kaiser and Spoliansky 1929, 87). 13 Comedian Harmonists with tenor Michael Bohnen:  “Ständchen des Casanova,” Orchester des Großen Schauspielhaus, Ernst Haucke, Michael Bohnen, BL 4431-​1, Electrola EG950; “Italienisches Intermezzo,” BL 4432-​ 1, Electrola EG 960; “Spanisches Intermezzo,” BL 4433-​1, Electrola EG 960. See Discography http://​www.charm. rhul.ac.uk (CHARM, AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music), and http://​www. comedian-​harmonists.net/​?page_​id=1005, both accessed 27 February 2019. 14 See http://​www.comedian-​harmonists.net/​?page_​id=1005, accessed 19 August 2019. 15 As is shown in an advertisement for ODEON, c.  December 1928 /​January 1929, see Stahrenberg and Grosch 2014, 195. 16 “The piccolino” and “Cheek to cheek” were published by Electrola (Electrola EG 3763); for “Let’s face the music and dance” and “There’s A New World” no issue of that recordings is known. See http://​www.comedian-​harmonists.net/​ ?page_​id=1047. Accessed 19 August 2019.

Bibliography Anonymous. 1860. “Tagesordnung für die künftige Woche.” Figaro. Humoristisches Wochenblatt, July 14, 1. Anonymous. 1905a. “[Im Orpheum wird…]” Der Humorist. Zeitschrift für die Theater und Kunstwelt, November 10 Anonymous. 1905b. “Freitag, 22. d. M.” Das Vaterland, December 17, 7. Anonymous. 1906. “Unterm Stephansturm.” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, June 5, 10. Anonymous. 1907a. “Vom Theater.” Marburger Zeitung, October 10, 4. Anonymous. 1907b. “Festabend des Männergesangvereins” Mährisches Tagblatt, March 26, 6. Anonymous. 1929. “Schallplattenbericht” Die Bühne 245: 50. Anonymous. 2010. “Leben in Berlin. Hier begegnen sich Menschen aus allen Teilen der Welt,” www.berlin.de/​berlin-​im-​ ueberblick/​index.de.html. Accessed August 7, 2010 (archived: https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20100824014559/​www. berlin.de/​berlin-​im-​ueberblick/​index.de.html. Accessed August 19, 2019). Anonymous, and Kurt Weill. 1944. “Pensacola Wham. Interview with Kurt Weill.” The New Yorker, June 10, 16–​17. Becker, Tobias. 2013. “Die Anfänge der Schlagerindustrie:  Intermedialität und wirtschaftliche Verflechtung vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg.” In Lied und populäre Kultur /​Song and Popular Culture, 58: 11–​39. Bergmeier, Horst, and Rainer E. Lotz. 1985. Alex Hyde Bio-​discography. Menden: Jazzfreund. Bertaux, Pierre. 1987. “Ein französischer Student in Berlin.” In Berliner Begegnungen: Ausländische Künstler in Berlin, 1918–​1933, ed. by Klaus Kändler, 239–​54. Berlin: Dietz. Budzinski, Klaus. 1985. Das Kabarett. 100 Jahre literarische Zeitkritik –​gesprochen –​gesungen –​gespielt. Düsseldorf: ECON (=Hermes Handlexikon). CHARM (AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music), http://​charm.rhul.ac.uk. Accessed November 16, 2018. Clarke, Kevin. 2004. ‘Im Himmel spielt auch schon die Jazzband’:  Emmerich Kálmán und die transatlantische Operette 1928–​1932. Hamburg: von Bockel Verlag. Czada, Peter, and Günter Große. 1993. Comedian Harmonists: Ein Vokalensemble erobert die Welt. Berlin: Hentrich. Escher, Felix. 1987. “Die brandenburgisch-​preußische Residenz und Hauptstadt Berlin im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert.” In Geschichte Berlins, Bd. 1.  Von der Frühgeschichte bis zur Industrialisierung, ed. by Wolfgang Ribbe, 341–​403. München: Beck. Fechner, Eberhard. 1988. Die Comedian Harmonists. Sechs Lebensläufe. Weinheim: Quadriga. Frey, Stefan. 2014. “How a Sweet Viennese Girl Became a fair International Lady: Transfer, Performance, Modernity –​ Acts in the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture.” In Popular Musical Theatre in Germany and Britain, 1890–​1939, ed. by Len Platt, David Linton, and Tobias Becker, 102–​17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Friedman, Douglas E. 2010. The Comedian Harmonists: The Last Great Jewish Performers in Nazi Germany. West Long Branch, NJ: HarmonySong. Goethe-​Institut. 2009. Online-​Redaktion (Franziska Schwarz), “In der Zeitschleife. Porträt Max Raabe.” Meet the Germans, Deutsche handverlesen, Die Lautstarken, Last modified March 2009. www.goethe.de/​ins/​gb/​lp/​prj/​mtg/​ men/​lau/​rab/​deindex.htm. Accessed August 1, 2018.

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 German Popular Music, 1900–1939   •   37 Grosch, Nils. 2009. “Populäres Musiktheater als dramaturgische Koordination Populärer Musik.” In Populäre Musik in audiovisuellen Formaten, ed. by Christofer Jost and Klaus Neumann-​Braun, 85–​102. Baden-​Baden: Nomos. Hofmeister, Friedrich. 1894. Musikalisch-​literarischer Monatsbericht über neue Musikalien, musikalische Schriften und Abbildungen für das Jahr 1894, 66.2: 59. Hofmeister, Friedrich. 1905. Musikalisch-​literarischer Monatsbericht für das Jahr 1905. 77.12. Leipzig: Hofmeister. Hollaender, Friedrich. 2001. Von Kopf bis Fuß. Revue meines Lebens, Berlin, 66. Hollaender, Victor. 1905a. Auf in’s Metropol! Ausstattungs-​Revue. Berlin: Bote & Bock. Hollaender, Victor. 1905b. Swing Song. London: Chappell & Co. Hollaender, Victor, and Ballard Macdonald. Not dated.  Swing Me High Swing Me Low. Lillian Lorraine’s Swing Song. New York: Jos. W. Stern & Co. Jansen, Wolfgang. 1987. Glanzrevuen der zwanziger Jahre, 128–​70. Berlin: Hentrich. Kaiser, Georg, and Mischa Spoliansky. 1929. Zwei Krawatten:  Revuestück von Georg Kaiser, Klavierauszug mit Text. Berlin: Dreiklang-​Dreimasken. Lange, Kerstin. 2014. “The Argentine Tango: A Transatlantic Dance on the European Stage.” In Popular Musical Theatre in Germany and Britain, 1890–​1939, ed. by Len Platt, David Linton, and Tobias Becker, 153–​69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linke, Norbert. 1987. Musik erobert die Welt. Wie die Wiener Familie Strauß die “Unterhaltungsmusik” revolutionierte. Vienna: Linke 1987. Lotz, Rainer E. 1982. Hot Dance Bands in Germany, vol. 2: The 1920s. Menden: Der Jazzfreund. www.berlin.de/​berlin-​im-​ ueberblick/​index.de.html. Accessed August 7, 2010 (archived: https://​web.archive.org/​web/​20100824014559/​www. berlin.de/​berlin-​im-​ueberblick/​index.de.html. Accessed August 19, 2019). Lotz, Rainer E. 2007. “Black Music Prior to the First World War: American Origins and German Perspectives.” In Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe, ed. by Neil A. Wynn, 66–​88. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Lüdtke, Alf, Inge Marßolek, and Adelheid von Saldern (eds.). 1996. Amerikanisierung. Traum und Alptraum im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts . Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Metken, Günter. 1979. “Deutschland und Frankreich –​Wege und Einbahnstraßen.” In Paris –​Berlin 1900–​1933. Übereinstimmungen und Gegensätze Frankreich-​Deutschland, ed. by Werner Spies, 20–​29. München: Prestel. Nenno, Nancy. 1999. “Weiblichkeit –​Primitivität –​Metropole: Josephine Baker in Berlin.” In Frauen in der Großstadt. Herausforderung der Moderne?, ed. by Katharina von Ankum, 136–​58. Dortmund: Ebersbach. Ommen van der Merwe, Ann. 2009. The Ziegfeld Follies: A History in Song. Lanham: The Rowman & Littlefield. Platt, Lenn; David Linton, and Tobias Becker (eds.). 2014. Popular Musical Theatre in Germany and Britain, 1890–​1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pollack, Heinz. 1922. Die Revolution des Gesellschaftstanzes. Dresden: Sibyllen. Schär, Christian. 1991. Der Schlager und seine Tänze im Deutschland der 20er Jahre. Zürich: Chronos. Schindler, F.B. 1845. “K.K. priv. Theater an der Wien.” Österreichisches Morgenblatt, October 25. Schlögel, Karl. 1998. Berlin Ostbahnhof Europas. Russen und Deutsche in ihrem Jahrhundert. Berlin: Siedler. Scott, Derek B. 2014. “German Operetta in the West End and on Broadway.” In Popular Musical Theatre in Germany and Britain, 1890–​1939, ed. by Len Platt, David Linton, and Tobias Becker, 62–​80. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Sfd. 1843. “Vorgestern zum Vortheile der Dlle. Lutzer.” Der Wanderer, January 30, 2–​3. Stahrenberg, Carolin. 2011. “Edith Lorand. Die ‘Königin des Walzers’ in den 1920er Jahren.” In “… mein Wunsch ist, Spuren zu hinterlassen …” Rezeptions-​und Berufsgeschichte von Geigerinnen, ed. by Carolin Stahrenberg and Susanne Rode-​ Breymann, 118–​35 (=Beiträge aus dem Forschungszentrum Musik und Gender, Bd. 1). Hannover: Wehrhahn. Stahrenberg, Carolin. 2012. Hot Spots von Café bis Kabarett. Musikalische Handlungsräume im Berlin Mischa Spolianskys 1918–​1933. Münster: Waxmann (=Populäre Kultur und Musik 4), 162–​77. Stahrenberg, Carolin, and Nils Grosch. 2014. “The Transcultural Function of Stage, Song and Other Media: Intermediality in Berlin Popular Musical Theatre of the 1920s.” In Popular Musical Theatre in Germany and Britain, 1890–​1939, ed. by Len Platt, David Linton, and Tobias Becker, 187–​200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Völmecke, Jens-​Uwe. 1997. Die Berliner Jahresrevuen 1903–​1913 und ihre Weiterführung in den Revue-​Operetten des Ersten Weltkrieges. Köln: TÜV-​Rheinland (Ph.D., University of Cologne). Weiss, Stefan (Ed.). Forthcoming. Deutsch-​russische Musikbegegnungen 1917–​1933. Hannover.

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38   •   Carolin Stahrenberg Wolffram, Knud. 2001. Tanzdielen und Vergnügungspaläste: Berliner Nachtleben in den dreißiger und vierziger Jahren, von der Friedrichstraße bis Berlin W., vom Moka Efti bis zum Delphi. Berlin: Hentrich.

Discography Braun, Oscar. 1905. Schaukellied (Der Kavalier), aus:  Auf ins Metropol (Victor Hollaender /​Julius Freund) VI/​ 5. Berlin: Odeon 1905 (Odeon X 34455). Comedian Harmonists with tenor Michael Bohnen. 1928: Ständchen des Casanova, Orchester des Großen Schauspielhaus, Ernst Haucke, Michael Bohnen, BL 4431-​1, Electrola EG950; Italienisches Intermezzo, BL 4432-​1, Electrola EG 960; Spanisches Intermezzo, BL 4433-​1, Electrola EG 960. See CHARM, www.charm.rhul.ac.uk, and www.comedian-​ harmonists.net/​?page_​id=1005. Both accessed February 27, 2019. Gialdini, Guido. 1905. Schaukellied aus “Auf ins Metropol” (mit Orch.) gepfiffen von Guido Gialdini, Kunstpfeifer. Berlin: The Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd. (Gramophone Concert Record, G.C.-​49513). Hollaender, Victor. 1905c. Schaukellied aus “Auf ins Metropol” von Victor Hollaender mit Orch. unter persönl. Leitung des Komponisten gesungen von Max Steidl, Tenor am Metropoltheater. Berlin:  The Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd. (Gramophone Concert Record, G.C. 3-​42350). K.u.k. Infanterie-​Regiment 51 Freiherr von Probszt Wien, Ltg. Anton Kutschera. 1906. Auf in’s Metropol –​Schaukellied. Vienna: Odeon (Odeon 8285), see CHARM, http://​charm.rhul.ac.uk. Accessed November 16, 2018.

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2

Nazis and Quiet Sounds

Popular Music, Simulated Normality, and Cultural Niches in the Terror Regime, 1933–​1945 Jens Gerrit Papenburg

Introduction Since the 1980s there has been a growing body of research about popular music in National Socialism (see for instance Kühn 1984; Kater 1992; Jockwer 2004; Ritzel 2005; Bergmeier and Lotz 2007; and Dompke 2015). However, what does it mean to study the organization and workings of National Socialism through  –​its?  –​popular music? To explore this question, I  analyze two aspects of Nazi Germany through popular music made in Germany between 1933 and 1945: (1) The organization of an everyday life, of a crude form of “normality” in a terror regime, and (2) the constitution and functioning of selected cultural niches in the Nazi era. Despite its totalitarian organization, the Nazi state harbored niches in which nonconformist practices were possible. Some of them were established by and even for intellectual and cultural elites, such as the Preußischer Staatsrat; others, for instance, “basements for radio hobbyists” or “ballrooms with swing music,” also met a demand for exclusiveness but were, certainly, more open in their social character (Lethen 2018, 53).1 For the people in Nazi Germany, the existence of such a nonconformist space within the terror regime “attributes responsibility” (ibid., 54); it assumes that at least some people had some kind of a choice. Or, as Helmut Lethen summarizes: “There was air to breath in the dictatorship –​for those who had still air to breath” (ibid., 191). We can add here that normality and everyday life in the Nazi state also had an acoustic dimension, a certain sound. I argue in the following that especially quiet and intimate sounds, music with a moderate volume level, contributed to the production of normality in the fascist state. Certainly, Nazi soundscapes, to pick up a concept of the media historian Carolyn Birdsall (2012), were constituted also by very loud sounds. Sounds of, say, the giant Olympic Bell from the Reichssportfeld (Reich Sport Field) casted for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; the monumental organ at the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg; Telefunken’s massive public address systems; Hitler’s and Goebbel’s breaking and spellbinding voices; blaring brass bands; chanting mass choirs; and voices singing explicit, agitating propaganda lyrics. However, in contrast to such sonic equivalents of Leni Riefenstahl’s overwhelming aesthetics and Albert Speer’s “Cathedrals of Light,” most of the sounds of popular music in Nazi Germany constituted a form of normality,

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40   •   Jens Gerrit Papenburg

precisely by rejecting a monumental, overwhelming, and excessive volume level. Popular music could thereby function as a kind of energy source for the Nazi dictatorship. Simulating normality in the dictatorship It was a crucial function of popular music in National Socialism to insinuate an apparently terror-​ free everyday life –​within a regime of extreme terror. For such an everyday life, personal emotions and romantic love stories, consumer products, leisure time, and entertainment should appear common  –​at least, more common than the ringing of the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, Gestapo) at the neighbors’ door, state-​orchestrated violent actions such as public book burnings and boycotts of businesses of Jewish owners in 1933, the devastating, violent pogrom against Jewish Germans and institutions in November 1939, and the monumental gatherings of the fascist “Volkskörper” (Folk body) at mass rallies, say, in Nuremberg or on Berlin’s Tempelhof Field. To establish a kind of normality, popular music or –​in the terms of the Nazi cultural bureaucratic apparatus to which I will return below –​“dance and entertainment music” not only relied on sentimentality and pathos (see Wicke 1998, 155–​85). It also helped to create an entertaining atmosphere of feeling good, maybe even of intimacy, sometimes cheesy and corny, but sometimes also not without a certain kind of elegance, glamor, and a slight swing or a form of temporary escapism to exotic places. Moreover, especially boosted by World War Two, it integrated political topics, most often almost incidentally. For instance, songs such as “Wenn unser Berlin auch verdunkelt ist” (Even if our Berlin is browned out) or “Wenn die Lichter wieder scheinen” (When the lights shine again) obviously aimed to help the German population deal with the brownouts in German cities during the war. In addition, the forms of citizenship the regime offered its subjects became protagonists in popular songs –​such as members of the Hitler Youth (“Ein Hitlermädel tanzt Polka”  –​A  Hitler Girl is dancing the Polka) or the wives of soldiers (“Tapfere kleine Soldatenfrau” –​Brave little soldier’s wife). In 2005, the directors Oliver Axer and Susanne Benze and the producer C. Cay Wesnigk won the renowned Adolf-​Grimme-​Preis for their movie “Hitler’s Hit Parade” (Axer, Benze 2004). The documentary, made nearly 60 years after the end of the Nazi era, is an impressive collage of heterogeneous footage from that time –​reaching from Wochenschau newsreels to motion pictures, from propaganda and advertising movies to anti-​Semitic cartoons. It offers an analytic insight into how people in Nazi Germany could be comfortable with their everyday life, a life in a bluntly racist and anti-​Semitic regime based upon a fascist leader cult, which passed openly anti-​Semitic laws and systematically organized mass deportations and killings of Jews, communists, homosexuals, so-​called antisocial people, and Sinti and Roma. As part of an answer to this question, the movie –​ with no explaining voice-​over –​presents a soundtrack of 25 fully played, catchy, often moderately swinging hit tunes from that era. The parading hits and the movie’s pictures “comment on each other mutually, sometimes thwarting, sometimes confirming” (Grimme-​Preis 2005). With its soundtrack and already with its title –​the concept of a “hit parade,” of course, comes from the US –​the film also problematizes the idea of the “pure” nationalist culture propagated by Nazi ideology (see Birdsall 2012, 212n76). “Hitler’s Hit Parade” is structured by over 20 thematic sequences that present topics such as “Fast and Modern,” “Healthy. Joy through Strength,” “Gas,” and “New Life.” The latter, for instance, is a collage of footage dealing with fashion, philandering, family life, erotic atmospheres, and the song “Es ist nur die Liebe” (It’s only love) from the revue movie “Hab’ mich lieb” (Love me; Braun

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 Nazis and Quiet  Sounds   •   41

1942) played by Benny de Weill and his orchestra and sung by Jenny Even. However, “Hitler’s Hit Parade” is far from presenting Nazi Germany as a cheesy, terror-​free regime. Instead, it comes as a collage of moving pictures from everyday life situations and from terror scenarios. Sometimes, the border between these two domains even seems blurred in the movie. For instance, a moderator swaggeringly opines that obnoxious musicians should be send to a “concert camp,” obviously alluding to the concentration camps that the regime built as despotic spaces outside legal jurisdiction. The sequence “Cheery Weekend” includes moving pictures of tours to the countryside, but also of the apparent leisure activities –​reading in a library, playing soccer –​of Jewish prisoners exhibited in the Nazi propaganda movie “Theresienstadt” (Gerron, Pečený 1945). The catchy tune “Wenn die Woche keinen Sonntag hätt’ ” (If the week had no Sunday) sung by the Allan Terzett is the soundtrack of this sequence. It is precisely the softness and normality of the tune that amplifies the terror of the pictures. Certainly, the movie’s soundtrack also has the potential to affect some members of the audience of “Hitler’s Hit Parade.” Probably they will not sway to the music like the soldiers and SS men did to Zarah Leander’s performance of “Davon geht die Welt nicht unter” (It’s not the end of the world) in “Die Große Liebe” (The Great Love; Hansen, 1942). However, a twenty-​first-​ century audience may start to bop along with their feet while watching a thematic sequence about, for instance, “In the Cover of the Night.” Here the song “Die kleine Nacht will schlafen gehen” (The little night is going to sleep) by Friedrich Meyer-​Gergs and his Dance Orchestra with added vocals by Oliver Axer, one of the movie’s directors, comments on a thematic sequence that includes moving pictures about topics such as night and sleep, loneliness and the moon, but also a nocturnal operation of the Secret State Police. Thus, even if popular music appeared apolitical in the Nazi era, it could support the dictatorship by pretending that nothing special or extraordinary had happened or by pretending that if something had happened –​say, cities were blitzed or girls transformed into Hitler Girls –​it should be taken lightly or as a rather ordinary fact. Such a normalizing function of popular music was supported by a comparatively quiet and soft sound (see Kühn 1984 and Dompke 2015). This sound also correlated with new media technologies –​amplifiers, microphones, and loudspeakers –​which started to appear in Germany in the mid-​1920s. That such technologies produced very loud sound was rather the exception, for instance at mass events powerful sound systems up to 5000 watts also amplified popular music to produce marching homogenized or overwhelmed masses of people (see Vierling 1938). Most often, early sonic amplification media were employed to make soft sounds, such as crooned voices, the sound of drum brushes, soft strings, and muted trumpets, recordable as well as audible in certain performance situations. Against this media-​historical backdrop, crooned microphone voices became prominent also in Nazi Germany. In 1941, for instance, Rudi Schuricke, accompanied by Hans Carste and his orchestra, started humming “Hm, hm –​Du bist so zauberhaft” (Hm, hm –​You are so enchanting; Schuricke 1941). Singers like Horst Winter, whose orchestra arrangements intoned soft tunes such as “Bei dir war es immer so schön” (With you it was always so lovely; Winter 1941) and “Ich liebe die Sonne, den Mond und die Sterne” (I love the sun, the moon, and the stars; Winter 1941) developed crooner qualities. The whispering sounds of Hilde Hildebrandt (for instance “Die Dame von der alten Schule” –​The lady of the old-​school; Hildebrandt 1932), a varieté and cabaret singer who started her career in the Weimar Republic, and the dynamic drumming of the “trick drummer” Ernst “Bimbo”2 Weiland became available on records or in entertainment theaters such as the Scala in Berlin, where Weiland had a successful engagement. Quiet atmospheres of

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specific arrangements of songs such as the slow foxtrot “Ganz leise kommt die Nacht” (The night is coming very quietly; Schuricke 1939), sung also by Rudi Schuricke, could be created. Moreover, most of the arrangement of hit songs –​waltzes, foxtrots, tangos, and polkas –​from cinema and revue theater by composers such as Franz Grothe, Peter Kreuder, Will Meisel, and Michael Jary and from operettas by Eduard Künneke, Nico Dostal, and late Paul Lincke staged “quiet sounds.”3 Such arrangements were played by different orchestra types –​radio orchestras, orchestras of record labels, or dance and entertainment orchestras that performed in entertainment theaters, ballrooms, or hotel lobbies –​with band leaders such as Peter Kreuder and Adalbert Lutter, Oskar Joost, and Bernard Etté, and also by the Deutsches Tanz-​und Unterhaltungsorchester (German Dance-​and Entertainment Orchestra).4 Finally, quiet sounds became successful also in rather loud song types –​such as soldier songs. For instance, an arrangement by the orchestra leader Bruno Seidler-​Winkler of the song “Lili Marleen” for a recording with the singer Lale Andersen turned that love song into a quiet soldier song –​indeed, by relying on a trumpet signal, but also a soft men’s choir, unobtrusive marching drums, and an accordion (see Wicke 2011). The recorded version of Lale Andersen (Andersen 1939), popularized by radio, eventually became one of the most popular songs in Nazi Germany. Regulating Musical Life in Total –​The Reichsmusikkammer The Nazis founded various institutions to totally regulate musical life in Germany. Several studies of music in National Socialism have analyzed in detail the organization of the central institution for implementing an aggressive and excluding nationalization of musical life  –​the Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber; see, for instance, Dümling 2015).5 Such a nationalization counted heavily on anti-​Semitism, racism, and homophobia. However, the organization also represented the social, economic, and legal interests of musicians, an occupational group that suffered under the consequences of the Great Depression more than the average population and under the introduction of the sound film in the late 1920s, resulting in the unemployment of many silent film orchestra musicians. Every musician and concert organizer had to become a formal member of the Reichsmusikkammer to be allowed to do his or her job. “Political reliability” and later “Aryan ancestry” were conditions for becoming a member. However, it took a while to register all of the about 94,000 musicians in Germany. The nationalization of musical life as propagated by the Reichsmusikkammer led to a couple of bans: English stage names –​as had been popular in the Weimar Republic –​were forbidden, and Nazi officials started aggressive campaigns especially against African American music and dance forms such as jazz and the Charleston. African American musicians –​who had been a part of a rising new “urban entertainment culture” in Germany since the late nineteenth century (Becker, Littmann, and Niedbalski 2011) and had successful guest performances in the booming years of the Weimar Republic (see Papenburg 2017) –​were by 1930 already forbidden to perform on public stages in parts of Germany (see Schröder 1988, 176 and Lange 1996, 72). The infamous poster of the exhibition “Entartete Musik” (Degenerate Music) in Düsseldorf in 1938 documents the Nazis’ racist denunciation of African American musicians. Against this backdrop and due to reprisals by the new leaders, by 1933 successful Jewish-​ German composers of operettas, popular film music, and revues such as Erik Charell, Friedrich Hollaender, Rudolf Nelson, Paul Abraham, and Mischa Spoliansky, and jazz and dance band leaders such as Stefan Weintraub (head of the Weintraub Syncopators), Dajos Béla, Marek Weber,

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Efim Schachmeister, and Ben Berlin had already begun to leave the country (see Kater 1992, 38–​46). Others, like the lyricist Fritz Löhner-​Beda, were deported and murdered in concentration camps. However, not only composers, lyricists, and musicians but also music fans, like the “Swing-​Heinis” (swing jerks) stood under police surveillance (see Wuthe 2012, 19f, 90, 116 and Kater 1992, 101–​10). The Nazi cultural bureaucracy could control the musicians who were active on stage quite effectively. Moreover, it defined unwanted musical works and composers by publishing corresponding lists (Dümling 2015, 373f) and by denouncing musicians and composers, most prominently with the infamous “Lexikon der Juden in der Musik” (Lexicon of the Jews in Music; Stengel/​Gerigk 1940). The music policy of the Nazis also tried to regulate music discourse, for instance, by excluding certain musical terms (such as “jazz” and “blues”) and by rejecting selected music forms as “entartet” (degenerate) or “kulturbolschewistisch” (cultural Bolshevik). In contrast, the regulation of the sounds of popular music was far more problematic. It was impossible for Nazi cultural bureaucrats to define exactly which sounds, instruments, and musical practices coincided with categories such as “jazz,” “German,” or “Jewish.” In this respect, radio production director Eugen Hadamovsky’s 1935 prohibition of “jazz” in German radio and a planned prohibition of the saxophone had nearly no practical consequences. Breaks, Gradual Changes, and Continuities Certainly, Nazi cultural policy aimed at making a clear break with the cultural life of the Weimar Republic. However, there were several gradual changes and even continuities, some hidden, some explicit. Especially these changes and continuities contributed to the simulation of normality mentioned above, but also enabled subcultural niches in a totalitarian state. The cultural experiments with gender and sexuality, racial and religious diversity, and most of the informal bohemian lifestyles that have shaped the image of cultural life in the Weimar Republic up to the present day were severely restricted in Nazi Germany. Such an image of the Weimar Republic is famously presented in Christopher Isherwood’s novel “Goodbye to Berlin” (Isherwood 1997 [1939]), Tom Tykwer’s recent period drama TV series “Babylon Berlin” (Tykwer, von Borries, and Handloegten 2017), and already in tourist guides to Berlin from the early 1930s (Moreck 2018 [1931]). However, also in National Socialism, popular music remained a transnational form of music, despite the ideological program of nationalist “purity” promoted by the Reichsmusikkammer. There were a number of reasons for this. Since the late nineteenth century, popular music culture in Germany had been more and more internationally interlocked.6 Along with an internationally linked stage and publishing business, this also included co-​operation between record labels. In contrast to the state-​controlled radio and film business,7 the recording industry in Nazi Germany was primarily market-​driven. This opened up some free spaces: Until 1941 it was possible to buy American jazz records in Germany without any difficulty, although it was not allowed to play them in the stores (see Lange 1996, 120). German and US record companies were heavily cross-​linked. For instance, the record label Deutsche Grammophon had distributed its records in the US via the US Brunswick label since 1926. In return, the German label licensed the English record label Brunswick via its Polyphonwerke AG as a brand to sell US jazz records in Germany (see Kellersmann 1990, 61–​6). In 1936, this record label even organized three events in the Delphi-​Palast in Berlin, where Dietrich Schulz-​Köhn, an employee of the Deutsche Grammophon’s Brunswick label and

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later a member of the NSDAP, gave lectures about the “Vielseitigkeit der Swing-​Musik” (versatility of swing music; see Kellersmann 1990, 61–​6, Prieberg 2009, 6854–​6 and Kater 1992, 72).8 The contracts between international record companies existed until the beginning of World War II or even until the US entered the war at the end of 1941. Thus, the interconnectedness of the internationally cross-​linked record market dissolved only gradually and slowly during the Nazi era. Along with swing records, also other products of US popular culture such as Hollywood movies and Coca-​Cola were part of everyday life in Nazi Germany (see Schäfer 2009, 9–​87). Goebbels in particular seemed fascinated by aspects of US popular culture  –​especially by Hollywood and its modernity (Spieker 2003). Thus, leading National Socialists themselves also worked against the ideology of establishing a “pure” national (popular) music culture, whatever that might ultimately be. Goebbels, for instance, engaged the big band of Jack Hylton –​a European version of US symphonic jazz king Paul Whiteman –​for the 1937 press ball in Berlin (Schäfer 2009, 48). Hollywood movies shown in cinemas in Nazi Germany also became sources for hit songs (Wuthe 2012, 41–​63). For instance, the film musical “Broadway Melody of 1936” (USA 1935) not only popularized the term “swing” in Germany, helped to establish record series promoting “swing music” by labels such as Electrola, Odeon, Imperial, and Brunswick, and conditioned the formation of swing orchestras such as Heinz Wehner’s “Telefunken-​Swing-​Orchester,” but also included the song “You are My Lucky Star” (Du sollst mein Glücksstern sein). In 1936, German record labels released over 30 different versions of “Du sollst mein Glücksstern sein” (ibid. 47 and  56–​9). Moreover, a few jazz bands existed in Germany during the Nazi era. Curiously, as the historian Michael Kater remarked already in the early 1990s, the regime also supported the foundation of a jazz band, “Charly and his Orchestra,” for propaganda reasons. “It was an attempt to reverse the damage done by the BBC to the Germans with their broadcasts by paying the enemy back in kind: American-​type jazz was to be thrown back to the British Isles from Germany in order to confuse the king’s loyal subjects” (Kater 1992, 130). Jazz bands came up also on a grassroots level. Most prominently, the “Hot Club Combo” was founded in 1941 in the milieu of the “Hot Club Frankfurt” with band members such as Carlo Bohländer, Emil Mangelsdorff, and Horst Lippmann. US songs and music forms thus remained present on stages and records in Germany even after the Nazis’ seizure of power. Especially during the Olympic Summer Games in 1936, the regime tried to present Berlin as a modern, cosmopolitan city. During the Games, “Goody Goody” (Stauffer 1936), with English lyrics in a version by the Swiss jazz band leader Ernst “Teddy” Stauffer, whose “Original Teddies” were the house band of the Delphi-​Palast in Berlin, became a huge hit (Hilmes 2016, 173–​7; on the nightclubs in Berlin of the 1930s and 40s in general, see Wolffram 1992). Such gradual changes –​Stauffer, for instance, left Nazi Germany in 1939 –​ instead of clear breaks worked against a simple sudden cultural nationalization and provincialization. However, such continuities contributed to the production of a kind of everyday life that appears “normal” through popular music. In contrast, the loud, aggressive, and overwhelming battle songs of the SA and the SS and the soldier songs and marching songs by composers and marching band conductors such as Herms Niel never had the potential to constitute a form of normality (“Erika! Auf der Heide blüht ein kleines Blümelein”  –​Erika! On the heath a small flower is blossoming, Niel n.d., “Tschingta, Tschingta, Bumtara,” Niel 1938). Rather than being part of everyday life, they were part of

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exceptional political events such as the mass gatherings of the regime. However, it is unlikely that there was a boom of marching song records during National Socialism, even if, of course, they were part of the record labels’ repertoires (Elste 1984, 108). In her study of radio in Nazi Germany, Inge Marszolek pointed out that the Volksempfängers’ loudspeakers contributed primarily via quiet sound to the production of the national community (see Marszolek 2005). Goebbels’s propaganda apparatus soon also disfavored the loud sound of marches. Goebbels remarked as early as March 1933 that playing “blaring marches every evening” would not support the aims of the new regime efficiently (Heiber 1971, 94). As a consequence, radio in Nazi Germany turned increasingly into an entertainment medium, with shows such as “Bunte Stunde” and “Wunschkonzert für die Wehrmacht” (see Koch 2006). However, in spite of or precisely because of its moderate volume level, radio definitely had a propaganda function. Thus, quiet sound could be the precondition for people to stay tuned to the Volksempfänger: “We know from remembrances that the Volksempfänger was switched off as soon as a loud voice came out of it: loud voices, those were the Führer, Goebbels, and others of the regime’s representatives” (Marszolek 2005, 67). To conclude, we have discussed National Socialism through the quiet sounds of its popular music. Here, popular music became part of the fascist system especially by stabilizing it by co-​constituting a carefree everyday life. Moreover, we saw how popular music made in fascist Germany –​despite severe political regulations –​not only reflected the Nazis’ political agenda. It preserved and established niches in the terror system. However, in a totalitarian system, in a certain way “normality” itself is already a niche, a niche that sustains the system. Notes 1 All translations in this chapter are by Jens Gerrit Papenburg, unless otherwise stated. In his recent book, Die Staatsräte. Elite im Dritten Reich: Gründgens, Furtwängler, Sauerbruch, Schmitt (The State Councils. Elite in the Third Reich:  Gründgens, Furtwängler, Sauerbruch, Schmitt), the cultural and literary historian Helmut Lethen analyzes nonconformist practices of cultural and intellectual elites in the Third Reich. Lethen deals primarily with the “Preußischer Staatsrat,” a committee that Hermann Göring initiated in 1933 to bind cultural and intellectual elites to the Nazi regime by allowing them a certain autonomy. However, as Lethen himself indicates, it is possible to analyze the extent to which popular music, too, opened up a cultural niche in Nazi Germany. 2 In German, “Bimbo” is a derogatory term for people with dark skin. 3 “Leise Töne” (quiet sounds) is also the title of a CD compilation from the label “Deutsche Moderne,” founded by Oliver Axer. The narrower catalogue of the label includes rereleases of dance music made in Germany from the 1930s and 1940s. 4 Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels initiated the Deutsches Tanz-​und Unterhaltungsorchester as an orchestra for popular music in 1941 as a counterpart to the renowned Berlin Philharmonic led by Wilhelm Furtwängler, to represent the fascist regime in the domain of popular music, as well. Franz Grothe was the artistic director of the orchestra. After the end of World War II, Grothe, a member of the NSDAP since May 1933, became the head of the supervisory board of the GEMA, the dominant fee-​collecting society in Germany for music authors’ rights. Grote is also the founder of the Franz-​Grothe-​Stiftung, a foundation that is today also funded by the GEMA. 5 The Reichsmusikkammer was founded in 1933 by the Nazi government as part of the Reichskulturkammer, which also included other chambers of, for instance, literature, theater, radio, and film. Goebbels was the head of the Culture Chamber. The composer Richard Strauss became the first president of the Music Chamber, followed by the composer and musicologist Peter Raabe in 1935. The Music Chamber administered popular music as “dance music” and as “entertainment music.” However, there were also a few smaller organizations regulating specific aspects of musical life, such as the Reichsmusikprüfstelle (Reich Music Review Board), Alfred Rosenberg’s NS-​Kulturgemeinde (Nazi Culture Community), and the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (Cultural Federation of German Jews).

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46   •   Jens Gerrit Papenburg 6 See also Carolin Stahrenberg’s chapter in this book. 7 In contrast to the US, for instance, broadcasting in Germany was public, controlled by the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG –​Reich Broadcasting Operation). After the Nazis’ seizure of power, Goebbels’s ministry soon took over control of the RRG. Moreover, Goebbels’s ministry factually controlled the Ufa, the dominant film company in Germany since 1937. 8 According to Kater, Schulz-​Köhn “must have believed that jazz and a strong National Socialist fatherland were indeed compatible, warts and all” (1992, 100).

Bibliography Becker, Tobias, Anna Littmann, and Johanna Niedbalski, eds. 2011. Die tausend Freuden der Metropole. Vergnügungskultur um 1900. Bielefeld: transcript. Bergmeier, Horst and Rainer E. Lotz. 2007. Booklet, “Der Jazz in Deutschland. Teil 2. Die Swing-​Jahre” (3 x compact disc). Holste-​Oldendorf: Bear Family Records. Birdsall, Carolyn. 2012. Nazi-​Soundscapes. Sound, Technology and Urban Space in Germany, 1933–​1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Dompke, Christoph. 2015. “Unterhaltungsmusik im ‘Dritten Reich’.” In Kunst im NS-​Staat:  Ideologie –​Ästhetik –​ Protagonisten, edited by Wolfgang Benz, Peter Eckel, and Andreas Nachama, 409–​25. Berlin: Metropol-​Verlag. Dümling, Albrecht. 2015. “Der trügerische Schein der Autonomie. Anspruch und Realität der Reichsmusikkammer.” In Kunst im NS-​Staat. Ideologie, Ästhetik, Protagonisten, edited by Wolfgang Benz, Peter Eckel, and Andreas Nachama, 369–​79. Berlin: Metropol. Elste, Martin. 1984. “Zwischen Privatheit und Politik. Die Schallplatten-​ Industrie im NS-​ Staat.” In Musik und Musikpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland, edited by Hanns-​Werner Heister and Hans G. Klein, 107–​14. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Grimme-​Preis. 2005. “Hitlers Hitparade (ZDF /​ARTE).” Accessed August 30, 2018. https://​www.grimme-​preis.de/​archiv/​ 2005/​preistraeger/​p/​d/​hitlers-​hitparade-​zdf-​arte/​ Heiber, Helmut (ed.). 1971. Goebbels Reden. Band 1: 1932–​1945. Düsseldorf: Droste. Hilmes, Oliver. 2016. Berlin 1936. Sechzehn Tage im August. Munich: Siedler. Isherwood, Christopher. 1997. Goodbye to Berlin. London: Vintage Classics. Jockwer, Axel. 2004. “Unterhaltungsmusik im Dritten Reich.” PhD diss., Universität Konstanz. Kater, Michael H. 1992. Different Drummers. Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. Kellersmann, Christian. 1990. Jazz in Deutschland von 1933–​1945. Menden: Jazzfreund. Koch, Hans J. 2006. Wunschkonzert: Unterhaltungsmusik und Propaganda im Rundfunk des Dritten Reichs. Graz: ARES Verlag. Kühn, Volker. 1984. “‘Man muß das Leben nehmen, wie es eben ist’. Anmerkungen zum Schlager und zu seiner Fähigkeit mit der Zeit zu gehen.” In Musik und Musikpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland, edited by Hanns-​Werner Heister and Hans G. Klein, 213–​26. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Lange, Horst H. 1996. Jazz in Deutschland. Die deutsche Jazzchronik bis 1960. Hildesheim: Olms. Lethen, Helmut. 2018. Die Staatsräte: Elite im Dritten Reich: Gründgens, Furtwängler, Sauerbruch, Schmitt. Berlin: Rowohlt. Marszolek, Inge. 2005. “Lautsprecher und leise Töne. Radio im Nationalsozialismus.” In Hörstürze: Akustik und Gewalt im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Nicola Gess, Florian Schreiner, and Manuela K. Schulz, 53–​68. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Moreck, Curt. 2018. Ein Führer durch das lasterhafte Berlin: Das deutsche Babylon 1931. Berlin: bebra verlag. Papenburg, Jens Gerrit. 2017. “Plantage, Militär, Maschine. Artikulationen populärer ‘afroamerikanischer’ Musik in Deutschland, 1900–​1925.” In Amerika-​Euphorie –​Amerika-​Hysterie. Populäre Musik made in USA in der Wahrnehmung der Deutschen 1914–​2014, edited by Michael Fischer and Christofer Jost, 95–​114. Waxmann: Münster. Prieberg, Fred K. 2009. Handbuch deutscher Musik: 1933–​1945. Auprès des Zombry: Selbstverlag. Ritzel, Fred. 2005. “‘… und nun an die Front, deutsche Kapellen, deutsche Musiker!’ –​Informationen und Überlegungen zu Wettbewerben in der populären Musikszene aus der Zeit vor dem 2. Weltkrieg.” In Keiner darf gewinnen. Populäre Musik im Wettbewerb, edited by Dietrich Helms and Thomas Phleps, 41–​55. Bielefeld: transcript. Schäfer, Hans D. 2009. Das gespaltene Bewußtsein:  Vom Dritten Reich bis zu den Langen Fünfziger Jahren. Göttingen: Wallstein.

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 Nazis and Quiet  Sounds   •   47 Schröder, Heribert. 1988. “Zur Kontinuität nationalsozialistischer Maßnahmen gegen Jazz und Swing in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich.” In Colloquium. Festschrift Martin Vogel zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Heribert Schröder, 175–​82. Bad Honnef: Gudrun Schröder Verlag. Spieker, Markus. 2003. Hollywood unterm Hakenkreuz: Der amerikanische Spielfilm im Dritten Reich. Trier: WVT. Stengel, Theo and Herbert Gerigk. 1940. Lexikon der Juden in der Musik:  Mit einem Titelverzeichnis jüdischer Werke. Berlin: Hahnefeld. Vierling, Oskar. 1938. “Erfahrungen mit einer 5 kW Großlautsprecheranlage auf der Burg zu Nürnberg.” Akustische Zeitschrift 3 (2): 93–​6. Wicke, Peter. 1998. Von Mozart zu Madonna. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Popmusik. Leipzig: Kiepenheuer. Wicke, Peter. 2011. “Lili Marleen (Lale Andersen).” In Songlexikon. Encyclopedia of Songs, edited by Michael Fischer und Christofer Jost. www.songlexikon.de/​songs/​lilimarleen. Wolffram, Knud. 1992. Tanzdielen und Vergnügungspaläste. Berliner Nachtleben in den dreißiger und vierziger Jahren. Berlin: Edition Hentrich. Wuthe, Stefan. 2012. Swingtime in Deutschland. Berlin: Transit.

Discography Andersen, Lale. 1939. “Lili Marlen (Lied eines jungen Wachpostens).” Electrola 6993, shellac. Axer, Oliver and Tanzorchester Friedr. Meyer-​Gergs. 1940/​2004. “Die kleine Nacht will schlafen gehen.” Polydor GR 47430 and Deutsche Moderne “Hitler’s Hit Parade,” shellac/​dvd. Bauschke, Erhard and Rudi Schuricke. 1939. “Ganz leise kommt die Nacht.” Grammophon 11354, shellac. R. A. Dvorsky m. s. Tanzorchester and Allan Terzett. circa 1986 (circa 1944). “Wenn die Woche keinen Sonntag hätt’.” Teldec LC 3706 “Im Rhythmus der Freude, Folge 5,” 2xLP. Even, Jenny. 1942. “Es ist nur die Liebe.” Odeon O-​26565a, shellac. Goldene Sieben. 1935. “Du sollst mein Glücksstern sein.” Electrola EG 3574, shellac. Hildebrandt, Hilde. 1932. “Die Dame von der alten Schule.” Electrola 2669, shellac. Niel, Herms. n.d. “Erika! Auf der Heide blüht ein kleines Blümelein.” Tempo 1426 (circa 1940), shellac. Niel, Herms. 1938. “Tschingta, Tschingta, Bumtara.” Kristall KC 26286, shellac. Schuricke, Rudi and Hans Carste. 1941. “Hm, hm –​Du bist so zauberhaft.” Electrola EG 7164, shellac. Stauffer, Teddy. 1936. “Goody Goody.” Telefunken A 2027, shellac. Various. 2003. “Leise Töne.” Deutsche Moderne, compact disc. Winter, Horst. 1941a. “Bei Dir war es immer so schön.” Tempo 5051, shellac. Winter, Horst. 1941b. “Ich liebe die Sonne, den Mond und die Sterne.” Tempo 5043, shellac.

Filmography Axer, Oliver, Susanne Benze (directors). 2004. Hitlers Hitparade. C. Cay Wesnigk Filmproduktion. Braun, Harald (director). 1942. Hab’ mich lieb. Ufa. Del Ruth, Roy, W.S. Van Dyke (directors). 1935. Broadway Melody 1936. MGM. Gerron, Kurt, Pečený, Karel (directors). 1945. Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet. Hansen, Rolf (director). 1942. Die Große Liebe. Ufa. Tykwer, Tom, Achim von Borries, Hendrik Handloegten (directors). 2017. Babylon Berlin. X Filme Creative Pool, Beta Film, Sky Deutschland, Degeto Film.

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3

Conflicting Identities

The Meaning and Significance of Popular Music in the GDR

Michael Rauhut

Charged with a special significance not attributed to it in the Western world, popular music1 had a particular relevance in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The fans recognized the music’s subversive power—​a power that would eventually help topple the Wall. Peter Wicke, the German Nestor of popular music studies, argues: Music is a medium which is able to convey meaning and values which—​even (or, perhaps, particularly) if hidden within the indecipherable world of sound—​can shape patterns of behavior imperceptibly over time until they become the visible background of real political activity. In this way, rock music contributed to the erosion of totalitarian regimes throughout Eastern Europe long before the cracks in the system became apparent and resulted in its unexpected demise. (Wicke 1992, 81) Critics counter that Eastern Bloc dictatorships tolerated these genres because they saw them as pressure relief valves—​as a way for people to release pent up frustrations. According to those scholars, the state maintained continuous control, even going so far as to subsidize the music—​ a strategy that eventually led to the domestication of those supposedly rebellious sounds and rhythms. As emphasized by the Polish musicologist Jolanta Pekacz, “relationships between the socialist state and rock were more often symbiotic than contradictory, hence many rock musicians were more interested in ‘adapting’ to the status quo, rather than in destroying it.” The “rock ‘revolt’ was not against the dominant culture, but within it” (Pekacz 1994, 48). Both positions are worth discussing, as they approach a complex phenomenon—​one riddled with contradictions—​ from different perspectives. Popular music was reclaimed as an identity-​forming medium by both the fans and the state for their own respective purposes. In the end, it was precisely those contradictions that functioned as its driving force. This contribution outlines popular music’s particular conditions of existence in the GDR, and how those were reflected in the meaning and significance of that genre. I will describe the power struggles linked to opposing identity ascriptions through an analysis of music-​based youth cultures in socialist East Germany.

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State Policies The GDR was founded as a socialist state in 1949. It defined itself as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and was led by the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands [Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED)], which was guided by Marxist-​Leninist principles. The GDR was centrally organized and governed by ideology—​and those mechanisms of control would affect the development of popular music. The state greatly limited the scope of action for private actors and monopolized the production and distribution of popular music. It held all decision-​making power, which was manifested through a widely ramified network of institutions and legal directives. The entire media sphere and event sector were under its control. An elaborate security apparatus monitored the day-​to-​day dynamics. The popular music scenes were completely infiltrated by the secret service’s “Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter” (unofficial collaborators), who wrote confidential reports in which they recorded even the slightest deviation from accepted political principles, thereby triggering counteractive measures. Press, radio, and television were all forced into line as well. In contrast to Western pluralism, public opinion was censored and polished with party doctrine. Over the decades, popular music has been discussed as a medium instrumentalized in the clash between different political systems. In the fifties and sixties, jazz, rock ’n’ roll, and beat music got caught between the fronts of the Cold War. The SED used them as a populist vehicle for their anti-​Western propaganda. During difficult political times, it identified the music as a dangerous medium of ideological diversion, as a “neurotoxin,” which would lead young people away from the path of socialism. Their attacks were directed primarily at the US, which was considered the “reactionary center of global imperialism” (Kleines politisches Wörterbuch 1973, 350)  and was therefore the number one “class enemy.” The SED’s aversion to the genres was nourished by the fact that the US was the birthplace of modern popular music, and that its state department celebrated jazz, blues, and rock as an expression of Western ideals of freedom—​even dispatching entertainment artists to Eastern Bloc countries on state-​sponsored tours (see Eschen 2004). Their animosity was also fed by press announcements such as the one on November 6, 1955 on the front page of The New York Times: “United States Has Secret Sonic Weapon—Jazz.” (Belair Jr. 1955, 1) Depending on which way the political wind was blowing, the SED exploited jazz and beat music in different ways. During brief times of détente, it was accorded a certain progressive potential, and was heard as the anticapitalist cry of the underpriviledged and subjugated. The state used Lenin’s theory to argue that there were two cultures within Western societies, which were mutually antagonistic:  the prevailing reactionary bourgeois culture, and the progressive-​ democratic culture represented by the working class. Depending on the political circumstances of the times, jazz and beat were interpreted as either a symptom of the decay of capitalism, or the domestic opposition’s soundtrack of resistance. Rock ’n’ roll, however, left no room for interpretation. It was condemned as a clear symptom of crisis, of a “dying” social system gasping out its last breath of aggressive rebellion. Aesthetic resentments whipped up a fatal rhetoric that frequently used the language of the Third Reich. The press caricatured stars such as Bill Haley and Elvis Presley as marionettes of political interests, as moral scum twisting their music into an overture for a new world war. Toward the end of the sixties, a paradigm shift occurred in the wake of a relaxation of state policy around cultural and youth issues. In spite of all the government’s prohibitions and repressive measures, the underground scenes were thriving and expanding uncontrollably. So the state began to channel that energy. In 1967, “jazz” was introduced into the secondary schools’

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curriculum in the GDR. Once condemned and persecuted, it was finally being rehabilitated as “an expression of protest against exploitation and racial oppression” (Pezold and Herberger 1973, 167). Starting in 1969, the state broadcasting company sent out talent scouts to the most remote corners of the Republic. They were supposed to discover young rock bands and work with them on developing songs worthy of production. The company’s only requirement was that the young talents express themselves in their mother tongue and avoid any extreme behavior. The media wanted to create a “socialist youth dance music,” which would differentiate itself from the West and distinguish itself by maintaining its “autonomy.” In reality, this concept never took off; aesthetic norms in the GDR were also set by global developments. The sole remaining statement of “autonomy” was the German lyrics, which were held over the Western-​influenced sounds like a fig leaf. The history of popular music in the GDR is a history of capitulation to the overwhelming dominance of the West. Sooner or later, even the trends they had fought most vehemently were authorized and embraced by the bureaucracy’s tentacled arms; it had simply become impossible to ignore their real importance in everyday life. In retrospect, the relationship between popular music and state power could be described as a permanent back and forth, as a pendulum swing between aversion, prohibition, and recognition. In 1971, the change of government from Walter Ulbricht to Erich Honecker brought in a new era, accompanied by a new path toward “consumer socialism.” The SED declared that the “increase in the material and cultural living standards of the people” was their “main objective” (Honecker 1971, 61). In that context, popular music was recognized as an important factor for youth and cultural policies. The governing bodies took on a pragmatic approach, revising the former, rigid strategy of differentiation. The SED leadership was now underscoring the point that “our dance music can never develop if it is shackled by Western trends; on the other hand, it cannot grow in a closed off, self-​contained greenhouse either” (Hager 1972, 46), or, even more clearly expressed: “We will not renounce jazz, beat, and folk just because the imperialistic mass culture is misusing them, manipulating people’s powers of aesthetic judgment in the interest of maximizing profits” (Rackwitz 1972, 4). From then on, rock and pop music2 would be extensively funded and subsidized—​ while also being monitored and corrupted. The state set up a gigantic bureaucratic apparatus to administrate the music scene and to guarantee total control. Nevertheless, there were glaring gaps in that system. On paper, it appeared as though the entire party hierarchy enjoyed monolithic unity. In reality, however, that was subverted by conflicts of interest, pragmatism, corruption, and resistance—​their goal of uniform behavior remained an illusion. And although they had intended to direct daily cultural processes by decree, that never came to be. Even the state’s vast arsenal of repressive strategies could not stop fans from continuing to develop niche scenes. In the early 1970s, the state began expending great cost and effort to pursue their grand vision. The government wanted to raise every single individual as a “socialist personality,” with the help of art and culture. That was defined as a “fully developed personality, which possesses comprehensive political, technical, and general knowledge, which holds a firm class standpoint based on a Marxist-​Leninist worldview, which is characterized by high mental, physical, and moral qualities, which is imbued with collective thought and action, and which actively, consciously, and creatively contributes to the shaping of socialism.” This ideal person was declared to be the “fundamental goal of the socialist society” (Wörterbuch zur sozialistischen Jugendpolitik 1975, 249). Rock and pop music were also expected to contribute and work as a catalyst for the formation of a socialist identity. The state stoically preached the following guiding principles all the way

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up until its fall: “Rock music is suited to promoting the beauty of a life of peace and socialism, to strengthen the courage to face life, to show pride in achievements, to encourage civic behavior and activities and also to make contradictions transparent, and use its resources to take sides in the battle of our time” (Generaldirektion beim Komitee für Unterhaltungskunst 1984). Dimensions of the Everyday There was a divide between the state’s ideological goals—​used as propaganda to reinforce the state’s promotion of popular music—​and the reality within the scene. As was the case for industrial nations of the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Bloc, the popular music scenes in the GDR were hooked up to the pulse of the Anglo-​American market, the source of their musical standards and cultural symbols. The sounds and images were communicated through the media in West Germany, but also in Luxemburg, Austria, and through the Allies. Almost all of the trends of the West found their East German counterpart at some point in time (see Rauhut 2002). Electronic rock and the disco wave had to first overcome the technical hurdles of an economy of scarcity, while punk had long been impeded by state repression. Psychedelic rock played almost no role in the GDR, as there was no constitutive moment of collective drug experience there. Technically ambitious playing styles, such as art rock and classic rock, exhibited much greater longevity than in their lands of origin, owing to the media’s high expectations of artistic value and the special qualifications of professional musicians. Trends that maintained an aura of the “handcrafted” and “authentic” demonstrated considerable persistance, such as folk rock, southern rock, and the blues. Popular music also elicited cultural youth movements in the GDR, where there was fertile ground for them to have an enormous effect. The particular climate produced by such a “closed society” increased the value of the music’s social and communicative power. The music became an allegory for “freedom,” “resistance,” and “otherness.” Under those guiding stars, fans established autonomous communication spaces, in which they were able to experience forbidden activities and act out their emotions. The fans’ habitual attitudes and peculiarities, their group dynamics, and rule-​breaking concepts of sexuality, morality, and pleasure generated continuous sources of conflict. The state developed elaborate security strategies to curtail their loss of influence. Up until 1965, it was the SED who dealt with the youth cultural phenomenon, which had bloomed under the influence of the beat music scene—​afterwards, the police and the Stasi were fully responsible for the day-​to-​day security surveillance of the people. A ministerial “directive on the political and operational fight against political and ideological deviations and underground activities among youth groups in the GDR” of May 15, 1966 defined longterm strategies. The document also provided action and interpretation schemas that would affect the way the Stasi handled the popular music scenes up until the fall of the Wall. It laid the strategic foundation for the observation and “Zersetzung” (subversion) of “negativ-​dekadente Jugendliche” (negative-​ decadent youth), as they were generally labeled. It read:  “Constant operational control can be ensured by the targeted recruitment of members of Western-​oriented music groups and their fan base” (Dienstanweisung 1966, 43). Discussions about domestic youth cultures were mainly held internally and under ideologically biased conditions up until the end of the eighties; the media took no notice of them. Official statements referred exclusively to the West. Hippies, punks, and skinheads were seen as disillusioned and manipulated youth—​as a symptom of the crisis of capitalism. The following was written about the “flower children,” for instance: “The rejection of a meaningful life, using escape

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into drugs and narcotic music as a ‘critique’ of a society of exploitation; that is precisely the lifestyle required by this doomed social order in order to extend its lifespan” (Hofmann 1971, 72). Even though it was almost impossible to overlook the importance of punk in the day-​to-​day life of many East German youth at that time, the state declared that punk had “no influence whatsoever” in the GDR: “First, the musical elements originate from rock music’s earliest forms, and are thus meaningless to any evolved form of rock music. Second, punk can only be understood in its specific social context. Third, punk contradicts our socialist norms of morality and ethics” (Lasch 1980, 94). Specific Characteristics of the Youth Scenes As in other places around the world, popular music was at the core of identity creation in the GDR. It functioned as a brace between a diverse reservoir of symbols, behavior patterns, and attitudes that served as markers of differentiation. Only a circle of initiates could decipher their codes. Their cultural context was a space of self-​discovery and self-​realization. The British sociologist Simon Frith made the following, justifiable claim: The first reason, then, we enjoy popular music is because of its use in answering questions of identity: we use pop songs to create for ourselves a particular sort of self-​definition, a particular place in society. The pleasure that pop music produces is a pleasure of identification— with the music we like, with the performers of that music, with the other people who like it. (Frith 1987, 140) That social positioning held a strong political connotation in the GDR. The state did hold some aesthetic reservations about popular music; it stoked generational conflicts—​but it was the social effects that were continuously interpreted as a threat. The fact that youth were veering off the predetermined path and discovering their own pattern of socialization was seen by the state as a frontal assault on its authority. That which the state had wanted to regulate and direct was in danger of spinning out of control: the comprehensive realization of the ideal socialist personality, including outside of official spheres of school and work. The state reacted in a correspondingly negative fashion. The youth caught in the crosshairs responded with denial or resistance. And so the politicization of popular music found itself in a vicious cycle following the law of action and reaction. The permanent suspicion and hypersensitivity of the censors and security agencies conferred a particular symbolic power to the music and the cultural activities linked to it, which it did not hold elsewhere. The close-​knit regulations, which were intended to guarantee influence and control, elicited the opposite effect. They awakened a creative desire for the forbidden, encouraging people to search the system for vulnerabilities and to develop niche scenes. Youth cultures created around popular music thus possessed a special quality due to the effect of the social and political relations in the country. They moved within a field of tension determined by both global influences and contradictions within the socialist system. The following section will analyze the defining characteristics of these scenes to provide an idea of the part the music played in everyday life. I limit this discussion to one particular example: a scene whose representatives called themselves “Blueser” (bluesers) or “Tramper” (hitchhikers), who could be considered the East German version of the hippies. Not only was it the longest-​lasting and liveliest youth culture

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to have existed, it was also the most flamboyant in the country. Born in the wake of Woodstock, the blueser scene began to lose its significance in the eighties due to competing pressure from punk, heavy metal, and other more attractive modes of self-​identification. The scene enjoyed its heyday in the second half of the seventies. Successive generations of bluesers followed the guiding principles of the hippie era. “Freedom,” “authenticity,” and “non-​conformism” were the primary values reflected in their behavioral patterns, their artistic preferences, and their attire (see Rauhut 2019). Style GDR youth cultures can be distinguished from communities in other countries by looking at their stylistic repertoire, only partly inspired by the images and behavior codes transferred from the West. Both groups revelled in their long hair, men grew beards and women enjoyed wearing flowing skirts. Bluesers and hippies alike wore jeans and sandals, headbands, necklaces, amulets, and the obligatory peace sign. However, if you were to put bluesers from the East next to hippies from San Francisco, you would notice subtle but important differences in their outfits. For example, bluesers mixed in their own everyday, traditional and regional items with typical Western dresscode items. They wore work shirts, climbing boots, which were actually meant for mountain climbers, and preferred to stow away their belongings in an old-​fashioned midwife’s bag, taking the bricolage principle a step further with their mishmash of “originality” and “innovation.” These added style elements were not just cheap and easily attainable, they were also perfectly suited to the group’s aesthetic concept. There were also shifts in emphasis as far as the music was concerned. As the scene-​goers self-​ given name indicates, their focal interest was the blues. Of course, that genre was also part of the hippies’ sound cosmos; they celebrated Janis Joplin and the Doors and had their guitar god in Jimi Hendrix. What was specific to the scene in the GDR was the central importance of the blues and the suppression of any psychedelic elements, as represented by bands such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. There were two sources of their quasi-​religious glorification of the blues: it was a relic of romantic, European patterns of interpretation while also being an expression of the youths’ rejectionist attitude. The demand for “authenticity” and “pure emotion” was projected onto this African-American music; the oppression of the former slaves was seen as the bluesers’ ancestral tale of woe. Autonomy Even though they were motivated by international trends, youth cultures enjoyed a certain level of autarky in the GDR. Specifically defined social positions and lifestyle concepts were obscured behind that iconic, seemingly standardized surface. Youth cultures in the East drew much of their substance from their own country’s potential for social conflict. All the West provided was the raw material, the stylistic repertoire. Or as the sociologists Manfred Stock and Philipp Mühlberg put it, “The ‘blueprints’ are used to manifest one’s own experiences, in the placing of the building blocks, in the combination of signs” (Stock and Mühlberg 1990, 236). The blues genre was reassessed in the GDR, becoming the sound of the silent resistance, a cipher for individuality and non-​conformity. Blues fans heard songs detailing experiences of exclusion and marginalization, and they related that to their own circumstances. Their committment

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to the music functioned as a symbolic act of self-​empowerment, as a protest against a repressive system. For the majority of fans, that aspect was implicit to the music, even as their main motivation—​enjoyment—​persisted. Relevance Youth cultures in the GDR had a lengthy half-​life, socially speaking. They gained traction a bit later than in West Germany but ended up lasting longer in the end. The phenomenon continued long after the hippie wave had passed its peak and the punk explosion had lost its spark in the West. This anachronistic tenacity was the result of biotopic conditions: youth cultures in the East were not subjected to market logic or calculated into the industrial chain of exploitation. The British pop music critic George Melly summed up this typical Western behavior in a succinct formula: “What starts as revolt finishes as style—​as mannerism” (Melly 1972, 43). That was not the case in the GDR, at least not in regard to its commerical inevitability. The hippie, punk, goth, and metalhead looks and associated attitudes were not recognized as sources of economic capital and thus robbed of their rebellious posture. Those marketing mechanisms did not exist in the GDR. The clothing and accessories that constituted the scene’s style and functioned as symbols of differentiation could not be bought in stores; acquiring them often required a considerable amount of energy and struggle. But they retained their explosive cultural and political power—​much longer than they had in their source countries. Politics The specific meaning of youth cultures in the GDR was politically determined. It is true that Western role models provided them with their basic stylistic repertoire and ideological benchmarks—​but those were in turn absorbed into the fields of social conflict, only to reemerge within new contexts of meaning. This was a multistage process. Anybody in the GDR who was a blueser or a punk had made the decision to act against the political norm, against the ideals of a socialist upbringing and personality profile. The automatic response to that was to charge them as “enemies of the state,” which led to penalties, or to incarceration in the most extreme cases. This stigmatization resulted in resistance, causing the scenes to self-​identify increasingly as political. There was one last step in the confrontation between the power of the state and the scene: cultural-​political appropriation. This strategy proved to be the most effective path toward the paralysis of oppositional groups, and all in all had the same effect as commercialization in the West. Youth cultures mutated into public assets, into an official form of entertainment, forfeiting their polarizing power. The blueser culture also bore the marks of political influence, and there was a snowball effect. With their long hair and parkas, the security agencies had them in their sights from the very beginning. They were labelled as “politisch-​negativ” (politically negative), “westlich-​dekadent” (decadently Western), and “asozial” (antisocial). As they continued to grow in numbers, so did pressure from the police and the Stasi. The movement reached its zenith toward the end of the seventies—​as did the state’s strategy of repression. On January 14, 1978, the head of the secret service at the time, Erich Mielke, ordered an increase of “political and operational work” and “strict compliance with socialist criminal law” (Dienstanweisung 1978) in the case of emergency. Step by step, the Ministry for State Security refined its strategic repertoire and perfected its system of

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informers. Work instructions, training, and graduation theses from the Juristische Hochschule Potsdam (Academy of Law in Potsdam) provided detailed analyses and planning. “Operative Vorgänge” (operational procedures) and “Operative Personenkontrollen” (operational identity verification) with code names such as “Blues,” “Penner” (riffraff), “Tramper” (hitchhikers) or “Diestel” focused particularly on musicians and on the suspiciously “long-​haired.” It was not uncommon for them to be observed for years, which limited their field of activity and gradually disabled (or to use the Stasi’s word: “zersetzt” [subverted]) them by way of a slow campaign of subtle terror. At its heart a hedonistic youth culture, the scene’s fringe came into increasing contact with oppositional trends as a result of political persecution. The Protestant church’s “Offene Arbeit” (open work) which catered to a non-​denominational clientele, became a gathering point for non-​ conforming youth. Quite a few of them were self-​defined bluesers. Between 1979 and 1986, East Berlin “blues masses” were aimed specifically at that target group (see Rauhut 2017); they also found a home in the Church’s environmental and peace movement. Bluesers were inadvertently spared the last phase in the downward spiral of politicization: state appropriation. In the mid-​eighties, the scene began to suffer from a lack of fresh members, as new youth cultures became more attractive. Now there were loud, mohawk-​wearing punks raising their fists up against the system, heavy metal fans who were shocking people with their muscles and leather—​and the growing swarm of skinheads represented a striking rebuttal to the claim that neo-​Nazism did not exist in the GDR. The security agencies were confronted with other, larger problems. It was only a question of time until the terrifying spectre of the bluesers disappeared from the political agenda. Conclusion The antagonistic relationship between the contrasting identity constructions worked as an important driving force in the development of popular music in the GDR. Both sides, the state and the fans, imbued the music with their own particular meanings. According to the will of the power structure, music should uphold the principle of social equality and contribute to the upbringing of a new kind of human being. The “socialist personality” must accept a subordinate role to the collective, and complete the metamorphosis “from I to we,” a common slogan at the time. Music fans, however, strove for the opposite: they were looking for individuality and differentiation. They thought of popular music as the ideal medium for emancipation and self-​ realization. In the musical trends of the West, they heard the sound of freedom. Jazz, blues, and rock allowed them to flee to another world emotionally and mentally—​a world beyond the Iron Curtain. In the GDR, popular music possessed a true political dimension. The state recognized its potential as a tool in the ideological clash between systems and implemented elaborate mechanisms to monitor and control the public. The integration of popular music into the cultural and security policy apparatus involved an enormous potential for conflict. Breaking the rules was unavoidable for musicians and fans, who saw their basic interests being violated. As far as the government was concerned, that constitued the undermining of socialist power structures—​but its reaction to that subversion ended up accelerating the downward political spiral. Pressure generated resistance. These frictions remained characteristic of the GDR from its foundation to its collapse. They released an energy that, despite all the obstructions and prohibitions, yielded a productive result.

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56   •   Michael Rauhut

The bulk of popular music’s appeal in East Germany came from its frictional relationship with the system. That continuous conflict between antagonistic identity patterns nourished a music culture that was of both high quality and relevance. Acknowledgments Jessica Ring is gratefully acknowledged for translating this chapter. Notes 1 For the definition of terminology specific to popular music, see here and in the following: Wicke and Ziegenrücker 2007. On the concept of “popular music,” see Middleton and Manuel 2001. 2 For a differentiation of “rock” and “pop music,” see Middleton 2001 and Middleton et al. 2001.

Bibliography Belair Jr., Felix. 1955. “United States Has Secret Sonic Weapon—​Jazz.” New York Times, November 6: 1 and 42. Dienstanweisung. 1966. Dienstanweisung Nr. 4/​66 zur politisch-​operativen Bekämpfung der politisch-​ideologischen Diversion und Untergrundtätigkeit unter jugendlichen Personenkreisen in der DDR, May 15. Der Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (BStU), ZA, MfS VVS 008–​365/​66. Dienstanweisung. 1978. Dienstanweisung Nr. 8/​78, January 14. BStU, ZA, VVS MfS 008–​8/​78, Dok. 102433. von Eschen, Penny Marie. 2004. Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Frith, Simon. 1987. “Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music.” In Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, edited by Richard Leppert and Susan McClary, 133–​49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Generaldirektion beim Komitee für Unterhaltungskunst. 1984. Standpunkt zur Entwicklung der Rockmusik in der DDR, May 21. Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (SAPMO-​BArch): DY 30/​39004. Hager, Kurt. 1972. Zu Fragen der Kulturpolitik der SED: 6. Tagung des ZK der SED, 6.–​7. Juli 1972. Berlin (DDR): Dietz. Hofmann, Heinz Peter. 1971. ABC der Tanzmusik. Berlin (DDR): Verlag Neue Musik. Honecker, Erich. 1971. “Bericht des Zentralkomitees an den VIII. Parteitag der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands.” In Protokoll der Verhandlungen des VIII. Parteitages der SED, vol. 1, 34–​123. Berlin (DDR): Dietz. Kleines politisches Wörterbuch. 1973. Kleines politisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed. Berlin (DDR): Dietz. Lasch, Stefan. 1980. PS: Rock-​Musik. Berlin (DDR): Tribüne. Melly, George. 1972. Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in Britain. London: Penguin Books. Middleton, Richard. 2001. “Rock.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, Volume 21, 485–​6. London: Macmillan. Middleton, Richard, and Peter Manuel. 2001. “Popular Music.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, Volume 20, 128–​66. London: Macmillan. Middleton, Richard et al. 2001. “Pop.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, Volume 20, 101–​22. London: Macmillan. Pekacz, Jolanta. 1994. “Did Rock Smash the Wall? The Role of Rock in Political Transition.” Popular Music 13 (1): 41–​9. Pezold, Hans, and Rainer Herberger. 1973. Musik: Lehrbuch für die Klassen 9 und 10, 2nd ed. Berlin (DDR): Volk und Wissen. Rackwitz, Werner. 1972. “Wie steht es mit unserer Tanzmusik? Referat des Stellvertreters des Ministers für Kultur, Dr. Werner Rackwitz, anlässlich der Tanzmusikkonferenz am 24. und 25. April 1972 in Berlin.” Sonntag, June 11, Beilage. Rauhut, Michael. 2002. Rock in der DDR 1964 bis 1989. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.

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 Popular Music in the  GDR   •   57 Rauhut, Michael. 2019. One Sound, Two Worlds: The Blues in a Divided Germany, 1945–1990. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Rauhut, Michael. 2017. “With God and Guitars: Popular Music, Socialism, and the Church in East Germany.” Popular Music and Society 40 (3): 292–​309. Stock, Manfred, and Philipp Mühlberg. 1990. Die Szene von Innen:  Skinheads, Grufties, Heavy Metals, Punks. Berlin: LinksDruck. Wicke, Peter. 1992. “The Times They Are A-​Changin’: Rock Music and Political Change in East Germany.” In Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, edited by Reebee Garofalo, 81–​92. Boston: South End Press. Wicke, Peter, Wieland and Kai-​Erik Ziegenrücker. 2007. Handbuch der populären Musik:  Geschichte, Stile, Praxis, Industrie, new expanded edition. Mainz: Schott. Wörterbuch zur sozialistischen Jugendpolitik. 1975. Wörterbuch zur sozialistischen Jugendpolitik. Berlin (DDR): Dietz.

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4

“Party on the Death Strip”

Reflections on a Historical Turning Point Susanne Binas-​Preisendörfer

The fall of the Wall had a profound impact on people from the former GDR who were involved in popular music culture. The cultural, political and media circumstances in which they produced, released and performed their music changed almost overnight. At the same time, we can assume that the rigid, ideological principles underlying cultural and media policy also impelled young people and musicians in the GDR to do their part to bring down the Wall. They increasingly turned their backs on the state –​in terms of the media used, aesthetics and politics –​and executed well-​rehearsed strategies to navigate between the poles of provocation and affirmation in the international context of pop music. In the Berlin of the early nineties enthusiastic creators transformed the former site of the Berlin Wall and emerging brownfield areas into an event, club and party landscape; a landscape which without the impulse of recent historic events would not have acquired renown beyond the city limits, let alone beyond the national border, and become so popular that it can be considered to have laid the foundation for a pan-​German electro-​pop culture. This chapter discusses the circumstances and opportunities that emerged for those involved in popular music after the fall of the Wall, and how and to what extent this historical event is remembered in the media 25 years on. Border Crossings –​Memories of a Historic Night November 9, 1989 was a Thursday. Even though it was a weekday, the band in which I played saxophone was performing at a student club in Dresden, barely 200 km from Berlin. We stopped at a motorway service station on the way and, as often happened, we bumped into other musicians who had been playing in the area, in Görlitz, Karl-​Marx-​Stadt (now Chemnitz), Zwickau, Plauen or Riesa. Just before midnight we arrived back in Berlin in our rented minibus. We were listening to “Yachtclub und Buchteln” (Yachtclub and small yeast cake), our favorite album cassette by a band whose members were also good friends of ours, AG Geige. The streets of East Berlin were usually deserted at this time of night. When we wanted to turn north just before the Oberbaum Bridge, a border crossing that today connects the districts of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg across the river Spree, we noticed that there were far more people out and about than usual. They were running towards Oberbaum Bridge, towards the border crossing, towards Kreuzberg. Among them was our manager, at the time carrying a large bottle of champagne under his arm. We 58

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bad-​mouthed him and guessed that he had got himself another passport to travel to West Berlin. The lo-​fi synth sound of AG Geige was still playing on the car stereo: “(Talking) ein Kaufhaus müsste mein sein, mit zwanzig gefräßigen Rolltreppen; (A heavily distorted voice interjects) automatisch; … gigantische Ventilatoren pressen dicke heiße Luft rein …” (a department store should be mine, with twenty voracious escalators; (…) automatic; … gigantic ventilators blowing in hot air …) (AG Geige 1987). The situation out on the street started to really irritate us. We turned on the radio … … What follows has since been transmitted and broadcast hundreds of times in both German and international media. Günter Schabowski, first secretary of the SED district leadership and chairman of the district administration of East Berlin, had overlooked the embargo on a press release. When asked by journalists when citizens of the GDR would receive permits allowing them to travel to West Berlin or the Federal Republic of Germany, he responded with two sentences that would become iconic soundbites in German history: “The permits will be issued shortly” (Journalist off-​ camera: “When will this come into force?”) “As far as I know, (pause) effective immediately, without delay” (Schabowski 1989). General Secretary Erich Honecker had already been forced to resign by the Politburo of the SED Central Committee on October 18,1989. The Council of Ministers of the GDR announced its resignation on November 7, and on the night of November 9, the Wall opened. We quickly took the instruments to our rehearsal space and went to join the crowds of people who wanted to cross over to the west at the Bornholmerstrasse border crossing. Time and time again these images have been broadcast in the media and have also featured in many documentaries about the fall of the Wall, for example, in Party auf dem Todesstreifen –​Soundtrack der Wende (Party on the death strip –​Soundtrack to Die Wende), produced by the French-​German station arte to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Wall. But more about that later. “Once upon a time …” –​Cultural and Media Policy in the GDR That night in November represented a real turning point for most people living in the GDR. Within six months the Deutsche Mark had been introduced in the East and within another three months the two German states were reunified. This ushered in a period of drastic change for musicians from the (former) GDR. The introduction of the monetary union turned the music world upside down almost overnight; market forces and competition took over. It marked the end of a period in which the state, which adopted a highly ambivalent attitude towards rules and their implications on culture, organized and controlled the destiny of this social realm. In the GDR, anything that had an influence on society was, as far as possible, “planned, regulated, managed and, in particularly, controlled by state organs” (Wicke 1996, 12). These mechanisms were dependent on the country’s political and cultural climate, which was characterized by cold spells as well as periods of thaw. Two of the most significant incidents to affect the creative industry, perfectly illustrating one such cold spell, were the results of the 11th Party Congress of the Central Committee of the SED in 1965 and the “expatriation” of critical singer-​songwriter Wolf Biermann in 1976.1 Following the 11th Congress, a new law was introduced in 1965 that regulated the performance of music for dance and entertainment purposes before an audience (in other words, in public). This law (Order No. 2; 1965, 777) typified the state’s ambivalence towards culture in a particularly remarkable way. Anyone who wanted to perform or play at a youth club, at a festival, in front of students or at a cultural association needed a permit. Performers received a classification from a state classification committee, which

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decided which band or group would be granted a permit. The Committee assessed not only the performers’ musical skills, but also  –​and perhaps more importantly  –​the band’s ideological ­integrity and whether it followed state doctrine. Bands had to submit the lyrics of their songs and the Committee documented their assessment of individual musicians and any elements that needed to be “monitored” in a report. The permit also indicated the fees to be paid to each individual musician and the band for each performance. The band Der Expander des Fortschritts, in which I played at the time, received the highest classification in the amateur section: “Special permit with concert authorization.” AG Geige were classified as an “Outstanding folk collective,” because the Karl-​Marx-​Stadt district used different classifications than Berlin. Thus, the social landscape was regulated by the state rather than market forces, which also meant that event organizers, such as a FDJ (the official youth movement of the GDR) club, had to pay musicians the amount specified on their permit. Given the importance of popular music to those living in the GDR, regardless of whether musicians or bands supported or resisted the state, musicians could count on finding a loyal audience. But even if the hall was empty, they still got paid. Economically speaking, the production of records turned out to be another sore point. The VEB Deutsche Schallplatte was the only record producer in the GDR and thus had no competition. Not only was there a rigid system that decided who was allowed to produce a record and who was not, shortages (vinyl had to be bought on international markets using foreign currency and CDs were not produced in the GDR) also resulted, in the view of musicians and the general public, in an absurd policy for releasing and distributing records. It was impossible to keep up with international trends, flexibility and diversification, which had been commonplace on international markets since the late 1970s, due to the scarcity of resources and the cultural direc­ tives that were introduced to ensure a balanced presentation of genres, even though record sales had raised considerable revenues. Production capacities were set in advance for the individual genres (Schlager music 25 percent, rock and pop 25 percent, blues and jazz 15 percent, singer-​ songwriters and folk music 15 percent, lullabies and children’s songs 10 percent, musicals and operas 10 percent) and published by the AMIGA label, which was responsible for “light entertainment” (Rauhut and Rauhut 1999). Despite the fact that the distribution policy was very much dependent on the availability of resources, VEB Deutsche Schallplatte’s relationship with the comparatively moderate Ministry of Culture was much more liberal than, for example, the state’s relationship with the two other producers of popular music: radio and television. They reported directly to the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the Central Committee of the SED and had to follow strict political guidelines. Sometimes, tracks produced on records were never aired on the radio because they did not make it past the radio editors (for example, because they contained inflammatory lyrics) and were locked away, despite the fact that a lot of money went into producing them in VEB Deutsche Schallplatte’s studio. From the mid-​1980s, radio started to get involved as a producer of music and cooperated with VEB Deutsche Schallplatte. On the premises of the GDR radio broadcasting center a pop studio was opened and fitted with the latest equipment. As VEB Deutsche Schallplatte, the concert industry and radio started to become less popular around the mid-​to late 1980s, radio officials started to send a mobile studio even to the newer bands, so they did not have to go to the broadcasting center, which was subject to tight security measures. At the same time, throughout the 1980s more and more successful musicians set up their own studios and leased them to interested parties. They either purchased equipment when touring in Western countries or got it through diplomats whose luggage was not checked at the border crossing. Overall,

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however, getting your hands on high-​quality technical equipment and the appropriate hardware and software to produce modern music was somewhat of a problem. Drumstick shortages were just as much a part of everyday life as being on a waiting list for a new car and fuel quotas. You could only get digital equipment (samplers, and so on) if you were willing to pay the exorbitant exchange rates (1 German Mark was worth 5 to 8 East German Marks). As a result, the black market flourished. A musician’s daily life consisted primarily of live performances up and down the country –​ in a country that was geographically speaking very small: just 500 km from north to south and 200 km from east to west. Only very few musicians toured abroad (either to the East or West). East Germany had a number of popular concert venues and locations which were run by organizations such as the FDJ, district cultural offices, cultural centers and other state-​ run organizations. Privately-​owned pubs and bars very rarely opened their dance halls for touring bands to perform. Not least, state organs, such as the Ministry of State Security (the Stasi), always kept an eye on them, because they were obligated only to themselves and their own business. Bands that did not have an official permit had to seek their audience in unofficial settings (such as open youth centers organized by the evangelical church, galleries or privately organized meetings), on which the Stasi kept an even more watchful eye. The ubiquitous red tape surrounding permits, the neurotic fear of being arrested as a dissenter and the labyrinth of power ultimately created a system that was not only difficult for musicians to understand, but also one that they rejected and which became increasingly difficult to control. Musicians and their audiences, however, did not live on a secluded island. Mass media (mainly radio), record circles and the bands and artists invited to East Germany to perform in the late 1980s introduced them to international trends and developments in pop music and youth culture. Despite the virtual state monopoly on producing, distributing and presenting popular music, there had always been successful attempts to circumvent that structure. Throughout the 1980s small, independent cassette labels emerged for punk and new wave music. And even before that, concerts, performances or readings were available on Super8 film or tape cassettes. People published books with accompanying cassettes themselves and printed slightly fewer copies than were allowed according to printing regulations to get around the red tape of the responsible authorities. As a result, a market and communication network emerged alongside the state-​run system, although we must not forget that nothing was safe from the prying eye of the Stasi; its informants were active in all walks of life. The years towards the end of the 1980s, the period just before the fall of the Wall, were characterized by considerable inconsistencies and contradictions. The state allowed broadcasting formats, events and records that would have been unthinkable ten years earlier. The state apparatus, and especially those responsible for the FDJ, started to realize that overly rigid measures and a uniform pop sound could neither meet the expectations of the young audience nor prevent the younger generation from disengaging and breaking away from the ideals of their parents and the idea of socialism. For example, the youth radio DT64 introduced a program called PAROCKTIKUM, which played tracks sent in by punks and “alternative” bands. In the late 1980s, international acts such as Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker and Bruce Springsteen played on large open-​ air stages and Depeche Mode performed at the Werner Seelenbinder Hall in Berlin, all invited by the state. It cooperated with international record companies and even allowed some East German bands to produce records in West Berlin recording studios. At major events, bands read

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out sections of the Communist Manifesto rather than submitting their own lyrics for approval time and again. The provocation elicited but little response. Neither side took the other seriously anymore. “Dancing is allowed…” –​Changes in the Weekly Routine On September 18, 1989, a group of well-​known rock musicians, songwriters, jazz musicians and other artists joined the New Forum movement, which published a statement on September 9. The declaration, titled For Our Country, read:  “Communication between the state and society has obviously broken down in our country” (Aufbruch 89 –​Neues Forum 1989). In the summer of 1989 countless citizens, especially young people, left the GDR and made it to Western Europe via Hungary. In the spring of 1989, bands interrupted their concerts to read out the New Forum’s proclamation. That was a significant moment for a lot of people. On November 4, the first officially approved mass demonstration which was not organized by the Party took place at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. The final rally was organized by artists and staff from several East Berlin theatres. Well-​ known actors, representatives of artists’ associations, the New Forum, Gregor Gysi,2 and the previously quoted Günter Schabowski spoke at the event. “If the government stands down in the next few weeks,” in the words of the famous playwright Heiner Müller on Alexanderplatz, “dancing is allowed at demonstrations!” When my band introduced the A-​side of our first record, which we were allowed to record at the VEB Deutsche Schallplatte studio in early 1990, we used those very words. The record was released on the German market in the autumn of 1990 under the name ad acta (Der Expander des Fortschritts 1990). VEB Deutsche Schallplatte had changed its legal form and was renamed Deutsche Schallplatten GmbH Berlin. AMIGA also ceased to exist; the label was renamed Zong. Between September and November 1989 events in the GDR came thick and fast: starting with the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig, vigils in the Gethsemane Church in Prenzlauer Berg (Berlin), the founding of the New Forum, arrests at demonstrations on the fortieth anniversary of the GDR on October 7, the mass demonstration on Alexanderplatz and finally the opening of the Wall the night of November 9. This period went down in history as a so-​called peaceful revolution. Although it was not always peaceful there were no major riots, which many had feared. In the months following the fall of the Wall people expressed a lot of different hopes. A lot also changed for and in the music scene. Bands were finally able to travel, bands from the West played in the cities of the GDR. Anyone who could afford it started to replace their vinyl collection with CDs.3 That development in particular benefitted the German recording industry. New labels, magazines, publishers, clubs, and free radio stations started to emerge. East Berliners worked in West Berlin radio stations and vice versa. People were curious on both sides. Despite all these developments, the once-​cherished myth of resisters and conspirators evaporated very quickly. Many musicians from the East not only lost their audience to international bands and artists, but also the hated yet at the same time comfortable and familiar infrastructure of the former production environment and distribution platforms. At the same time, the entire music scene, from state supporters to punks and dissidents, suffered as a result of more and more revelations about many members, even the most dedicated, having worked as unofficial collaborators for the Stasi. Concepts of music and livelihood had to be re-​interpreted. Scores of bands broke up, cultural centers and district offices responsible for cultural activities soon closed their doors and nationally-​owned organizations suspended cultural activities long

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before the Treuhandanstalt (agency established by the last GDR government in March 1990 to (re)privatize East German enterprises) took over. Almost all print media outlets were bought by Western publishing groups, and radio and television stations adapted to the dual system (public and private) and underwent a thorough overhaul. What marked the beginning of a new era for some, was the end of a once promising career for others. Inevitably, anyone who wanted to continue dedicating themselves to their music had to get to grips with the mechanisms of market structures and consistently develop appropriate marketing strategies. Fixed fees were a thing of the past; competition, demand and supply ruled. In hindsight, only a few managed to make a name for themselves on the German market (Die Prinzen) and on the international market (Rammstein and Paul van Dyk). Today, almost 30 years later, numerous other musicians, rappers and DJs can be added to the list of individuals who have shaped  –​and continue to shape –​the German music scene; Marteria (born in Rostock) and Kraftklub (Karl-​Marx-​Stadt, now Chemnitz) grew up in the former GDR. Other bands that enjoyed some success in GDR times managed to hold on to their fans (Puhdys) and others, with a new line-​up, continued playing also their old hits (Silly). As for the system for the production and distribution of pop music, a substantial difference has materialized between urban centers and rural regions. Apart from huge festival areas, to which thousands of people make their pilgrimage in the summer months, well-​known bands very rarely schedule tour dates in rural regions. Interestingly, big festivals, such as Melt! and Splash, have also sprung up on the former sites of closed opencast mines and unprofitable industries (Ferropolis –​ “the city of iron”). The influence and role of rural areas is now largely insignificant. Things are different in the big cities, and the eyes of the world are on Berlin. “Sounds like Berlin”4 –​The Fall of the Wall and Club Culture Berlin was a divided city until the fall of the Berlin Wall.5 In 1961 the East German government constructed the Wall –​the anti-​fascist protection wall, as it was known in the GDR –​around West Berlin, which was administered by the three Western powers. Both halves of the city enjoyed a special status until the fall of the Wall, which ultimately also had an effect on the music cultures on both sides. In the old West Berlin housing was cheap, there were two universities as well as the University of the Arts, broadcasting corporations (Sender Freies Berlin and the RIAS), there was no military service and much more money was spent on cultural activities, since there was more of it available in the old West German states. This was an ideal breeding ground for a lively subculture and independent scene, for cooperative galleries and even legendary recording studios. East Berlin was home to government offices and agencies and the GDR radio broadcasting center; it had a university, several art colleges and many event venues and theatres. The city lived by the anonymity that is common in large cities and there was a lot of very cheap, run-​down housing which provided students, musicians and artists with the kind of atmosphere they needed to fuel their stubbornness and creativity. Famous musicians like Nick Cave, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie spent many, many hours at Hansa Studios and many significant years of their musical careers in West Berlin. They contributed to the myth of the city, alongside Lokomotive Kreuzberg, Element of Crime, Malaria!, Die Ärzte and Spliff. In 1976, Nina Hagen moved from East to West following the Biermann affair and embarked upon her second career in West Berlin.6 The Olympic Stadium and especially SO36 and the lofts and pubs in Kreuzberg became legendary locations for art and music production

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in the old west of Berlin. Werner Seelenbinder Halle, Die Insel der Jugend and Haus der jungen Talente (HdjT), Duncker-​Klub and the Langhansstrasse youth club were doing the same on the other side of the Wall. When after November 9, 1989 the first “Wallpeckers” started to claim their pieces of the Wall, an entire area was laid bare. It was here that a musical pop culture would take root in the following months –​a culture that would go on to play a crucial role in shaping the myth and reality of the city of Berlin until the present day. A 2014 documentary entitled Party auf dem Todesstreifen  –​der Soundtrack der Wende looked back on this period. It is based on the book Der Klang der Familie –​Berlin, Techno und die Wende (The Sound of the Family –​Berlin, Techno and Die Wende) by Felix Denk and Sven von Thülen, who themselves were active club managers and techno fans. The documentary includes interviews with techno DJs who were at the birth of this cultural movement, i.e. those who were working as DJs and event organizers during the reunification period and wanted to make a name for themselves. Even today, they associate the “fall of the Wall” with the development of Berlin’s club culture and its then particularly successful and popular genres of Acid House and Big Beat. The eastern part of the city in particular was a Mecca for fans of techno and club culture in the early 1990s in Germany, in addition to the cities of Cologne and Hamburg, which, as a result of urban policy changes (exodus of large industries, closure of factories and ports) had a lot of empty buildings which became a breeding ground for musical activities within sub-​, youth and event cultures. Berlin was a unique case: the special status of the old West Berlin met the equally special status of the old East Berlin. The land along the path of the former Berlin Wall which used to separate and divide the two halves of the city was peppered with old factories, department stores and power stations that had not been used since the end of the Second World War in 1945 or the construction of the Wall in 1961. Cultural activists from East and West started to occupy buildings that remained unclaimed and had no legal owners, and they were transformed into clubs modelled on the Warehouse in Chicago. These clubs attracted hundreds of techno fans day after day, and not just at the weekend. It was during this period that Tresor, E-​Werk and WMF also opened their doors, and it was not long before these techno clubs became famous beyond the city limits. These names refer to specific locations, their original function or the names of former owners. They became locations in the physical sense, but also social and cultural spaces that stimulated the post-​ reunification music culture that very much appealed to young people from Berlin, but also from the rest of Germany and beyond. At the same time, they became commercial brands –​companies that not only owned and managed clubs but also produced and distributed their own records. These famous clubs were not the only cultural hotspots in the city; there were countless other smaller clubs dotted around the city center (especially in Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte, later in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg). Techno impresarios occupied a house or a cellar, installed a lighting system, dragged in a few beer crates, came up with secretive methods of communication using answering machines and then the obligatory flyer, which was regularly used to advertise the increasingly popular club events. “In Berlin you could do things that you wouldn’t even think of doing elsewhere,” recalled Olaf “Gemse” Kretschmar in an interview with the author in the early 2000s (Binas 2003, 129). There was no curfew, an abundance of untrained local politicians, and, above all, a lot of empty buildings. When Gemse, a social sciences and philosophy graduate, opened Delicious Doughnuts in 1993 with friends from the former GDR punk and new wave scene, they did not want to be pigeonholed into a specific genre just yet. Back then, Gemse said, it was important to share sounds, ideas, and premises with other people. Nightclub culture did not differentiate between

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creators and audience; it was more about “having the audacity to get something done” (Binas 2003, 129). He played the game without having a plan or any capital, swept along by the euphoria of Berlin’s rebirth. His second club, Oxymoron in the Mitte district, had more of a coherent business concept: breakfast available in the morning and good wines, cocktails, cigars and Italian-​ French cuisine available from 12 noon. If you were lucky, at the end of the 1990s you might even have bumped into Herbert Grönemeyer (musician and successful songwriter), Walter Momper (mayor), Mick Jagger or Peter Sloterdijk (philosopher). On weekends, Oxymoron turned into a real club from 11 p.m., when DJs treated the dancefloor to funk, soul, R’n’B, house and big beat. The prices were comparatively moderate, but not for everyone’s wallet. The clubs were frequented by a generation that had enjoyed a middle-​class upbringing. If they came from the West to Berlin they had grown up with video and computer games, had money and “were not afraid of using technology and the urban and economic change after the fall of the Wall was part of everyday life for them” (Vogt 2002, 117). Subversion, entrepreneurial flair, creative spirit and parallel worlds came together in techno and electronic music. It was precisely this mix that attracted so many of those involved in the scene, whether organizers, musicians or fans. The subversiveness of this generation, however, expressed itself in a sense of community that seemed to be free of ideology: respect and freedom were the rules of the night. The sounds of the associated musical genres “no longer wanted to reach the listener as a recipient of messages […] but as a generator” (Schweinfurth 1998, 61). Clubs, fashion, lifestyle and electronic music became urban symbols of a transformation process that challenged the certainties of traditional social, cultural and economic relationships. Flexibility would soon become the magic word of digital capitalism (see Glotz 1999). “The Future Started There and Then” –​Memories in the Media To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, in 2014/​15 public broadcasters produced several programs on the significance of popular music for these events. Two of those programs are mentioned briefly below, because they explain why the fall of the Wall was the driving force behind the electro and techno scene in Germany and because the title of this chapter is borrowed from one of them. The above-​ mentioned documentary Party auf dem Todesstreifen –​Soundtrack der Wende (“death strip” refers to the victims and the impregnability of the Berlin Wall) generally follows the pattern of current German television documentaries. It falls into the category of “histotainment.” Historical images from those eventful days in the summer and autumn of 1989 are intertwined with interviews with contemporary witnesses from the techno scene. These witnesses talk about recordings from a Saturday evening radio program, Radio Free Berlin’s youth program Radio 4U: “new electronic dance music, acid house.” A DJ from the former eastern part of the city says that he remembers how “constantly listening to the program and everything that went on there made him realize that he had to leave the GDR.” Another witness explains: “For a lot of people music was a driving force, […] we all knew that we would leave someday. Everyone always said that they wouldn’t be the last one to turn off the lights. That was one of our sayings at the time.” The dramatic highlights of the documentary are the images of the opening of the Berlin Wall. The viewer is shown shots of Berlin at night, the border crossing at Bornholmer Straße, Trabants headlights, border officers taken aback by the stream of people trying to cross the border. The press conference with Günter Schabowski flashes onto the screen, accompanied by the now familiar words: “Individuals from East Germany may travel abroad without having to meet the

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previous requirements, without having to apply to travel and without having to prove family connections. The permits will be issued soon […].” The documentary B-​Movie –​das wilde Westberlin (B-​Movie –​Wild West Berlin) (Hoppe et al. 2015) also makes a direct connection between ravers and techno and electronic music and the opening of the Berlin Wall. The co-​author of the program, the British musician, music producer and label owner Mark Reeder,7 who moved from London to West Berlin in 1978, comments on the images of the Berlin Love Parade with the words: The future started there and then, on July 1, 1989. Nearly 100 ravers gathered on the Ku’damm and turned it into a dance floor. [Pause] Dr Motte, the man behind the Love Parade, like us, had no idea that a few years later more than one million ravers from all over the world would flock to Berlin for this mega event. The Love Parade catapulted WestBam’s career to another level. He soon had his own truck and composed a new anthem every year. [Pause] On that rainy Saturday I  also couldn’t have predicted what was about to happen only four months later. [Pause] Our call for more freedom didn’t fall on deaf ears. It had dramatic political consequences that totally changed the city and the world. Unlike the protagonists in the TV documentary Party auf dem Todesstreifen, the program produced by arte and Reeder explored how the wild years and relationships in old West Berlin –​ the occupied buildings, the pubs in Kreuzberg and especially the punk scene with its mix of bohemians, conscientious objectors and artists –​became the founding myths of the new Berlin. While the producers of Party auf dem Todesstreifen focus on techno and electro music, Reeder attempts to trace the genealogy of post-​punk, new wave and electronic music. 2019 marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; the Wall has now been down longer than it was up (from 1961 until 1989), separating East and West Germany and surrounding the city of Berlin. Nevertheless, it seems that its existence as well as its end is deeply rooted in the memory of those who lived through it. There have been many attempts in recent years to write about or cinematise the recent history of popular music in Germany, not least against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification. It is an impossible task to reconcile the memories and experiences of all those who lived through and participated in the music scenes in East and West. Their own memories are representations of their own past, seen from modern-​day perspectives and reinforced by media images, sounds and the memory of a time when they were still young, curious and went against the grain. This conflict of emotions and memories makes it difficult to achieve any real clarity, not least because many of the authors, including myself, are also contemporary witnesses and thus representatives of their own history. Attempting to answer the whats, whys and the hows of that history is a challenge that requires a self-​reflective approach to historiography. Notes 1 See also publications by Michael Rauhut (Rauhut 1993 and 1996). 2 Gregor Gysi worked in the GDR as a lawyer defending civil rights activists and critics of the system. From 1990 to 2000 and since 2005 he has been a member of the German parliament and chairman of Die Linke (The Left) political party. 3 Citizens over the age of 60 could exchange up to 6,000, adults up to 4,000 and children up to 14 years up to 2,000 East German Marks to Deutsche Marks at a rate of 1:1. Anything over that was exchanged at a rate of 2:1, and debts were also halved.

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 Reflections on a Historical Turning Point   •   67 4 See also Binas 2000. 5 There has recently been a heated debate as to whether the wall “opened” or “fell.” Using the phrase “the Wall fell” rather than “the Wall opened” in everyday language and in the media is an “understanding of the events of 1989/​1990 from a West German perspective, which has since become a meaningless phrase and the ‘norm’,” according to Thomas Oberender, born in Jena in 1966 and artistic director of the Berliner Festspiele since 2012. (Oberender 2017, 47) 6 Following a concert in Cologne, the GDR government banned the critical songwriter Wolf Biermann from re-​entering the GDR. Biermann subsequently enjoyed a lot of support from both the East and West. Artists from the GDR who had signed a protest letter against Biermann’s expatriation were banned from working and they then often applied to leave the country. 7 Reeder managed, among others, the British post-​punk band Joy Division.

Bibliography Aufbruch 89 –​Neues Forum. 1989. Accessed March 13, 2018. https://​www.hdg.de/​lemo/​bestand/​objekt/​dokument-​ aufbruch-​89.html. Binas, Susanne. 2000. “Sounds like Berlin.” Accessed March 14, 2018. https://​www.musikundmedien.hu-​berlin.de/​de/​ musikwissenschaft/​pop/​popscriptum-​1/​sounds-​like-​berlin. Binas, Susanne. 2003. “Nach den Regeln von Märkten und Wettbewerb –​Musikproduzenten im Osten.” In labor ostdeutschland –​Kulturelle Praxis im gesellschaftlichen Wandel, edited by Kristina Bauer-​Volke and Ina Dietzsch, 120–​34. Berlin: Kulturstiftung des Bundes und Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Glotz, Peter. 1999. Die beschleunigte Gesellschaft. Kulturkämpfe im digitalen Kapitalismus. München: Kindler. Oberender, Thomas. 2017. “Die Mauer ist nicht gefallen.” DIE ZEIT, September 28. Order No. 2 on the Performance of Dance and Entertainment Music of 1/​11/​1965, Law Gazette of the GDR II, No. 112. Rauhut, Michael. 1993. Beat in der Grauzone. DDR-​Rock 1964–​1972 –​Politik und Alltag. Berlin: Scharzkopf & Scharzkopf. Rauhut, Michael. 1996. Schalmei und Lederjacke. Udo Lindenberg, BAP, Underground –​Rock und Politik in den achtziger Jahren. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf. Rauhut, Birgit and Michael Rauhut. 1999. AMIGA. Die Diskographie aller Rock-​und Popproduktionen 1964–​1990. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf. Schabowski, Günter. 1989. “Pressekonferenz DDR-​Reiseregelung, 09.11.1989.” Accessed July 31, 2018. https://​www. youtube.com/​watch?v=kZiAxgYY75Y. Schweinfurth, Reiner. 1998. “Natürlichkeit, Loyalität und eine Vision. Über Dimitri Hegemann und Marc Wohlrabe.” In Die bewegte Stadt. Berlin am Ende der Neunziger, edited by Thomas Krüger, 60–​65. Berlin: FAB. Vogt, Sabine. 2002. “Subkultur Clubkultur? Sozioökonomische Netze und transkommerzielle Formen des Musikgebrauchs in der Clubkultur Berlins.” In musik netz werke –​Konturen der neuen Musikkultur, edited by Lydia Grün and Frank Weigand, 106–​39. Bielefeld: transcript. Wicke, Peter. 1996. “Zwischen Förderung und Reglementierung –​Rockmusik im System der DDR-​Kulturbürokratie.” In Rockmusik und Politik. Analysen, Interviews und Dokumente, edited by Peter Wicke and Lothar Müller, 11–​27. Berlin: Ch. Links.

Discography AG Geige. “Maximale Gier.” In GRENZFÄLLE. Deutsche Schallplatten GmbH, Berlin 1990, compact disc. Originally released in 1987 as audio cassette. Der Expander des Fortschritts. ad acta. Zong/​Deutsche Schallplatten GmbH, Berlin 1990, album 33 1/​3 rpm.

Filmography Hoppe, Jörg A., Heiko Lange, Klaus Maeck, and Mirjam Dehne (directors). B-​Movie –​das wilde Westberlin. arte TV, 2014–​15. Lambert, Rolf (director). Party auf dem Todesstreifen –​Soundtrack der Wende. arte TV, 2014.

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Part 

Globally German

When their commercially most successful hit “Wind of Change” was released as a single in 1990, the Scorpions had already established themselves as one of the major heavy metal groups of the 1980s –​and probably the internationally most successful German act of that era. Though singing in English, the band was known to its worldwide fans as a German band, their global success paving the way for a new generation of internationally successful bands and music business actors within the German heavy metal scene. Without them, it would be hard to imagine later bands like Rammstein attaining such international success. When it comes to “German popular music,” people around the globe expect certain bands and artists to be mentioned. This is why no book on this topic today can do without Rammstein, as we claimed in the introduction. This book’s second part is dedicated to those bands and artists that are considered from an international perspective to be representative for German popular music (though this assessment is not necessarily shared by German audiences). Providing a good case in point, the Scorpions bring together several strands of this book’s section. With roots in the 1960s, the Scorpions were already part of the German rock music scene when British music journalists applied the label “Krautrock” to a new generation of bands from Germany such as Kraan, Can, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. Krautrock is arguably the first genre of German popular music in which the music’s national origin figures prominently in its reception abroad. In his account on music from the 1970s Ulrich Adelt aptly demonstrates that Krautrock was not a homogeneous style. The label was one ascribed from outside and did not necessarily reflect the way the bands viewed themselves. While in the early 1970s their music was occasionally considered to be Krautrock, too, the Scorpions’ later productions with Dieter Dierks (who had been also responsible for the production of well-​known Krautrock bands such as Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh) moved towards a metal sound which paved the way for their international success. As a pioneering metal band from Germany, the Scorpions with their English lyrics provided a model for younger metal bands. Today Germany has emerged as one of the major markets for heavy metal –​in terms of bands, labels such as Nuclear Blast and festivals such as Wacken Open Air. In his chapter, Jan Herbst tracks the international careers of a younger generation of German metal bands following in the Scorpions’ footsteps. Seeing themselves as part of a worldwide metal scene, these bands used English lyrics to build an international fan base that also helped to raise their reputation at home. At the same time some quite literally embodied Germany as a place of origin in part through singing (involuntarily) with German accents and in germanized English.

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Not mentioning the Scorpions but focusing on James Last, Rammstein, and Max Giesinger instead, Melanie Schiller and Jeroen de Kloet discuss the international reception of popular musicians from Germany. Their chapter is a dialogue between two scholars and popular music aficionados who both embody different links to German popular music. As a German scholar who lives and works in the Netherlands, Schiller reflects on her unease with certain popular music acts expressing a newfound “patriotism” that reflects a change in German self-​awareness. De Kloet is a Dutch scholar who uses his reflections of his personal “Germanophilia” to question his own “Dutchness.” Bringing an “insider’s” and an “outsider’s” perspective into dialogue, Schiller’s and de Kloet’s chapter explores the importance of German popular music beyond the German discourse. Discography Scorpions. 1990. Wind Of Change. Mercury 878 832–​7. SP.

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5

The Krauts Are Coming

Electronic Music and Rock in the 1970s Ulrich Adelt

Introduction West German electronic music and rock from the late 1960s and early 1970s, commonly referred to as “Krautrock” today, has had an astonishing renaissance in the last decade. Reissues of long out-​of-​print albums by groups like Neu!, eagerly anticipated live appearances of formerly obscure artists like Faust, and the ongoing references to bands like Kraftwerk and Can in the music of post-​rock, indie and electronica artists have prompted a renewed interest in Krautrock musicians that were often viewed as quintessentially German outside of Germany, even if the artists themselves had a conflicted relationship with their own national identity. In this chapter, I will situate Krautrock in its heterogenous context and discuss both its “Germanness” and the way the idea of the nation-​state was called into question from within Germany’s borders.1 After a brief discussion of Krautrock’s strategies of deterritorialization and hybridity, I will discuss how a specific form of “German” music evolved at the Essen Song Days in 1968 and what this musical form has come to mean conceptually and sonically. A few of the best-​known groups will then exemplify how Krautrock musicians used irony, cosmopolitanism, and communal living to challenge the idea of the German nation-​state. A more specific analysis of the Krautrock subgenre kosmische Musik will contrast alternative new age spirituality and cosmic consciousness with the continued foreign perception of the music as essentially German. Deterritorialization and Hybridity Néstor García Canclini describes the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization as “the loss of the ‘natural’ relation of culture to geographical and social territories and, at the same time, certain relative, partial territorial relocalizations of old and new symbolic productions” (1995, 229). Canclini’s context is 1990s Latin America, but his analysis can also be applied to post-​ World War II Germany. Krautrock artists expressed a fragmented, porous transnational identity that, in Canclini’s words, lacked “consistent paradigms” (1995, 243). As I will show, Krautrock’s deterritorialization was articulated through a negation of the nation-​state as a stable identifying force while at the same time turning to other spatial constructs, in particular the “cosmos.” In addition to deterritorialization, the concept of hybridity helps to understand the transnational dimension of Krautrock. Introduced by Homi Bhabha and developed more specifically 71

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in terms of space and place by Canclini, cultural hybridization describes the exchanges that take place between the center and the periphery or between different peripheries. Hybridity can function as a form of resistance but does not necessarily entail oppositional politics. Krautrock’s hybridity appeared in a variety of ways, for instance in a “cosmic” syncretic spirituality that blended various geographically removed religious traditions. Hybridity and deterritorialization are the main strategies in Krautrock that serve to deconstruct essentialist and fixed notions of what it means to be German. The Essen Song Days As the first public forum for what became later known as Krautrock, the Essen Song Days signaled the beginning of its history. They took place from September 25 to September 29, 1968, in the West German city of Essen, part of the industrial Ruhrgebiet. The Essen Song Days were the first major popular music festival in Europe, with eight venues, 43 events, more than 200 musicians and an audience of 40,000, and performances, among others, by international stars like Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention but also relatively obscure West German groups Amon Düül I, Tangerine Dream, and Guru Guru (Dedekind 2008, 59). The Essen Song Days were organized by a team led by the eccentric Rolf-​Ulrich Kaiser, a music journalist who later founded the German labels Ohr and Kosmische Kuriere before suffering a mental breakdown and retreating from the scene. He was inspired by the Monterey Pop Festival of the previous year, but he wanted to mix popular music and politics more overtly at Essen, invoking the New Left by quoting Herbert Marcuse in the booklet for the festival and stating that “songs don’t make a revolution but songs accompany revolutions” (Jugendamt, 12). The transnational politics of the Essen Song Days were meant to blend Marcuse and Zappa in covering diverse aspects of a burgeoning counterculture (Siegfried 2006, 607). German groups were prominently featured at two of the festival’s events. The first event was “Deutschland erwacht:  Neue Popmusik aus Deutschland” (Germany Awakes:  New Pop Music from Germany). Amon Düül’s cacophonous jamming, Tangerine Dream’s avant-​garde experiments, and Guru Guru’s psychedelic rock invigorated a small but devoted audience. The three groups returned, among many others, for the Saturday night event “Let’s Take a Trip to Asnidi.” An audience of 12,000 watched and danced to bands on two stages, accompanied by projections, stroboscopes, and underground films (Wagner 2013, 198). In the course of the following decade, what became known as “Krautrock” turned out to be even more varied than the music that Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream, and Guru Guru presented at the Essen Song Days and engaged with national identity and globalization explicitly. At the time, none of the German musicians performing at the Essen Song Days thought of their music as “Krautrock,” but it was the place-​specific moniker that would retroactively define their careers. The Term “Krautrock” Viewed as a genre, Krautrock seemingly points to a specific national identity, but the actual music referred to by this term continuously transgresses spatial borders and defies rigid classifications. Historically, the term itself was only one among many describing West German popular music from the 1970s. Until about 1973, the music magazines Musikexpress and Sounds used Deutsch-​ rock to label rock groups from West Germany. The term Krautrock was introduced by the British

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DJ John Peel in the early 1970s and taken up by the British music press, which interchangeably also used other terms like teutonic rock or götterdämmer rock. The West German music press initially used Krautrock as a term to dismiss specific artists. In an ironic move, the band Faust had already called the first song on their 1973 album Faust IV “Krautrock.” Amon Düül had recorded a song called “Mama Düül und ihre Sauerkrautband spielt auf ” (Mother Düül and her Sauerkraut band performs) for their album Psychedelic Underground back in 1969. It should be noted that the German word Kraut is short for “sauerkraut” only in its English translation –​in German it refers to, among other things, herbs, weeds, and even drugs. Although it has become fairly common to describe German popular music from the 1970s as Krautrock, many performers associated with the music continue to reject the moniker as a unifying genre term, and it remains disputed to this day. The positive spin on the term Krautrock originated with the British music press. The publications Melody Maker and New Musical Express raved about West German bands, some of which, like Faust and Amon Düül II, became more successful in Great Britain than in their home country; Tangerine Dream’s Phaedra (1974) even reached the UK Top Twenty in 1974. As a consequence of Krautrock’s success in Great Britain, the term became more acceptable in West Germany. In 1974, the label Brain in Hamburg issued a triple-​album compilation of West German music under the title Kraut-​Rock. In his liner notes, journalist Winfried Trenkler (1974) wrote: “Rock from the Federal Republic (of Germany) doesn’t have to hide behind Anglo-​ American rock, in particular when German musicians don’t even try to sound like their famous colleagues from the U.S.A. and England.” Because of the music’s variety, a musicological definition of the term “Krautrock” is difficult. The influence of music traditionally perceived as German, such as the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, on what would evolve around 1968 as Krautrock is negligible. Krautrock also stood in stark opposition to popular forms like Volksmusik or Schlager. Finally, Krautrock artists often rejected Anglo-​American or African American forms of postwar popular music. Despite its rejection of Anglo-​American influences, evidenced by interviews with musicians and the deliberate absence of blues and rock structures in much of the music, Krautrock did pay tribute to some of the psychedelic rock bands and other countercultural artists from Great Britain and the US, namely, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, and Jimi Hendrix. Yet instead of merely developing another replication of the major Anglo-​American and African American styles that dominated the airwaves, Krautrock artists also drew on experimental composition (in particular Karlheinz Stockhausen) and European free jazz (Peter Brötzmann, Manfred Schoof, and Alexander von Schlippenbach), two distinctive musical developments that were outside of mainstream rock’s framework, both geographically and structurally. Sonically, Krautrock came to encompass a range of styles, from the electronic music of Klaus Schulze and the jazz rock of Kraan to the political songs of Floh de Cologne, the folk rock of Witthüser & Westrupp, and music that is even harder to classify but had a long-​lasting impact, like that of Faust, Cluster, or Popol Vuh. Krautrock was influenced by African American music but also involved the conscious departure from blues scales. Unlike psychedelic rock groups in the US, many Krautrock performers had a background in Western art music and ties to the electronic music of “serious” composers. In addition, Krautrock’s embrace of the dilettante, abstract, and experimental contrasted with British progressive rock’s focus on composition and Romantic themes. The early use of synthesizers, non-​traditional song structures, and the employment of a steady, metronomic beat (generally referred to as motorik) instead of rock ’n’ roll’s backbeat also set Krautrock apart from Anglo-​American music of the 1970s. Through their connections to

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the avant-​garde art world, through their more intellectual approach, and through abandoning traditional song structures, Krautrock bands were in some aspects more daring and radical than British and American groups like Pink Floyd, the Beatles, or the Beach Boys. With the music scene in West Germany flourishing in the 1970s, it became increasingly harder to generalize about Krautrock. Although many groups released albums on small labels like Ohr, Pilz, and Brain, moved from the city to rural communes, and employed electronic instruments, none of these characteristics applied to all Krautrockers. Among the many different and unconnected local scenes were Düsseldorf, with the slick electronics of Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Wolfgang Riechmann; Hamburg, with the experimental rock of Faust; Cologne, with the groove-​heavy minimalism of Can; Munich, with the psychedelic progressive rock of Amon Düül II; and West Berlin, with the synthesizer drones of Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel, and Tangerine Dream. In addition, there were many German bands from the 1970s that were almost indistinguishable from their British and American counterparts despite being labeled “Krautrock” by the British music press and, later, by fans outside of Germany. These bands included the internationally successful Scorpions, Nektar, and Triumvirat. The use of the term “Krautrock” varied depending on the historical context and whether it was applied from within (most musicians being reluctant to accept it) or without (with fans outside of Germany being particularly “generous” with its usage). Krautrock Groups and Identity Politics Cologne group Can’s music was characterized by a mix of the serious and the dilettante (while keyboarder Irmin Schmidt was a trained conductor, lead singer Damo Suzuki had been a street musician before joining the band). As early as 1968, Can had dabbled in Vietnamese, North African, and Spanish flamenco music, and they would continue experimenting with what was later called “world music” on albums like Tago Mago (1971). Some of these experiments were released as numbered pieces of the humorously titled “EFS,” the “Ethnological Forgery Series.” Bass player Holger Czukay stated: “We never came off as particularly German. We focused more on international music scenes” (Schmidt and Kampmann 1998, 132). Can’s deterritorialized, international approach was reflected in their English band name and song titles, their African American and Japanese lead singers, and their early touring and success in Great Britain, but in many ways the core band members were responding to a specific demand to create a more multicultural German identity against the mainstream of Americanization after World War II. This cosmopolitan identity was far from stable, as it brought “international” elements in conflict with the band’s Germanness. The self-​reflexivity of the “EFS” recordings was a testament to Can’s critique of authorship. In contrast to Can, Kraftwerk deliberately used German titles for their songs and sang in German. Influenced by Karlheinz Stockhausen and other pioneers of electronic music as well as by musique concrète, Kraftwerk gradually became an all-​electronic group without relinquishing Romantic elements in their music (for instance, they repeatedly used the motif of the doppelgänger from German Romanticism). In an ironic challenge to hippie conventions, the band consciously chose an “austere, extremely German image,” cut their hair, and bought matching 1950s-​style suits (Flür 2000, 52). Keyboard player Ralf Hütter told his bandmates to refrain from moving around on stage, which would eventually lead to the robotic image of the Man Machine (1978) album. The group had introduced the trope of the “living machine” in their songs about cars, trains, and radios, and in later songs they would sing in a similar way about other technological inventions,

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namely, telephones, computers, pocket calculators, and bicycles. Musically, synthesizers served as the embodiment of the cyborg or “man machine” identity and assisted Kraftwerk in playing with stereotypes of Germans as robotic automatons. Kraftwerk’s “Germanness” stood in marked contrast to Can’s cosmopolitanism, but what connected both groups was their intent to break with the Nazi past that had become impossible to defend. Beginning with their first, self-​titled, album of 1972, Neu! combined Kraftwerk’s irony and Can’s deliberate dilettantism and articulated a post-​national identity by more explicitly engaging a critique of consumer capitalism. Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, the two members of the group, had begun their careers as part of Kraftwerk. Dinger, who had worked for an advertising agency, designed the cover images for the records that ironically proclaimed the products’ “newness” through the identical logo “Neu!” on their three albums (the fourth one even being black and white and signaling a move back in time rather than forward) and song titles like “Sonderangebot” (Special Offer). Often mainly consisting of different layers of electric guitar and “motorik” drums and lacking a verse–​chorus structure, vocals, or even harmonic changes, Neu!’s songs clearly departed from blues scales and timbres that were common in Anglo-​American and African American music. Like their music, in which they recycled similar ideas over and over, the album covers and song titles created an intentional conflict with the label “Neu!” and indirectly commented on Germany’s always-​unfinished substitution of National Socialism with consumer capitalism. Communal living was another strategy by Krautrock bands to break out of hierarchical and nationalist structures. Communes, of course, were not unique to Germany in the 1970s and arguably had a more significant history in North America than in Europe. The similarities between forms of alternative living and music-​making as an expression of countercultural desires in West Germany and the US do in fact point to globalized or at least transnational developments. Yet the way communal living was applied to the specific historical circumstances in West Germany after World War II is apparent in the works of some of the most recognized Krautrock groups. It served as a deterritorializing mechanism in the context of Americanization and globalization by shifting attention to the specific local community of the commune as an alternative to broader national or global society. The commune of Munich group Amon Düül II, which had separated from the well-​known countercultural Kommune 1 in Berlin, deteriorated from a familial community to a group of egotistical rock stars. Musically, this was reflected in experimentation making way for more conventional rock fare. On albums like Yeti (1970), they presented an eclectic mix of Anglo-​and African American blues rock, free jazz, Arabic, Indian, and Chinese music on lengthy and complex suites, but they gradually drifted into fairly standard rock territory. Their success in Great Britain made them briefly join the same league as groups like Led Zeppelin and King Crimson and their occasional self-​stylization as Nazis particularly reinforced stereotypes held by their numerous British fans. For instance, the cover of their 1973 Live in London release depicted “a gigantic German-​ helmeted Stormtrooper insect claw(ing) the London Post-​Office tower from its foundations as flying-​saucers lay the city to waste overhead” (Cope 1996, 67). Another communal band, Faust, was rejected both by critics and audiences in Germany but became quite successful in Great Britain and other European countries. Faust’s “Germanness” was apparent in their name choice, which was referencing both Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous character and the German word for “fist.” Yet influences on the band were manifold and included American as well as German artists. The “Faust Manifesto,” handed out at their 1973 UK

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tour, concluded by calling Faust’s music “the sound of yourself listening,” a description that was not bound to any distinct national boundaries (Wilson 2006, 156). The band’s “black boxes,” a type of stereo synthesizer and multi-​effect unit developed by sound engineer Kurt Graupner, and the idea of “commune-​as-​studio” were examples of Faust’s experimentation with sound and their politics of starting a revolution within, not outside of, their music. Record company Polydor provided living quarters for Faust in an old school house in Wümme near Hamburg, where the band lived and recorded communally. This experimentation was augmented by Faust’s self-​referential cover designs, for instance the eponymous first album’s (1971) transparent sleeve depicting the x-​ray of a clenched fist. Keyboard player Hans-​Joachim Irmler explained why British critics and fans were interested in Faust long before they had any positive reaction in their home country: “We gave them the Teutonic because we were brutes, but we were also weird. That did not correspond with the image of Germans that the Brits had” (quoted in Dedekind 2008, 202). Finally, Ton Steine Scherben’s West Berlin commune had a very specific political agenda from the outset and expressed the musicians’ connection to their home country through German-​ language lyrics. Musically, however, they were the most Anglo-​American-​influenced of the communal bands that also included Amon Düül and Faust. On their commercially most successful album Keine Macht für Niemand (No power to nobody, 1972), Ton Steine Scherben presented a combination of pentatonic blues rock and more experimental songs with agitprop lyrics in German. Their eclectic politics included Marxism, anarchism, Christianity, and rock star hedonism. Explicitly communal throughout their existence, the Scherben’s left-​wing politics and their connection to the West-​Berlin squatter scene gradually made way for more introspective songs and a move to the northern German countryside. Singer Rio Reiser’s identification as gay had an important part in this process. Unlike Amon Düül and Faust, the Scherben have hardly had any impact outside of their home country because what was “German” about them was their lyrics, not their Americanized music. Krautrock’s identity politics, then, was articulated through a number of different strategies: the cosmopolitan approach of Can, the ironic invoking of an essentialized Germanness of Kraftwerk, the critique of consumer capitalism of Neu!, and the communal societies promoted with different results by three bands. Amon Düül’s countercultural experimentation made way for a self-​stylization as Nazis; Faust’s artist commune attempted to create a revolution within the music rather than outside of it; and Ton Steine Scherben moved from radical leftist slogans to the more personal politics of sexual orientation. All of these strategies connected to Krautrock’s decentering of German national identity after World War II by means of deterritorialization and hybridization. Kosmische Musik As a subgenre of Krautrock, kosmische Musik (cosmic music), despite its name, came to represent “Germanness,” although many artists rather seemed to promote post-​national notions of cosmic new-​age identity. Integral to this new consciousness were the consumption of psychedelic drugs and the invention of new sounds, in particular through the employment of the synthesizer. The term kosmische Musik was introduced by Rolf-​Ulrich Kaiser in 1972 to market Krautrock artists like Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, and Klaus Schulze on what would become Kaiser’s own label, Ohr. Although rejected by many artists associated with it, kosmische Musik remains a somewhat useful term to describe the synthesizer-​heavy, meditative anti-​rock of some West German

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musicians of the 1970s. Like Krautrock, the term has remained popular in particular with British music critics, who use it as a subcategory to “Krautrock” and often simply abbreviate it as the grammatically incorrect kosmische. Ash Ra Tempel’s music alternated between “earthy” blues rock and “spacey” synthesizer soundscapes and endorsed the use of mind-​altering drugs. According to guitarist Manuel Göttsching, Ash Ra Tempel were “trying to withstand the Anglo-​American invasion. They were creating their own typically German style by turning their backs on common song structures” (quoted in Patterson 2002, 255). It was not exactly clear what was specifically German about the group’s sound since it was characterized by a combination of blues-​based psychedelic rock and serene drones foreshadowing what would later be called “ambient.” Beginning with their self-​titled first album (1971), they demonstrated their ability to do both, generally through two lengthy pieces, a hard-​rocking, electric-​guitar-​driven A side, and a slower-​paced B side dominated by synthesizers. Later, the “ambient” sounds were more prominent than psychedelic rock, and, under the name Ashra, Manuel Göttsching emphasized the spiritual dimensions of his music when he entitled his 1975 album New Age of Earth. As a case in point for Ash Ra Tempel’s concept of kosmische Musik, their 1971 debut had a multi-​ fold-​out cover that displayed an ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s head and reprinted the opening lines of beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” in English and German on the inside of the gatefold. The group was thus introduced as a countercultural force drawing on alternative spiritualities in a transnational context. Side one, “Amboss” (Anvil), began with slowly swelling guitar drones, eventually turning into a psychedelic rock jam featuring a lengthy guitar solo with effects like feedback, distortion, wah-​wah, and phase-​shifting over free jazz drum patterns and bass phrases. Here, Ash Ra Tempel’s music resembled both Jimi Hendrix’s improvisations and those of another Ohr group, Guru Guru. While drawing on Anglo-​American rock, the side-​long piece contained no lyrics or clearly recognizable song structure. It consisted of movements attributed to human emotions, ranging from meditative and quiet to aggressive and panic-​stricken, and ultimately back to a rebirth. The song referenced an anvil as both a bone in the middle ear that produces sound as well as the rhythmic quality associated with the ancient tool. Side two, “Traummaschine” (Dream Machine), was instrumental as well, but much more restrained and contemplative. It contained mostly long guitar and synthesizer drones by Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze and some subdued percussion, emphasizing the cosmic over the human “machine.” Similar to Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream’s instrumental music, at least initially much more successful outside than inside of Germany, was perceived as paradigmatically German simply because of the band’s country of origin: “Their cult status, won in the 1970s, was based more or less on their difference, their funny-​foreignerdom, their Germanness as on their music” (Stump 1997, 13). Yet the band members themselves viewed their music as rather “cosmic.” Tangerine Dream departed from conventional Anglo-​American musical structures with their synthesizer-​ driven anti-​rock, as evidenced on the glacial sounds of their 1972 double album Zeit (time), which played with traditional notions of (musical) time on its four serene tracks, which were almost free of any conventional rhythm or melody and instead focused on slow harmonic shifts and dynamic swells. Keyboard player Edgar Froese explained the group’s turn to the cosmic with the particular spatiality of West Berlin, an island-​city surrounded by East Germany: “Berlin was different from other [German] cities, in particular because it was isolated. […] Since it was difficult to cross borders, a sound developed that moved upwards: Kosmische Musik” (Hoffmann 1980, 248).

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Klaus Schulze was the drummer for Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel before he turned to synthesizers. While grounded in kosmische Musik, his music marked a significant turn toward a rediscovered sense of German national identity. Schulze’s solo works were more improvised than composed, but they continuously evoked German Art music. The sound Schulze developed can most aptly be described by the name of a song from his Moondawn (1976) album, as “floating” –​ synthesizer and sequencer melodies free of traditional rock structures, lengthy pieces made up of mostly minor chords but, unlike most music classified as new age, always containing some contrasting, “ugly” sounds. Schulze countered his growing international pop-​stardom (particularly in Great Britain and France) with explicit references to “serious” German composers like Beethoven and Wagner. In contrast to Klaus Schulze’s rediscovery of the national musical canon, Popol Vuh linked their evocation of cosmic spirituality most explicitly with religious ideas. Yet embracing this spirituality as the main motivation behind their music eventually involved abandoning the synthesizer, the instrument that had been the driving force behind kosmische Musik. While the first two albums relied on the Moog synthesizer, Hosianna Mantra (1972) was entirely acoustic and, already in the title, connected Eastern and Western religiosity. The religious “purity” of Hosianna Mantra could be contrasted with Popol Vuh’s soundtracks for the German director Werner Herzog, which occasionally saw a return of the synthesizer. In Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Popol Vuh’s main theme accompanies the opening shots of a fog-​covered Peruvian mountain with human-​like features, slowly cutting to a sixteenth-​ century expedition party descending single-​file. In order to produce an ominous sound fluctuating between human and artificial that foreshadowed the main character’s insanity, Popol Vuh’s Florian Fricke played a so-​called “choir organ.” This Mellotron-​like synthesizer used the sounds of a pre-​recorded choir (as well as strings, mandolins, and other acoustic sounds). The conflict between “man” and “machine,” also articulated in the synthesizer music of other Krautrock artists from Kraftwerk to Faust, was at the heart of Popol Vuh’s film soundtracks. Aguirre, the main character in Werner Herzog’s film, ultimately fails in his search for the mythical El Dorado, and this failure was also present in the unstableness of the musical narrative. With Herzog’s significant success as a filmmaker not just within but also outside of Germany, Popol Vuh’s soundtracks were able to reach an international audience for kosmische Musik. Conclusion Kosmische Musik exemplifies Krautrock’s success and perception as “German” outside of Germany but also the attempt by artists associated with the subgenre, such as Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Popol Vuh, to move away from essentialized notions of Germanness and, in this specific case, turn to cosmic identity. The “man-​machine” aesthetics through the employment of synthesizers also characterize other bands classified as Krautrock, like Kraftwerk and Faust. In order to destabilize German national identity after World War II, many groups turned to strategies like hybridity, cosmopolitanism, and communal living. Beginning with the Essen Song Days in 1968, Krautrock blossomed until circa 1974, but one could also argue that it lasted well into the 1980s. The conflicted articulation of Germanness from within Germany with the simultaneous celebration of this “Otherness” outside of the country made way for a much more specific expression of Germanness in the Neue Deutsche Welle2 and in German-​language rock and pop music in the following decades. At the same time, Krautrock

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continued to influence rock and electronica in significant ways, including major international acts like Radiohead and Wilco. These artists show how valuable it is to remember the time when “the krauts” were coming to change the history of popular music. Notes 1 The title for this essay is taken from Amon Düül II’s “Emigrant Song” (1975). For a more thorough analysis of Krautrock see my book Krautrock: German Music in the Seventies (Adelt 2016). Despite being frequently mentioned in magazines and on internet blogs, Krautrock continues to be a much-​understudied topic among popular music scholars (a notable exception is a special issue of Popular Music and Society from December 2009, Littlejohn 2009). Apart from a few publications that merely list individual performers and bands, the only books about the topic available in English are David Stubbs’s journalistic overview Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany (2014) and Nikos Kotsopoulos’s coffee-​table tome Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy (2010). Both books offer many interesting details but not much in-​depth analysis. Finally, there is Julian Cope’s out-​of-​print Krautrocksampler (1996), a highly subjective account by a fellow musician and self-​proclaimed fan. The only German-​language monographs are journalist Henning Dedekind’s meandering Krautrock:  Underground, LSD und kosmische Kuriere (2008) and Alexander Simmeth’s historical dissertation Krautrock transnational (2016). 2 See Hornberger’s chapter in this book.

Bibliography Adelt, Ulrich. 2016. Krautrock: German Music in the Seventies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Canclini, Néstor García. 1995. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cope, Julian. 1996. Krautrocksampler. London: Head Heritage. Dedekind, Henning. 2008. Krautrock: Underground, LSD und kosmische Kuriere. Höfen: Hannibal. Flür, Wolfgang. 2000. Kraftwerk: I Am a Robot. Bodmin: MPG Books. Hoffmann, Raoul. 1980. Rock Story: Drei Jahrzehnte Rock & Pop Music von Presley bis Punk. Frankfurt: Ullstein. Jugendamt der Stadt Essen, ed. 1968. Song Magazin 1968 für IEST 68. Essen. Kotsopoulos, Nikos. 2010. Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy. London: Black Dog. Littlejohn, John, ed. 2009. Popular Music and Society 32.5, special issue on Krautrock. Patterson, Archie. 2002. Eurock: European Rock and the Second Culture. Portland, OR: Eurock Publications. Schmidt, Hildegard, and Wolf Kampmann, ed. 1998. Can Box Book. Münster: Medium Music Books. Siegfried, Detlef. 2006. Time Is on My Side:  Konsum und Politik der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre. Göttingen: Wallstein. Simmeth, Alexander. 2016. Krautrock transnational. Bielefeld: transcript. Stubbs, David. 2014. Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany. London: Faber & Faber. Stump, Paul. 1997. Digital Gothic: A Critical Discography of Tangerine Dream. Wembley: SAF. Trenkler, Winfried. 1974. Kraut-​Rock: German Rock Scene. Brain. Liner notes. Wagner, Christoph. 2013. Der Klang der Revolte: Die magischen Jahre des westdeutschen Musik-​Underground. Mainz: Schott. Wilson, Andy. 2006. Faust: Stretch Out Time, 1970–​1975. London: faust-​pages.com.

Discography Amon Düül I. 1969. Psychedelic Underground. Metronome. Amon Düül II. 1970. Yeti. Liberty. Amon Düül II. 1973. Live in London. United Artists. Ash Ra Tempel. 1971. Ash Ra Tempel. Ohr. Ashra. 1975. New Age of Earth. Isadora. Can. 1971. Tago Mago. United Artists. Faust. 1971. Faust. Polydor.

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80   •   Ulrich Adelt Faust. Faust IV. 1973. Virgin. Kraftwerk. 1978. The Man Machine. Kling Klang. Neu!. 1972. Neu!. Brain. Popol Vuh. Hosianna Mantra. 1972. Pilz. Popol Vuh. 1975. Aguirre. Ohr. Schulze, Klaus. 1976. Moondawn. Brain. Tangerine Dream. 1972. Zeit. Ohr. Tangerine Dream. 1974. Phaedra. Virgin. Ton Steine Scherben. 1972. Keine Macht für Niemand. David Volksmund. Various Artists. 1974. Kraut-​Rock: German Rock Scene. Brain.

Filmography Aguirre, the Wrath of God. 1972. Directed by Werner Herzog. Filmverlag der Autoren.

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6

German Metal Attack

Power Metal in and from Germany

Jan-​Peter  Herbst

Introduction Germany has been home to a vibrant heavy metal scene since the mid-​1980s. A good example is Wacken Open Air, a festival since 1989, which each year attracts 85,000 metal fans and over 100 bands from around the globe. Yet despite the huge popularity of metal music, German metal is widely ignored by national media and rarely present in music charts. Therefore, most German citizens are hardly aware of the high recognition German metal has attained elsewhere in the world. This chapter analyzes the challenges German power metal bands faced to get acknowledged by their home scene and abroad. Due to the lack of research on German metal (Elflein 2017), the empirical basis for this historical investigation are journalistic sources: 426 issues of the German Metal Hammer (1984–​2018) and 997 issues of the British Kerrang! (1985–​2006). With their influence on metal audiences in Europe, such magazines advanced or hampered careers of bands (Mader, Jeske & Hoffmann 1998, 108–​9). Radio airplay was much less important in Europe, especially compared to the USA, where college radio stations had a huge impact (Gehlke 2017, 234). The Historical Context of Metal Music in Germany Metal music made in Germany has been a phenomenon since the mid-​1980s. Although West Germany had been an important market for international rock music since the 1960s, German rock evolved slowly. Bands initially imitated US-​American and British blues and rock musicians and their stylistic idioms. Around that time, the infrastructure, largely destroyed by World War II, was still being re-​established. Adequate musical instruments, recording studios and specialist producers for rock music were hard to get hold of. According to national law, the state-​run job center had the monopoly on managing artists, which meant that officially associated artist agencies, professional music managers, promoters and bookers specializing in metal music were rare until the 1990s (Klüsener 1989, 134–​5). Heavy metal spread in the Western hemisphere during the first half of the 1980s. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWoBHM; 1975–​1983) stirred broad interest in metal music in the USA and West Germany, where the two fastest growing metal scenes were developing. By the mid-​1980s, Britain’s declining metal scene was already outpaced (Doherty 1986). Independent labels emerged in Germany, most notably Noise, with their distribution Modern Music Records, in April 1983, and 81

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Steamhammer/​SPV in January 1984. While previously only records by a few internationally famous metal bands such as Iron Maiden (England) and the Scorpions (Germany) were distributed, these new labels made British and American metal imports widely available in Germany. More importantly, they started signing German bands on a large scale. Within short time in the mid-​1980s, West German releases created “European metal” and the “power metal” genre (Weinstein 2011, 40), most notably Helloween’s Walls of Jericho (1985). Power metal at that time was commonly labelled “melodic speed metal” and described a more positive form of heavy metal that built on the stylistic trademarks of the NWoBHM, as opposed to the more aggressive form of thrash metal. German Power Metal Bands in Germany and Abroad For much of the twentieth century, the four most important metal markets were the USA, Germany, Great Britain and Japan. In the eighties and nineties, the second largest metal market was Germany (Kühnemund 1989):  seemingly ideal conditions for German metal bands, yet they were struggling to become established in their home market due to an abundance of metal records (Metal Hammer 1989). It also proved difficult to stand up to foreign bands, because German fans and the music press tended to favor international groups such as the British Iron Maiden and the American Metallica and Slayer (Mader, Jeske and Hoffmann 1998, 9–​10). Even the Scorpions and Accept had only become widely accepted in Germany after they achieved international acclaim. This fact prompted many German acts to focus on international metal markets because being acknowledged internationally seemed to be a way to stick out of the mass of bands in Germany. Japan welcomed melodic German metal right away, whereas the other two pivotal markets proved to be tough nuts to crack. American metal enthusiasts did not approve of German artists copying US bands (Klemm 1987), and the British audience were torn between their fondness for a European alternative to US metal (Putterford 1987) and their pride in their glorious NWoBHM. The British attitude towards German bands was largely positive in the 1980s, but then their taste slowly Americanized, making it difficult for German metal to compete on the UK market (Groß 1991). Coping with this challenging situation demanded different strategies. The Relevance of an English-​Native Singer and Selling Out Bands Since the advent of German metal, almost every band sang in English; not only for reaching an international audience, but also for musical reasons. Scorpions singer Klaus Meine once explained that German was “inadequate to express metal feelings and themes” (Weinstein 2011, 45). But this demand for English lyrics was a big disadvantage for German bands as highlighted in Kerrang!: most German rock outfits are fighting an uphill battle. It must be frustrating for them to see British and American bands with much less to offer getting far greater returns. With the odds stacked against them, German rock bands, however good they are, must feel that an international breakthrough is somewhat in the lap of the Gods. (Henderson 1989b, 14) Not being successful due to a lack of language skills was hard for German groups. In West Germany, English was already a subject taught in schools, but this basic knowledge was far from sufficient to write decent lyrics. Accept guitarist Wolf Hoffmann in an interview told how he

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coped with this: “I remember sitting in the kitchen with a Langenscheidt dictionary trying to give meaning to the lyrics. Obviously, a catastrophe, but back then a very naïve approach. We didn’t know better: Nobody checked anything” (Kessler & Riedl 2017, 19; my translation1). Pronunciation was another problem, as Klaus Meine highlighted in an interview on the Scorpions’ Crazy World (1990) record:  “it’s getting pretty good reviews all over the world … except for England. […] Language-​wise I would understand why you guys would put me down for my German accent” (Zell 1991, 40). Both the lyrics’ bad quality and the German accent are recurrent themes in the British music press. This resulted in bad album reviews, which in turn put off international audiences. German bands were conscious of this issue as an interview statement of Helloween singer Michael Kiske demonstrates: “I sing and speak accent-​free English [after having relocated to England]; this is a big plus for us. It’s very important because you often hear people saying that Klaus Meine has a German accent. That irritates many British and American people” (Schöwe 1992a, 136). Aware of this problem, several German bands engaged new vocalists who were native English speakers, in order to achieve greater international compatibility. Accept, Germany’s second largest metal export after the Scorpions, is the most famous example of this. Their Balls to the Wall (1983) album received gold status in the USA for 500,000 sold copies. Yet with record sales under two million the American music industry considered it a fail, causing their record label to push for a new singer (Schöwe 2010, 50). In 1987, Accept eventually dismissed iconic singer Udo Dirkschneider to replace him with the American frontman David Reece. This strategy, however, was a failure as guitarist Wolf Hoffmann later realized: “It was a mistake to think we could be commercial without Udo, and it was a mistake to make an album for MTV. It didn’t work” (Watts 1993, 40). Their commercial move did not impress the British music press: “The problems started for Accept when they tried to break the American market with a series of somewhat patchy albums, beginning with Metal Heart (or even Balls to the Wall), from which they never really recovered” (Reynolds 1990, 20). The journalists not only criticized the commercial orientation, they also considered it wrong to replace Dirkschneider and his characteristic “Teutonic” style:  “I’d forget that Accept have a new album out soon with a new, American singer, cause U.D.O.  is the real McCoy. It was Dirkschneider who gave Accept that special something; the others were easily replaceable” (Reynolds 1989, 25). With this overt selling out to the American market, Accept lost much support by the German scene for many years. It was their influence on early metal music that eventually earned them appreciation by German metalheads. Despite Accept’s failure, many other bands obsessively tried to become acknowledged as an international act. Although some succeeded in the late eighties and early nineties, none established a long-​standing international career. A lack of support in Germany was the main reason they all disbanded in the end. Bands from Hanover, with their strong vision to follow in the footsteps of the Scorpions, were particularly keen on an international profile. Victory, one of the most ambitious bands, went to great lengths to achieve an American sound. They recruited US-​singer Charlie Huhn, produced their debut album in the States, and they hired Dieter Krebs, an internationally renowned manager, for their foreign affairs. The German Metal Hammer’s review of their self-​titled debut album (1985) was positive but already foresaw missing approval in their home country: “Victory show enough originality […] not to be ignored by the US hard rock premier league, and it remains to be seen whether or not the musical concept of the Hanover based group will be successful in Germany too” (Rinne 1985, 83). Internationally, their strategy worked well at the beginning. By 1990, however, their success started to crumble, as a review of

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their album Temples of Gold (1990) demonstrates: “mediocre. At best the band achieve something spirited and competent. At worst it is simply laboured. […] The music is pre-​Axl wannabe Americana” (Watts 1990, 26). Although the German music press frequently featured Victory, they only managed to achieve moderate success in Germany. The band eventually separated in 1994. Another band from Hanover striving for international success were Thunderhead, with US-​ singer Ted “Bullet” Pulit. Choosing an American singer initially proved successful abroad, as had been the case with Victory. Kerrang! put it this way: “Their album, Behind the Eight Ball (1989), is impressive for a first effort, with a number of cracking songs and a distinct lack of that peculiarly Germanic feel that has been the stumbling block for many German bands” (Henderson 1989a, 48). Yet neither their success in the States and Britain nor being popular in Japan helped them to establish a career in Germany, where their Americanized sound has never been accepted (Mader, Jeske and Hoffmann 1998, 178). The band split up in 1999. Original German Style Helloween are commonly cited as the band that popularized power metal (Weinstein 2011, 40), a genre most strongly associated with Germany. Soon after their inception in 1984, they entered the European scene with their self-​titled EP (60,000 sold records) and renowned debut album Walls of Jericho (110,000 sold records) in 1985. Both Metal Hammer (Kielner 1985) and Kerrang! (Russell 1986) gave the album their best rating, describing the band as a down-​to-​earth alternative to Metallica and a faster and more powerful version of Iron Maiden. Their international breakthrough in Germany, Britain and the rest of Europe came with Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 1 in 1987. Reviews inland and abroad proclaimed their uniquely German and prototypically European style as their main appeal. Given just how advanced and epochal (not to mention individual) this release is, it’s difficult to establish any criteria for it […].it’s one of Heavy Metal’s all-​time masterpieces. (Dome 1987a, 15) This LP hit us just a few months ago and the shock waves are still being absorbed, analysed and admired. […] A  triumph of power, melody, epic arrangements, emotion… and all the good things from early Queen and Uriah Heep. Sure, it owed something to Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Metallica, but Helloween have stamped their own jackboot authority onto the vinyl [and opened] up a ‘third front’ for Metal. […] Helloween […] are very much in the tradition of the classic Germanic hard rock brigands, from the Scorpions to Accept. They have a tuneful countenance, a respect for the operatic past of their country’s musical heritage and a firm grasp of modern studio techniques, all combined in a unique fashion […]. (Dome 1987b, 16) Helloween built on the tradition of the Scorpions and Accept, who were influenced by the NWoBHM only little. Instead, they played a German style of heavy metal that took melodic, harmonic and rhythmic inspirations from classical music. This particularly shows in Accept’s adaptation of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” on their 1985 track “Metal Heart.” As singer Udo Dirkschneider explained:  “A lot of German musicians use classical music as an influence. We’re much closer to the classics. America is much closer to the blues. It’s wrong for a German band to be like an

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American band. It’s best to play and develop your own styles at all times” (Watts 1989, 38). For Dirkschneider’s successor, US-​American singer David Reece, it was the band’s different mentality and its “classical orientation” making him leave Accept (Schwerter 1991, 29). As Accept guitarist Wolf Hoffmann explained, this classical influence was a result of his musical socialization rather than a deliberate decision (Poponina 2018). Although Helloween did not explicitly incorporate classical motifs in their take on the NWoBHM, they still had a different sense of melody than their British and American counterparts, making them sound individual, as the Kerrang! reviews indicate. Similarly, Helloween’s new German style of power metal was associated with the precise performance and rhythmic control for which Accept had become famous in the early 1980s (Kerrang 1986). Helloween’s guitar work was organized, structured and synchronized, differing from British bands such as Iron Maiden and blues-​influenced American groups, who all practiced looser articulation. Such compositional and performative differences between German and Anglo-​ American metal were further increased in the production. German recording professionals were hardly familiar with the production conventions of metal abroad, leading to a metal sound that was perceived as “modern” and “unique” outside of Germany (Dome 1987b, 16). Helloween introduced this German sound to the world and it became hugely successful: 250,000 record sales in Germany and position #15 in the German charts, 500,000 sales worldwide and #104 in US Billboard charts. Its successor Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 2 (1988) became even more successful: #5 in Germany, #24 in Britain and #108 in the USA. In Kerrang!’s (1988/​206) album charts it entered at #4, surpassed only by Metallica’s And Justice for All (1988), Europe’s Out of this World (1988) and Guns n’ Roses Appetite for Destruction (1987). When Kerrang! raised the question of how German bands could become accepted by British and American metalheads, Helloween guitarist Weikath answered: On the one hand it is a difficulty. On the other hand, one advantage of coming from Germany is that you are something special. There have been so many bands coming from Britain, and there are thousands of them in the States, that it’s not special anymore. If you achieve something in Germany  –​like going gold, or even selling 100,000 or whatever, or getting something happening in Japan, as we have […], then people really listen out and say, ‘Hey, what’s happening here?’. […] One of my biggest concerns has been how to break into Britain. We know you’ve got to be original and got to be the way you are. If they feel it’s some kind of ‘set-​ up’, […] people in Britain won’t go for it. […] Phonogram offered us a distribution deal for Europe, but we turned it down. We had the feeling that they just wanted to buy us to control us and to keep us away from Metallica, Warlock, Dio and so on. With Noise we are Number One, and it would be a mistake to change to a label where we might be Number 30 on the bill and all the money and effort going to the bigger bands. (Henderson 1988, 26–​7) Yet it was precisely this transition from a successful German band to an international top act that did not go well. Helloween’s next album Pink Bubbles Go Ape (1991) failed miserably after Iron Maiden manager Rod Smallwood took over. Other events added to the downfall: a legal dispute between Noise and EMI of over two years, the subsequent change to major label EMI, hiring of British producer Chris Tsangarides and recording in a studio abroad for the first time. Kerrang! claimed the band to “have veered off into the land of the mega-​buck and commercialism” (Russell 1991, 13). It was no surprise that the record neither sold well nor entered the US charts (Germany

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#32). Pink Bubbles Go Ape was Helloween’s last album to enter the UK charts for 22 years. The following album, Chameleon (1993), was even less successful. It reached chart position #35 in Germany but did not sell 25,000 copies. These poor sales had severe implications: Helloween’s record deal and their European tour were cancelled (Wölke 1994). The band never again reached their previous level of success in the States and Britain. In Germany, mainland Europe, Japan and South America, however, they remained very popular and sold more than eight million records by their own account. Other power metal bands in Helloween’s tradition –​Gamma Ray, Iron Savior, Masterplan, Blind Guardian, Rage, Edguy and Avantasia  –​likewise have become immensely popular in many places of the world, except in the USA and UK. Consistency and Truthfulness in the German Scene Many German bands have tried to succeed on the Anglo-​American market and failed. Some of them realized just in time that their music could only be popular in their homeland. Grave Digger is one of those bands. After their national success in the early 1980s, they aimed to compete with bands in the league of Bon Jovi and Europe. They shortened their name to “Digger” and released Stronger than Ever in 1987. This album was, as singer Chris “Bolle” Boltendahl later admitted, “pure commercial sell-​out. We wanted to make loads of money. […] The record initially was intended to reach the US market, but it has never been released there” (Mader, Jeske and Hoffmann 1998, 99). Devastating album reviews and five catastrophic live shows caused (Grave) Digger to disband (Gehlke 2017, 120–​121). It took them six years to return as Grave Digger. Having learned their lesson, from then on they released uncompromising, old-​school metal to the tastes of their German fans. By keeping true to their own style, playing music similar to their celebrated early records Heavy Metal Breakdown (1984) and Witch Hunter (1985) (Ruskell 2003; Lawson 2005), they eventually impressed even the critical British press (Cooper 1996, 1998). All their last ten studio albums entered the German charts (positions between #15 and #81), even though not recorded in a trendy studio abroad but in the same studio in Germany close to their hometown. Chris Boltendahl explained the choice of studio in an interview: “I don’t think it’s authentic when German bands go to California for years, lay in the sun, get streaks in their hair, and hope to enter the German market with a fake US image. Why shouldn’t a band from Germany sound German? I am German and I don’t think it’s been bad to grow up here” (Schöwe 1992b, 153). Such loyalty to their homeland earned Grave Digger their status as a cult band in Germany. Running Wild is the best example of a band that built a long-​standing career of over 40 years by focusing solely on their German home market. When they opened for Mötley Crüe in their Theatre of Pain tour in Germany and Switzerland in 1986, they won over many fans in the German-​ speaking metal scene. Touring the US in 1987, however, was so devastating that Running Wild decided never to tour the States again (Gehlke 2017, 129–​32). Their third release Under Jolly Roger (1987) created the subgenre “pirate metal,” a theme they kept, notwithstanding mockery from the music press around the world, Germany included. Despite the bad press, the record sold 250,000 copies, which demonstrates the faithfulness of the German fans to German metal bands keeping true to their distinct musical style unaffected by musical trends. Band leader Rolf “Rock ’n’ Rolf ” Kasparek, however, resented the bad press and refused to talk to Metal Hammer for eight years (Mineur 2002). The British music press also had nothing good to say, emphasizing the music’s distinct Germanness as reason for its rejection in Britain:

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Running Wild meant about as much to me prior to this jaunt as they probably still do to you –​ precisely nothing! Six albums in as many years ain’t done nothin’ to switch the UK on to ’em, but here in Germany it’s a whole different ball game! There are 1500 odd punters here, many of ’em with Running Wild T-​shirts on, digging the shit out of this band. […] It ain’t hard to see why. Running Wild are so German it’s unbelievable! Their music is precise, clinical and very heavy. The stuff that armies march to. Enjoyment in a regimented, serious manner. Bombastic? Wagnerian? You betcha! […] I think maybe you’ve just got to feel this music in the blood to really get off on it. (Johnson 1990, 51) Despite the generally acknowledged high level of playing skills and high production standard of Running Wild’s releases, these qualities were overshadowed by their lack of musical innovation and appreciation of newer musical trends, and their stiffness. In other words, the music was perceived as competent but labored and stale. With such press, bad live responses and low sales, Running Wild decided not to tour the UK anymore. When the German EMI bought a band package from Noise in 1990 that included Helloween, Celtic Frost, V2 and Running Wild, the dispute escalated and the British and French EMI branches refused to distribute Running Wild in their countries (Schöwe 1991). After that, Running Wild focused on German fans, who have always regarded them as a cult band. Satisfying the wishes of the German audience for authentic old-​school heavy metal seems to be mutually beneficial, as a statement by the band indicates: “With this album [Pile of Skulls, 1992] we may not win over many new fans but definitely we won’t lose any.” This truthfulness to tradition helped the band in many respects: stable record sales ranging between 60,000 and 80,000 copies (Schöwe 1991), German chart positions between #2 and #54 and live shows with 1,000 to 2,000 fans (Gehlke 2017, 141). Sticking to their established style proved to be a good strategy, as neither grunge in the 1990s nor any later musical trend from abroad had any impact on Running Wild (ibid., 140). Over time, the German press accepted the band and eventually nominated them as one of the best German metal bands of all time. Running Wild may never have reached international acclaim equal to that of the Scorpions, Accept or Helloween, but they surely belong to the history of German heavy metal as few other bands (Mineur 2016). In 2011, Running Wild celebrated their comeback after having had disbanded in 2009. Since their reunion, they are doing exceptionally well. In 2018, they headlined Wacken Open Air, and with their most recent record Rapid Foray (2016), they earned their best chart position (#2) ever in Germany. Conclusion The German metal scene, one of the largest in the world, has always been somewhat special. With an abundance of home groups on the one hand and the popularity of foreign acts on the other hand, German bands were torn between making music for their home crowd and satisfying Anglo-​American tastes, even if only as a path to find acceptance in their home country. Few attempts to imitate American or British groups went well; neither Anglo-​American nor German metalheads accepted such music. For the English-​speaking audience, the music was competent but not innovative, unlike Helloween’s Keeper albums that were groundbreaking for their different take on metal to that of UK and US groups; for the German home crowd, imitations of foreign groups reeked of selling out. History suggests that success for German bands depends on

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keeping true to their own heritage and fans. Many bands are evidence of this. Although never having caused a major stir abroad, acts such as Grave Digger, Running Wild and many others such as Axel Rudi Pell enjoy successful careers of over thirty years, because they can rely on the loyalty of their German fans. Valuing tradition, the fans seem to appreciate the early styles that still had national features, contrary to modern genres of metal which are commonly produced in a global industry and potentially lack distinct character. In retrospect, the hardships German bands faced have paid off. German power metal groups in the tradition of Helloween have created a unique sound hugely popular in Central Europe, Japan and South America. Metal bands from all over the world, HammerFall (Sweden), Kamelot (USA) and Angra (Brazil), have been adapting this German style of power metal. Other acts like the Scottish-​Swiss Gloryhammer have even faked a German accent to imitate this sound. German power metal may have had relatively little success on the Anglo-​American market, but in many other countries it has become famous with German bands relishing superstar status there. As far as Germany is concerned, bands keeping true to their home scene and playing traditional German heavy metal can trust on strong and long-​standing support. The general population, however, is hardly aware of the rich metal tradition of their own country. Note 1 All translations in this chapter are by Jan-​Peter Herbst if not stated otherwise.

Bibliography Cooper, James. 1996. “Review: Grave Digger –​Tunes of War.” Kerrang! 627: 46. Cooper, James. 1998. “Review: Grave Digger –​Knights of the Cross.” Kerrang! 709: 45. Doherty, Henry. 1986. “There’s no biz like Rockbiz.” Metal Hammer 11: 82–​4. Dome, Malcolm. 1987a. “Review: Helloween –​Keeper Pt. 1.” Kerrang! 140: 14–​15. Dome, Malcolm. 1987b. “Helloween. Key to the door.” Kerrang! 156: 16. Elflein, Dietmar. 2017. “Restless and Wild. Early West German Heavy Metal.” In Perspectives on German Popular Music, edited by Michael Ahlers, and Christoph Jacke, 116–​22. London: Routledge. Gehlke, David E. 2017. Systemstörung: Die Geschichte von Noise. Berlin: I.P. Verlag. Groß, Martin. 1991. “U.D.O. Der Endzeit-​Heino.” Metal Hammer 4: 116–​17. Halupczok, Marc. 2010. “Avantasia & Scorpions. Von Goslar bis New York.” Metal Hammer 4: 30–​33. Henderson, Paul. 1988. “Helloween. Lock up yer pumpkins!” Kerrang! 212: 24–​7. Henderson, Paul. 1989a. “Thunderhead Concert Review Theaterfabrik Munchen.” Kerrang! 260: 48. Henderson, Paul. 1989b. “Thunderhead. Donner und Blitzen!” Kerrang! 268: 14. Johnson, Howard. 1990. “Concert review of Running Wild and Rage at Longhorn Stuttgart.” Kerrang! 277: 51. Kerrang. 1986. Legends of Rock. Special issue. Kessler, Sebastian & Riedl, Katrin. 2017. “Treffen der Giganten.” Metal Hammer 8: 16–​19. Kielner, Frank. 1985. “Review: Helloween –​The Walls of Jericho.” Metal Hammer 12: 80. Klemm, Frank. 1987. “Noise Records.” Metal Hammer 2: 120–​21. Klüsener, Edgar. 1989. “Ist Westdeutschland ein rockmusikalisches Entwicklungsland?” Metal Hammer 3(2): 134–​5. Kühnemund, Götz. 1989. “Szene D.” Metal Hammer 4(2): 118–​19. Lawson, Dom. 2005. “Review: Grave Digger –​The Last Supper.” Kerrang! 1040: 42. Mader, Matthias, Otger Jeske and Arno Hofmann. 1998. Heavy Metal –​Made in Germany. Berlin: I.P. Verlag. Metal Hammer. 1989. “1988. Licht und Schatten eines langen Jahres.” Metal Hammer 1: 16. Mineur, Matthias. 2002. “Running Wild. Bruder Rolf.” Metal Hammer 3: 66–​7. Mineur, Matthias. 2016. “Running Wild. Gewässerschutz.” Metal Hammer 9: 76. Popnina, Olga. 2018. “Accept’s Wolf Hoffmann Never Realized the Band’s Classical Influence.” Accessed 2 November 2018. http://​loudwire.com/​accept-​wolf-​hoffman-​never-​realized-​classical-​influence.

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 Power Metal in and from Germany   •   89 Putterford, Mark. 1987. “U.D.O. Rock Like a Beast.” Kerrang! 165: 24–​6. Reynolds, Dave. 1989. “Review: U.D.O. –​Mean Machine.” Kerrang! 227: 25. Reynolds, Dave. 1990. “Accept: Staying Alive.” Kerrang! 320: 20. Rinne, Charly. 1985. “Review: Victory –​Victory.” Metal Hammer 9: 83. Ruskell, Nick. “Review: Grave Digger –​Rheingold.” Kerrang! 956: 56. Russel, Xavier. 1986. “Review: Helloween –​Walls of Jericho.” Kerrang! 117: 10. Russel, Xavier. 1991. “Review: Helloween –​Pink Bubbles.” Kerrang! 331: 13. Schöwe, Andreas. 1991. “Running Wild. Machtkampf.” Metal Hammer 6: 124–​5. Schöwe, Andreas. 1992a. “Helloween. Back & Bubbling.” Metal Hammer 4: 134–​7. Schöwe, Andreas. 1992b. “Grave Digger.” Metal Hammer 4: 153. Schöwe, Andreas. 2010. “Accept. Jetzt oder nie.” Metal Hammer 9: 50–​51. Schwerter, Danny. 1991. “David Reece. So war es bei Accept wirklich.” Metal Hammer 9: 128–​9. Watts, Chris. 1989. “M.E.A.N. M.A.N. (U.D.O.).” Kerrang! 243: 38–​9. Watts, Chris. 1990. “Review: Victory –​Temples of Gold.” Kerrang! 316: 26. Watts, Chris. 1993. “Accept No Substitues.” Kerrang! 433: 40–​41. Weinstein, Deena. 2011. “The Globalization of Metal.” In Metal Rules the Globe. Heavy Metal Around the World, edited by Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger and Paul D. Greene, 34–​59. Durham: Duke University Press. Wölke, Tim. 1994. “Helloween. Wahlverwandschaften.” Metal Hammer 3: 38–​9. Zell, Ray. 1991. “Scorpions. Everybody’s crazy, ja?” Kerrang! 323: 28–​41.

Discography Accept. Restless and Wild. Brain 0060.513, 1982, LP. Accept. Balls to the Wall. RCA PL70186, 1983, LP. Accept. Metal Heart. RCA PL70638, 1985. LP. Digger. Stronger than Ever. Noise N0052, 1987, LP. Europe. Out of this World. Epic EPC462449 1, 1988. LP. Grave Digger. Heavy Metal Breakdown, Noise N007, 1984. LP. Grave Digger. With Hunter, Noise N0020, 1985. LP. Guns n’ Roses. Appetite for Destruction. Geffen Records 924148-​2, 1988, CD. Helloween. Helloween. Noise N0021, 1985. 12.” Helloween. Walls of Jericho. Noise N0032, 1985. LP. Helloween. Keeper of The Seven Keys Pt. 1. Noise N0057, 1987. LP. Helloween. Keeper of The Seven Keys Pt. 2. Noise N0117-​1, 1988. LP. Helloween. Pink Bubbles Go Ape. EMI 7960862, 1991. CD. Helloween. Chameleon. EMI 077778936824, 1993. CD. Metallica. And Justice for All. Elektra 60812-​1, 1988. LP. Running Wild. Under Jolly Roger. Noise N0062, 1987. LP. Running Wild. Pile of Skulls. Noise N0322-​2, 1992. CD. Running Wild. Rapid Foray. Steamhammer/​SPV SPV267392, 2016. CD. Scorpions. Crazy World. Mercury 846 908-​2, 1990. CD. Thunderhead. Behind the Eight-​Ball. Intercord INT145.122, 1989. LP. Victory. Victory. CBS BFZ40038, 1985. LP. Victory. Temples of Gold. Metronome 843 979-​2, 1990. CD.

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7

German Longings

A Dialogue about the Promises and Dangers of National Stereotypes Melanie Schiller and Jeroen de Kloet

Im zerschnittenen Himmel / Von den Jets zur Übung zerflogen / Hängt sie mit ausgebreiteten Schwingen / Ohne Schlaf, und starren Blicks / In Richtung Trümmer / Hinter ihr die Zukunft aufgetürmt / Steigt sie langsam immer höher / Übersieht letztendlich das ganze / Land Was ist die Befindlichkeit des Landes? Einstürzende Neubauten, “Die Befindlichkeit des Landes” (2000) Introduction “What is the state of the country?” wonders Blixa Bargeld. This question may well be more pressing for Germany since 1945 than it is for any other country, as the state of the country continues to be haunted by the specter of the war. And it is this specter, we argue, that equally haunts cultural practices that try to negotiate that state of the country. Germanness is always already entangled with the complicated and torn history of Germany. This chapter tries to engage with the issue of Germanness in popular music from two different personal perspectives, one Dutch, and one German. The quotation with which we open the chapter is clearly selected by the older author of this chapter, Jeroen, as it concerns a band that is part of the sound of the 1980s and of whom he continues to be a quite devoted fan. This band, Einstürzende Neubauten, already gestures towards the paradoxical state of Germanness. In its industrial sound, in the declaratory voice of Blixa Bargeld, a listener like Jeroen hears clearly sounds of Germanness, sounds that ironically also hark back to Nazi Germany. In his ears, their industrial sound resonates with the sound of the military, just as the vocal range is reminiscent of the voice of a leader, even when it clearly critiques anything that has to do with state power and the military. It is this double bind –​that even a dismissal of Germanness tends to sound just so German –​this impossibility of escaping the past, that makes the issue of Germanness so thorny. This chapter navigates between issues of national identity and stereotyping through the lens of popular music. It explores our fascination for, and struggle with, and at times even longings for, Germanness. This is clearly a thorny issue, as German music faces a similar fate as German cinema, which, as Thomas Elsaesser writes (1996, 13), struggles with the question:

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What is a nation, what is national cinema, and how can a filmmaker represent either? In the case of Germany since WWII these are, of course, especially difficult questions. After 1945, few countries were obliged to interrogate their geographical or cultural identity as anxiously as the defeated, devastated and divided German Reich. What is German music, and how do we, as listeners with our specific classed, gendered, aged, and national biographies, negotiate such sounds? What makes something sound German to us, and when and how would that attract us, and when would it push us away? Jeroen explores this question through interrogating his suspicious liking or fondness of stereotypes, Melanie by exploring her mixed feelings when she heard 80 Millionen from Max Giesinger, while on a trip back to Germany. Indeed, what did that song say about the state of the country? Jeroen It was when I  was about the age of ten, in 1977, that my parents took me and my sister to a James Last concert in Arnhem. This was quite an unlikely event; it is the one and only concert I remember my parents taking me to. My father, often suffering from depression, would generally avoid big crowds and closed spaces. My memories of the concert are faint, but I do remember the happy crowd, the singing and dancing along, and the feeling of togetherness that concerts can evoke. Part of the charm of the easy listening music of James Last was, I believe, his Germanness, so close, yet still a bit exotic. He spoke Dutch, but with a funny and charming accent. In a way, he may well have pacified the tense relationship with our close neighbors. I also remember that at the same time, we had family living in Noordwijk, a coastal tourist city in The Netherlands. Over the summer, they would park a car in front of their house, not because they ever used the car, but just to avoid German tourist buses parking there. Such blatant and disturbing forms of anti-​ German sentiments were slightly frowned upon, but also met with approval from my parents. Looking back, this both surprises and embarrasses me, and it points at a rather strong undercurrent in those years –​the 1970s and 1980s –​of anti-​German sentiments. These were clearly fueled by history classes, in which the story of the invasion of The Netherlands by Germany generally was framed in clear black and white: the Dutch were innocent and tried to resist, the Germans were the bad culprits. While the Second World War would take months to dissect, the subsequent war in Indonesia dare not even have that name, it was called “police actions.” I wish I could claim that my liking for, or attraction to, Germanness, one that was for sure kindled by James Last, was also related to my mistrust of Dutchness, and its underpinning myths of tolerance, openness and innocence. But I  am afraid my doubts about Dutchness, probably as thorny a question as Germanness, came in much later. Instead, short holidays in Germany, German television (Die Sendung mit der Maus), living in Nijmegen, close to the border, and the concert of James Last, were all part and parcel of my slowly growing fascination for Germanness. That fascination steadily lingers today. James Last may have even been responsible for my strong affinity with music, but rather soon I of course realized that his music was not the appropriate kind for the young. During my university years, I thus moved towards a liking of the industrial sound of Einstürzende Neubauten and the new wave music of Grauzone. Slowly, the negative stereotypes about Germany seemed to evaporate in The Netherlands, but it would be unfair to claim they evaporated all together. For example, when googling the Dutch version of the word Germanophilia, the first hit is telling, it says:  “Germanophile, can one use this word again?”

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(Germanofiel, kan dit woord weer?), gesturing to the sensitivity of expressing a passionate liking for German culture, unlike Anglophilia or Francophilia. How, then, can one like Germany without feelings of guilt? The question of Germanness is, like all national identities, connected to the issue of stereotypes. Here I am reminded of the work of communication scholar Walter Lippmann from the 1920s. In his 1922 book Public Opinion he introduced a seemingly banal observation that I still think is relevant: the diversity of the world is too complex to grasp, hence we need simplifications such as stereotypes. In his words, “For the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. And although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it. To traverse the world men must have maps of the world” (Lippmann 1922, 4). He referred to the pictures we develop in our heads, and for him, this is where the importance of public opinion comes in, as these pictures can be created, changed and tweaked. Those propagandistic dangers aside, the simplicity of his observations remains appealing: we simply need stereotypes to render the world intelligible. Whereas Lippmann helps to think the idea of stereotype away from its negative connotation and make it more neutral, Rey Chow moves one step further by unpacking the productive implications of stereotypes. She does so by showing how Jacques Derrida developed his theory of deconstruction through a stereotypical reading of the Chinese language. She writes, “whereas stereotypes are usually regarded pejoratively, as forms of entrapment and victimization of the other, the case of Derrida shows that stereotypes can be enabling: without the cliché of Chinese as an ideographic language, as a writing made up of silent little pictures, the radical epistemic rupture known as deconstruction could perhaps not have come into being in the manner it did” (Chow 2002, 71). Just as Lippmann writes about pictures in our mind, so does Chow point to the importance of visuality. She writes, “although stereotypes are not necessarily visual in the physical sense, the act of stereotyping is always implicated in visuality by virtue of the fact that the other is imagined as and transformed into a (sur)face, a sheer exterior deprived of historical depth” (ibid., 73). We may wonder, however, if such readings are not too ocularcentric, bypassing the importance of the auditory. What do nations sound like? And how can we listen to the state of the country? And what is a stereotypical sound for a country? When looking back to my liking of Einstürzende Neubauten, I think I do expect a Germanness in their sound and image. This expectation is related to global hierarchies when it comes to popular music. When I listen to a British or American band, I am not as much looking for traces of Britishness or Americanness, not even in Britpop or Americana. For sounds outside the hegemonic center of popular music production, this demand for locality becomes more pressing (see de Kloet 2010). For my ears and eyes, the Germanness of Einstürzende Neubauten lies in their use of the German language, in the voice of Bargeld, the poetic lyrics, in the roughness and at times marching-​like quality of the sound and in their industrial image. All these resonate with my stereotypes about what constitutes Germanness, a country with a poetic yet also harsh language, with a roughness that refuses to be gentrified, and above all, deeply serious about music and about life. Once, during a concert in Paradiso, Bargeld was clearly dissatisfied with the sound engineer, throughout the show, he kept on making angry movements with his arms towards the engineer, movements that, indeed for me, conjured up uncanny resemblances with the Hitler salute. While his anger annoyed me, this resemblance also brought an ironic smile to my face. And this smile says more about me than it does about Bargeld. Indeed, it is this smile that turns stereotypes into something

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more problematic than just simplifications –​even intellectually productive simplifications. It is a smile that once again freezes Germany back into the Second World War, a smile that smacks of moral superiority, since “we,” the Dutch, were the victims during that period. It is this feeling of irony that brings me to a second band, Rammstein. First, a musical disclaimer, being so much invested in Einstürzende Neubauten, I have never truly liked Rammstein that much, they always struck me as a more commercial, more superficial and more banal version of “real” industrial music. But their confrontational aesthetics amuse me, and in their deliberate and quite grotesque play with Germanness they clearly do something very different. In their amplification of stereotypes of Germanness, in sound, aesthetics and lyrics, they mobilize large doses of irony, for example in the song “Pussy” (2009): Germany! Germany! You’ve got a pussy I’ve got a dick So what’s the problem? Let’s do it quick The pleasure of such ironic negotiations of Germanness resonated well with my Germanophilia, so I started to like the band a bit more. That the band has been followed by controversies since their inception in 1994 comes as no surprise, and one may wonder if the public announcement by the guitarist Richard Kruspe of his left-​wing political leanings is of much help here. I started to question my own liking a bit more when we discussed Rammstein in class, somewhere around 2006 in Amsterdam. Then and there, Melanie challenged me. “Even if you may read it as ironic, who says everybody does? What if the far right embraces this music?” Unwanted uses of popular music are not unique, it was to the dismay of Bruce Springsteen that the Republicans used his “Born in the USA,” just as it seems highly unlikely that the band Survivor will be pleased to hear that the Dutch far right politician Geert Wilders uses their “Eye of the Tiger” for his stage performances. But, Melanie would argue, Rammstein’s case is of a different order, as they deliberately appropriate a Third Reich aesthetics into their sound and image. This, indeed, brings back questions of intentionality of the author on the table, questions that for a long time have been deemed inappropriate, and in their slipstream, questions of power and responsibility. Melanie’s words not only cast doubt upon the pleasure I  derive from stereotypes about Germany, they also point to the potential danger and misuse of these stereotypes. It is in particular in the alignment of stereotypes with irony that we can observe a potential and rather toxic danger. In Irony’s Edge, Linda Hutcheon argues that irony always involves a complex negotiation between the sender, the audience and the specific context. Irony is dangerous, as Hutcheon claims “I think there are always going to be potential problems with any use of irony […] With irony, you move out of the realm of the true and false and into the realm of the felicitous and infelicitous” (1992, 14). What may be ironic to some can well be deadly serious for others. It is this ambivalence of meaning that might make irony a poor tool for the negotiation of Germanness in popular music. Whereas in the case of the serious and critical band Einstürzende Neubauten, the double bind I observed is closely connected to my own stereotypes and prejudices vis-​à-​vis Germany, the case of Rammstein proves more disconcerting, as they clearly and deliberately gesture towards a far-​right imagination.1

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In short, while my longing for Germanness is bound to stay forever, I  have become more cautious about its underpinnings. I mistrust by now ironic references to a brutal past, I question my own use of stereotypes about Germany, just as I consider stereotypes less productive than I did before. I have also started, slowly and hesitantly, to realize how this longing is entangled with Dutchness. This entanglement can in my eyes also be connected to Freud’s idea of the narcissism of the minor differences –​it is especially when we are almost alike that we tend to articulate an allegedly profound difference, a practice not alien to academic disciplines. Minor as they may be, they allow me to fall back into the same old trap, and poke fun at my co-​author, who now takes over the baton, and will no doubt do so in a much more rigorous, scholarly and serious, in other words, German way … Melanie The struggle over Germanness as described by Jeroen is by no means exclusive to the “outsider” of German identity. The ambiguities and longings, and Jeroen’s simultaneous fascination with, and feelings of guilt in pleasurable encounters with (stereotypical and ironic articulations of), Germanness, mark an interesting counterpoint for my own reflections on German identity in pop. Since I  was born and raised in Germany but moved to Amsterdam to study Media and Cultural Studies at the age of 20, I have been living “abroad” for almost half my life now. Since my graduate studies I  have been researching German national identity and popular music, which has in fact been a truly international experience for me. I  have been dwelling between different countries, sometimes continents, but always between bureaucratic systems and cultural contexts, cities, universities, workplaces, and homes. Always accompanied by what I have learned to be a typically German question:  What is German identity? This question, and its link with popular music, has been central to my academic development since I wrote my Master’s thesis in Amsterdam under the supervision of Jeroen in the summer of 2006 –​when I missed the so-​called “Sommermärchen” of the FIFA World Cup taking place in Germany that year. Through the media I  saw Germans celebrating the national team, but really mostly themselves. Looking in from the outside, the nation seemed to be in a staggering state of re-​defining its identity, embracing national pride and confidence, all with the excuse of supporting “Die Mannschaft.” Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, I wrote my thesis about the latest wave of musical re-​definitions of Germanness in the early 2000s –​about songs by MIA, and Paul van Dyk and Peter Heppner who stressed the rhetoric of Germany having an “identity problem” (Wagner 2014) –​something “we” should finally relax about, relaxing about Germany’s past, the Holocaust, the incessant guilt. I wondered who this “we” was and whether I belonged to it. On the other hand, bands like Tocotronic, Muff Potter and Knarf Rellöm opposed such celebrations of nationalism in songs like “Aber hier Leben, nein danke” (2005), “Arme kleine Deutsche” (2005), and through the publication of a collection of critical-​theory-​inspired heavy “German” intellectual texts, accompanied by music that was published as the I can’t relax in Deutschland compilation (2005). This collection of German-​ critical songs, steeped in irony and self-​distance, celebrated national self-​pity rather than pride. The music played with German stereotypes (“Achtung!” (Räuberhöhle 2005); “Zis is ze heavy heavy no-​Deutschland sound!” (Knarf Rellöm 2005)) and the texts in the accompanying book were heavily “Adornian” in its critique; Jeroen  –​the self-​proclaimed Germanophile  –​loved it, because it was so “German”! … I was confused.

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The longing for a German identity, negotiations, celebrations and contestations of Germanness in popular music have been around for decades, and in fact, have been pivotal for (self-​)images of the nation, as I researched my subsequent dissertation project (Schiller 2018). One important signifier for Germany’s incessant struggle with its past, the nation’s loss of self-​evidence, and its longing for identity in popular music, is language, as Blixa Bargeld explains: There has always been a problem with German music, about singing in our own language. For countries that did not have this interruption of the Third Reich, such as France and Italy, it is quite natural for bands to sing in French and Italian. I have learned to construct music around the German language, which is not capable of rock ‘n’ roll inflections, learned how the music has to be different to accommodate the language. (Stubbs 2014, 416) Each year on May 5th, The Netherlands celebrate Liberation Day (Bevrijdingsdag) to mark the end of the occupation by Nazi Germany during the Second World War  –​a welcome day off from work, but also always a reminder of my own Germanness. Having lived in the Netherlands for almost 20 years, this day unfailingly feels a little uncomfortable, and I know from German colleagues and students that they inadvertently share my sense of unease. In 2016, I therefore decided to visit my parents in Germany that day. On the train ride I listened to the latest official German Top 30 (out of academic curiosity, of course), until I reached chart position 21: Max Giesinger’s song “80 Millionen.” The song has haunted me ever since. It does not haunt me because of its catchy hook or its “earwormyness”, nor because I  particularly like or dislike it. Rather, I see the song as performing an affirmative national identification that not only represents banal nationalism as described by Michael Billig (1995), but that also exemplifies the state of “naturalness” the nation has gained (again) in Germany. A “natural” state that is highly problematic when keeping in mind the nation’s past, and considering the contemporary political situation of the Cologne New Year’s Eve events (2015/​2016) and its media aftermath marked by xenophobia,2 weekly PEGIDA marches against “the ‘islamisation’ of the Occident” in Dresden, the right-​wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and Holocaust deniers represented in state parliaments and the Bundestag. What does “80 Millionen” have to do with this and why does it strike me as dangerous? Max Giesinger is a popular singer (and collaborative songwriter) who participated in the first season of the casting show “The Voice of Germany” in 2012. He did not win but has been successful with the release of two albums and has scored several hit singles. Giesinger is seen as representative of a new genre (or wave, or generation) of successful pop musicians singing in German; often softly crooned pop songs with catchy singer/​songwriter melodies. Artists like Tim Bendzko, Andreas Bourani, Clueso and Max Giesinger are sometimes called German Pop-​Poets (Groß 2017), or their music “Befindlichkeitspop” (Lange 2017) (roughly translated as sensibility-​pop), since the lyrics often deal with issues like friendship, flirting, relationships, but also loneliness, escapism and sometimes mild(!) social criticism and self-​reflection. Whereas German-​language pop in the early 2000s, regardless of its critical or affirmative stance, caused fierce national debates about Germanness, these so-​called Pop-​Poets do not. Music by Giesinger et al. is questioned for its authenticity,3 and critics struggle with the genre-​categorization (is it pop or is it Schlager?). What is not discussed this time around, however, is their relationship to the question of Germanness.

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“80 Millionen” does not strike me as a particularly outstanding love song. The lyrics begin by locating the protagonist as a small-​town boy and quantifying the chances of finding love and meeting “The One” by one-​in-​80-​million. The 80 million refer unambiguously to the size of the nation-​state of Germany, with Berlin as its capital (almost four million inhabitants, as the song points outs). The bridge highlights an inaccessible, but shared, history: “We’ve come so far, we’ve seen so much; so much has happened that we don’t understand” (translation). The protagonist has found love, unlikely as it is, his girl has found him –​one of 80 million. The chorus “One of 80 million” is repeated several times, it is the main hook and message of the song. The implicit, yet pervasive, identification as an individual is unambiguously German. The nation functions as the main identity-​marker, and as the only thinkable frame of reference for finding love and happiness. “80 Millionen” does not ask “who are we?” anymore. It self-​evidently assumes that the individual is defined by its belonging to the German national collective. It does not acknowledge a problematic state, it does not ask questions anymore, and no one seems upset. In 2017, the AfD (unsurprisingly) embraced the song and played it at local rallies for the national parliament elections (Krohn 2017). Giesinger reacted with displeasure, disapproved and forbade its use. Thinking of himself as apolitical, he explains: “I am not at all an expert in politics, and I would never assume the right to write a song about [politics]” (translation)4 –​ whereas I, on the other hand, understand “80 Millionen” as highly political in its explicit “apoliticalness.” I am in no way accusing Giesinger (or any of the other “Pop-​Poets” for that matter)5 of xenophobia or nationalism, nor am I criticizing the use of German lyrics in pop. I do, however, see “80 Millionen” as a symptom of how far the nation has become naturalized, unquestioned, taken for granted and filled with pride. Germany has quietly moved from “relaxing” about the Second World War to electing Holocaust deniers into state parliaments and the Bundestag.6 Since the rise of the AfD and the PEGIDA movement, Germany –​like many others in Europe –​is undergoing a rise of exclusionary populism, including a strong instrumentalization of fear and anxiety with a xenophobic, racist, and anti-​Semitic orientation and a revisionist perspective on German history, including anti-​EU attitudes. Clearly the national past of fascism that has been haunting the nation seems closer than ever, and the ghost of nationalism is returning: Er ist wieder da! (Look who’s back)!7 Conclusion While still being seduced by the pleasures of stereotypes, over the years, also due to the critical interventions of Melanie, Jeroen has come to be more cautious about such pleasures, and more sensitive towards their violence, either symbolic or real. And he has come to realize how his Germanophilia is profoundly entangled with his Dutchness: stereotyping Germanness as “exotic Other” may be an indicator for his own complicated relationship with Dutch identity. Melanie has been amused by this shifting position of her former teacher. But both are troubled, as in the decade that has passed the changes taking place in both Germany and Europe at large have not make it easier to embrace the nation as our primal point of identification. Unlike the rich tradition of self-​stereotyping and irony in German popular music  –​ranging from Kraftwerk performing all the German stereotypes that were expected of them, DAF sounding like a Hitler speech or Rammstein’s appropriations of Nazi imagery and sounds, a song like “80 Millionen” lacks such reflexivity. It does not invite a reading as “typically German”

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from the outside, indeed, Jeroen then also had no reaction to it, even though he started listening to the song while writing this chapter. Nor does it produce and inner-​national conflict of identification. Precisely its “ungermanness” as not being explicitly self-​referential makes Melanie wonder:  maybe stereotypes and irony can be good after all, at least sometimes. In its lyrics as well as its mellow sound, “80 Millionen” produces togetherness and national belonging instead of alienation and strangeness –​a message all too willingly embraced by the far-​right. Simultaneously, Jeroen has come to be more critical towards the tropes of stereotypes and irony for their ambiguity and dangers of infelicitous appropriation by the far-​right. In both of these approaches, Germany remains an ontologically slippery category that cannot escape its haunting past. It seems as if we have reached a higher level of confusion, but also of alertness: sometimes we can embrace the stereotypes, be they ironic or not. It brings fun to our friendship, just like our shared love for popular music –​and poplar music studies –​does. But while articulating them, we cannot simply embrace them, as stereotypes are far from innocent. In particular in a Europe in which the far-​right is so much on the rise. To return to our opening quote of Blixa Bargeld, today, it is not only anymore about the state of the country, but more so, the state of Europe and the world at large. Allow us to close with a statement alluding to the quality of music, something often frowned upon in popular music studies:8 To interrogate the state of the world at large, as well as of Germany and The Netherlands, we continue to need Blixa Bargeld, Tocotronic and Knarf Rellöm, we need them far more urgently now than we need either Max Giesinger or Paul van Dyk. Sorry Max, sorry Paul. Acknowledgements The research for this chapter is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) consolidator grant for the project ChinaCreative (ERC-​2013-​CoG 616882). We thank Blixa Bargeld and Anna Szczuka for giving permission to reprint the lyrics of “Die Befindlichkeit des Landes” (2000). Notes 1 It is important to note that Rammstein was a band from former East Germany, and Einstürzende Neubauten came from Berlin –​both not quite typical of West Germany. This may well have influenced their sound and aesthetics. 2 In the wake of sexual assaults by –​allegedly –​migrants during the 2015 New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, reputable news sources, both liberal and conservative, published numerous reports about migrant crimes, often accompanied by sexual stereotypes and images of white women’s bodies defiled by black hands and racist tropes about criminal foreigners, “asylum abuse,” and refugees as a resource burden found their way into major media outlets (Kleist 2017, 3). 3 In his widely popular television program NeoMagazin Royal, satirist Jan Böhmermann criticized the so-​called Pop-​ Poets for producing “seelenlose Kommerzkacke” (soulless commercial crap) and received much attention for it https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=nFfu2xDJyVs. 4 “Ich bin überhaupt kein Politcrack und würde mir nicht anmaßen, darüber einen Song zu schreiben,” Giesinger in interview with Osnabrücker Zeitung (Kracht 2018). 5 Andreas Bourani’s song “Auf Uns” (2014) was similarly appropriated by the right-​wing NPD. Bourani’s song shares the celebration of togetherness and belonging, an implied shared past that has been overcome as collective, and looking ahead toward an eternal future of fireworks as immortal “us”: “Denkt an die Tage die hinter uns liegen. Wie lang’ wir Freude und Tränen schon teilen” (Think of those days that lie behind us, how long we have been sharing joy and tears). Bourani’s song is less explicitly nationally coded, yet also invites a reading as national narrative.

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98   •   Melanie Schiller and Jeroen de Kloet 6 Wolfgang Gedeon (German right-​wing author, politician of the AfD and acknowledged Holocaust denier) has been deputy of the Baden-​Württemberg state parliament since March, 2016. 7 In the autumn of 2015, the film Er ist wieder da (Look Who’s Back) (Wendt 2015) was a major success in Germany and the Netherlands: based on a satirical novel, this self-​referential “Hitler comedy” stages the return of “The Führer,” and showcases the broad acceptance of his persona and ideology in contemporary German society. 8 But here we are in good company, see the opening of Simon Frith’s Performance Rites (1996) in which he refers to a discussion he had at the doorstep of Johan Fornäs’s house over The Pet Shop Boys.

Bibliography Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Chow, Rey 2002. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Elsaeser, Thomas. 1996. Fassbinder’s Germany: History, Identity, Subject. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites, On the Value of Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Groß, Torsten. 2017. “Status:  Es ist kompliziert.” Musikexpress, September 21. Accessed May 11, 2018, https://​www. musikexpress.de/​der-​deutsche-​pop-​und-​sein-​verhaeltnis-​zu-​politik-​und-​gesellschaft-​897559/​. Hutcheon, Linda. 1994. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London: Routledge. Kleist, J. Olaf. 2017. “‘Germany: Two Faces of Refugee Reporting’. The Big Question: What Role Does the Media Play in Driving Xenophobia.” World Policy Journal 34 (1): 3–​7. de Kloet, Jeroen 2010. China with a Cut –​Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music. Amsterdam:  Amsterdam University Press. Kracht, Svenja. 2017. “Sänger im Interview. Max Giesinger wird bei Dating-​Apps gesperrt.” Neue OZ, August 18. Accessed May 11, 2018. https://​www.noz.de/​deutschland-​welt/​medien/​artikel/​937604/​max-​giesinger-​wird-​bei-​dating-​ apps-​gesperrt. Krohn, Knut. 2017. “Streit um ‘80 Millionen.’ Max Giesinger wehrt sich gegen die AfD.” September 12. Accessed May 11, 2018. https://​www.stuttgarter-​nachrichten.de/​inhalt.streit-​um-​80-​millionen-​max-​giesinger-​wehrt-​sich-​gegen-​die-​ afd.d4bbe0cf-​3603-​4eb7-​9cca-​d12c4f2b91af.html. Lange, Tino. 2017. “Befindlichkeits-​Pop vom Feinsten.” Hamburger Abendblatt, June 1. Accessed May 11, 2018. https://​ www.abendblatt.de/​kultur-​live/​article210764059/​Befindlichkeits-​Pop-​vom-​Feinsten.html. Lippmann, Walter. 1922. Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan. Schiller, Melanie. 2018. Soundtracking Germany: Popular Music and National Identity. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Stubbs, David. 2014. Future Days. Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany. London: Faber & Faber. Wagner, Hartmut. 2014. “‘Wir Deutschen haben ein Identitätsproblem’. Sänger Peter Heppner über sein Lied ‘Wir sind Wir’.” Berliner Zeitung, October 1.  Accessed March 5, 2018. www.berliner-​zeitung.de/​film/​-​wir-​sind-​jung-​-​wir-​ sind-​stark-​-​die-​wut-​der-​entheimateten,10809184,29618894.html.

Discography Bourani, Andreas. “Auf Uns.” Vertigo Berlin, 2014, CD Single. Einstürzende Neubauten. “Die Befindlichkeit des Landes.” In Silence is Sexy, CD, Potomak, 2000. Giesinger, Max. “80 Millionen.” In Der Junge der Rennt. BMG, 2016a, CD Album. Rammstein. “Pussy.” In Liebe ist für alle da, CD, Universal Music, 2009. Räuberhöhle Feat. Saalschutz. “Achtung.” In I can’t relax in Deutschland, Unterm Durschnitt, 2005, CD Sampler and Book. Rellöm, Knarf. “Arme kleine Deutsche.” In I can’t relax in Deutschland, Unterm Durschnitt, 2005, CD Sampler and Book. Various Artists. I can’t relax in Deutschland. Unterm Durschnitt, 2005, CD Sampler and Book.

Filmography Wendt, David (director). Er ist wieder da. Constantin Film, 2015.

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III

Part 

Also “Made in Germany”

Helene Fischer’s song “Atemlos” (Breathless) entered the German charts in 2013 peaking at third place in 2014. Staying in the charts for 116 weeks, she went on to receive one of her numerous Echos –​in this case in the category “Hit of the year” in 2015. In addition to helping rejuvenate Schlager by drawing on EDM and contemporary pop elements (and thus opening it up to a younger audience) her hardworking image and nearly scandal-​free career has also helped her become a German media darling. What makes Fischer special is not only that she is one of numerous commercially successful female artists singing in German. She also has an immigrant background, being a so-​called ethnic German who as a child emigrated from the (former) Soviet Union to Germany. Her background points to a less visible German immigration movement than for example the so called Italian and Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers) who came to Germany in the 1950s and 60s to alleviate labor shortages in their new host country. This can also be seen in how Fischer is marketed: while her background is no secret it is not actively used in her promotion so that her modernized version of Schlager is generally considered to be “German.” Fischer’s personal background also highlights the fact that Germany is an immigration country: In 2015 there were 8,652 million registered foreign citizens residing in Germany. This is about 10.5 percent of the total population of 82,176 million (Statistisches Bundesamt 2017, 29). But that does not necessarily mean that all the people who live in Germany and all the music they produce in this country are considered to be “German.” The post-​Soviet music scene in Germany is also what David-​Emil Wickström’s chapter examines. Exploring the cultural intermediaries, he shows how different genres of post-​Soviet popular music have been marketed to both a non-​Russian speaking majority audience and a Russian-​speaking audience. Focusing on the latter he argues that, while post-​Soviet immigrants are not a homogenous group, the cultural intermediaries draw on certain artists as a common generational denominator in order to bring a critical mass to the concerts. Thus, the intermediaries also fulfill a homogenizing function within the post-​Soviet community in Germany. While Wickström examines foreign music in Germany that a German majority population probably does not know, hip hop and rap are quite present. In his chapter, Thomas Solomon writes about rap that is “made in Germany,” but is usually not considered to be “German.” Discussing the emergence of Turkish hip hop both in Germany and in Turkey Solomon demonstrates (as does the interview with Kutlu Yurtseven in a later section of this book) that rap and hip hop have also from the very beginning been the music of the diverse minorities living in Germany. This is also something Schütte picks up on when he writes that hip hop’s “lyrics convey minority narratives 99

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and socio-​political criticism that would otherwise remain unheard” (2017, p. 20). In other words, Turkish hip hop in Germany has provided a minority narrative to popular music that most mainstream acts have not. What unites the Turkish hip hoppers and the post-​Soviet migration wave is that they negotiate between the German host culture and other culture(s) including their own. As Solomon writes, drawing on Robins and Morley (1996), the second-​generation Turkish migrant youth negotiate between German, US-​American and their own culture. Germany also acts as a central node for Turkey: through the use of Turkish language in hip hop “made in Germany” the music played a major part in the genesis of Turkish hip hop in Turkey itself, which is, as Solomon conveys, a product of a diasporic relationship between the two countries The third chapter in this section takes a closer look at the third (foreign) culture in Robin and Morley’s triad: US-​American music. In his contribution, Bodo Mrozek problematizes the term “Americanization” by examining the meeting between the allied soldiers’ music and German musical styles in the 1950s and 1960s which introduced German popular music to international influences. Here he not only highlights (allied) radio, but the roles personal contacts played. Mrozek argues that the critique of “Americanization” was used as a topos of cultural criticism in those years. Instead, the music that emerged is an amalgam of different influences where the allied soldiers with their families and the locals started numerous collaborations. These results have influenced many musics mentioned in this book –​be they Pete Bellotte, who started out producing interviews for AFN and ended up collaborating with Giorgio Moroder,1 or the introduction of hip hop through American GIs which paved the way for Turkish hip hop. Note 1 See Heiko Wandler’s chapter in this book.

Bibliography Robins, Kevin, and David Morley. 1996. “Almancı, Yabancı.” Cultural Studies 10 (2): 248–​54. Schütte, Uwe. 2017. “Introduction –​Pop Music as the Soundtrack of German Post-​War History.” In German Pop Music: A Companion, edited by Uwe Schütte, 1–​24. Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Statistisches Bundesamt. 2017. Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit  –​Ausländische Bevölkerung Ergebnisse des Ausländerzentralregisters 2016. Online ed. Fachserie 1 Reihe 2. Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis).

Discography Fischer, Helene. 2013. Atemlos Durch Die Nacht. Polydor LC 00309. CD.

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8

Peepl Rock

Post-​Soviet Popular Music in Germany David-​Emil Wickström

Introduction December 1, 2012, Stadthalle Offenbach: I entered the Peepl Rock Festival’s venue and it was like I had left Germany and entered Russia: At the entrance sponsors were handing out advertisements predominantly in Russian, and Russian was heard everywhere. The audience (about 3,000) had come from all over Germany to hear the bands Leningrad, Splin, Liapis Trubetskoi, Tanok na Maidani Kongo (TNMK) and Mara. With the exception of this group of citizens from the former Soviet Union these well-​known Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian artists from the 1990s and 2000s are mostly unknown to a German majority population. Consisting mainly of ethnic Germans but also Jews this group is quite large: since World War II more than three million people have emigrated from the (former) Soviet Union to Germany.1 While this group is less visible than, for example, the so called Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers), Russian is today often heard in the German public domain. Unlike other major German migrant groups like those of Turkish descent, many ethnic Germans have not returned to their previous country of residence, nor do they commute between the countries as implied by Schiller, Basch and Blanc’s (1995) term transmigrant. The generation of immigrants who moved to Germany as teens and adults, however, still maintain transnational musical as well as media ties to the (former) Soviet Union. In addition to immigrant bands in Germany making music inspired by the musical heroes of their teens, there is also an active circuit of primarily Soviet and Russian vocalists and bands who mainly perform for the last Soviet generation living in Germany, as the opening example demonstrated. While the Berlin-​based Russendisko (Russian discotheque), initiated by the author Wladimir Kaminer and the musician Yuriy Gurzhy, opened up a segment of this music to a broader audience in the early 2000s most of the concerts are hidden from the view of the majority population. By drawing on ethnographic data collected in the 2000s and 2010s, this chapter will explore post-​Soviet popular music in Germany. Focusing on the cultural intermediaries and their activities in Germany, my research shows how post-​Soviet popular music in the last 20 years has been repackaged in different ways to cater to different audiences in Germany.

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Cultural Intermediaries The mentioned events are organized from within the immigrant community. Originally targeting a Russian speaking audience, actors like Kaminer and Gurzhy can be theorized as cultural intermediaries.2 According to Maguire and Matthews (2012, 552)  cultural intermediaries construct value, by framing how others  –​end consumers, as well as other market actors including other cultural intermediaries –​engage with goods, affecting and effecting others’ orientations towards those goods as legitimate –​with ‘goods’ understood to include material products as well as services, ideas and behaviours. The cultural intermediaries at the same time claim “professional expertise in taste and value within specific cultural fields” (Maguire and Matthews 2012, 552) and are within the commodity chain located between the stage and the consumers of cultural commodities. As Gebesmair points out, their main function within the cultural industries is to establish new cultural forms within the broader consumer world and to “frame or reframe these cultural productions by providing access to institutions” (2015, 94). While some, like Kaminer and Gurzhy, succeed within the broader consumer world others remain within their own group. The concept of cultural intermediaries emphasizes a shift “towards an approach that conceives of workers as intermediaries continually engaged in forming a point of connection or articulation between production and consumption” (Negus 2002, 503). This has been facilitated through social media, making it easier and more cost-​efficient for individuals who set up booking agencies or work as managers to act as influencers promoting certain products. As I  will show, the cultural intermediaries discussed here act as market agents and play a central role in the cultural production of post-​Soviet popular music in Germany by being the link between bands primarily based in the former Soviet Union (production) and the audience in Germany (consumption). Maguire and Matthews identify three dimensions to focus on when examining cultural intermediaries “as contextualized market actors” (2012, 553): framing, expertise and impact. In terms of framing, this (as I will show) not only includes the content and target group, but also how the medialized products of labels like Eastblok Music (CDs/​Vinyl/​digital downloads) differ in the presentation from event organizers (live performances and events). Within the live market, working as a DJ gives a different form of immediate feedback than organizing concerts. While DJs can adjust their set and somewhat adapt to the crowd, concert organizers cannot react as quickly. The actors involved as cultural intermediaries, however, play a key role between production and consumption by continuously evaluating and deciding what is marketed and thus influencing what can be consumed. Working as arbiters of taste, they have to balance their activities, since they “identify with artists and intellectuals, yet under conditions of the de-​ monopolization of artistic and intellectual commodity enclaves they have the apparent contradictory interests of sustaining the prestige and cultural capital of these enclaves while at the same time popularising and making them more accessible to wider audiences” (Featherstone 2007, 19) Analyzing the activities with Ulf Hannerz’s (1996, 136f) sequential model within what he  labels “world cities” provides one way of exploring these audiences  –​specifically the

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impact of post-​S oviet popular music both within the post-​S oviet immigrant community as well as outside. Post-​Soviet Migration to Germany The first big wave of Russian emigration to Germany followed the Russian revolution and civil war.3 These settled in Germany, with Berlin becoming the center of Russian migration and culture during the 1920s (Schlögel 1994; Darieva 2004, 41, 100ff). This was followed by three more waves of emigration from the Soviet Union. These immigrants have struggled with assimilation –​especially those arriving in the 1990s and 2000s –​and have been somewhat disillusioned in terms of their expectations and the way they were welcomed in Germany (Hess 2016).4 Based on official statistics (Federal Ministry of the Interior 2005, 58; Statistisches Bundesamt 2006, 38f; Kiss and Lederer 2006, 68; Bundesverwaltungsamt 2017) and a conservative estimation, more than three million Russian speaking migrants have moved to Germany since World War II (see Wickström 2014a, 53ff, 247ff for a more in depth discussion). While referred to as Die Russen (The Russians), a term used both by the immigrants and the German majority population, this group is not homogenous. Roughly speaking, the groups differ in aspects of ethnicity, religion and geographic distribution in their home country. In Germany the formal categories used when they immigrate are (see Dietz 2000; Wickström 2009): Ethnic Germans, Jews and “Ethnic” Russians (Ukrainians etc.). In Germany these immigrant groups have in part settled in their own enclaves with their own internal infrastructure (see Hess 2016, 388f; Dietz 2000). This includes both artists and cultural intermediaries catering to their own community and not only covers the field of music, but also theatre, art as well as online and print media. In Mannheim (about 300,000 inhabitants) where I live these groups overlap somewhat with, for example, cultural associations providing Russian language lessons as well as “Soviet” cultural activities (New Year’s celebrations, author readings, concerts etc.) aimed at the immigrants’ children. At the same time the local Jewish community specifically caters to Jews from the former Soviet Union by providing weekly German conversation courses for its members, Russian synopses of the weekly Torah portion during services and prayer books in Russian, as well as by publishing its monthly program in German and Russian. At first glance this subdivision seems logical based on the immigrants’ ethnic backgrounds. The European ethnologist Darieva (2004, 77ff), however, argues that the categories ethnic German and Jewish are primarily imposed by the host country, Germany. These ethnic categories which in Germany are linked to different expectations and institutions (Jewish community, organizations for ethnic Germans) were for many almost void of meaning in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the backgrounds of post-​Soviet immigrants are not always as clear cut as the system makes them –​ some have both Jewish and ethnic German backgrounds. Thus, Darieva argues that the German state creates an artificial split. This was also reflected in answers I got from musicians who were uncomfortable in using the official labels in interviews. On the other hand, Russian as a language, as Darieva (2004, 262ff) argues, is used as a super-​ ethnic collective identity category in Russian-​language print media in Berlin. A language-​based approach is also productive when discussing post-​Soviet popular music in Germany. Drawing on the work of Ulf Hannerz, the next section will provide a frame for focusing on the music’s impact and different target groups.

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German Speaking Audience We started this mainly to present this music to other people, the Russians know what this is about. (Gurzhy 2005)5 “This music” primarily includes bands from the former Soviet Union, Europe and the United States mixing elements from ska, punk, reggae, Klezmer and other styles summarized under the label “Balkan” and often featuring a horn section. The lyrics are mainly in Russian, Belorussian or Ukrainian. While the Russendisko, a fortnightly event in Berlin during the 2000s playing post-​Soviet popular music, is a product of the post-​Soviet immigrant community, the target group differs from other events of that community by primarily catering to a non-​immigrant audience –​as Gurzhy’s statement alludes to. He added that the Russians mainly remain among other “Russians.” When asking different regulars during my fieldwork in the 2000s about the Russendisko I was told that around 15–​20 percent of the participants were “Russians.” Further indications that the target group is not Russian speakers were the Russendisko DJs’ radio show and podcasts on (the now defunct) radio station radiomultikulti as well as the short stories on the album Radio Russendisko (Various Artists 2005): these are all in German. This targeting of a German-​speaking audience can also be seen in the DJs’ conscious exoticization and play on Soviet and Russian clichés normally employed by Germans (see Wickström 2014b). This raises the question of how an event which seemingly would cater to an immigrant audience has managed to reach the majority population. When discussing how meaning and meaningful forms arise in local contexts the anthropologist Ulf Hannerz (1996, 69)  points out that cultural production and circulation in social relationships operate within four frames:  form of life, state, market and movement. These four frames involve different agents which manage meaning and which have different motives and dimensions of interaction. In the following discussion, form of life, which refers to everyday communication and interaction between people, and market, which involves the commodification of meaning and people relating to each other as buyer and seller, are important. Hannerz (1996, 136f) also provides a sequential model within what he labels “world cities.” This model examines how the form of life level interacts with the market level and thus creates new types of meaningful forms. His framework can shed some light on the cultural activities and cultural intermediaries within the immigrant community and specifically on the evolution of the Russendisko. In Berlin, as in other German cities, the presence of a large post-​Soviet immigrant community allowed for an exchange of ideas among people with similar backgrounds. Gurzhy pointed out that when he became acquainted with Kaminer they would exchange tapes and listen to and discuss post-​Soviet popular music (Gurzhy 2005). This kind of communication about music is common in everyday interactions (the form of life level). Hannerz (1996, 136) argues that in the first phase of his model, meaning and meaningful forms flow fairly freely within what he calls the sub-​cultural community –​here the post-​Soviet community in Berlin, which is large and cohesive enough to offer both moral and other non-​material support to its members. At one point Kaminer’s wife suggested that they stage a dance party with post-​Soviet music for friends. This coincided with an offer from the organizers of Cafe Zapata located in Tacheles, a center for contemporary art, to organize a party with Russian music. Due to its success Gurzhy and Kaminer were invited to host the event regularly in the club Kaffee Burger. In Hannerz’s model this can be seen as the beginning of the second stage, where

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a higher degree of division of cultural labor is introduced within the community. Apparently the latter [the community] has also reached another kind of critical mass here, where it is profitable enough to commoditize subculturally distinctive items for consumption by community members, as an alternative to the free flow of the form-​of-​life framework. (Hannerz 1996, 136f) The meaningful forms –​here the music –​move into the local market frame, becoming a commodity, and also enter the public arena, though still focused on the immigrant community. Both Gurzhy and Kaminer draw on their cultural capital and position themselves as experts, thus emerging as cultural intermediaries catering to a broad audience. This type of change is not limited to music. In Berlin it can also be seen in stores –​including major supermarkets  –​selling (imported and locally produced) Russian products as well as in Russian-​language print and online publications, a Russian-​language radio station and Russian-​ language shows on other radio stations and television. Not only do these forms of media retain a link “home,” but it also shows that there is a viable market for post-​Soviet products –​including cultural products –​in the new home. This demand also enables Russian groups and performers to tour Berlin as well as Germany to perform for an immigrant audience. As I have argued elsewhere, post-​Soviet popular music has been masterfully repacked within the Russendisko through Kaminer’s books,6 as well as through numerous compilation CDs Gurzhy and Kaminer have released (see Wickström 2014a, 2014b for an in-​depth discussion on Russendisko). Thus, through both staging the event regularly by drawing on their expertise on post-​Soviet popular music and through Kaminer’s success as an author, which has paralleled the popularity of the Russendisko, the event evolved into a cultural commodity which had its peak during the mid-​2000s.7 As a cultural commodity the event was also more visible –​becoming part of the wider cultural marketplace –​the third stage of Hannerz’s model. These activities also allowed for others to emerge as cultural intermediaries and to copy or develop the idea further with similar events, but also through specializing in marketing the music (e.g. the labels Russendisko Records and Eastblok Music) and post-​Soviet groups performing for a non-​immigrant market. Russian Speaking Audience While the Russendisko is on Hannerz’s third stage, other music events playing Russian-​language popular music remain on the second stage targeting primarily the immigrants. Gurzhy’s comment above regarding Russians who know what the music played at the Russendisko is about reflects on the ability of the post-​Soviet immigrants to acquire Russian-​language music without the help of a cultural intermediary. Another, more important, reason that they are not necessarily part of the event’s target group is that their musical taste –​just like that of their non-​post-​Soviet peers –​is very diverse. The local discotheques and youth clubs catering to ethnic Germans and Jews focus on Russian-​language popular music like Russian pop (popsa, estrada), hip hop and EDM as well as Western popular music. While the Russendisko has an added “exotic element” (see Wickström 2014b), which appeals to a German speaking non-​post-​Soviet crowd this does not really apply for the majority of post-​Soviet immigrants. They tend more towards shared (popular) cultural symbols which they recognize from when they grew up in the former Soviet Union or from visits to the post-​Soviet republics.

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A central platform for these events is the online platform http://​germany.ru which is aimed towards the Russian-​speaking audience in Germany. The events promoted here are organized by various (small) booking agencies and cultural intermediaries from the post-​Soviet community living in Germany. Their activities can mostly be framed within Hannerz’s second stage. Within the realm of guitar-​driven popular music (e.g. rock, metal) booking agencies like peepl, Zucker Eventagentur and Piligrim Rock organize tours in Germany of primarily Russian and Ukrainian based bands. These are small agencies each consisting of one to three cultural intermediaries who then hire helpers for the concerts. The activities of peepl’s Alexey Parparov and Alexander Lissak provide a good example: Parparov and Lissak started organizing concerts when in 2005 they booked the Nürnberg concert for the St. Petersburg based group Billy’s Band. After that Parparov became acquainted with Andrei Muratov, responsible for germany.ru’s cultural section. Muratov planned tours of Russian bands and suggested that Parparov and his colleague organize some of the local concerts. After doing that for some years Parparov and Lissak registered their own company peepl in 2010 and started to organize concerts under that banner. Their activities, however, are part time and both have day jobs (Parparov 2017). Both Parparov (2017) and Armin Siebert (2017), co-​founder of the label Eastblok Music, pointed out that due to distance (and thus costs) the invited bands have to attract an audience of 1,000 to 3,000 in order to generate enough revenue for the concerts to be financially viable for the bookers in Germany. This limits the pool of groups mostly to known Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian bands from the 1990s and 2000s. One good example for such a concert is the Peepl Rock Festival (Figure 8.1) mentioned in this chapter’s introduction. Organized by peepl the audience mainly consisted of the last Soviet generation and older (in other words people born in the early 1980s and earlier). I have seen similar audiences at other concerts and festivals in Germany that I have since attended. While some of these groups (e.g. Leningrad and VV) overlap with the Russendisko line up, most of them are primarily bands that have not been part of the Russendisko –​and are neither known nor necessarily interesting to a German speaking audience. Another important aspect pointed out to me by Parparov (2017) was that bringing in (rock) bands was also more expensive compared to (pop-​)singers and (local) DJs (like Kaminer and Gurzhy) and thus more of a financial risk. This limits the pool of bands to invite. Furthermore, as Siebert (2017) pointed out, a generational shift in musical taste has also had an impact on the audience for guitar driven bands: the first generation born in Germany in the 1990s and 2000s prefer to listen to hip hop and not necessarily rock nor Russian-​language hip hop. This limits the potential audience and thus also which bands can be invited. Musical Boundaries When considering what emerges as a commodity in the marketplace it is also important to examine what is left out and thus not commercially viable. One example are the Germany-​ based bands performing for a local Russian-​speaking audience. These are primarily amateur bands playing in local youth and community centers. While it is hard to generalize their musical style, there are some observations to be made: aside from the language (primarily sung in Russian) the music does not seem very different from popular music produced by their non-​ post-​Soviet peers. If one listens closely, however, there are some musical links to (post-​)Soviet popular music.

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Figure 8.1  Peepl Rock Festival Ticket (December 1, 2012)

One example is the Berlin-​based group Crossing. Founded in 2004 the group consists of ethnic Germans from Russia and Kazakhstan who at the time of the interview conducted by me in 2009 were between 25 and 40 years old. The name is an allusion to them being at the crossing of two cultures –​that of their origin and Germany. At the time they rehearsed in a girl’s club located in a residential area in Marzahn –​a borough in the eastern part of Berlin where many ethnic German immigrants from the former Soviet Union settled. Their albums Chast’ Zhizni (Part of Life; Crossing 2007) and Ia ne Gagarin (I’m not Gagarin; Crossing 2009) consist of guitar driven songs within a rock idiom and with Russian lyrics. When I played Crossing’s album to some musicians in St. Petersburg the first response was “This sounds like Makarevich, that sounds like Chaif, Splin, Chizh etc.” In other words, Crossing’s music was compared to Soviet rock singers and groups from the 1980s and 1990s. This is based on the language, vocal timbre, harmonization and intonation, as well as the guitar riffs, groove and the overall sound aesthetic. I made similar observations with the other bands I talked to during that fieldwork stint: the music they played often sounded like well-​known Soviet and post-​Soviet bands  –​clearly

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presenting a musical link between Berlin and the musicians’ country of origin. In Crossing’s case this link is reinforced by including covers by bands like Kino and Chaif in their repertoire (Baburin et al. 2009).8 This was also acknowledged in the interviews –​the musicians were very upfront with pointing out the music they listened to and what musical influences were important. Here Soviet and post-​Soviet music was part of their listening profile. This is not surprising considering that the musicians were born in the former Soviet Union and spoke Russian, and that at the time of the interview some of them still had family in their country of origin. Furthermore, the bands they mentioned were active while they lived in the Soviet Union, Russia and Kazakhstan. At the same time this music does not reflect the local popular music from Kazakhstan, for example, but a regional Soviet/​post-​Soviet popular music from the centers St. Petersburg and Moscow. While exceptions exist (e.g. Berlin-​based SkaZka Orchestra) these bands are, however, not part of the marketplace and thus also not of interest for the cultural intermediaries.9 Another group not of interest to these cultural intermediaries are regionally well-​known Russian bands like Markscheider Kunst, Iva Nova or NOM (to name three well-​known St. Petersburg based groups). Parparov (2017) pointed out that these bands were marketed as (in his words) “Russian underground” targeted primarily at a German (student) audience. What he implied was that they play in smaller clubs with less elaborate shows than the bands peepl book and to smaller audiences. They are also bands who emerged in the 1990s and are not well known nationally in their home country thus making them less recognizable for those who arrived in Germany during the 1990s and 2000s. What they have in common is that they have been active touring Germany since the late 1990s and have thus cultivated their own German fan-​base. Since the market is small and the financial risk high the cultural intermediaries have to carefully vet who and who not to promote. Conclusion A vibrant, hidden market for post-​Soviet popular music has emerged in Germany in the past 30 years.10 As I have shown, the actors involved as cultural intermediaries play a key role between production and consumption, by continuously evaluating and deciding what is marketed and thus influencing what can be consumed. They draw on their expertise when they assess, book and promote post-​Soviet bands in Germany. Cultural intermediaries are not only active within the community, but also to some extent promote the music to a majority audience. As Negus points out “Bourdieu […] suggests that symbolic production is central to the work of cultural intermediaries, and this frequently means the use of advertising imagery, marketing and promotional techniques” (2002, 504). By repackaging post-​Soviet popular music for a majority audience Eastblok Music and Russendisko have taken on a more active role in this symbolic production as taste-​makers outside the post-​Soviet community than those working within the Russian-​speaking scene who cater to their audience with known bands and do not necessarily establish new cultural forms. At the same time, the former is also dependent on the novelty status of their music to appeal to their audience. Within the rapidly changing popular music market this music was one hype which then disappeared again. Today, neither Eastblok Music nor Russendisko play a major role within the general market. The latter also have to convince their audience that the groups they bring remain relevant. This includes highlighting a band anniversary, a final tour or only a limited number of concerts

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in Germany. They occupy an important different role, however: As I have argued the post-​Soviet immigrants are not necessarily a homogenous group. Due to their predominantly Soviet socialization, however, they do have a similar cultural background and thus interest. Here the cultural intermediaries function as a homogenizer bringing these different groups together based on a shared musical listening biography and shared generation. In order to remain profitable, they focus on the lowest common denominator, in other words, bands that were nationally well known in the 1990s and early 2000s. This also means that they (unlike the previously mentioned cultural intermediaries) are not necessarily formative as taste makers in promoting new(er) bands. While on a horizontal level there is an overlap between the different post-​Soviet immigrant groups the group is stratified on a generational level, in regards to musical taste, with the younger generation interested in different musics. In other words, depending on the target group we can uncover different strategies of inclusion and exclusion of post-​Soviet bands. Notes 1 The (post-​)Soviet emigration to Germany is based on historical roots. Germans left Germany in the eighteenth century, in part for religious reasons, and settled around the Volga (in today’s Russia) and the Northern Black Sea (in the modern Ukraine). Legally considered German, after World War II their return was guaranteed by the German constitution, making them one of the first major immigrant groups in Germany following World War II. The other major group of post-​Soviet migration is made up of Soviet Jews, who due to Germany’s preeminent role in the genocide of European Jews were welcomed in order to revitalize the almost extinguished Jewish communities in reunified Germany. 2 The term draws on Bourdieu (1984) and his use of it to describe shifts in occupational structures since the 1960s, especially within the middle class. Here he focuses on a new group of workers who as taste influencers exercise cultural authority and challenge the traditional influencers (e.g. intellectuals) (Nixon and Du Gay 2002, 496f). Drawing on Bourdieu, Featherstone (2007) places them within a broader shift towards consumer culture in the twentieth century. 3 See Stahrenberg’s chapter for a brief discussion of Russian emigration to Berlin in the 1920s. 4 Their offspring have, however, assimilated faster compared to e.g. Turkish immigrants. The first generation born in Germany tends to be more proficient in German than Russian and culturally more integrated. They also tend to intermarry more frequently and are more successful in the labor market (Hess 2016, 394 and personal observations). 5 All translations in this chapter are by David-​Emil Wickström, unless otherwise stated. 6 His debut novel Russendisko (Kaminer 2000)  released in 2000 and made into a movie in 2012 (Ziegenbalg 2012) consists of funny short stories describing his semi-​fictionalized immigrant experience in Berlin. For more on Kaminer see Rutten 2007; Wanner 2005. 7 While both are still active (Gurzhy as a musician, Kaminer as an author) the Russendisko itself is not hosted at Kaffee Burger anymore. 8 Both bands formed in the 1980s and are today well-​known representatives of the genre russkii rok (Russian rock). 9 This is a major difference to the Turkish hip hop groups mentioned in Solomon’s chapter. Not only did they appeal to a majority audience in Germany, they also laid the foundation for hip hop in Turkey. 10 Similar processes can be seen in other countries with large post-​Soviet immigrant communities like Israel, Great Britain as well as the United States. Exploring this, however, goes beyond the scope of my chapter.

Bibliography Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction –​A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bundesverwaltungsamt. 2017. (Spät-​ )Aussiedler und ihre Angehörigen Zeitreihe 1950–​ 2016 Herkunftsstaaten. Bundesverwaltungsamt. Accessed September 28, 2017. www.bva.bund.de/​SharedDocs/​Downloads/​DE/​BVA/​ Staatsangehörigkeit/​Aussiedler/​Statistik/​Zeitreihe_​1950_​2016.html. Darieva, Tsypylma. 2004. Russkij Berlin –​Migranten und Medien in Berlin und London. Münster: Lit Verlag.

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110   •   David-Emil Wickström Dietz, Barbara. 2000. “German and Jewish Migration from the Former Soviet Union to Germany: Background, Trends and Implications.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 26 (4): 635–​52. Featherstone, Mike. 2007. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Federal Ministry of the Interior. 2005. Immigration Law and Policy. Berlin: Federal Ministry of the Interior. Gebesmair, Andreas. 2015. “When Balkan became Popular:  The Role of Cultural Intermediaries in Communicating Regional Musics.” In Speaking in Tongues –​Pop lokal global, edited by Dietrich Helms, and Thomas Phleps, 89–​102. Bielefeld: transcript. Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational Connections –​Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. Hess, Christin. 2016. “Post-​Perestroika Ethnic Migration from the Former Soviet Union: Challenges Twenty Years On.” German Politics 25 (3): 381–​97. Kaminer, Wladimir. 2000. Russendisko. München: Manhattan. Kiss, Antje, and Harald Lederer. 2006. Migration, Asyl und Integration in Zahlen. 14th ed. Nürnberg:  Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge. Maguire, Jennifer Smith, and Julian Matthews. 2012. “Are We All Cultural Intermediaries Now? An Introduction to Cultural Intermediaries in Context.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 15 (5): 551–​62. Negus, Keith. 2002. “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries and the Enduring Distance Between Production and Consumption.” Cultural Studies 16 (4): 501–​15. Nixon, Sean, and Paul Du Gay. 2002. “Who Needs Cultural Intermediaries.” Cultural Studies 16 (4): 495–​500. Rutten, Ellen. 2007. “Tanz um den roten Stern –​Die Russendisko zwischen Ostalgie und SozArt.” Osteuropa 57 (5): 109–​24. Schiller, Nina Glick, Linda Basch, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1995. “From Immigrant to Transmigrant:  Theorizing Transnational Migration.” Anthropological Quarterly 68 (1): 48–​63. Schlögel, Karl. 1994. “Berlin: ‘Stiefmutter unter den russischen Städten’.” In Der große Exodus: Die russische Emigration und ihre Zentren 1917 bis 1941, edited by Karl Schlögel, 234–​59. München: C.H. Beck. Statistisches Bundesamt. 2006. Ausländische Bevölkerung –​Ergebnisse des Ausländerzentralregisters 2005. Bevölkerung und Erwerbstätigkeit. Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt. Wanner, Adrian. 2005. “Wladimir Kaminer: A Russian Picaro Conquers Germany.” The Russian Review 64: 590–​604. Wickström, David-​Emil. 2009. “Who are ‘die Russen’ Currently Living in Germany?” dew’s blog. Accessed August 29, 2019. https://​www.d-​ew.info/​2009/​03/​11/​who-​are-​die-​russen-​currently-​living-​in-​germany. Wickström, David-​Emil. 2014a. Rocking St. Petersburg: Transcultural Flows and Identity Politics in Post-​Soviet Popular Music. 2nd revised and expanded ed. Stuttgart: ibidem Press. Wickström, David-​Emil. 2014b. “Russendisko and the German-​Russian Folklore Lineage.” In Poor, But Sexy –​Reflections on Berlin Scenes, edited by Geoff Stahl, 43–​58. Bern: Peter Lang.

Discography Crossing. 2007. Chast’ Zhizni. mp3. Crossing. 2009. Ia ne Gagarin. mp3. Various Artists. 2005. Radio Russendisko. Russendisko Records RD 002. CD.

Filmography Ziegenbalg, Oliver. 2012 Russendisko. DVD.

Interviews Baburin, Dmitrij, Sergej Fiedler, Nikolaj Leinweber, and Sergej Stehr. 2009. Berlin (Germany). Interviewed by David-​Emil Wickström, December 7. Gurzhy, Yuriy. 2005. Berlin (Germany). Interviewed by David-​Emil Wickström, October 5. Parparov, Alexey. 2017. Telephone (Germany). Interviewed by David-​Emil Wickström, September 7. Siebert, Armin. 2017. Berlin (Germany). Interviewed by David-​Emil Wickström, September 19.

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9

Made in Almanya

The Birth of Turkish Rap1 Thomas Solomon

Turkish rap was born in the late 1980s in the transnational meeting of two mobile groups of people: African American soldiers stationed in Germany during the waning days of the Cold War and the period immediately after its end, and second-​generation Turks in Germany, the children of economic migrants.2 In this way the crucible of Turkish rap was found not in Turkey itself, but in the Turkish diaspora in German cities such as Berlin and Frankfurt, home to both large Turkish populations and American military bases. It is thus the unique historical juxtaposition of the Cold War presence of the American military in West Germany and West Berlin  –​including the high number of African American soldiers stationed in those places during the late 1980s and early 1990s –​ with the post-​war labor shortages in Germany that led to its recruitment of Turkish “guest workers” (Gastarbeiter) –​primarily unskilled laborers recruited to work in factories –​beginning in 1961, that created the conditions for the emergence of Turkish rap music and hip hop youth culture in Germany. This chapter explores the early history of Turkish hip hop in Germany, showing how second-​ generation Turkish migrant youth used rap music as a vehicle for constructing a sense of identity in the context of systematic marginalization within German society. Finding themselves in the situation of being in Germany, but not of Germany, Turkish youth in cities like Berlin and Frankfurt used hip hop as a way of commenting on and working through their experiences via their engagement with a cultural form originating in the United States (Brown 2006, 158). While Turkish rap made in Germany beginning in the early 1990s explored various themes, including gender and party culture (A. Kaya 2001), an ongoing concern of rappers of Turkish origin was to document and respond to their ongoing experience of racism and social exclusion. Turkish migrant youth were keenly aware of the key role they, along with other foreign “guest workers,” were playing in the postwar rise of the (West) German economy, while otherwise being locked out of participation in Germanness. Turkish rap is thus a productive lens through which to hear how young people of Turkish background living in Germany worked through issues of identity and belonging. Social and Cultural Context of Turkish Rap in Germany By the mid-​1990s there were nearly two million people of Turkish origin living in Germany, a significant portion of them being youth (Elflein 1998, 255). Already by the mid-​1980s a new generation of migrant youth had reached critical mass, growing up in a socially liminal space between the Turkish culture and social norms of their parents, those of the host country Germany, and 111

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internationally circulating popular culture that originated in the expressive forms of black Americans (Elflein 1998, 261). As Robins and Morley put it, second-​generation migrant youth were caught between not two cultures, but three (1996, 249). The first wave of hip hop culture came to Germany in the mid-​1980s with the American films Wild Style (1983), Style Wars (1983), and Beat Street (1984), shown in theaters and on television, and (especially) circulated on VHS tapes. The popularity of these films spawned a rather short-​ lived breakdance craze and some interest in graffiti street art (Elflein 1998, 256; Loh and Güngör 2002, 23; Verlan and Loh 2002, 92–​9). Among Turkish migrant youth, however, the musical arts of hip hop –​rapping, turntablism, and DJing –​did not take root until the end of the decade and emerged from more direct contact with American participants in the culture. As in youth cultures of leisure throughout the world, music and dance played significant roles in the lives of migrant youth. Feeling unwelcome in local German-​operated discotheques, many young second-​generation Turks gravitated toward discotheques operated by and for American soldiers near the military bases Rhein-​Main Air Base near Frankfurt and Tempelhof Airport, West Berlin. At these discotheques young German Turks met and developed friendships with African American servicemen, and first heard and learned about the rap music popular with African American soldiers at the time and often played from recordings or performed live in the form of freestyle (improvised raps) in these discos (interview with Frankfurt-​based DJ Mahmut, Istanbul, November 6, 2006). Rap music could also be heard in parts of Germany on radio broadcasts by the American Forces Network (AFN), produced by and for American servicemen, but also available for listening by other people living in the areas the broadcasts reached. Migrants in Germany during this period –​including the second generation born and raised or brought there as young children by their parents –​were subject to enforced structural social marginalization as a result of the German state’s (at that time) restrictive naturalization policies (A. Kaya 2001, 58–​72). The German citizenship regime relegated Turkish labor migrants to a marginal place within German society, the assumption being that as “guest workers” they would eventually “go home” back to Turkey once their labor was no longer required (Greve 2009, 118; Perchinig 2008, 11). Besides the structurally determined marginality of their position in German society, migrants of Turkish origin in Germany also experienced racism and xenophobia in their everyday lives. The rising tide of anti-​Turkish xenophobia culminated in a series of violent physical and psychological attacks by neo-​Nazis, skinheads, and other far-​right groups beginning in the late 1980s, infamously including a series of fatal arson attacks on Turkish homes in various German cities and towns. It is in this context of social marginalization and the experience of racist attacks that many Turkish youths in Germany found in the rap music popular with African American soldiers an idiom in which they could express their perceptions of themselves as having a similar place in German society to that of black people in the USA (interview with Kiel-​based rapper İnce Efe, Istanbul, November 3, 2006). Many veteran German-​Turkish hiphoppers who came to hip hop during this period in the late 1980s to early 1990s cite the classic 1982 song “The Message” by Grand Master Flash & the Furious Five3 as the catalyst that helped them understand the potential of rap music for giving them a voice with which to express themselves and talk about their experiences as second-​class non-​citizens in Germany. Perceiving that the idiom of rap music, which they associated with protest and social commentary, would be an appropriate vehicle with which to respond to the everyday racism and the wave of racist attacks they were experiencing

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during the 1990s (Solomon 2008; 2011a), Turkish youths in Germany themselves began making rap songs, first largely in English, and later in Turkish and German. Turkish rap in Germany can be seen as a subcategory within the broader genre of migrant rap that emerged in the late 1980s, including other significant groups such as Advanced Chemistry (which included members of Ghanaian, Haitian, and Italian background). But Turkish rap quickly emerged as a separate and coherent sphere, characterized by the use of the Turkish language itself and by the use of Turkish musical samples and motifs in the “oriental rap” subgenre, and enabled demographically by the sheer number of Turks that could potentially form an audience. Migrant Rap: The Life of a Foreigner The song “Bir yabancının hayatı” (The Life of a Foreigner) is generally recognized as the first commercially released rap song using the Turkish language (Elflein 1998, 257; Loh and Güngör 2002, 172). The song was released in 1991 on the vinyl-​only album The Word is Subversion by the Nuremberg-​based group King Size Terror. This group was at that time a duo consisting of the Turkish-​born rapper Alpertunga Köksal (credited on the album jacket as The Incredible Al) and the Peruvian-​German DJ/​producer Michael Huber, known under his artist name Chill Fresh. King Size Terror rapped primarily in English, and while the title of the song “Bir Yabancının Hayatı” is in Turkish, the song itself is actually bilingual. It begins and ends with verses rapped in English, bracketing the middle verse in Turkish, all over a musical track that combines funk rhythms on drum kit with a jazzy saxophone sample. The first verse in English begins by explaining “This is about the life of a foreigner in Germany /​Many people don’t want to see the reality.” The song then considers the rapper’s existential crisis in lines like “I’m asking myself /​Where the hell are you goin’, Al? /​And what the hell are you goin’ to tell my people?” The text also describes various aspects of the Turkish experience of racism in Germany, for example being chased by skinheads on the street. The rapper explicitly acknowledges the change in language from English to Turkish in the middle of the song by rapping, at the end of the first verse in English, the lines “Now let me kick it in my own language /​So my Turkish brothers can understand my message.” The verse that follows in Turkish is sonically marked by electronic distortion added to the vocal, giving the rapper’s voice a harder, more aggressive edge. The verse addresses the contradictions of coming to Germany ostensibly as a temporary “guest worker” with plans to work a few years, save some money, and eventually return to Turkey, but then being seduced by the money to be made and the lifestyle and status that money enables (exemplified by owning an expensive car such as a Mercedes), and ending up deferring the return indefinitely. “Bir yabancının hayatı,” with its one verse in Turkish, appeared on an album that was otherwise all in English. But the track paved the way for an entirely Turkish-​language side project which then developed in its own right and continued under the name Karakan (Blackblood) after King Size Terror eventually disbanded. The first full-​length rap album entirely in Turkish was released in 1994 by the Frankfurt-​ based collective Looptown, consisting of DJ Mahmut and the rappers Volkan T, Murat G, and KMR (Figure 9.1). The songs on this album elaborated further on the themes explored in “Bir yabancının hayatı,” solidifying Turkish-​language migrant rap as a genre. The lyrics refer to the drudgery of factory jobs, the seductions of money and the consumer goods it can buy, the impact of drugs on migrant communities, and the arson attacks on Turkish homes mentioned above. Collectively, the songs on the album constitute and perform an oral history of Turkish labor

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Figure 9.1  DJ Mahmut, Volkan T, Murat G, and KMR, Looptown (1994).

migration to Germany and the experience of Turkish migrants there, as told by youth based on their personal experiences. The contradictions of being caught “between two cultures” –​that of the Germany they grew up in and of the Turkey of their parents –​and the resulting struggles to have a sense of identity and belonging are summed up in the often-​evoked rhyming pair of terms almancı/​yabancı. Yabancı is a common Turkish word meaning simply “foreigner” or “stranger.” Almancı is a newly invented word, based on the Turkish name (Almanya) for Germany, meaning “German-​like” or “Germanized,” and used by people in Turkey to describe the behavior, lifestyles, and world view of Turkish migrants who had lived many years in Germany and were perceived to have adopted German ways (V. Kaya 2015, 260–​61). This pair of terms forms the organizing trope for a number of songs, including the opening track “Almancı Yabancı” on Karakan’s 1996 album Al Sana Karakan. Oriental Hip Hop Prominent within Turkish rap from Germany during the 1990s was a subgenre called “oriental rap” or “oriental hip hop” which combined African American techniques of rapping and making beats with self-​consciously “Turkish”-​sounding musical samples and motifs taken from Turkish folk and popular musics (Diessel 2002; A. Kaya 2001, 190–​91, 202). Recordings in the Turkish

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popular music genre from the 1960s–​1970s known as Anadolu rock (Anatolian rock) or Anadolu pop –​itself a hybrid of American and British rock music with traditional Turkish and Middle Eastern musics –​were a particularly rich source of musical material sampled and used by producers of oriental rap tracks. Very recognizable samples from Turkish artists such as Erkin Koray, Barış Manço, and Moğollar form the basis of the genre’s sonic palette. The Berlin-​based group Islamic Force is widely recognized as a pioneer in developing the oriental rap genre. They started out as a duo in the late-​1980s consisting of Boe B. and the DJ/​ turntablist Cut ’em T, both with Turkish backgrounds. They were soon joined by producer DJ Derezon, of German and Spanish background, thereby making the group multicultural in membership. Rapper Boe B. was born in the neighborhood of Kadıköy on the Asian side of Istanbul; he came to Germany when he was eight years old (A. Kaya 2001, 195). The name of the group Islamic Force was intentionally ironic  –​they were not “Islamist” at all, but actually rejected fundamentalisms of all kinds. They chose their name in part as a way of thumbing their noses at racists, xenophobes, and Islamophobes in Germany, and in part as a homage to pioneering New York hip hop musical group Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force. In the logo for the group’s name on the front cover of their 1997 CD Mesaj (Message), the letters I and S in the word Islamic have been combined into a dollar sign $, poking fun at the Islamic capital behind religiously oriented Turkish politicians (Figure 9.2). The group’s general orientation can be described as humanist in the sense of stressing the potential value and

Figure 9.2  Islamic Force, Mesaj (1997).

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goodness of human beings and emphasizing common human needs, rather than appealing to divine law or emphasizing difference. This attitude is manifested in the group’s general open-​ mindedness in regard to religion, race, and ethnicity, and their explicit rejection of racism and nationalism. Islamic Force’s first two records were entirely in English; for their third release, they switched to rapping in Turkish. The group’s debut 12-​inch vinyl single My Melody, released in 1992, is considered a founding recording of the oriental hip hop subgenre. The main musical motif of “My Melody” is a syncopated version of the melody of Turkish folk singer Zülfü Livaneli’s well-​known song “Leylim ley” played on synthesizer, topped off by a sample from famous Turkish arabesk singer İbrahim Tatlıses’s version of the same song, all given rhythmic support via drum samples from James Brown’s “Funky Drummer.” The lyrics of “My Melody” place it within the boast rap genre in which the rapper calls attention to his own rapping skills. Understanding intuitively that the track would constitute something new within the landscape of hip hop in Germany, Boe B. uses the boast rap genre’s meta conventions to point out the self-​consciously “Turkish style” of the track while explicitly referring to himself as a “Turkish MC.” Islamic Force’s second release was the 12-​inch EP The Whole World is Your Home (1993) (Figure  9.3). The musical track of the EP’s title song is built around a sample of the primary melodic hook from Anadolu pop artist Barış Manço’s 1976 track “Ölüm Allahın emri” (Death

Figure 9.3  Islamic Force, The Whole World is Your Home (1993).

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is God’s Command). The English-​language lyrics of the song riff on another track by Manço, “Hemşerim memleket nire” (Fellow Countryman, Where Are You From?) from 1992, which includes the line “Bu dünya benim memleket” (This world is my country). In the third verse of the song, Boe B. raps about racism, making an explicit historical connection between racism in Germany during the Third Reich and the racism that migrants were experiencing in Germany 60 years later, suggesting that some people had forgotten the lessons of history. Another German-​Turkish artist working in the oriental hip hop genre is the female rapper Aziza-​A, who was born in Berlin and based there throughout the 1990s. Her 1997 album Es ist Zeit (It’s About Time) announces its genre affiliation prominently with the phrase “Oriental hip hop” across the top of the front cover (Figure 9.4). The album’s musical production eschews samples from recordings, using instead live musicians playing various Turkish folk instruments in the studio, including for example bağlama (long-​necked lute), kaval (end-​blown reed flute), and zurna (double reed wind instrument), as well as Middle Eastern percussion such as zils (finger cymbals) and darabuka (ceramic goblet drum). The CD includes songs in both German and Turkish. Several of the songs use melodies from Turkish folk songs in the chorus to frame the rapped verses; for example, the title track’s chorus quotes from the central Anatolian song “Misket” (Marbles), while “Kendi yolun” (Your Own Road) draws on the Turkish and Kurdish folk song “Kara üzüm habbesi” (Black Grape Seed).

Figure 9.4  Aziza-​A, Es ist Zeit (1997).

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Aziz-​A’s artistic project on this album is specifically to give voice to the experience of Turkish migrant women in Germany. The album’s title track announces her feminist agenda, describing how the patriarchal norms for women’s behavior in Turkish society have been maintained in the diaspora in Germany and keep Turkish women down there as well. Aziza-​A asserts her right to be “disobedient” in regard to these norms, calling for Turkish women in both Germany and Turkey to find their own voice and assert their own agency (Diessel 2001, 178–​9). Exporting Turkish Rap A watershed in Turkish hip hop came in 1995 with the album and tour in Turkey of the German-​ Turkish rap group Cartel. This group was actually a kind of German-​Turkish rap “supergroup,” including the two groups Karakan (from Nuremberg, the group mentioned above which grew out of King Size Terror) and Da Crime Posse (from Kiel), as well as the Berlin-​based solo rapper Erci-​E. The project was put together by German-​Turkish producer Ozan Sinan specifically with the idea of marketing Turkish rap in both Germany and Turkey (Diessel 2001, 170). With Cartel, Turkish rap made in Germany “came home,” so to speak. The cover of Cartel’s CD and cassette, released both in Germany and in Turkey, featured the group’s logo, based on the design of the Turkish flag. The flag consists of a white crescent moon and star on a red background. The CD/​cassette cover (Figure 9.5) has the group’s name in dark letters on a red background. Surrounding the C of the word Cartel is a white crescent shape like

Figure 9.5  Cartel, Cartel (1995).

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the crescent moon of the flag. Cartel’s CD and cassette cover thus appropriated one of the most emotionally charged symbols of the Turkish nation. Musically, Turkishness is enacted through the use of oriental hip hop as the primary rap subgenre on the album. Three tracks, for example, are built around prominent samples from old songs by Barış Manço; other tracks include samples from 1970s recordings by Turkish Anadolu pop artists such as Edip Akbayram and Esin Afşar. In terms of lyrics, the songs discuss the by-​now familiar themes of the experience of Turkish labor migrants in Germany. Consistent with the iconography of the Turkish flag used on the cover, many of the songs on the album also deploy cultural-​nationalist tropes. But this is largely an inclusive nationalism based on citizenship that invokes solidarity among people from the country of Turkey in the face of racism in Germany, without necessarily insisting on Turkish ethnicity. The song “Kan kardeşler” (Blood Brothers) performed by Karakan on the Cartel album, for example, names four ethnic groups from Turkey –​Turk, Kurd, Laz, and Circassian, all of which are represented in the Turkish diaspora in Germany –​arguing that ethnic factionalism makes them all weaker and that they should maintain unity in the face of discrimination in Germany. The song “Yetmedi mi?” (Isn’t it Enough?) by Da Crime Posse explicitly argues against antagonism between Turks and Kurds, suggesting that it is not the Kurds who are traitors to the Turkish state, as extreme Turkish nationalists would have it, but those who would come between them. Cartel’s arrival in Turkey in Summer 1995 became a major media event. Members of the group used interviews in the Turkish press to explain how their musical project was intended as an intervention against neo-​Nazis and other fascist groups in Germany. Group member Abdurrahman, for example, was quoted in the Turkish newspaper Sabah as saying “we need to be like a single fist against the skinheads who are attacking our families, raiding our homes, beating up Turkish women. Now we see that music allows us to do this much better than street fights” (quoted in Çınar 1999, 43). Cartel’s message denouncing racism in Germany and promoting dignity for Turks living there had, however, a contradictory reception when transplanted to the Turkish context. Cartel was received warmly by youth from the Turkish far right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) who turned up at the airport in Istanbul to greet the group upon its arrival there in August 1995 (Çınar 1999, 44; A. Kaya 2001, 183–​4; Robins and Morley 1996, 252; Stokes 2003, 298–​99). Cartel’s assertion of Turkish identity as a positive thing in the context of anti-​Turkish racism in Germany was thus misunderstood in Turkey as support for Turkish nationalism in Turkey directed against ethnic groups (particularly the Kurds) who were themselves asserting political and cultural rights denied to them by the Turkish state. As Çınar puts it, “Cartel, an expression of resentment against ultranationalism, was being cheered by ultranationalists” (Çınar 1999, 44). While rap music was basically unknown in Turkey before 1995, Cartel’s album, videoclip and tour inspired youth in Turkey to begin making rap in the Turkish language. Rappers in Turkey at first embraced the musical style and textual themes established by their German-​Turkish cousins. But they soon began to argue that Turkish rap made in Turkey needed to respond to local realities in Turkey and find its own modes of expression, rather than imitate German Turkish models (Solomon 2005a; 2005b). Conclusions In his study of Turkish hip hop youth in Berlin during the mid-​1990s, Ayhan Kaya describes Turkish-​origin rappers as (following Antonio Gramsci) “organic intellectuals” and (following

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Walter Benjamin) “storytellers.” Kaya elaborates, “the rapper is an intellectual storyteller who has counsel for his/​her audience and who wishes to mobilise his/​her local community against the power of the hegemonic and/​or coercive group” (2001, 181). For Turkish-​origin youth in Germany in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, rap music was also a way of writing and performing their own history. Rap provided Turkish youth with a vehicle for constructing a historical subjectivity around the experience of labor migration to Germany, documenting in song the challenges and frustrations of living in a society in which they were systematically marginalized, subject to everyday racism, and even the target of violent attacks. While they may have first learned the genre from African American soldiers stationed in Germany, Turkish youth in cities like Berlin and Frankfurt made rap music their own, describing their experiences in rhymes set to beats that drew on the Turkish musical expressions of their parents’ generation. Notes 1 Portions of this chapter draw on previously published material (Solomon 2008, 2009, 2011a, 2011b). 2 By “Turkish rap” I mean rap music created and practiced by people of Turkish background, no matter which language (Turkish, German, or English) they might use in their songs or which country they may reside or have citizenship in. 3 “The Message” by Grand Master Flash & the Furious Five (first released in 1982) was one of the first politically conscious rap song recordings emanating from the early New York hip hop scene. The song is a founding recording of the rap subgenre that would later become known as “message rap” (Allen 1996).

Bibliography Allen, Ernest, Jr. 1996. “Making the Strong Survive:  The Contours and Contradictions of Message Rap.” In Droppin’ Science:  Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture, edited by William Eric Perkins, 159–​91. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Brown, Timothy S. 2006. “‘Keeping it Real’ in a Different ’Hood: (African-​) Americanization and Hip Hop in Germany.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final:  Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, edited by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 137–​50. London: Pluto Press. Çınar, Alev. 1999. “Cartel: Travels of German-​Turkish Rap Music.” Middle East Report 29: 43–​4. Diessel, Caroline. 2001. “Bridging East and West on the ‘Orient Express’: Oriental Hip-​Hop in the Turkish Diaspora in Berlin.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 13 (2): 165–​87. Elflein, Dietmar. 1998. “From Krauts with Attitudes to Turks with Attitudes:  Some Aspects of Hip-​Hop History in Germany.” Popular Music 17 (3): 255–​65. Greve, Martin. 2009. “Music in the European-​Turkish Diaspora.” In Music in Motion:  Diversity and Dialogue in Europe, edited by Bernd Clausen, Ursula Hemetek, Eva Sæther, and European Music Council, 115–​32. Bielefeld: transcript. Kaya, Ayhan. 2001. ‘Sicher in Kreuzberg’: Constructing Diasporas: Turkish Hip-​Hop Youth in Berlin. Bielefeld: transcript. Kaya, Verda. 2015. HipHop Zwischen Istanbul und Berlin:  Eine (deutsch-​)türkische Jugendkultur im lokalen und trans­ nationalen Beziehungsgeflecht. Bielefeld: transcript. Loh, Hannes, and Murat Güngör. 2002. Fear Of A  Kanak Planet–​ HipHop zwischen Weltkultur und Nazi-​ Rap. Höfen: Hannibal Verlag. Perchinig, Bernhard. 2008. “A Short History of Turkish Immigration to Central and Western Europe.” In Music from Turkey in the Diaspora, edited by Ursula Hemetek and Hande Sağlam, 11–​20. Vienna: Institut für Volksmusikforschung und Ethnomusikologie, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. Robins, Kevin, and David Morley. 1996. “Almancı, Yabancı.” Cultural Studies 10 (2): 248–​54. Solomon, Thomas. 2005a. “‘Listening to Istanbul’: Imagining Place in Turkish Rap Music.” Studia Musicologica Norvegica 31: 46–​67. —​—​—​. 2005b. “‘Living Underground is Tough’: Authenticity and Locality in the Hip-​hop Community in Istanbul, Turkey.” Popular Music 24 (1): 1–​20.

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 The Birth of Turkish  Rap   •   121 —​—​—​. 2008. “ ‘Bu Vatan Bizim’ [This Land is Ours]:  Nationalist Discourse in Turkish Rap Music.” In Freedom and Prejudice:  Approaches to Media and Culture, edited by Süheyla Kırca Schroeder and LuEtt Hanson, 204–​22. Istanbul: Bahçeşehir University Press. —​—​—​. 2009. “Berlin-​Frankfurt-​Istanbul:  Turkish Hip-​Hop in Motion.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 12 (3): 305–​27. —​—​—​. 2011a. “Hardcore Muslims: Islamic Themes in Turkish Rap Between Diaspora and Homeland.” In Muslim Rap, Halal Soaps, and Revolutionary Theater: Artistic Developments in the Muslim World, edited by Karin van Nieuwkerk, 27–​54. Austin: University of Texas Press. —​—​—​. 2011b. “Whose Diaspora? Hybrid Identities in ‘Turkish Rap’ in Germany.” In Music and Identity in Norway and Beyond:  Essays Commemorating Edvard Grieg the Humanist, edited by Thomas Solomon, 253–​ 67. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Stokes, Martin. 2003. “Globalization and the Politics of World Music.” In The Cultural Study of Music:  A Critical Introduction, edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, 297–​308. London: Routledge. Verlan, Sascha and Hannes Loh. 2002. 20 Jahre HipHop in Deutschland. Höfen: Hannibal.

Discography Aziza-​A. Es ist Zeit. BMG/​Gema 0X001, 1997, compact disc. Cartel. Cartel. Mercury 526 914-​2, 1995, compact disc. DJ Mahmut, Volkan T, Murat G, and KMR. Looptown. Looptown Records, 1994, 33⅓ rpm. Grand Master Flash & the Furious Five. The Message. Sugar Hill Records SH-​584, 1982, 33⅓ rpm. Islamic Force. My Melody/​Istanbul. Juiceful Records PCR 001-​12, 1992, 33⅓ rpm. —​—​—​. The Whole World Is Your Home. Juiceful Records 002-​12, 1993, 33⅓ rpm. —​—​—​. Mesaj. De De Records, 1997, compact disc. Karakan. Al Sana Karakan. Neşe Müzik, 1996, compact disc. King Size Terror. The Word is Subversion. Vulkan Verlag F-​2487, 1991, 33⅓ rpm.

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G.I. Blues and German Schlager The Politics of Popular Music in Germany during the Cold War Bodo Mrozek

Introduction On October 1, 1958, the USS General George M.  Randall arrived in Bremerhaven to the loud cheers of hundreds of young Germans who had gathered along the walls of the quay. But the crowd’s attention was directed at only one of the 1,382 young Americans who had boarded the troop transport in Brooklyn to serve on the front lines of the Cold War in divided Germany: the 23-​year-​old recruit Elvis Aaron Presley. A former truck driver who by the time of his draft had already made millions from record sales, Elvis had been assigned to the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, whose mission was to defend the Fulda Gap against advancing Soviet forces in the event of war (Heigl 2007, 5). For US Army brass, Private Presley’s deployment had less to do with his military prowess than with his strategic value as a popular entertainer in occupied West Germany. The throngs hoping to catch a glimpse of him in Bremerhaven left little doubt that the Elvis phenomenon had reached its peak among German teenagers. “Today was the greatest day of my life,” wrote the 15-​year-​old Marion H.  in her diary, even though she and her girlfriend hadn’t even seen the king of rock ’n’ roll when he disembarked the General George M. Randall.1 “One American soldier pretended to be Elvis to keep the fans off the gangway. Only a few people fell for it. Unfortunately, Petra and I were among them” (quoted in Peters and Reich 2004, 19). Not everyone was as enthusiastic about Presley’s arrival. “Private Presley advances on Germany,” reported the Süddeutsche Zeitung with military dispassion. One irate citizen wrote the Friedberg town council urging them to do something about the many “very dumb” female fans who followed Presley everywhere he went: “Best would be if you chased them away with a whip” (quoted in ibid., 16).2 Presley elicited even less enthusiasm in communist East Germany, whose state media regularly disparaged prominent rock ’n’ roll singers like Presley as “caterwaulers” and “noise acrobats” and accused them of trying to “Americanize” German culture (Maase 1992; Poiger 2000; Fenemore 2009). Worries about “Americanization” were not confined to East Germany; nor were they especially new. They belonged to a decades-​long tradition of cultural pessimism that criticized America as the ambassador of “soulless” industrialization, mass culture, and ruthless capitalism. One of the prime targets of this criticism was popular music. For instance, the young Theodor W. Adorno, in what has

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become a textbook case, dismissed jazz as an expression of a soulless modernity (Rottweiler 1936; Pfleiderer 2014). Views like Adorno’s may seem overheated, but America’s leading role as a producer of mass culture was indeed closely tied to its political and military dominance. In the postwar era, popular culture became one of the key weapons in the Cold War, and Germany became a key site of its deployment thanks to the Western Allied occupation. In this way, Anglo-​American music –​or what passed for it –​became an object of appropriation and hostility in Germany, shaping citizens’ understanding of popular music on both sides of the Iron Curtain for years to come. Re-​Education Through Popular Music: Allied Radio in Germany Allied cultural officers recognized early on the importance of popular music in two core areas of Germany’s integration with the West: the re-​education of Germans shaped by National Socialist ideology and the swaying of public opinion in the East–​West conflict. In pursuing these goals, the Allies relied on a young generation who had mostly come of age after the war. A secret study by the Americans in 1946 had found that young Germans’ taste in music was significantly different from that of the older generation (Intelligence Branch: Radio Listening in Germany). The affinity of German youth for American jazz led to the first experiments with new radio programming at the end of the 1940s. After racist listeners protested, the Allies halted the broadcasts. Nevertheless, by the second half of the 1950s, American radio had come to play an important role in the spread of “Western” music, and its chief promoters were Allied military radio stations. During the Second World War, the Allies broadcasted military radio via truck-​mounted speakers to entertain the troops and broadcast propaganda on the front. After the war ended, the Western Allies established stations in the occupied zones. Berlin, due to its joint occupation, possessed a variety of foreign-​language military broadcasters that played jazz, rock, and, later, pop music: the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), the American Forces Network (AFN), and the Radio Forces Françaises de Berlin (FFB) (Schäfers 2014). The AFN began by broadcasting shows that were produced and recorded in the US, bringing American radio programming directly to Europe. Another station playing Western popular music was the German-​ language Soldatensender 935 (Soliderstation 935), though appearances were deceiving: based in the Grünau district of East Berlin, Soldatensender 935 broadcasted music suppressed in the GDR to attract Western Allied soldiers and then indoctrinate them by delivering anti-​West propaganda between tracks.3 In 1948, the US-​founded radio and television station RIAS began broadcasting in the American sector under the motto “A free voice of the free word.” Its most important pop broadcasts were RIAS Treffpunkt (RIAS Meetingpoint), which featured live broadcasts from Berlin discotheques, and Schlager der Woche (Hit of the Week, Schäfers 2014, 157). RIAS was strongly influenced by the Cold War climate and served as an explicit counterforce to Berliner Rundfunk in the Soviet Occupation Zone. It started as a medium wave station but expanded its reach in the early 1950s, adding short wave and VHF bands together with a second show. Part of the RIAS programming aired on the Voice of America station in Munich, which broadcast propaganda into the Eastern Bloc and could be heard throughout Germany on long wave. RIAS received most of its funding from the West German government, but this was kept secret, since West Berlin was subject to the terms of Four Power Agreement, which restricted close ties with Bonn (Galle 2003, 110–​14). RIAS started out politically neutral –​even sympathizing occasionally with communist ideas –​ but after the Berlin Blockade by the Soviets in 1948–​49 and the Soviet suppression of the workers’

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uprising on June 17, 1953, it increasingly became a mouthpiece of capitalist and ‘Western’ democratic values. This political reorientation was fueled in part by the Truman Doctrine, which called for a halt to Soviet expansion, and the Strategy of Freedom, which the National Security Council adapted in 1950. In this politically charged climate, radio became “a central instrument of psychological warfare” and even had its own coordinating agency, the United States Information Agency (USIA). The atmosphere also affected RIAS youth radio (Stöver 2004, 209). Though geared towards schools, the programming went beyond education and information; it also compared political systems. The cultural broadcasts sought to reach student listeners beyond the Wall who would otherwise be without Western programming. The GDR government directive of January 2, 1958, required that 60 percent of all light music and dance music programming, whether played on the radio or performed live, must include works from East German composers or composers from other communist states. Violations were subject to fines, and professional musicians who repeatedly violated the directive could lose their performance license. The Western Allied stations wanted to provide a counterweight: they directly addressed young East Germans in the broadcasts, sought to create contacts for East German youth in the West through pen-​pal exchanges, and used church radio and literary broadcasts to bypass the East German censors. These stations were extremely popular in the West as well. Military personalities –​DJs in uniform –​attracted the attention of German radio audiences. Sergeant George Hudak and fellow soldier Mike Dewey had become veritable stars in Berlin and drew large German audiences at public events (Mrozek 2014). Hudak’s show on AFN, Frolic at Five, popularized the American accent, frolic being a “Germarican” word imitating the American pronunciation of the German word fröhlich (jolly). The radio station had already developed a large loyal following in the UK and France in the 1940s. 150,000 fan letters arrived at the station per year from Britain alone, and after French listeners had protested plans to close the station, the government allowed it to continue broadcasting in Paris “for diplomatic reasons.” In the 1950s, soldiers such as the British corporal Chris “Mr. Pumpernickel” Howland moved to German radio stations and internationalized the musical programming. Their foreign accent rendered them “authentic” ambassadors of the new music. Howland, the son of a BBC producer, joined the show Rhythmus der Welt (Rhythm of the world) at NWDR in 1953 as one of the first disc jockeys in West Germany. His trademark was to create sounds  –​waterfalls, horse clops, explosions –​emulating American radio DJs such as Alan Freed, who had made them popular on his station Cleveland WJW. Freed rang cow bells, pounded on telephone books, and sang along with tracks to give the “rough” and “different” music his own personal touch. The British composer and arranger Pete Bellotte, who collaborated in the 1970s with Giorgio Moroder and produced German disco hits such as “Hot Stuff,” “Love to Love You Baby,” and “I Feel Love,” began by producing interviews for AFN.4 Musical programming in this era was highly politicized, even if it was not primarily about politics. Consider the show Schlager der Woche, which began in 1947. In 1954, German-​language songs from Gisela Griffel, Friedel Hensch, Wolfgang Sauer, Lieselotte Malkowski, and Renate Holm dominated its broadcasts. Of the year’s 21 hits, only three were in a foreign language. Within three years, the composition of the list had changed completely. In 1957, all 21 titles were in English. Instead of Schlager music, it now included swing and jazz music from Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, and Jimmy Dorsey, calypso from Ray Anthony and Harry Belafonte, and rock from Bill Haley, Guy Mitchell, and Elvis Presley. Just as Schlager der Woche was moving to rock and jazz,

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rock ’n’ roll broke into the American Top 40, which a West German station with American ties broadcasted. In 1958, RIAS introduced its own jazz program, Club 18 (Mrozek 2019, 386). This shift in music was not without conflict. RIAS received numerous outraged letters, from the mildly chauvinistic to the openly racist, with some calling on the station’s producers to be fired. The conflict escalated on March 8, 1959 at the anniversary celebration of the 500th Schlager der Woche live broadcast in Berlin’s Deutschlandhalle. There, while performing before 12,000 people, Romy Schneider, one of the most well-​known international cinema stars in Germany, was booed by teenage audience members, who then proceeded to drown out her singing with bugles and horns brought for that purpose. The conflict was interpreted as a generational one. A visitor at the concert objected to “these 12–​16-​year-​old tikes,” between whom she had to sit with her husband and who have received “too many concessions.” (Mrozek 2019, 386) Imagining Popular Communities: Cold War Ether Politics Schlager der Woche was also controversial in the GDR. East German news criticized the program for spreading the “poison of Americanism” through music and urged its audience to refrain from listening to RIAS. At first, the GDR did not explicitly prohibit listening to Western media, but any record of having done so could increase prison sentences at criminal trials. Then in 1957 the GDR government passed a law that made the public listening of Western radio prosecutable as a “subversive propaganda and agitation” (Kuschel 2016, 304). To prevent the reception of Western broadcasts, East Germany employed jammers, sometimes with significant consequences. Two East German soldiers who were fans of Schlager der Woche wrote in 1958 to tell the station that listening to medium wave had become very dangerous. The soldiers would ironically joke that their “jammer reception was poor because the RIAS was transmitting on the same frequencies” (haNDWritten letter, December 17, 1958). In their letter, the soldiers made some requests and asked that their forenames be mentioned on air. Here, appropriation served as a vehicle for creating sensed communities. By creating a community of taste in popular culture, the two soldiers overcame the political division and imagined themselves within a cultural unity with their western age-​mates. Foreign cultural products like Schlager (crooner) music had become a political battleground. But foreign popular music also gave rise to organized communities. One of the most important were fan clubs. They helped spread new international music, network young fans, and establish new styles. Here too, the creation of fan clubs could be traced back to contact with Western Allied soldiers, many of whom had been exposed to the large network of fan clubs formed in the 1940s when Frank Sinatra was popular. Fan clubs for Western popular music also sprang up in the GDR. There they elicited not only the kinds of criticisms of American culture that were already familiar in West Germany, but, as agents of unwanted international socialization, provoked repressive government measures. GDR government agencies criticized members of a Dessau rock ’n’ roll club that they “mostly addressed each other with nicknames like Billie, Cherie, Bobi, Pigman, Steigi, Rocky, Rolli, Elvis, etc.” Many clubs operated their own clubhouses in repurposed cellars. Others were forced to operate in secret, since interest in American musicians was taken as support of US imperialism (see surveillance protocol BStU: “Rock’n Roll-​Club”). The actual purpose of the clubs, of course, was to listen to Western music –​music that was difficult to access given the GDR’s severe restrictions on its import and performance. For instance, they listened to bootleg recordings from West Germany, Schlager der Woche, and “other stations of the capitalist West,” including Western Allied military broadcasters.

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Listening to Western Allied broadcasts behind the Iron Curtain was nevertheless risky –​just how risky was shown by a number of show trials against members of fan clubs. In the febrile atmosphere of the Cold War and armed occupation, the seemingly innocuous activities of these fans became evidence of a nefarious infiltration. GDR authorities accused “the 800 existing film and star clubs” of being instruments of “NATO stations” and of exploiting the collective passion of East German youth. According to a Schwerin pamphlet, agents from clubs in the West followed the same game plan. First, they initiated contact with East Germans and gave them permission to start a club. Next, the “main clubs in West Germany sent written ‘instructions’ and invited the support club leaders to West Berlin or West Germany, where they gave them appropriate ‘directions’.” At the end of the process, “the association of such youths […] was everything other than a film or star club” (see Schwerin 1961). East German authorities pointed to a case in Gera as evidence that fan clubs could form armed groups whose mission was to “spread propaganda, make threats against citizens, and carry out assaults, break-​ins, theft, murder, arson” and bomb attacks (Schwerin 1961, 23–​6). They believed that government officials at RIAS, Radio Luxembourg, and other western radio stations served as the ringleaders of such groups. The pamphlet from Schwerin includes a photo of Elvis Presley from Jailhouse Rock, under which a caption reads:  “Hip shakers and star cult serve the same dirty work: agent recruitment” (Schwerin 1961, 27). The GDR authorities were especially alarmed because the “Union of Fan Clubs,” the self-​avowed umbrella organization of West German fan clubs, had explicitly urged their members to provide moral and material support for fellow clubs in East Germany (BStU: Assessment from August 30, 1961). The Ministry of State Security regarded fan clubs as “instruments of psychological warfare of NATO” (BStU: Assessment from August 30, 1961, 91). Indeed, some fan organizations whose mail had been confiscated issued guidelines for contacting East German members, but they explicitly warned against making political statements (Merkblatt). The GDR saw the “Western unculture” as an extension of American security policy and could impose draconian punishments on those who supported it, from school expulsion to exclusion from university education and placement in juvenile homes. But the foreign radio stations also established a true Western audience. The findings of a 1976 Infratest study commissioned by the West Berlin public broadcaster SFB underlined the importance of foreign-​language radio for West Berlin youths. In contrast to adults, who preferred television, radio was the most important medium for young Berliners (DRAF: Jugend in Berlin [West] 1976: Einstellungen). Most listened to SFB and RIAS, though a “surprising large” share listened to AFN (47 percent), followed by BFBS and BBC (17 percent) and Radio Luxemburg (11 percent). Five percent listened to FFB and DDR 1 (DRAF: Jugend in Berlin [West] 1976: Einstellungen, 34). The Western Allies had given Germany an international and multilingual radio landscape for youths open to new styles. In response to the popularity of military stations and other West-​ oriented radio programs, the GDR had established DT64 in 1964, which provided more pop-​ oriented youth programming designed to attract young listeners and offer them an alternative to the West. From “Fraternization” to Global Terrorism: Soldiers’ Clubs in Germany The Western Allied occupation also had a strong influence on the West German club and disco scene, particularly in Berlin. An important cultural center of cabaret, bars, dance halls, and foreign music influences already in the Weimar era (Jelavich 1996, 2009),5 Berlin became more

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international again after 1945. In the immediate postwar era, jukeboxes in temporary Nissen huts attracted young audiences even as Berlin still lay in rubble. By the 1950s, jazz and dance clubs had begun to open, and in the late 1960s a disco scene emerged.6 At first, West German authorities sought to curtail night life, and local news was dominated by sensational reports on topics such as the drug scene and altercations between bouncers (some of whom were ex-​soldiers). Police regularly raided nightclubs to check the IDs of partygoers (See, for instance, Betr.: Schankwirtschaft), and even in the 1980s MPs continued to patrol clubs and escort soldiers out past curfew back to the barracks, not infrequently with truncheons drawn. Dance and jazz clubs in West Germany drew decidedly multinational crowds thanks to the many young French, British, and American soldiers in the country. Some musicians performed in uniform. One was the French singer Johnny Hallyday, who like his role-​model Elvis Presley completed his military service in Germany and published some 45 German language songs; in 1984, he recorded an album with the German beat band The Rattles (Mrozek 2018). The American country singer Hank Williams and other entertainers frequently performed concerts for troops stationed in Germany. Some young soldiers played guitar or piano in their spare time. For instance, Bill Ramsey, a US Air Force soldier stationed in Germany after a deployment in Korea, jammed with German jazz musicians at the Jazzkeller in Frankfurt am Main, sang with a broad American accent on popular German-​language Schlager records, and played himself in several films.7 In West German musical films such as those starring Peter Kraus, African American musicians played GIs with close ties to West German youth (Fischer 2017).8 The Norman Taurog-​directed G. I. Blues (1960) is about the idiosyncratic connection between popular culture and military occupation, and it features scenes in which the King of rock ’n’ roll sings traditional German songs.9 One of the most eccentric American bands was started in early 1965 by four American GIs led by the singer Gary Burger. Originally called the Torquays, the band members changed their name to The Monks after they left the army. On a whim, the band members decided to give themselves tonsures to go with their black habits and cinctures tied around their necks. Their music was just as austere as their appearance: monotone rhythms and an electric banjo with an internal microphone created a sound that, in its minimalism, was extremely avant-​gardist, earning the band the reputation as the “anti-​Beatles.” They often performed at the Hamburg club Top Ten, not far from Star Club in which the Beatles began their career. Although the popularity of their only album Black Monk Time soon waned, the garage beat band gained a posthumous reputation as a pioneer of punk avant la lettre. The dance and club scene in West Germany also included venues operated by the military forces. After the ban on fraternization with Germans was lifted, the military opened these clubs to improve relations between military forces in the barracks and the population at large. The West Berlin military administrations operated their own dance clubs –​Starlight Grove, Checkpoint, Gator Club, and the Friendship Pub, near the Andrews barracks. In these clubs, foreign soldiers and German civilians came together and shared with each other their respective pop cultures.10 The Bavarian capital became a West German center of American popular music as well. The American military station AFN got its start in Munich, and Radio Free Europe, with funding from US intelligence services, set up shop near the English Gardens. So-​called “ami” clubs such as Bürgerbräukeller, Hofbräukeller, and Cracker-​B ox, and military clubs such as the Officer’s Club and the McGraw barracks’ Casino became venues for swing, jazz, and rock ’n’ roll –​as well as meeting places for African Americans and young Germans. Hot Club Munich was founded in 1950 and molded after Hot Club de France, which specialized in American swing

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and jumpin’ jive. Until Hot Club Munich closed its doors in 1964, its reputation as a jazz venue could “have measured up to that Parisian existentialist cellar,” the Munich columnist Siggi Sommer wrote.11 The club’s successor opened its doors in 1965 under the name Domicile and featured international jazz musicians such as Chet Baker and George Mraz. Red-​light venues such as the Babalu Bar recast themselves as jazz bars. Institutionalized meeting places for the civilian population and stationed troops opened elsewhere as well, including G.I. Circuit in Mannheim. The spread of American-​style music was also driven by disc jockeys, who imported dance and music styles from their hometowns; by popular mass events such as the German-​French and the German-​American folk festivals; and by regular open houses in the barracks, where national music provided a cultural bridge for the population. Moreover, many soldiers remained in Germany after exiting the military and, like the African-​French Louis Emilio Gomis, played a role in the night life as club founders and DJs.12 The emerging rap scene in the 1980s benefited from the presence of African American G.I.s from the Bronx and Los Angeles, who established funk, breakdance, and emceeing in Germany and inspired numerous German DJs (Pauls and von Kostka 2013). The significance of discos for Allied soldiers became dramatically clear on April 5, 1986, when a bomb exploded at La Belle in the Friedenau district of West Berlin. The detonation of the three-​ kilo explosive device killed two American soldiers and a Turkish civilian, and injured around 250 people, three dozen seriously (Höhn and Musser Lloyd 2013; Davis 1990, 115). Investigations later revealed that the attacks were carried out by Libyan intelligence in retaliation for a US attack on two Libyan warships (ibid., 119f); in 2008, Libya officially admitted responsibility for the attack (Rice 2008). By bringing the Middle East conflict to West Berlin, the attack showed just how closely the seemingly apolitical sphere of popular music was tied to the geopolitical status of Germany, a country bifurcated at the frontline of a Cold War whose conflict was as much cultural as it was military. Summary The significance of Western Allied occupation for the development of popular music in Germany is hard to overstate. After an initial period of nonfraternization and re-​education, the Americans became particularly effective at attracting young fans through music and media. The Soviet army also tried to use music to similar effect, but it never managed to be nearly as popular in East Germany as the US army was in West Germany –​among other reasons, because the Soviet barracks were mostly isolated from the civilian population and because the Soviet suppression of the Uprising of 1953 did not help their reputation. Personal contacts played an important role in the Allies’ efforts to integrate Germany with the West. Creating connections to soldiers and their families and establishing musical personalities as stars of West German culture and media were more than just strategies to burnish the Allied image. The cultural shifts and unusual sounds of the first postwar decades were extremely polarizing, however. While many young Germans, especially those from the lower and middle classes, responded enthusiastically to the new music, cultural elites in positions of power –​at public broadcasting stations, say –​had serious reservations. In media debates, they characterized the new culture as morally depraved and violent, and in doing so also expressed their misgivings about the deployment of foreign troops in Germany. Their criticisms stand in

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a long tradition of cultural conservativism (on the right and the left) that can be traced back to Adorno’s critique of jazz, to blackfacing, and to nineteenth-​century ideas about the national and ethnic character. Many who were critical of the transnationalization of popular music in Germany understood it as Americanization or Westernization due to its close intersection with Western pop cultures. But I have argued that the idea of Americanization was more a topos of contemporary cultural criticism, which is not suitable as an analytic concept. To understand popular music as “American,” one had to essentialize it in advance, which meant negating its African and European influences. Jazz, rock ’n’ roll, and beat music are –​like all cultures –​amalgams that escape a single national identity. The presence of Western musicians in Germany not only “Americanized” the musical landscape, it also led to many short-​term and several long-​term collaborations, including German-​language recordings by American pop artists. The close connection between Germany’s dominant geopolitical tensions and its cultural conflicts became clear the day that Elvis Presley, a rock ’n’ roller in military uniform, landed in Bremerhaven, and it has continued to persist throughout the second half of the twentieth century, with echoes into the twenty-​first. Popular music in Germany is not merely transcultural and international; it’s been a highly political affair from the beginning. Notes 1 2 3 4

All translations in this chapter are by Bodo Mrozek, unless otherwise stated. The letter appeared in the exhibition Elvis in Deutschland at the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn. See Mrozek 2004. Soldatensender 935 went off air after the Basic Treaty outlawed such propaganda in 1972. See Stahl 2010, 181. See “Giorgio Moroder” https://​www.psaudio.com/​pauls-​posts/​giorgio-​moroder/​12030/​ (Retrieved on October 1, 2018). 5 See Stahrenberg’s chapter in this book. 6 Some well-​known clubs in West Berlin included Badewanne, Eierschale, and Quasimodo. 7 See, for instance, “Yes, Fanny, ich tu das [Yes, Fanny, I’ll do that]” /​“So ein Stroll in Tirol [Such a stroll in Tirol],” 1958, Polydor NH 23 738, 45 rpm and the film Schlagerparade 1960 (directed by Franz Marischka). 8 See, for instance, Alle lieben Peter (Everybody loves Peter, 1959; directed by Wolfgang Becker). 9 In G.I. Blues, Presley sings “Muß i denn, muß i denn [Wooden Heart]” /​“G’schichten aus dem Wiener Wald [Tonight’s Alright For Love]”, 1961, RCA 47–​9340, 45 rpm. 10 For more, see the document collection of the Alliiertenmuseum Berlin. 11 For more, see Ertl 2010, 9; and Rigan 2008, 30. 12 Gomis operated a club for r&b and black music in Berlin Schöneberg. See the video interview with Gomis in the exhibition Von G.I. Blues zu G.I. Disco: Der ‘American Way of Music’ in Deutschland,” video, collection of the Berlin Alliiertenmuseum.

Archival Sources Berlin, Alliiertenmuseum: Interview-​Sammlung. Berlin, Archiv der Behörde des Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasi-​Unterlagen (BStU), Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS) BV Frankfurt/​Oder AU 122/​61, Bd. 11, Bl. 88: Assessment from August 30, 1961 (copy). Berlin, Archiv der Behörde des Bundesbeauftragten für die Stasi-​Unterlagen (BStU), Außenstelle Halle, MfS BV Halle AU 118/​59, Bd. 2: “Rock’n Roll-​Club in Dessau,” December 18, 1958, Bl. 248. Berlin, Landesarchiv (LAB), ), B Rep. 010, Nr. 2300 (unpaginated): “Betr.: Schankwirtschaft Sidney-​Bier-​Bar,” Berlin N 65, an das Bezirksamt Wedding. Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Babelsberg (DRAB), SG RIAS A304-​03-​01/​0002: HaNDWritten letter dated December 17, 1958; Rückblick 1954, Abteilung Tanz-​und U.-​Musik, 22.12.1954 (unpag.).

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130   •   Bodo Mrozek Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Frankfurt/​Main (DRAF) A39-​05/​1:  Intelligence Branch, Information Control Division OMGUS USFET: Radio Listening in Germany. Winter 1946; Bd. 1. Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Frankfurt/​Main (DRAF) A39-​05/​1, A 53/​463, 32: Jugend in Berlin (West) 1976. Einstellungen, Verhaltensweisen, Mediennutzen; Bd. 2 (Analyse).

Bibliography Davis, Brian L. 1990. Qaddafi, Terrorism, and the Origins of the U.S. Attack on Libya. New York: Praeger. Ertl, Christian. 2010. Macht’s den Krach leiser! Popkultur in München von 1945 bis heute. Munich: Buch & Media. Fenemore, Mark. 2009. Sex, Thugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll: Teenage Rebels in Cold-​War East Germany. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Fischer, Michael. 2017. “Musik, Stars, Medien Peter Kraus als Beispiel einer domestizierten Amerikanisierung der deutschen Musikkultur.” In: Amerika-Euphorie – Amerika-Hysterie. Populäre Musik made in USA in der Wahrnehmung der Deutschen 1914–2014. Zum 100-jährigen Bestehen des Deutschen Volksliedarchivs und zur Gründung des Zentrums für Populäre Kultur und Musik, edited by Michael Fischer and Christofer Jost, 211-26. Münster: Waxmann Verlag. Galle, Petra. 2003. RIAS Berlin und Berliner Rundfunk 1945–​1949: Die Entwicklung ihrer Profile in Programm, Personal und Organisation vor dem Hintergrund des beginnenden Kalten und Kultur Krieges. Berlin: Lit Verlag. “Giorgio Moroder,” Accessed October 1, 2018. https://​www.psaudio.com/​pauls-​posts/​giorgio-​moroder/​12030/​. Heigl, Peter. 2007. Sergeant Elvis Presley in Grafenwöhr: Bayern/​Bavaria. Amberg: Battenberg-​Gietl Verlag 2007. Höhn, Maria and Marion Musser Lloyd. 2013. “Terrorist Attacks in the 1980s,” In Von G.I. Blues zu G.I. Disco. Berlin: Alliiertenmuseum Berlin (unpaginated). Jelavich, Peter. 1996. Berlin Cabaret. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —​—​—​. 2009. Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kuschel, Franziska. 2016. Schwarzhörer, Schwarzseher und heimliche Leser:  Die DDR und die Westmedien. Göttingen: Wallstein. Maase, Kaspar. 1992. BRAVO Amerika. Erkundungen zur Jugendkultur der Bundesrepublik in den fünfziger Jahren. Hamburg: Junius Verlag. Merkblatt der Star-​Revue. n.d. “Korrespondenz zwischen Filmfreunden der DDR und der Bundesrepublik,” o.J., Pressehaus Hamburg. Mrozek, Bodo. 2004. “Der E-​Day: Als wir Amerika noch liebten.” Der Tagesspiegel, November 21. —​—​—​. 2014. “Vom Ätherkrieg zur Popperschlacht: Die Popscape West-​Berlin als Produkt der urbanen und geopolitischen Konfliktgeschichte.” Zeithistorische Forschungen /​Studies in Contemporary History 11: 288–​99. —​—​—​. 2018. “Hallyday, Johnny.” Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. —​—​—​. 2019. Jugend –​Kultur –​Pop: Eine transnationale Geschichte. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Pauls, Florian and Bernd von Kostka. 2013. “From G.I. Blues to G.I. Disco. The ‘American Way of Music’ in Germany,” In Von G.I. Blues zu G.I. Disco. Berlin: Alliiertenmuseum Berlin (unpaginated). Peters, Christian and Jürgen Reiche. 2004., ed. Elvis in Deutschland. Bonn:  Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (catalogue). Pfleiderer, Martin. 2017. “Die Erfindung Amerikas aus dem Geiste des Jazz. Jazzrezeption in Deutschland zwischen den Weltkriegen.” In: Amerika-Euphorie – Amerika-Hysterie. Populäre Musik made in USA in der Wahrnehmung der Deutschen 1914–2014. Zum 100-jährigen Bestehen des Deutschen Volksliedarchivs und zur Gründung des Zentrums für Populäre Kultur und Musik, edited by Michael Fischer and Christofer Jost, 39-54. Münster: Waxmann Verlag. Poiger, Uta. 2000. Jazz, Rock and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rice, Condoleeza. 2008. Certification Under Section 5 (A)(2) Of The Libyans Claims Resolution Act Relating To The Receipt Of Funds For The Settlement Of Claims Against Libya, October 3, 2008, Accessed March 17, 2018. www. state.gov/​documents/​organization/​138871.pdf. Rigan, Richard. 2008. “Cracker-​Box: Bier und Prügeleien,” In Mjunik Disco: Von 1949 bis heute, edited by Mirko Hecktor, Munich: Blumenbar. Rottweiler, Hektor (=Theodor Adorno). 1936. “Über Jazz,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 5, 235–​59. Schäfers, Anja. 2014. Mehr als Rock ‘n’ Roll: Der Radiosender AFN bis Mitte der sechziger Jahre. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

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G.I. Blues and German Schlager   •   131 Schwerin Bezirksleitung der SED, ed. 1961. Heiße Musik und kalter Krieg. Schwerin. Stahl, Heiner. 2010. Jugendradio im kalten Ätherkrieg: Berlin als eine Klanglandschaft des Pop (1962–​1973). Berlin: Landbeck Verlag. Stöver, Bernd. 2004. “Radio mit kalkuliertem Risiko:  Der RIAS als US-​Sender für die DDR 1946–​1961.” In Zwischen Pop und Propaganda: Radio in der DDR, edited by Klaus Arnold and Christoph Classen, 209–​28. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag.

Discography The Four Aces Featuring Al Alberts, “Three Coins In The Fountain” From 20th Century Fox Film “Three Coins In The Fountain” /​“Wedding Bells (Are Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine),” 1954, Decca 9-​29123, 45 rpm. Hallyday, Johnny, “Johnny Hallyday trifft die Rattles,” 1984, Philips 32 461–​6, 33 1/​3 rpm. The Monks, Black Monk Time, International Polydor 249 900, 1966, 33 1/​3 rpm. Les Paul and Mary Ford, “Vaya Con Dios (May God Be With You)” /​“Johnny (Is The Boy For Me),” 1953, Capitol Records F2486, 45 rpm. Presley, Elvis, “Muß i denn, muß i denn (Wooden Heart)” /​“G’schichten aus dem Wiener Wald” (Tonight’s Allright For Love), 1961, RCA 47–​9340, 45 rpm. Ramsey, Bill. “Yes, Fanny, ich tu das” /​“So ein Stroll in Tirol,” 1958, Polydor NH 23 738, 45 rpm. Summers, Donna. Love To Love You Baby. 1975, Atlantic ATL 50 198-​Z, 33 1/​3 rpm. —​—​—​. “Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)” /​“I Feel Love,” 1977, Atlantic ATL 10 963, 45 rpm. —​—​—​. “Hot Stuff ” /​“Journey To The Center Of Your Heart,” 1979, Bellaphon –​BF 18665, 45 rpm. Torriani, Vico, Vico Torriani und seine Lieder, 1953, Telefunken LF 1514, 33 1/​3 rpm.

Filmography Becker, Wolfgang (director). Alle lieben Peter. 1959. Marischka, Franz (director). Schlagerparade 1960. 1960. Taurog, Norman (director). G.I. Blues (German title: Café Europa). 1960.

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IV

Part 

Explicitly German

“Here I was born, here is my home, here are my folks, here I belong, because here is where I prefer to be” (Hier bin ich gebor’n, hier ist mein Zuhause, hier sind meine Leute, hier gehör’ ich hin, weil ich hier am liebsten bin) Nena sings in her song “Made in Germany” from her epynomous album released 2009. This “here” in Nena’s song is, obviously, Germany and she makes her Germanness explicit by linking it directly to her place of birth. This section focuses on such blunt expressions of Germanness and on music that is explicitly associated with Germany. As we stated in the introduction, while obvious negotiations of Germanness are not common in German popular music, there are a number of artists and acts who reflect on this. Linking oneself geographically and emotionally to Germany is one way to negotiate Germanness. Others, like for instance Advanced Chemistry who explicitly negotiated Germanness and their sense of feeling alien in their 1992 debut “Fremd im eigenen Land” (Foreign in my own country) do not subscribe to the idea of Germanness as put forth by Nena. Well before her album “Made In Germany,” Nena had her breakthrough in 1983 with the hit “99 Luftballons” (also released in an English translation titled “99 Red Balloons”) within the emerging Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW; New German Wave), which often featured more subversive strategies in the negotiation of Germanness. As Barbara Hornberger argues in her chapter on NDW, by using German instead of English lyrics the artists not only wanted to portray (German) reality, but also to distance themselves from their punk predecessors. Hornberger outlines not only how the artists played with aspects of Germanness, but also highlights a common strategy of NDW in doing so: tactical affirmation. NDW artists often played with signs linked to what was considered to be conservative and petit bourgeois  –​including references to German Schlager which in the end also alienated NDW from its original audience. Schlager, by some considered to be the most German of popular music, features prominently in Julio Mendívil’s chapter. Leaving the geographical boundaries of Germany behind, Mendívil looks at the Oktoberfest music performed by the German diaspora community in Blumenau (Brazil). Mendívil describes how Schlager music and the annual Oktoberfest celebrations were used in the re-​invention of Blumenau as a German city within Brazil after the city’s devastation through a flood in the 1980s. The third chapter in this section deals with music propagating a clearly delimited definition of an exclusive Germanness. Focusing on recent right-​wing rock festivals in Germany Thorsten Hindrichs explores RechtsRock (lit. rightrock) which he defines as white power music made by and for rightwing extremists. Ironically Hindrichs shows that this music which propagates

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national superiority, xenophobia and hatred towards everything considered foreign is part of a global network of nationalists and white supremacists. Discography Advanced Chemistry. 1995 Advanced Chemistry. 360° Records IRS 974.990. CD. Nena. 1983. “99 Luftballons.” CBS A 3060. SP. Nena. 1983. “99 Red Balloons” /​“99 Luftballons.” Epic 34-​04108. SP. Nena. 2009. Made in Germany. Laugh + Peas CD 31000. CD.

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11

Neue Deutsche Welle

Tactical Affirmation as a Strategy of Subversion

Barbara Hornberger

Introduction The abbreviation NDW stands for Neue Deutsche Welle, which translates literally as New German Wave.1 But it would be only partially correct to assume that this is an equivalent term for new wave. Indeed, like new wave, NDW emerged from punk, but this term means something quite different in the German context: For young Germans, punk, like rock ’n’ roll and beat, was merely another imported form of music to be listened to and copied. In contrast to this, the novelty of NDW lay in developing one’s own culture through imports: From 1977/​78 onwards, a development took place in West Germany that was comparable to the one found in Great Britain: punk came to Germany via the media, e.g. music magazines, initially establishing a small subculture and then becoming the starting point for the formation of many new bands in several regional scenes –​mainly Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hanover, Berlin and Munich. It was not long before they started to distance themselves from paradigms of authenticity and a 4/​4 meter and looked for new stylistic paths that differentiated and expanded musical, lyrical and performative modes. This turned punk into a new genre with German lyrics, which was given a descriptive and significant name in 1979 by a series of articles in the magazine SOUNDS entitled “Neue Deutsche Welle.”2 However, the term NDW is a catch-​all category subsuming considerable stylistic differences. In a record store you would find NDW albums on very different shelves:  under punk/​indie you might find bands such as Male, Mittagspause, Abwärts and Hans-​a-​Plast, whereas bands such as Extrabreit, Spliff or Nena would be found under German rock. Artists like Neonbabies, Ideal or Falco would be in the pop category, whereas groups such as Einstürzende Neubauten, DAF, Palais Schaumburg and Malaria! would be listed under avant-​garde. Some, like Hubert Kah, Markus and Frl. Menke were even filed under Schlager3, not to mention various “in-​between-​phenomena” such as Trio, Der Plan, Foyer des Arts or Andreas Dorau. What unites the heterogeneous variants of NDW as a recognizable style is the use of German lyrics. The use of German in place of the usual English was, especially in the beginning, an expression of its mission to portray reality. This reference to reality is a central characteristic of NDW and is connected with an attitude of distance (see Hornberger 2011). The distance serves as an initial starting point for connecting personal and social issues. As NDW created a distance from imported punk through modifications and interpretations, it also created a distanced attitude toward its own home country –​and its politics. In contrast to previous German youth cultures the 135

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NDW artists did see Germany as their homeland, expressing this not only by using their mother tongue, but also by demanding new German cultural traditions beyond Goethe and Schiller, Bach and Wagner and also apart from “Heimatfilm” (Heimat movies) and Alpine folk music. However, when NDW bands referred to Germany as their homeland, it was not in a romantic and conservative way, but rather as a kind of broken relationship. Their concept of homeland was a concept of ideological differentiation from and in it. They used German to express in particular their difference between them and “Germanness” which thereby nearly appears as foreignness: “Sprich fremde sprachen [sic] im eigenen land [sic]” (speak foreign languages in your own country) or “gottseidank nicht in england [sic]” (thank God, not in England, Fehlfarben 1980). With this cold and sober distance NDW was able to portray the social and political atmosphere of the late 1970s Western Germany. In this approach, NDW mainly used three characteristic strategies of subversion that expressed this attitude of distance and created aesthetic commonalities within its heterogeneous style: provocation, mystification and tactical affirmation. The last of these was especially characteristic of NDW, anticipating the postmodern pop strategies of the 1980s at an early date. It will therefore be the focus of this chapter and will be discussed in more detail using a selection of cases. In just five years, up to 1983, NDW evolved rapidly from subculture to mainstream; this was followed by a fast decline, which was perceived as the “sell-​out” of a subculture. The “real” representatives of NDW very soon distanced themselves from all that was (and is) now regarded as NDW. They emphasized their disparity, dissolved their bands or engaged in strange avant-​ garde electronic experiments. But the process was irreversible. Instead of “No Future” and “No Fun” the slogan was now: “Ich will Spaß” (I want to have fun, Markus 1982). In that way, the term NDW itself was discredited in the scene. Even the music magazine SOUNDS, supporter and multiplicator from the beginning, now called for the “containment and long-​term eradication of the ugliest of all births […] born by the record industry in recent years: Die Neue Deutsche Welle” (Gröfaz and Goldmann 1982).4 And so there is a sharp distinction between the early subcultural part of NDW and the later successful part that remains in the charts to the present day. It is no coincidence that Jürgen Teipel’s documentary book “Verschwende Deine Jugend” (2001) which almost exclusively features protagonists of the early NDW, does not use this term in its subtitle, speaking of German punk and new wave instead. Subcultures and Their Claim to be Subversive The concept of subversion is a major factor in the consideration and evaluation of juvenile subcultures. Journalism and academia often distinguish between subversive, progressive youth cultures on the one hand and hedonistic, regressive youth cultures on the other, with the preference usually being given to subversive, oppositional forms. The arts in general and popular culture in particular are expected to produce a critical, enlightened gesture. In the context of popular music, therefore, subversive power and authenticity are often valued more highly than craftsmanship (see Frith 1987). This idea of juvenile subcultures as a space for displaying subversive ways of thinking and acting seemed to work for punk at first –​Dick Hebdige (1979) explicitly included punk in his influential book Subculture: The Meaning of Style about juvenile subcultures in Great Britain. In the mid-​1970s, punk attacked the mature, self-​satisfied and saturated rock business with three chords, safety pins and a lot of noise. Punk was no longer directed against the parents’ generation only, but against rock music, which had by then become established and mainstream

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itself. In the mid-​1970s, the notions of subversion and dissidence had also changed considerably, partly because the ideas and utopias of the hippies and 1968 protesters were perceived as having failed in various ways: They were fraying in the theoretical narrow-​mindedness of left-​wing student groups, had lost themselves in the course of their “march through the state institutions,” or had become perverted by terrorist groups such as the Red Army Faction. For this reason, punk and NDW renounced utopias of any kind and, in doing so, lost or even undermined a characteristic feature of subversive groups. Instead, they relied on playing anarchically with symbols and provocative nonsense. However, the tactics of the semantic chaos of punk were not accepted by everyone as subcultural practice. Admittedly, their open criticism of the welfare society fits perfectly into the concept of progressive youth cultures. Playing with symbols like the swastika and the renunciation of utopian social concepts aroused suspicion, especially among representatives of older subcultures. Many observers felt helpless with regard to punk and NDW, mainly because these forms of irrational provocation were completely alien to them. In this regard, punk and NDW were part of a generation change, which found reflection and expression in a redefinition of subversion. For NDW, the question of subcultural identity and impact is even more complex. Since the style can hardly be defined around a uniform statement, NDW’s subversive power was not always easy to recognize, both for its contemporaries and for later interpreters. In addition, NDW, especially its strategy of tactical affirmation, was constantly evading the criteria of what previously had been understood as subversion. NDW and Tactical Affirmation All three subversion strategies of the NDW –​provocation, mystification and tactical affirmation –​ were directed on the one hand against petty-​bourgeois society, and on the other against the previous generation of 1968 and the hippies. The first strategy, provocation, originated directly in punk, with the probably best-​known example DAF (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft  –​ German-​American Friendship) and their song “Der Mussolini.” It equated fascist leaders like Hitler and Mussolini with ideologies like communism and religious figures like Jesus Christ: in the song they are claimed to be one (always the same) dance style. The repetitive beat and the synthesizer loops, together with the shouting of singer Gabi Delgado-​Lopez, supported the martial character of the song. The use of fascistic symbols, starting with the title, provoked above all the 1968 generation and worried educators. The second strategy, mystification (in the sense of riddling), resisted the social and political duty to be rational by operating with irrational statements such as “Morgen wird der Wald gefegt” (Tomorrow the woods will be swept; Palais Schaumburg 1981) and “Ich glaub, ich bin ein Telephon, romantisches kleines Telephon” (I think I  am a telephone, romantic little telephone; Palais Schaumburg 1981). Some artists undermined semantic contexts  –​as DAF in “Kebabträume” (Kebab Dreams): “miliyet for the Soviet Union, a spy in every snack bar, at the zk an agent from turkey” (DAF 1980). NDW artists refused to take a clear position, they did not name opponents and they did not want to justify their protest. This strategy also contained a fundamental refusal of communication in general, which can also have a subversive effect. While on the one hand provocation had always been part of the repertoire of juvenile subcultures and on the other hand mystification had a tradition in the artistic avant-​garde, the third strategy, tactical affirmation, was new and may not be recognized as subversive at first

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glance. Punk already used irony to take up and break the oppressive atmosphere of the 1970s in artificial ways and to challenge previous generations. However, the more punk was established as a subculture and standardized in its style, the more it lost this ironic and distanced-​playful attitude. But while punk increasingly settled and solidified itself in its gloomy seriousness, NDW retained the ironic-​affirmative momentum and expanded it. This started with the appearance of artists and fans. The beards and long hair, which had become a visible sign of protest in the 1960s, had already disappeared in punk. But punk was still provoking with dirty aesthetics. The NDW’s protagonists, by contrast, were demonstratively wearing suits: “the clothes became more and more strict –​suit, white shirt and tie” (Anette Humpe, quoted in Wagner 1999, 145). Instead of snubbing the affluent society with a shocking appearance, the NDW bands masked themselves with its attributes and clothing conventions. They decided not to be openly oppositional any longer, but chose a kind of covert action, an infiltration tactic. This form of affirmation worked subversively through a debunking and ironic game, which only revealed itself to insiders at first and thus appeared less attackable. In this way, NDW acts distanced themselves from the hippie culture as well as from punk and its increasing one-​dimensionality:  “It’s too late for the old movements /​what counts today is cleanliness /​You don’t come along with our changes /​you’re not ready for us yet.” (“Abenteuer & Freiheit,” Fehlfarben 1979). Affirmation as part of this covert action within NDW became a central cultural strategy that manifested itself in various ways. The rejection of the optimism of utopia and progress of the sixties, for instance, was expressed in an offensive “yes” to the obviously imperfect present, and NDW confronted the 68er and hippies’ cultural pessimistic criticism of civilization with the affirmation of artificiality. Any impression of naturalness or authenticity was avoided, the industrialized urban world was celebrated instead. Previously valid judgements were redefined at will. With songs like “Industrie-​ Mädchen” (Industry Girl) and “Zurück zum Beton” (Back to concrete, both S.Y.P.H. 1979) NDW turned against the 1970s plush and nature aesthetics and the hostility to technology of the emerging ecology movement: Back to the concrete /​Back to the concrete /​Back to the subway /​Back to the concrete /​There a human being is still human /​There’s love and happiness there /​Back to the concrete /​Back to the concrete /​Back to the subway /​Back to the concrete. (S.Y.P.H. 1979) The song title was an ironic allusion to the eco-​movement slogan “Back to nature.”5 Contrary to their political program, however, the inhuman wasteland of grey industrial areas was no longer simply denounced in the song but was sarcastically reinforced and counteracted by affirmation –​“Da ist der Mensch noch Mensch” (There a human being is still human). With this attitude, the NDW artists distanced themselves from the ecologists’ gestures of consternation. “We wanted to do exactly the opposite of what was otherwise required […] These rural communities and flowing cloths were just annoying.” (Thomas Schwebel, quoted in Teipel 2001, 89)  NDW expressed a provocative agreement with the world, flirting with its obviously bad condition: “The world is evil, life is beautiful, Why is this so hard to understand?”6 (“Die Welt ist schlecht,” Der Plan 1980b). However, the impression of uncritical devotion was deceptive; there was rebellion behind the apparent approval. “We don’t need any given rise for the world rebellion” (“Der Weltaufstandsplan,” Der Plan 1980b). The affirmation of NDW was by no means insubstantial,

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as it was accused of, but used the “yes to the modern world as a principle of permanent revolt” (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle, quoted in Hahn and Schindler 1982, p. 216). In this way, affirmation also went hand in hand with the strategy of complication and refusal of communication, which was used here as an apparent agreement. As a hallmark of the subversive project, this means that the protest and the rebellion associated with it, which were still an elementary part of the enlightenment way of speaking, disappeared completely in favor of an attitude which (apparently) fully agrees with the offers of meaning offered by society to the individual. (Fliege 1997, 103) For the further development of NDW, however, another form of tactical affirmation was of even greater importance: NDW artists distanced themselves even more radically from the analytical practices of left-​wing criticism by incorporating childish foolishness and nonsense-​like structures into the lyrics and performances. In addition to bands like Wirtschaftswunder, Trio and Foyer des Arts, it was above all Der Plan and Andreas Dorau who acted with quirkiness, humor and cunning naivety. Thus, NDW turned away from the critical-​agitational habitus of punk, but also from the art-​attitude of the “Geniale Dilletanten” (Genius Dilletants). “We were quite deliberately opponents of the gloomy, Teutonic currents that were becoming more and more established in Germany” (Moritz R® 1993, 133). Der Plan: Subversion With a Traffic Light Many avant-​garde acts experimented with sounds, noise and dissolution of song structures (e.g. Einstürzende Neubauten, Malaria!). Der Plan’s debut album Geri Reig (1980b) is also characterized by this, following the avant-​garde traditions of, for example, Kraftwerk or The Residents and testing the limits of what may be called popular music –​but only in part. In addition, there were also songs that came along catchy-​melodic and cheerful to absurd: self-​ironic synthie-​pop. This was corresponding to the overall concept of the band: With colorful scenes, costumes, masks and foam guitars, the artistic trio consisting of Moritz R®, Frank Fenstermacher and Kurt Dahlke alias Der Pyrolator added a calculated momentum of childlike anarchy and carefreeness to NDW. We didn’t just want to do German lyrics, but also German music. And after it had disappointed me excessively to find out one day that most German hits were only cover versions of American songs, the nursery rhyme remained the only tradition we could fall back on. But that’s all I wanted. I was in no hurry to grow up. I wanted to play as long as possible. (Moritz R®, quoted in Teipel 2001, 181) This moment of the childlike can also be found in the music, which had experimental moments like the illustrative use of synthesizer “plastic” sounds, which nevertheless remained playful, and the lyrics, which were characterized by an astonishing simplicity, a new, naively innocent form of perception of the world. The songs and performances of Der Plan were candy-​colored and foolish and were more reminiscent of children’s birthdays than revolutionary manifests. At second glance, however, this was not that kind of escapism so often accused of the cheerful artifacts of popular culture, but a strategy of naive unmasking.

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In the song “Da vorne steht ’ne Ampel” (There’s a traffic light over there), Der Plan (1980a) challenged the automatism of rules-​compliant behavior. “What’s wrong with crossing a red traffic light?” With this childish fundamental question, the traffic regulations become a matter of negotiation, individual mobility in a modern city becomes a question of free choice. “That’s what our ‘traffic light’-​single was all about: that people shouldn’t just be symbol-​controlled robots. That they can even cross the street if the traffic lights are red –​if there is no car.” (Moritz R®, quoted in Teipel 2001, 264). This could be read as a politically subversive statement, even more so against the historical background. The provocative question “Warum nicht bei Rot gehen?” was not just a challenge to an administrative offence that is still in place today; in the terrorist-​frightened Federal Republic of Germany of the 1970s, even such a slight questioning of traffic rules could pose a fundamental challenge to state control and power. “And that was a political statement back then. It used to be much worse than it is today to cross at a red light” (Frank Fenstermacher, quoted in Teipel 2001, 264). But also in abstraction from the concrete historical situation, the song questions systemic rules and thus social hegemony. The traffic light situation reflects the alienation of a “regulated life” in the modern world. The refusal of obedience, the breaking of rules becomes a piece of rebellious self-​empowerment that restores freedom and individuality to the people. The traffic light should help, even protect. However, if it only regulates indiscriminately, respecting its signs can hardly be recognized as reasonable in every case. Instead of simply being obedient, Der Plan questioned the (transport) system. Stopping in front of the red traffic light is –​morally speaking –​more dangerous than crossing it. Freedom is more important than security: “The signs are there for the people, not the people for the signs. Whoever only sees signs is dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead” (back cover of the single “Da vorne steht ’ne Ampel,” Der Plan 1980a). This attitude of tactical affirmation and ironic playfulness, expressed in the lyrics and performance, finds an equivalent and support in the music and the manner of singing. The music is reminiscent of an early video game, simply structured and with artificial synth sounds. Moritz R®’s singing is amateurish: the pitch tends to be too low for him, he hits many notes only approximately and at best has mediocre timing; in brief, he sings like a little boy. Tactical Affirmation Goes Mainstream Tactical affirmation was not only a subversive avant-​garde element, developed and used by bands like Der Plan belonging to the core of the NDW scene, for distinguishing themselves from punk as well as from progressive and art rock. It was also an essential element in establishing NDW tracks in the charts. The band Trio is a good example for this kind of border crossing. Trio worked with a consistent and self-​ironic concept of dilettantism. Their equipment was limited to the bare essentials: an electric guitar, with Kralle Krawinkel removing two of the three pickups, a small case amplifier, a drum kit consisting only of snare, cymbal and bass drum, and a performance that was second to none in terms of its simplicity. Less music and less show can hardly be done. The music of Trio has simple forms, absurd lyrics and a musical concept, which can best be described as “melodic shrinkage.” It is undoubtedly minimalistic, yet by no means avant-​garde. Trio was pure pop. Despite all minimalism they did not leave the range of what was harmonically and melodically familiar representing this with irony and distance at the same time. Their songs, which at first glance seemed intellectually rather simple, were permeated with ironic breaks and aesthetic ambiguities. Their musical and textual simplicity satirized both the formulaic quality of Schlager and the deadly serious avant-​garde poses of some NDW bands such as, for example, Einstürzende

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Neubauten, DIN A  Testbild or DAF. In doing so, they pursued their reduction strategy quite seriously by leaving out everything unnecessary, until only the pure structure remained: music without art-​attitude, without virtuosity, without star air and graces. The result was neither art requiring interpretation nor pure nonsense, but a concentrate clearly reflecting the well-​known structures of pop. In fact, we have taken the pseudo-​contents of inflated pomposity from our music. But if you think we have removed the last bit of content from the music, then I have to disagree. We have deconstructed the hollow pathos in the music, in the lyrics, in the presentation et cetera, and by emphasizing the essential we have made the contents appear naked, which is more like an appreciation of the contents. (Stephan Remmler, quoted in Musikexpress 2001, 226) At the same time, the band skillfully undermined the artistic claim suggested by this deconstructivist approach. Their stage performance has a particularly subversive effect. In the public broadcasting TV show ZDF-​Hitparade on May 3, 1982,7 for example, they presented their hit single “Da da da ich lieb dich nicht du liebst mich nicht” (There, There, There I don’t love you you don’t love me, Trio 1982), a song which is kept in laconic-​ironic tone. “Da da da” is a love song and an anti-​love song at the same time, an illogical document in the style of late puberty confusion. They avoid any touch of sentimentality; on the contrary: the lack of emotional expression is remarkable. The subject of farewell becomes clear in the lyrics, but the way front man Stephan Remmler presented it was in strange contrast to it. His performance was extremely restrained, almost neutral, denying any insight into his feelings. Trio’s stage performance was completely ignoring the TV-​conventions of half-​playback, with Peter Behrens’s bass drum rolling away, Kalle Krawinkel repairing the guitar strings and Stephan Remmler demonstrating the Casio Vl-​1 mini-​ synthesizer, which did half the rhythm work. The band thus appeared in a show which could hardly be further away from the scene and which represented affirmative cultural industries like no other in the field of German music entertainment –​only to play aggressively on and break its conventions. Trio shined with casual absurdities and charming provocation, stubbornly refusing to associate themselves in conversations with either “art” or “pop.” Trio’s flirting with Schlager and their distance to the NDW scene were refreshing and innovative, skillfully driving the concept of the NDW to its very peak. With their success, however, the game turned around. Their combination of minimalism and tactical affirmation became a blueprint for further modern German (NDW) hits, adopting formal simplicity and foolishness, but not the deconstructive concept and the self-​distanced attitude: Hubert Kah, Kiz, Markus or Frl. Menke. In this way, Trio represented a turning point in the development of NDW: With their intensification of reduction and dilettantism they became the quintessence of NDW. At the same time, however, their success and the mass imitation of their style also heralded the climax and the end of the genre. From 1981 on, the charts were conquered by bands and artists mainly focusing on German lyrics, synth sounds and bizarre performances. Only a few of them still had a connection to the original NDW scene or even to punk. Instead of “no future,” Markus claimed “Ich will Spaß” (I want to have fun, Markus 1982). Instead of safety pins and razor blades, there was a colorful panopticon of children’s toys and carnival, at second glance as a rich compilation of quotations from (German) entertainment culture, especially from the 1950s. The success of such songs,

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however, expanded the circle of recipients in a way that went beyond the scope of coded communication. Hubert Kah’s nightgown performance of his song “Sternenhimmel” (Starry Sky) in 1982 on ZDF’s Hitparade, for example, was funny for a traditional Hitparade viewer. But the subversive quality provided by this costume –​the explosion of the broadcasting format, the visualization of the somnolent quality of the German Schlager, the allusion to the German “Michel”8 –​ probably remained hidden in his mind. The more the NDW developed from a subculture with common codes to a mainstream culture, the more the strategy of tactical affirmation lost its power, focusing only on comedy without aesthetic breaks, until in the end a clear distinction between real affirmation (in the form of Schlager) and apparent (tactical) affirmation (in the form of NDW) hardly seemed possible. But also bands like Ideal or Spliff, individual artists like Hubert Kah, Markus or Frl. Menke, who had little or no connection to the original NDW scene, can still be called NDW in Fabbri’s (1999) sense, since they also formulated what was the NDW’s common attitude:  An attitude of distance (see Hornberger 2011, 2020). In this respect, the strategy of tactical affirmation in style created a correspondence and thus also an essential connection between the heterogeneous variants of the early and late, the indie and the mainstream versions of NDW. Conclusion The subversive power of tactical affirmations must be considered above all against the background of contemporary history. Their naivety is not to be mistaken as innocence; cheerfulness and wit are not a cathartic moment here, which in the end only restores the acceptance of society by means of its relieving function. Rather, these were tactical demarcation maneuvers against a fearful and anti-​fun German society. NDW opposed the artistic rock music of the 1970s with dilettantism, challenged the intellectuality of the counter-​culture of the 1970s with the simplicity and foolishness of its lyrics, confronted the authenticity constructions of the hippies with the obvious artificiality of music and performance, and undermined the standardized negativism of punk with its offensive-​subversive cheerfulness. In a complicated world, the NDW acts represented a strategic simplification that had a considerable potential for deviation. Overt, tactically motivated affirmation formally dissolves the opposition, making any confrontation impossible. Naive simplification was also an appropriate way to undermine rational debate. Tactical affirmation, however, requires not only an agreement on aesthetic procedures, but also an agreement on the subject of its criticism, because it acts covertly. It thus functioned primarily within the subculture, in which the apparent character of its affirmation was also recognized. In NDW’s seemingly affirmative play with Schlager, the distance and difference to it were increasingly reduced, both in production and in reception. But the subversive strategies and critical positions had to be recognized in order to be effective. With the increasing success of NDW the context of reception became more important than the context of production; affirmation was no longer recognized as a strategy and valued in its ironic quality, but celebrated as a real approval of “more fun.” After the dismal, terror-​and recession-​influenced end of the seventies, “I want to have fun” was a slogan that broad sections of society were claiming and implementing. In a sense, NDW was becoming the victim of its own strategy, falling in the trap it had set itself. By flirting with Schlager –​with the conservative and petit bourgeois signs –​it had alienated itself from its own original scene. At the same time, with the massive emergence in mainstream entertainment, the core of the scene had become fragmented, even mostly

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broken up. At the height of its success, the NDW was therefore losing its innovative potential and the exclusivity of its theme-​setting as well as its authority to interpret these themes. Youth cultures and popular music styles will only remain popular and alive as long as they succeed in responding adequately to a historical youth cultural demand. But since the NDW artists were now decoupled from their beginnings and from their original audience, they lost the sense for their themes –​and the music thereby lost its relevance. And so, the fans turned away in favor of a different music culture. Notes 1 All translations in this chapter are by Barbara Hornberger, unless otherwise stated. For a short general overview of NDW see Hornberger 2017. 2 See Alfred Hilsberg’s (1979a, 1979b and 1979c) three-​part article-​series in SOUNDS. 3 Schlager is a genre in German language popular music including soft pop as well as parts of folk-​inspired songs, performed by bands as well as solo artists. See also Mendívil’s chapter in this book. 4 Gröfaz and Goldmann are pseudonyms used by Alfred Hilsberg and Jäki Eldorado, two of the scene’s most prominent figures. With the abbreviation Gröfaz –​an acronym of “Größter Führer aller Zeiten” (greatest commander of all time) –​Hilsberg uses a pejorative term for Adolf Hitler. The choice of this pseudonym expresses an ironic appropriation of authority; above all, however, the closeness to punk is documented here, which describes the game with the theme of fascism –​see for example the reinterpretation of the swastika as “jewelry” or the designation of the United Kingdom as a “fascist regime” (“God Save The Queen,” Sex Pistols 1977) –​as a maliciously ironic provocation. Since at that time the abbreviation “BOF” –​“boring old farts” was often used for the followers of “good old rock ’n’ roll”, the pseudonym can also be read as “Greatest Fart of all time”. 5 The slogan is often attributed to Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose writings do not contain this phrase literally, but only implicitly. For the ecology movement, which first emerged in the nineteenth century as a counter-​movement to the industrial revolution, the sentence also appeared to be an implicit guiding statement that still worked in the 1970s and 1980s. 6 Translation by Der Plan (1980b). 7 ZDF-Hitparade is a known German Schlager-​chart-​show. ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) is a German public broadcasting television channel comparable to BBC2. 8 The German “Michel” is a traditional personification of the German, which mainly appears in caricatures. It shows a man in a nightgown with a pointed sleep cap. The “Michel” symbolizes a German who is naive, foolish and unsuspicious, simply “oversleeping” the world’s threats.

Bibliography Fabbri, Franco: Browsing Music Spaces. Categories and the Musical Mind. Paper presented at IASPM (UK) conference, 1999. Accessed February 15, 2018. www.tagg.org/​xpdfs/​ffabbri990717.pdf. Fliege, Jens. 1997. Von der Aufklärung zur Subversion. Sprechweisen deutschsprachiger Popmusik. Münster: LIT. Frith, Simon. 1987. “Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music.” In Music and Society. The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, edited by Richard Leppert and Susan McClary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 133–​49. Gröfaz, Goldmann. (pseud.) 1982. “Pamphlet.” SOUNDS 7: 44–​5. Hahn, Bernd and Holger Schindler (eds.). 1982. Punk. Die zarteste Versuchung, seit es Schokolade gibt. Hamburg: Buntbuch. Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Hilsberg, Alfred. 1979a. “Neue deutsche Welle. Aus grauer Städte Mauern.” SOUNDS 10: 20–​25. Hilsberg, Alfred. 1979b. “Dicke Titten und Avantgarde. Aus grauer Städte Mauern (Teil 2).” SOUNDS 11: 22–​7. Hilsberg, Alfred. 1979c. “Macher? Macht? Moneten? Aus grauer Städte Mauern (Teil 3).” SOUNDS 12: 44–​8. Hornberger, Barbara. 2011. Geschichte wird gemacht. Die Neue Deutsche Welle. Eine Epoche deutscher Popmusik. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann. Hornberger, Barbara. 2017. “Neue Deutsche Welle/​NDW: From Punk to Mainstream.” In Perspectives on German Popular Music, edited by Michael Ahlers and Christoph Jacke. London: Routledge, 195–​200.

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144   •   Barbara Hornberger Hornberger, Barbara. 2020. “ ‘Ich will Spaß, ich geb Gas’: German Pop Between Fun and Subversion.” In Popular Music and Automobiles, edited by Mark Duffett and Barbara Peter. New York: Bloomsbury, 111–​118. Musikexpress (ed.). 2001. Made in Germany. Die hundert besten deutschen Platten. Höfen: Hannibal. Moritz R. 1993. Der Plan. Glanz und Elend der Neuen Deutschen Welle:  Die Geschichte einer deutschen Musikgruppe. Kassel: Schmitz. Teipel, Jürgen. 2001. Verschwende Deine Jugend. Ein Doku-​Roman über den deutschen Punk und New Wave. Frankfurt/​ M.: Suhrkamp. Wagner, Peter. 1999. Pop 2000. 50 Jahre Popmusik und Jugendkultur in Deutschland. Hamburg: Ideal.

Discography DAF. 1980. “Kebabträume” /​“Gewalt.” Mute 005, 45 rpm. DAF. 1981. “Der Mussolini” /​“Der Räuber und der Prinz.” Virgin vs 418-​12, 45 rpm. Fehlfarben. 1980. Monarchie und Alltag. Weltrekord/​EMI 1C 064-​46 150, 33⅓ rpm. Fehlfarben. 1980. “Große Liebe –​Maxi” /​“Abenteuer & Freiheit.” Weltrekord WER-​001, 45 rpm. Hubert Kah. 1982. “Sternenhimmel” /​“Tanzen Gehen.” Polydor 2042 425, 45 rpm. Markus. 1982. “Ich will Spaß” /​“Kling, Klang Schicksalsmelodie.” CBS A2355, 45 rpm. Palais Schaumburg. 1981. Palais Schaumburg. Phonogram 6435 139, 33⅓ rpm. Palais Schaumburg. 1981. “Telephon” /​“Kinder der Tod.” ZickZack ZZ 33, 45 rpm. Der Plan. 1980a. “Da vorne steht ’ne Ampel” /​“Rot-​Grün-​Tod.” Atatak wr 005, 45 rpm. Der Plan. 1980b. Geri Reig. Warning WR 003. 33 ⅓ rpm. Sex Pistols. 1977. “God Save The Queen” /​“No Feeling.” A&M Records AMS 7284, 45 rpm. S.Y.P.H. 1979. “Zurück zum Beton.” In S.Y.P.H. Pure Freude PF 04 CK 2, 33⅓ rpm. Trio. 1982. “Da Da Da, ich lieb dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht” /​“Sabine.” Mercury 6005 199, 45 rpm.

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“One Day You Will Wish We’d Only Played Music”

Some Remarks on Recent Developments of Germany’s RechtsRock Scene Thorsten Hindrichs

Covering a musical spectrum ranging from “classical” oi!-​punk and “Rock against Communism” (RAC)1 to singer-​songwriter music, from National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) and National Socialist Hardcore (NSHC) to RechtsRap, neither the term “RechtsRock” nor the phrase “white-​ power music”2 mark a homogenous musical genre but are meant as umbrella terms defining “a spectrum of cultural policy working by established means of youth cultural self-​organization that has to be distinguished from organized right-​wing politics” (Dornbusch and Raabe 2002, 10). In this sense, RechtsRock simply refers to any kind of white-​power music made by right-​wing extremists for right-​wing extremists.3 Although the assumption that RechtsRock is an explicit German issue might be an alluring idea, not least because “as the historical seat of the Third Reich, Germany functions as a spiritual home for most white-​power and neo-​Nazi musicians today” (Dyck 2017, 35), any attempt to restrict RechtsRock to Germany falls short of (music-​)historical evidence as well as of a fundamental understanding of what RechtsRock is about, inside and outside of Germany. First, the international networks of RechtsRock must not be disregarded all too carelessly, on the contrary. From its very beginning in the mid-​1980s, when German right-​wing extremist skinhead bands like Endstufe and Böhse Onkelz (later on, the latter distanced themselves from the far right) adopted British white-​power RAC  –​especially modelled on British RAC-​band Skrewdriver  –​ RechtsRock has been an international affair; and it still is.4 Second, contrary to the perpetually articulated but erroneous idea of RechtsRock as “gateway drug,”5 its core functions are (a) the construction and consolidation of individual and collective identities as right-​wing extremist(s), (b) the generation of financial resources, and (c) providing a field of action in which politics and ideologies as well as hierarchies and relations of power are constantly negotiated and debated. The objective of this chapter is first to outline a (very short) history of Rechtsrock by shedding light on some principal performers –​within different musical genres –​as well as on their national and international networks. I  then discuss core aspects of RechtsRock’s general functions, before finally looking at the series of big RechtsRock festivals that have taken place in Germany since 2017 that will give a vivid and frightening example of German right-​wing extremists’ practices of “doing” RechtsRock. 145

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A (Very Short) History of RechtsRock Made in Germany Although German right-​wing extremists started to experiment with rock music as early as 1977, Ragnaröck, a band formed by members of the Nationaldemokratische Hochschulbund (national democratic university union, the academic branch of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, NPD), did not succeed in initiating the construction of a German right-​wing music scene, probably because the band was a “top-​down” project promoted by political functionaries. The failure of Ragnaröck clarifies that the early days of RechtsRock must be understood in light of a continuous interplay of different right-​wing youth cultures and rather traditionalist right-​wing party politics, with the latter constantly oscillating between appropriation and defense. Thus, when RechtsRock in Germany started during the early 1980s it had emerged “bottom-​up” from already existing skinhead scenes that were –​by any means –​completely modelled on British skinhead’s Oi! music, but without any political party affiliations. In the same way early German RAC initially simply followed British RAC bands like Skrewdriver or Brutal Attack in sound and (white-​power) topics, but with German lyrics, of course. Nevertheless, the British–​German relationship was not a one-​way street, but soon turned into a mutually cooperative affair, with Skrewdriver touring Germany regularly on the one hand, and German record label Rock-​O-​Rama –​run by Herbert Egoldt –​producing Skrewdriver as well as Böhse Onkelz and many others. At the end of the 1980s Rock-​O-​Rama turned out to be the most successful white power music label worldwide, preceding the international success of originally Canada-​ based Resistance Records during the 1990s. Although RAC-​based RechtsRock is nearly 40 years old by now, it is still the most popular genre within the German right-​wing music scene, not the least because Landser, with its lead-​singer Michael “Lunikoff ” Regener, gained certain fame within the scene during the turn of the millennium, since the band went underground and its members were convicted for being a criminal organization in 2005. Whereas “founding fathers” like Endstufe, who are still active, are rather legendary for nostalgic reasons, Michael “Lunikoff ” Regener, having spent almost three years in jail without having betrayed his “comrades” to the authorities and from then on fronting his own band Die Lunikoff Verschörung, has become quite a pop star of the right-​wing music scene. A similar progression from “modelled on” to “mutual cooperation” as it can be seen in RAC, yet with one remarkable extension, is to be observed with regard to the rise of NSBM during the 1990s. Dealing heavily with Nordic, anti-​Christian, and pagan topics, the Scandinavian scene of the so called second wave of black metal offered an ideal opportunity to load up these very topics with themes of white power ideologies and right-​wing extremism. Since the black metal scene in general is internationally connected in a most excellent way, and comparatively tolerant towards white-​power ideologies, German NSBM-​bands like Absurd, Totenburg, and others were inherently involved in more or less worldwide networks of black metal –​with a core area in Eastern Europe –​from their very beginnings. Moreover, Norwegian right-​wing extremist Varg Vikernes with his project Burzum is most important here, because he made Hendrik Möbus, conceptional head of Absurd, branch manager for his company Cymophane Records. The latter was closely tied to Resistance Records run by National Alliance founder William Pierce. Like Vikernes a convicted murderer, “in 1999 Möbus fled to the United States to escape a parole violation in Germany” (Dyck 2017, 61), where he was provided refuge by Pierce. Möbus “set up Resistance Records as the US distributor for Cymophane Records, bringing NSBM to the US white power music market on a large scale for the first time” (ibid., 62).

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In return, the US NSHC scene that emerged out of former neo-​Nazi skinhead bands who captured sound and lifestyle from 1980s hardcore, but transformed it with white-​power topics, served as model for those German right-​wing extremists, who were in their early twenties around 2000. The Blue Eyed Devils from Delaware had an especially large impact on German RechtsRock when they toured Germany in 1997 and 1999 (cf. Schulze 2017, 248–​52). According to the hardcore ideas of DIY and independence, while facing their political involvement in right-​wing extremism, German NSHC-​bands like Moshpit, Brainwash, or Terrorsphära try to manage a fragile balance between remaining a discrete scene within a wider scene of right-​wing extremism and participating in this wider scene at the same time (cf. Schulze 2017, 255). Furthermore, NSHC implemented “younger” styles and codes from mainstream popular music scenes –​and even the political left –​and, most important, the use of English instead of German into RechtsRock. On this basis, the eventual invention of RechtsRap (labelled as “n-​rap” or “nationalist-​rap”) is not as much surprising as it might seem at first sight. Inspired by US acts like Neo Hate and rivalled by Polish white power rap, for instance, it took until 2010 until German right-​wing extremists realized that hip hop was (and still is) by far the most popular music genre for German teenagers and some far right bands started to experiment with RechtsRap.6 Remarkably enough, all of the earlier RechtsRap projects were side-​projects of already established RechtsRock bands, thus the technical skills and the products of Sprachgesang zum Untergang or NSS /​n’Socialist Soundsystem7 were still rather clumsy, sometimes awkward. Things changed when MaKss Damage (stage name of Julian Fritsch) entered the scene. Fritsch has quite decent skills in rapping and sampling-​techniques and he started his early career as a Stalinist (!) rapper within a (rather small) sub-​scene of the German political left. Even when still a Stalinist, Fritsch always articulated lots of antisemitism, nationalism, and sexism, but in 2011 he decided to change scenes and become a neo-​Nazi, or rather a racist white German nationalist (cf. Hindrichs 2017). All of his releases have been (and are still) outlawed by German judiciary, but this only helps to increase his fame within the scene for being tough. However, in this regard RechtsRap is still on the fringes of German RechtsRock arousing more public attention than having relevant impact on the whole of German right-​wing extremism itself. Some Remarks on “Doing” RechtsRock Asked for an estimation of Makss Damage’s RechtsRap track “Wahrheit” (Truth, 2015), singer-​ songwriter Frank Rennicke, one of Germany’s most prominent right-​wing extremists, stated the following: It is, finally, a political statement. Right? And it’s being combined with a modern form of music. […] This is electronic music. Artificially made, no one strums a guitar. And he speaks fast. We live here in a republic that’s taken its lead from America. Culturally speaking, too. […] [What matters is] the adoption of a style of modern music that hadn’t existed in this form, that’s used to convey political content. (Post 2015) What makes this statement unique is less that it is one of very few examples of a major protagonist of German right-​wing extremism speaking out in public on self-​conceptions of RechtsRock, but that it differs from earlier such statements by stressing the core issue of RechtsRock as “musicking”

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instead of reproducing the odd narrative of music as “gateway drug.”8 Within discourses on white-​ power music this narrative dates back at least to 1994, when Ian Stuart Donaldson, singer of Skrewdriver and founder of the international right-​wing extremist network Blood and Honour, explained his idea of neo-​Nazi music in a TV interview: You go to a concert and listen to a group that you agree with, it is a lot more enjoyable than going to a political meeting. And, ehm, we can get over to a lot more people that way and maybe, if they listen to the lyrics, they believe in what they say, maybe they will go out and get involved in the nationalist party, within their own country, and that can only be good really. (Käfer 1994) Although Donaldson’s suggestion that the ideological message of RechtsRock remains contained within song texts only, whereas music, social contexts, and even joy are rather pleasurable additions, is obviously “wrong” (a song’s meanings are generally constructed via all of its signifying media; cf. Moore 2012 and Hindrichs 2019), his stressing of RechtsRock’s social function is important: by constructing and consolidating individual and collective identities as right-​wing extremist(s) RechtsRock is “a framing device” and “white power musicians urge their audiences […] to imagine new transnational white supremacist identities” (Love 2016, 46). Moreover, these audiences do not consist of passive subjects that are urged to receive whatsoever, but active listeners who form an essential part of “doing” music (musicking) as well. Like any popular music RechtsRock is “done” in two different fields of action: live concerts and recordings. Although both share similar functions as framing devices, drawing this distinction is essential because of their different modes of handling “music as doing” by means of participation. During live concerts all musical agents share the same space of performance (or rather perform the same musical space) and thus simultaneously participate in a shared community that is experienced with body and mind. With recordings, however, the mode of participation is that of an “imagined community” (Love 2016, 12). Although this community is an imagined one, this does not mean that it was not “real” –​on the contrary. The integration of “doing music” into everyday life (see DeNora 2000) is essential for its central function of constructing and stabilizing social scenes. Therefore, the aforementioned distinction between both fields of action must not be misunderstood as “either–​or”:  music is done collectively as well as individually. While the non-​daily event of a RechtsRock concert offers an attending right-​wing extremist numerous opportunities of initiating or intensifying personal contact with likeminded “comrades” as well as experiencing companionate community, listening to a RechtsRock recording on an everyday basis allows one to re-​enact this very experience and to deal intensely with the articulated ideological positions –​be it a song’s lyrics, the imagery of a CD cover or booklet, or the political background of the performer –​so that this right-​wing extremist’s relevant view of the world gets more and more consolidated and routine. Nevertheless, this observation points to two further considerations:  the significance of recordings for German right-​wing extremism is declining in recent years, and monetary issues must not be underestimated. In fact, besides the aforementioned support of constructing identities, making money is the second function that is central to RechtsRock. Due to the clandestine structural organization of the German RechtsRock-​scene, it is –​unfortunately enough –​nearly impossible to work with solid data in this context. Nevertheless, several

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observations allow for some careful assessments and considerations concerning the market of RechtsRock. During the 1990s the number of record releases steadily increased up to a peak of 140 in 1998 (Dornbusch and Raabe 2002, 36), which evened out to an average of 100 releases each year since then (Schulze 2017, 208). RechtsRock records are produced, marketed, and sold either by one of currently approximate 20 relevant German labels and/​or online shops or as RechtsRock band’s “self-​releases,” “particularly when they wanted to record explicitly illegal neo-​Nazi songs that even white-​power labels were often afraid to distribute” (Dyck 2017, 44). Dornbusch and Raabe estimated the average number of copies of each record in the lower four-​digit range of 3,000–​5,000 (Dornbusch and Raabe 2002, 36). Yet a quick browse through several online shops and band pages reveals that in recent years the number of copies of each release not only must have decreased significantly, but that most RechtsRock bands and labels are pursuing market strategies very similar to those of the “regular” popular music market: any new record gets offered as several versions with different covers, “special editions”, as metal boxes or with soft sleeves, and so forth, and, most important, with very few copies available at all, now mostly standing at between 100 and 300 units only.9 Although best-​sellers like Landser or Die Lunikoff Verschwörung are still in stock, this relatively new development coincides with a significant increase in live concerts since 2015 at the latest. In Thuringia alone, the number of RechtsRock concerts has increased from 23 in 2012 to 54 in 2016 (Mobit 2018, 15). Thus, the assumption that this increase of live concerts is mainly induced by a market collapse in record sales is certainly not too far-​fetched. Moreover, it also indicates that at least on a structural level of economic conditions RechtsRock works just like any other music market. “A Sign to the Public”? It is quite impossible to summarize the political landscape of German right-​wing extremism in this short chapter. It should at least be noted that right-​wing extremism in Germany is neither coherent nor consistent, but is split up in several branches with different ideological backgrounds pursuing different political goals with different strategies. On the one hand, one finds neo-​Nazis who refer to Nazi Germany and all its völkisch roots, on the other hand there are groups who find Hitler and völkisch issues much too old-​fashioned and are geared to white supremacy and (basic) racism (cf. Schulze 2017). Furthermore, both of these branches are quite discordant in how to achieve their aims the best way, either by participating in democratic processes (via political parties) or by “street fight” and revolution. And finally, both of these branches organize themselves both in political parties and in free fellowships. Moreover, it must be noted that most German RechtsRock musicians are political agents as well, being either active members of one of the relevant political parties or part of a free fellowship (sometimes even both). Nevertheless, since the NPD and other long-​established right-​wing extremist parties have faced a decline in electoral successes during the last few years,10 fierce discussions about political and ideological goals, programs, and strategies within the right-​wing extremist scenes are to be observed. RechtsRock concerts, in particular, provide a field of action in which politics and ideologies as well as hierarchies and power relations are constantly negotiated and debated. These activities arise from the opportunity the concerts offer for personal contact, but it is also the case that the fact that such concerts take place at all is part of these negotiation processes. In particular, the question of who is responsible for which concert and with what degree of success becomes a key issue in such processes.

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On July 15, 2017 the commune of Themar, located in the south of German state Thuringia, faced the largest one-​day RechtsRock festival worldwide known to date: more than 6,000 right-​ wing extremists from Germany and neighbouring countries attended the event, which was organized by local right-​wing extremist Tommy Frenck and held under the motto “Rock gegen Überfremdung II” (Rock against foreign infiltration II). Nevertheless, it is not just the size that makes this event remarkable, but the fact that it was followed by further mass rallies. On July 29, 2017 right-​wing extremist Patrick Schröder organized a second one-​day festival at Themar called “Rock für Identität” (Rock for identity), this time with approximately 1,000 attendees and five acts, followed up by a third event on October 28, 2017, again organized by Schröder with about 1,100 attendees, now called “Rock gegen Links” (Rock against the Left) and presenting nine bands. Looking at the 19 different bands that played Themar I–​III, it is noteworthy that all of them represent rather “old-​school” traditions of RechtsRock.11 However, the NPD, which according to its self-​perception is still the most important political party of the German far right, played a rather minor role during the Themar festivals of 2017. Thus, it is not surprising that Thuringian NPD-​leader Thorsten Heise announced a two-​day festival as well: on April 20 and 21, 201812 in Ostritz (eastern Saxonia) a festival called “Schild und Schwert” (shield and sword; note the “s-​s”) took place with 1,300 guests, but now expanded to include a Mixed Martial Arts competition. Moreover, in summer 2018 Berlin based NPD-​activist Sebastian Schmidtke (backed up by Tommy Frenck) organized Themar IV on June 8 and 9, 2018 with almost the same line-​up as Themar III and labelled as “Tage der nationalen Bewegung” (Days of the national movement) with ca. 2,300 visitors. The DDW had its own festival “Jugend im Sturm” (Storming Youth) in Kirchheim/​Thuringia (July 7, 2018), attended by only 200 neo-​ Nazis. Both were followed up by a second “Schild und Schwert”-​festival on November 2 and 3, 2018, again in Ostritz (organized by Heise) with ca. 800 visitors. Apart from their large sizes, these festivals do not differ from other RechtsRock concerts of recent years, with regard either to the sale of merchandise or to the fact that attendees had to pay an “entry donation,” or to the rather conservative line-​up of bands. In fact, it is another aspect that makes this series of festivals exceptional:  the astonishingly overt promotion. Whereas in earlier years “German white-​power concert organizers have had to become increasingly cautious about releasing the details of their gigs ahead of time […] in order to avoid detection by police and anti-​racist protesters” (Dyck 2017, 46), all the festivals mentioned had been promoted completely overtly weeks before the relevant event via social media, including the possibility of advance ticket sales. Considering the “German Penal Code’s statutes against neo-​Nazi propaganda and incitement to hatred” (ibid., 47), this frankness regarding the announcements of the events might be surprising and seems to symbolize a growing self-​confidence of the RechtsRock scene. Yet in these cases the organizers used a legal trick by appealing to the German right of political assembly according to §8 of the German constitution, according to which “all Germans have the right to assemble peacefully and without weapons without registration or permission.” In order to fulfill the requirements of being qualified for a “political assembly” in the sense of German law, all festivals presented –​ right-​wing extremist  –​political speakers in between the individual musical performances, so that German law enforcement authorities had no legal handle to prohibit the events. The right-​wing extremists that spoke onstage at the festivals represented nearly the complete range of Germany’s right-​wing extremist political parties –​such as NPD, Die Rechte (The Right), Der Dritte Weg (The Third Path)  –​as well as representatives of so-​called free fellowships,

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i.e. right-​wing extremist activists who are not or at least are barely tied to a particular political party. Nevertheless, this legal “trick” is less remarkable for its legal finesse than for its displaying of RechtsRock’s inseparable entanglement with right-​wing free fellowships as well as right-​wing political parties. When Michael “Lunikoff ” Regener told right-​wing journal N.S. heute in March 2018, “just like a big rally, a big festival is a sign to the public,”13 he probably addressed not only this very public, but Germany’s RechtsRock scene, too. In doing so he revealed a growing self-​confidence of the German far right, that were no doubt based on the successes of the past year. Yet what Regener could not foresee at the time was the setback of another 2018 festival “Rock gegen Überfremdung III” (Rock against alienation III), which was initially announced for August, but was banned by the regulatory authorities. The replacement concert in October 2018 in Apolda (Thuringia) was stopped by the authorities after a short time. The failure of both festivals, which were originally announced as “even bigger than Themar,” meant a major setback for Germany’s RechtsRock scene, because the organizers (“free activist” Steffen Richter, backed up by the aforementioned Sebastian Schmidtke) suffered bad financial losses and the neo-​Nazi fans were extremely frustrated. Moreover, what began to show already in the summer of 2018, finally became clear at the end of the year: different “players” of Germany’s far right had started to compete openly with each other within this “musicking” field of action. In November 2018 Der Dritte Weg (DDW) announced a second “Jugend im Sturm” festival for July 6, 2019; in early December 2018 Schmidtke and Frenck announced the next Themar-​festival (Themar V) for the same weekend (July 5 and 6, 2019), and only one week later Thorsten Heise announced a third “Schild und Schwert”-​festival in Ostritz for June 21 and 22, 2019 –​just two weeks before Themar V. All three events failed in one way or the other. The DDW festival was banned by law enforcement, Themar V was as significantly restricted by the authorities as Heise’s Schild und Schwert (no alcohol, continuous press access, etc.), with only 1,000 visitors attending each event. What looked like the beginning of a frightening success story with more than 6,000 visitors in Themar in July 2017 and seemed to give the German RechtsRock scene an increased profile, has meanwhile not quite settled, but nevertheless settled at a significantly lower level. However, there is no reason to sound the all clear. Three weeks before the 2019 “Schild und Schwert” festival, Walter Lübcke, president of the regional council of Kassel, was been murdered by a suspect who is close to the right-​wing terrorist network Combat 18 (he may even be a member). However, Thorsten Heise, the organizer of the festival, has close ties to Combat 18, too, which may explain why he has held back so strikingly in terms of media coverage. In any case, several neo-​Nazis have participated in all the festivals, which are involved (sometimes more, sometimes less) in right-​ wing terrorist networks. For example, André Eminger, who was sentenced in 2018 for support of a terrorist organization as part of the NSU trial, participated in the first Themar festival in July 2017 (one year before his sentence). The lawyer of Ralf Wohlleben, who was convicted of aiding and abetting murder in the same trial, was among the political speakers at Themar IV in June 2018. When the replacement concert “Rock gegen Überfremdung,” on October 6, 2018 was stopped by the authorities, Dieter Riefling, yet another German neo-​Nazi activist, tweeted a long known, but still frightening motto of Germany’s RechtsRock scene: “One Day You Will Wish We’d Only Played Music” (see Figure  12.1). Facing this “sign to the public” the obvious reciprocal links between RechtsRock and right-​wing terrorism do not bode well for the future.

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Figure 12.1  Tweet by Dieter Riefling (account suspended by Twitter in late 2019)

Acknowledgements I want to thank Martin Cloonan, Stefan Heerdegen, Keith Kahn-​Harris, Katharina König-​Preuss, Jan Raabe, and Christoph Schulze for their help and support in various ways. Notes 1 Technically, the term RAC refers rather to ideological content, not to musical features; concerning its musical characteristics, RAC is plain rock music avoiding rock’s blues roots. 2 Within German academic and political discourses the term RechtsRock is prevailing, whereas in international context most authors prefer “white-​power music.” In fact, RechtsRock and “white-​power music” mean the same and might thus be used synonymously. 3 I define right-​wing extremism according to Richard Stöss as self-​contained world view driven by a particular set of attitudes consisting of racism, ethno-​centrism, militarism, nationalism, biologism, sexism, social Darwinism, antidemocracy, and the idea of white supremacy (see Stöss 2010, 19–​23). 4 Stressing this internationality, to be clear, does not imply an attempt to relieve German white-​power music –​and German right-​wing extremism in general –​from its racist and inhuman attitudes and its criminal actions, nor from its impact on national and international right-​wing extremist movements. 5 The concept of “music as gateway drug” is based on the odd idea music in general would “make” people do/​feel/​ behave in determinable ways. Suggesting that RechtsRock might have the power to turn people into right-​wing extremists refers to an all too simple principle of cause and effect that could not be affirmed by any reliable musicological study. One has to have a certain disposition for right-​wing extremist positions and attitudes in order to “do” RechtsRock in such a manner. Thus it is essential to the individual process of self-​fashioning and centrepiece of a right-​wing extremist lifestyle. I have discussed this problem at length in Hindrichs 2019. 6 Since hip hop is considered to be black music, the relevant protagonists proclaimed from the very beginning that they adapt rap as (musical) style, not hip hop as “subculture.” 7 This project operates under both names, NSS and n’Socialist Soundsystem. 8 For example, in 2004 the then chairman of the NPD, Udo Voigt, claimed in a TV interview:  “Music transports opinions, music transports culture. For us this is an important link to the youth. For by music we address youth. And once we have opened their hearts by music, we are thus capable of teaching them our ideas” (MDR FAKT, November 1, 2004, see Steimel 2008, 160). 9 Although most RechtsRock songs are to be found on online platforms like Youtube, Spotify, Soundcloud, etc., those channels are primarily used for gaining popularity, not for making money. 10 The comparatively new right-​wing party AfD (Alterative für Deutschland), which gained rather impressive/​appalling successes in recent elections, is surprisingly “unmusical”; the party has no particular soundtrack, not to mention its own music scene. 11 See the “small enquiries” 2445, 2423, and 2655 made at the Thuringian parliament. 2445:  http://​www.parldok. thueringen.de/​ParlDok/​dokument/​64456/​neonazistische-​veranstaltung-​rock-​gegen-​%C3%BCberfremdung-​ii-​am-​ 15-​juli-​2017-​in-​themar-​redner-​und-​bands.pdf. Accessed March 9, 2018. 2423: http://​www.parldok.thueringen. de/​ParlDok/​dokument/​64455/​neonazistische-​veranstaltung-​rock-​f%C3%BCr-​identit%C3%A4t-​am-​29-​juli-​2017-​ in-​themar-​redner-​und-​bands.pdf. Accessed March 9, 2018. 2655:  http://​www.parldok.thueringen.de/​ParlDok/​ dokument/​65974/​erkenntnisse-​zu-​der-​politischen-​kundgebung-​rock-​gegen-​links-​am-​28-​oktober-​2017-​in-​themar. pdf. Accessed March 9, 2018.

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Bibliography DeNora, Tia. 2000. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dornbusch, Christian, and Jan Raabe, eds. 2002. RechtsRock –​Bestandsaufnahme und Gegenstrategien. Münster: Unrast. Dyck, Kirsten. 2017. Reichsrock –​The International Web of White-​Power and Neo-​Nazi Hate Music. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hindrichs, Thorsten. 2017. “ ‘Shice auf Hiphop’. RechtsRap als Crossing?.” In Crossing –​Über Inszenierungen kultureller Identitäten und Differenzen, edited by Antje Dresen and Florian Freitag, 159–​76. Bielefeld: transcript. Hindrichs, Thorsten. 2019. “Mit Musik die Herzen der Jugend öffnen? Eine musikwissenschaftliche Zurückweisung der fortgesetzten Rede von der ‘Einstiegsdroge Musik’.” In RechtsRock: Aufstieg und Wandel neonazistischer Jugendkultur am Beispiel Brandenburgs, edited by Gideon Botsch, Jan Raabe, and Christoph Schulze, 179–​93. Berlin: be.bra. Love, Nancy S. 2016. Trendy Fascism –​White Power Music and the Future of Democracy. New York: SUNY Press. Martin, Peter J. 1995. Sounds and Society –​Themes in the Sociology of Music. Manchester: Manchester University Press. MOBIT e.V., ed. 2018. Hass und Kommerz -​RechtsRock in Thüringen. Erfurt: MOBIT e.V. Moore, Allan. 2012. Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song. Farnham: Ashgate. Raabe, Jan. 2017. “Die neonazistische Musik-​ Szene:  Transnational wie nie.” Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, August 8. Accessed March 9, 2018. www.bpb.de/​politik/​extremismus/​rechtsextremismus/​253972/​ die-​neonazistische-​musik-​szene-​transnational-​wie-​nie. Schulze, Christoph. 2017. Etikettenschwindel  –​Die Autonomen Nationalisten zwischen Pop und Antimoderne. Freiburg: Tectum. Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking  –​The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Hanover:  University Press of New England. Steimel, Ingo. 2008. “Musik und die rechtsextreme Subkultur.” PhD diss., TH Aachen; cf. darwin.bth.rwth-​aachen.de/​ opus3/​volltexte/​2008/​2460/​pdf/​Steimel_​Ingo.pdf. Accessed March 9,  2018. Stöss, Richard. 2010. Rechtsextremismus im Wandel, 3rd edition. Berlin: Friedrich Ebert-​Stiftung; cf. http://​library.fes.de/​ pdf-​files/​do/​08223.pdf. Accessed March 9, 2018.

Filmography Käfer, Karl-​Heinz (director). 1994. Lieder der Verführung. Studio TV /​ZDF /​ ARTE. Post, Dietmar (director). 2015. Deutsche Pop Zustände –​Eine Geschichte rechter Musik, 3sat /​playloud! productions.

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13

Hallo Blumenau, bom dia Brasil! German Music beyond Germany Julio Mendívil

Introduction Every year, the picturesque city of Blumenau, in the southern state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil, celebrates the second biggest Oktoberfest in the world. During the celebrations, the local population of Blumenau transforms the Brazilian city into an “extended territory of Germany,” where self-​imagined Bavarians flood the streets with German folk and Schlager music, German regional costumes, German food and German beer. In this chapter I  offer an overview of the German music scene in Blumenau to show how Brazilians of German origin in Blumenau construct a German musical identity outside the boundaries of Germany. Through the annual staging of Oktoberfest, this sub-​group of Brazilians negotiates different images of a past and contemporary Germany and engages a variety of German musical traditions to distinguish themselves from their non-​German Brazilian countrymen and women. There are four kinds of German music in Blumenau with which Brazilians of German origin construct and negotiate their cultural identity:  1) German folk music, 2)  German Schlager music,1 3)  German folk-​style Schlager and 4)  German Schlager by Brazilians. In Blumeneau’s Oktoberfest celebrations, all of these genres are amalgamated through an idea of musical Germanness. As Franco Fabbri has pointed out, musical genres are not a fixed ragbag of musical structures, but “a set of music events associated by the conventional agreement of communities” (Fabbri 1981, 52–​3). Fabbri’s observation reveals that the borders between the different kinds of music mentioned above are ambivalent and mutable, and in a constant process of negotiation, as the musical events taking place in Blumenau every year illustrate. Indeed, what differentiates these types of music are not necessarily specific musical characteristics but the settings in which these musical genres are played and heard and the way they are performed. The data I will comment on in this chapter stems from a trip I made to Blumenau during the Oktoberfest in 2003. While there, I interviewed musicians, consumers, music promoters, music teachers and staff members in various music shops in the city. Although all my interviewees were Brazilians with German ancestry, all interviews were conducted in Portuguese by request of the informants (as they were more comfortable speaking Portuguese). Additional data was procured from internet sources and the scarce literature on the topic. 154

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Blumenau, a Snapshot of Old Germany in Brazil Blumenau was founded as a German colony in 1850 by the Saxon chemist, Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau and is the indisputable center of representation of German culture in Brazil today. Despite its past and present multicultural citizenry comprised of Italian, Portuguese, and Afro-​ Brazilians as well as Germans, Blumenau has pointedly taken care to maintain and reinforce its identity as a center of ethnic Germanness. Since the 1980s the city government of Blumenau has organized an annual Oktoberfest celebration, in which German food, German costumes and German music are the featured attractions for tourists and inhabitants to present the ethnic image of the city.2 At first sight, Blumenau seems to be a place anchored in ancient times, where old customs are preserved and old songs are sung. As the German ethnomusicologist Ursula Reinhard wrote some years ago, “the European tourist has the impression, as if the time between the two World Wars has frozen there. One feels, not technically, […] but culturally in the past” (Reinhard 1992, 157–​8). Reinhard enthusiastically describes the “old-​fashioned” architecture of the city not as an artificial cosmetic gesture, but as reflexive, integral, and rooted in the style of German tradition (see ibid.). But the German image of Blumenau is no older than the houses, whose siding mimics Bavarian timber frame, built 30 years ago to decorate the city center and other central places like a postcard.3 A brief outline of the city’s history clearly shows that certain personalities from the administration and the intellectual and business sectors have conducted various municipal projects in order to promote Blumenau as a fair-​trade city, a cultural city, an industrial city or a tourist attraction. But before these personalities could come to an agreement, nature intervened. In 1983 and 1984, massive floods destroyed the city and its periphery, plunging the otherwise prosperous region into a major crisis that radically weakened both industry and cultural life. The idea for a big beer festival was first discussed in the context of recovery and reconstruction in order to promote Blumenau as a tourist destination. In 1984, a group of hotel owners, in cooperation with the city administration, organized the first Oktoberfest and, as bait for tourists, decided to use the event to deliberately present the city’s German face. The historian Maria Bernardete Ramos Flores suggests that the founding myth of the Oktoberfest was created around the floods. As she points out, the idea that the city should organize a party with beer, music, traditional German food and folklore dances had already been discussed in 1981 –​two years before the floods –​in order to establish the city as a tourist attraction. However, at that time the project was rejected by local government. It was only after the floods that municipal leaders agreed to move forward, because the urgency of the moment necessitated concrete initiatives. In local discourses, however, the initiation of the festival is portrayed as a spontaneous administrative reaction to a situation of adversity and crisis (see Ramos Flores 1997, 107–​8). In a sense then, the floods gave a mythical touch to discourses around the festival that was previously lacking, and hence, Oktoberfest could be staged as an annual reminder that the diligent but happy Germans in southern Brazil were able to face and master the onslaughts of destiny successfully. The power of this myth resulted in the establishment of a festival that temporarily transformed the whole city of Blumenau into an “ethnic metaphor” of Germanness. The imagination takes over the whole city, which is decorated with flags from different regions of Germany, numerous paper flowers and garlands and symbols for the Oktoberfest: The Vovô Chopão,4 the colors green and red, traditional costumes, music, dances, culinary specialties, the decoration, the beer, etc., as a reference to the past, are like pictures stuck over the city of

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Blumenau […]. The encounter with the imaginary is stimulated by all senses. In the morning, a musical matinee is held, traditional bands perform, street concerts in the squares and in front of the hotels. Twice a day, Vovô Chopão distributes free beer with the beer wagon […]. The past is represented by the symbols that make up the parade. Women and men, old people, young people, adolescents, children and babies transform their bodies into ‘living mannequins’ dressed not only in the typical costumes of culture [of the German homeland], but also in the roles of personalities of local history, just like in a wax museum. (Ramos Flores 1997, 24–​5)5 As Ramos Flores argues, Blumenau’s Oktoberfest projects the image of a German past that is invented, rather than historically accurate (1997, 33). In fact, the festival employs a romanticized blend of quite different forms, aesthetics, desires, sounds, smells, palates and historical narratives that differs from the city’s actual German past. By presenting and re-​presenting an idealized German past, Blumenau’s population produces an epic discourse about a patient and laborious German community that reinforces its cultural distinction in relation to Portuguese-​speaking Brazilians. In fact, Blumenau’s Oktoberfest exemplifies a living artistic representation of what Benedict Anderson has called a “narrative of identity”: that is to say, it is the performed biography of a cultural group which aims to distinguish itself from the groups that surrounds it (see Anderson 1988, 207). But how is this German culture represented in Blumenau? As Ramos Flores says, Blumenau’s image evokes a German rural landscape from the nineteenth century, constructed through the use of German cultural elements like beer, period costumes, and above all else, timber-​frame architectural surfaces. Together, these elements paint a scenic backdrop for the Oktoberfest show, in which German music plays its crucial part in the representation and celebration of Germanness in Blumenau. German Music Beyond German Territory The musical history of Blumenau is a central theme in the “identity-​narrative” of the city, and as such it is often presented on a historical continuum directly linked to the homeland. Edith Kormann, for example, has outlined a linear history of Blumenau’s music, starting from the first Musikkapellen (musical ensembles) of the nineteenth century to the jazz bands of the early twentieth century to current Schlager music bands like Cavalinho Branco and Banda de Caneco (see Kormann 1994, 227–​60). Indeed, since the colony’s founding, there have been bands in Blumenau playing polkas, rhinelanders, polonaises, waltzes and other forms of music from the Germanic regions of Europe which were considered to be “traditional” German music.6 But what Kormann fails to point out is that German musical influence in Blumenau has declined over time. During the reign of the nationalist government of Getúlio Vargas (1930–​1954), for example, German language and culture were seen then as a danger to the construction of a uniform and homogenous national identity in Brazil. Accordingly, musical ensembles with trumpets, accordions, and other “typically German” instruments experienced a tremendous crisis (see Kormann 1994, 231–​9, Reinhard 1992, 156), and a series of repressive measures almost put an end to German music bands in Santa Catarina’s capital Blumenau. Only after Vargas’s death in 1954 did some bands try to reanimate the musical life of the German minority. No wonder, then, that the first albums of local musicians recorded in the early 1960s were compilations that were presented as an important cultural rescue operation, as album’s titles like Antigamente era assim (This is

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How the Past Used to Be) or Salve a Banda (Save the bands!) suggest (see Kormann 1994, 248).7 However, German musical life in Blumenau after Vargas’s government remained fragile and completely cut off from the popular music scenes in Germany, where traditional music began to be modernized, including through the incorporation of influences from international popular music genres like rock ’n’ roll and Merseybeat (Mendívil 2017, 32–​3). When the first Oktoberfest was organized in Blumenau, in 1983, local bands seemed so incompetent that organizers decided to bring in musicians from Munich instead of hiring local acts (Mendívil 2008, 306). Helmut Högl (who reached a quasi-​mythical status due to his popular composition “Hallo Blumenau”) as well as the band Nussel Birq-​Buam, came to the kickoff event as special guests and gave the festival a “real” German flair. Helmut Högl was a popular musician in Germany at the time, and a central figure of the traditional music scene. He was well known for including modern instruments such as electric guitar and keyboard and for pushing the traditional music genre closer to Schlager music. Through these modernizing innovations, Högl helped give birth to the new so-​called Volkstümliche Musik (German folk-​style Schlager). Alois Hoffmann –​a German musician who visited Blumenau every year with Nussel Birq-​Buam from 1986 to 1991 before settling there to join the Banda Cavalinho –​recalls his first impressions of the music scene in Blumenau at the time: The people here like our music very much, because many Germans live here in Blumenau and in the region, you know? The Brazilian bands were musically very bad. We played here and suddenly realized that all the bandas were standing in front of us, listening to us. And a few years later they were already re-​enacting music from us, right. Only, that was a bit wrong, not quite right… (Interview on January 23, 2004) With the continuous success of the Oktoberfest, Blumenau and the region established a significant job market for interpreters of German music (see Ramos Flores 1997, 37). Meanwhile, Nussel Birq-​Buam’s Oktoberfest repertoire included traditional songs and increasingly more and more Schlager music. Following his example, local bands in Blumenau began to present Schlager music from 60 and 70  years ago as traditional German music. This type of music remains fundamental to Blumenau’s Oktoberfest celebrations. During the festival, concerts are held with German bands on the grounds of Vila Germánica, a timber frame style shopping mall. When I visited the festival, every evening featured German music that was simultaneously presented in four different halls. The repertoire of the local bands was quite eclectic and included German brass-​band music, traditional songs and Schlager music. Everywhere in the halls of the Vila Germánica there were Brazilians of supposed German ancestry in lederhosen singing, playing electric guitars and accordions on stage or polkas or old popular songs like “Lustig ist das Zigeunerleben” (Fun is the Gipsy Way of Life) or traditional songs like “Das Kufsteinlied” (The Kufstein’s Song). They covered well-​known German Schlager music pieces like “Die Gitarre und das Meer” (The Guitar and The See) or “Anita.”8 The Högl Fun Band  –​led by Michael Högl, Helmut Högl’s son  –​was the festival headliner the year I  visited. His band’s repertoire combined polkas and polonaises with famous German Schlager songs from the sixties and the eighties. The song “Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht” (Marble, Stone and Iron break), originally by Drafi Deutscher, deserves special mention, as it was the highlight of their concert, unleashing an immense euphoria in the audience. This now iconic tune is one of the most popular German

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songs amongst Brazilians. There was no concert I  attended in Blumenau in which that song was not played: with accordion, double bass, electric guitar and drums, sometimes as a “folk” song, sometimes as rock, and sometimes even with techno-​drums and keyboards. Wherever German music was played, the audience waited for this song –​not only because of the catchy and succinct hook “dam-​dam,” with which every verse ends, but also because it has now become a cultural symbol for Germanness in the context of the Oktoberfest in Blumenau. As Sergio Schilkmann, guitarist of Banda Os Tradicionalistas, told me, this song is a German classic for the Brazilians, a song that definitely belongs to the Oktoberfest. As Hoffmann remembers, the interaction between the Brazilian and German bands that came regularly to Blumenau for Oktoberfest stimulated a significant increase in repertoire. We did not only play brass music, but also German Schlager music. [….] They [the Blumenauer] knew the old things, but not the new things, simply because the communication with Germany was not there. We [the band Nussel Birq-​Buam] brought the new things and then they realized, “Ahh, that’s how it’s played.” (Personal interview, January 23 2004) It was very likely Helmut Högl who initiated this new form of musical interchange between Blumenau and Germany by presenting the Schlager music that his band played in Blumenau as traditional German music. After his legendary participation in the Oktoberfest of year 1983, the music from the homeland was no longer archaic music, but it could also very well be played on electric guitar, e-​bass and drums, and could be brought directly from the traveling bands to southern Brazil. In the last few years, visiting bands from Germany have continued to import musical novelties to the South of Brazil, bringing folk-​style Schlager music and so-​called Ballermann Schlager music to Blumenau. Larissa, a local record vendor, also verified interest in new German productions in the field of traditional, folk, and German Schlager music (interview on October 19, 2003). Indeed, recorded samplers of “German music,” on which German traditional music as well as popular Schlager music and Ballermann Schlager music are compiled, are very much in demand in Blumenau. Banda Cavalinho, whose chucrute music mixes traditional dance elements with “Ballermann” Schlager music exemplifies this trend of symbiosis of German music varieties in Blumenau. Banda Cavalinho also combines German with Portuguese lyrics (see CDs Chucrute Music and Marreca), crossing linguistic as well as musical boundaries. Their well-​known piece “Chopp Motorrad” can be called paradigmatic of these kinds of songs that push at traditional boundaries of genre (see the CD Oktoberfest Blumenau SC). Even the trio Konzertsaal Musik, which consists of three conservatory teachers who play music based on a “Hochkulturschema” (values of “highbrow” culture as manifested in Western art music contexts) (see Schulze 1993, 142–​3), recognizes the eclectic character of the Heimatmusik (music from the homeland) in Blumenau. According to Andreas von der Heyde (guitar) and Gilson Padaratz (violin), the trio tries to play “simple melodies of the popular culture” through the usage of harmonious arrangements. “We understand that as a way of saving and developing this music,” argues Padaratz (interview on April 13, 2006). Members of the trio occasionally come to Germany to search for new “old” repertoire. On their first CD one can find old folksongs like “Das Kufsteinlied,” operetta numbers like “Holzauktion” (Wood’s auction) by Franz Meißner, and

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the Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Brahms, as well as popular Schlager songs like “Lili Marleen,” and “Die Gitarre und das Meer,” however always as instrumental interpretations. For the musicians all these pieces connect them with Germany, the homeland of their ancestors: Our audience buys our music because they connect with this music. It’s not an audience that goes to the store to buy a CD because the music is good for dancing. Our audience buys our CDs because they [the consumers] have a historical or familiar interpretation of the songs. “This music reminds me my grandfather” or “that reminds me my German family,” the people say to us. Even for us it is the same. Of course we consider the taste of the audience. But our music also reflects a personal interest, because we all are of German descent. For us, this music is a way of establishing a connection with the homeland. (Personal interview, April 13, 2003) This statement clearly shows that it is not important to reproduce a “real” musical past in the present, but that the goal of this community is to create an aural German past which could be evoked effectively in Blumenau. As Ramos Flores correctly points out, it is more about having the appropriate cultural elements to envision an imagined past (Ramos Flores 1997, 31). German Music from Brazil As a representation of an alternative ethnicity among common Brazilians, the Oktoberfest aims to fulfill two functions. First, the Oktoberfest strengthens the cultural identity of German descendants living in Brazil. As Ramos Flores says: “the success would be not the same if the feast would have a samba as the characteristic dance, for example. It was necessary to perform this German music so that every guy would cry when he hears it. It was necessary to rediscover the lost link of history, the connection with something precedent” (Ramos Flores 1997, 45). The second objective is to stimulate an interest in Blumenau in all Brazilians. The common tourist expects to find a typical representation of the place he or she visits. This representation does not have to be realistic, but it is generally based on images that can be decoded and consumed by visitors. In that sense, the musical representation of Germanness poses a problem for the organizers of the party. On the one hand the German music gives Oktoberfest an enchanting note of exoticism that attracts the interest of outsiders. On the other hand, it creates an idiomatic barrier with the non-​German speaking audience. For this reason, the communication between bands and audience is sometimes difficult. The problem was perceived very early by Helmut Högl, who responded with a new form of Schlager music that would speak to Brazilian audiences. This music did not differ musically from what was produced in the German-​speaking countries. However, Högl mixed German and Portuguese language in the lyrics, making the lyrics accessible for Brazilians, as in the case of “Hallo Blumenau” which, composed in 1987 by Högl, quickly became the anthem of the Oktoberfest. Hallo, Blumenau, Bom dia, Brasil, Dezassete dias de folia, Música, cerveja e alegria

Hello, Blumenau Good morning, Brazil Seventeen days of revelry Music, beer and entertainment

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Following Högl’s strategy, all local bands now compose in Portuguese and German or translate German songs to appeal to both sectors of the Oktoberfest audience.9 Such is the case with the song “Chopp Motorrad” (The Beer Motorcycle) by the Banda Cavalinho in 2003, which refers to beer consumption during Oktoberfest. The song says: Chopp Motorrad

The Beer Motorcycle

Blumenau é engraçada Olha só o que ela tem Um barbudo e um galego Numa moto do além Horácio, Ingo Penz e um barril de chopp

Blumenau is funny Look who is there? A bearded man and a Galician On a wonderful motorcycle Horácio, Ingo Penz and a barrel of beer

These local productions have not caused a rupture with the homeland, which continues to be a kind of sound archive of German music for the bands of Blumenau. Rather, these groups tend to be attentive to the success of Schlager music in Germany or Austria, and to make linguistic and cultural adjustments accordingly to accommodate a Brazilian context. In the lyrics, Blumenau Germans are represented as men who display positive attributes such as strength, good health and beauty, and who are also connected to and admirers of Brazilian mass culture. Hits in Germany and Austria are also converted into Brazilian Schlager music. An example of these translations is the song “Anton aus Tirol” (Anton from Tirol) by DJ Ötzi, which receives the significant name of “Alemão de Blumenau” in its Brazilian version by Cavalinho: Alemão de Blumenau

German from Blumenau

Sou bonitão, sou gostosão, sou alemão de Blumenau Gosto muito das loirinhas mas também das moreninhas Sou alemão de Blumenau

I am so pretty; I am so sexy I am a German from Blumenau I really like the blondies But the brownies, too I am a German from Blumenau

Although these lyrics, like the previous ones, resort to clichés about Germans and Brazilians, they adeptly expose the tensions created between German and non-​German Brazilians as well as depicting a harmonious world in which their differences are resolved without conflicts. So, the typical German of Blumenau eats potatoes, but likes caipirinha. He likes blondies, but is also into Afrobrazilians. He likes sausages, but also enjoys feijoada. In this way, the alterity built through ethnic representation is mediated by the concessions made to the Brazilian mainstream. Final Words In this chapter I have shown how the German minority in the southern Brazilian city of Blumenau builds a cultural identity through the invention and annual reenactment of an Oktoberfest where they perform and celebrate the undifferentiated use of various kinds of German music in order to consolidate an alternate ethnicity. As I have demonstrated, this appropriation and adaption of German musical genres is intended to revive and propagate what is considered a homogenous

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past, linking Blumenau with the German homeland in a musical and ethnic imaginary. Each of the four types of German music played in Blumenau seems to be considered “traditional,” regardless of the real degree of historical or cultural connection it has with Germany. All of these musics are also intended to represent the Germans as an ethnic group as set apart from the Brazilian majority. At the same time the music offers points of encounter between German and non-​German Brazilians and creates a way for them to connect with each other despite the cultural differences. From an ethnomusicological perspective, the Oktoberfest event in Blumenau introduces new issues in the study of musical minorities, especially concerning the role of music in the creation and maintenance of ethnic identity. It also highlights how musical events and ethnic representations can become an important resource in capitalist and consumption-​based society. With the increasing force of tourism and the entertainment industry in our modern world, the economic and political implications of such cultural representations remain an important subject for further exploration and study. Meanwhile, in Blumenau, ethnicity straps on its Lederhosen and queues up for another drunken sing-​along, and the band plays on. Notes 1 Schlager music can be defined as “a type of popular music; it is generally quite successful in Germany, but has little artistic or social cachet” (Mendívil 2017: 25). Characteristic for Schlager music is its musical minimalism and its heteronormative lyrics. There different types of Schlager music, such as romantic Schlager, sometimes called “classic Schlager,” carnival Schlager, a regional type which is really popular in Cologne’s carnival times, German folk-​style Schlager, which combines Schlager music with German folklore music and Ballermann Schlager, a variant of Schlager music well known for using techno-​beats. For a detailed description of Schlager music see Mendívil (2008). 2 The Oktoberfest in Blumenau is an invented tradition and has no direct connection to any Oktoberfest tradition anywhere in Germany. 3 In the 1970s the city government decided to construct a German image for Blumenau. Through tourism programs and tax incentives, the city administration promoted an architecture with German style. As Ramos Flores puts it, a series of buildings with surfaces resembling the timber frame tradition emerged during these years “as a quotation of the past” (Ramos Flores 1997, 74). 4 The Vovô Chopão (the grandpa, who donates beer) is a central figure of the Oktoberfest parade in Blumenau. 5 All translations in this chapter are by Julio Mendívil, unless otherwise stated. 6 Kormann mentions well known bands like Hermann Rüdiger’s Band, Karl Ligner’s Band, Gustav Werner’s Band, the Gypsi Band and The Blumenau Jazz Band which played by official ceremonies and weddings until the government of Getúlio Vargas. For a detailed history of these bands see Kormann (1994, 231–​40) 7 According to Reinhardt, 40 years later the repertoire contained traditional folk songs, popular songs and Schlager music, soldier songs, satirical songs and wedding songs (Reinhard 1992, 158). 8 My analysis of the repertoire on CDs shows the same musical eclecticism. Old Schlager pieces such as “Rosamunde,” “La Paloma, “Lili Marleen” or “Aus Böhmen kommt die Musik” (The Music Comes From Bohemia) appears next to recent popular songs like “Mein Märchenprinz sieht aus wie Du“ (The Prince I am waiting for looks like you) or “Ein Stern” (A star). 9 The modernization of the band repertoire now served no longer as a factor of social distinction, but at the same time as a point of encounter with Brazilian culture. If the Oktoberfest was a productive impulse for tourism in the region (Ramos Flores 1997, 127), the consolidation of a musical scene boosted the local music industry for the benefit of the bands, which could now play weddings, official ceremonies, festivals or concerts. According to Larissa, big bands like Cavalinho Branco or Banda de Caneco can survive on music-​making today, something that was not possible for bands before. This is restricted, of course, to the successful bands. Several of the musicians I spoke with continue to practice music as a hobby.

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Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. 1988. Die Erfindung der Nation. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. Fabbri, Franco. 1981. “A Theory of Musical Genre: Two Applications.” In Popular Music Perspectives, edited by David Horn, 52–​81. Göteborg: International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kormann, Edith. 1994. Blumenau: arte, cultura e as histórias de sua gente (1850–​1985), vol. 3. Florianópolis: Edição da Autora. Mendívil, Julio. 2017. Schlager as Musical Conservatism in the Post-​War Era. In German Pop Music. A Companion, edited by Uwe Schütte, 25–​42. Berlin: De Gruyter. Mendívil, Julio. 2008. Ein musikalisches Stück Heimat. Ethnologische Beobachtungen zum deutschen Schlager. Bielefeld: transcript. Ramos Flores, Maria Bernardete. 1997. Oktoberfest. Turismo, festa e Cultura na estação do Chopp. Florianópolis: Letras contemporáneas. Reinhard, Ursula. 1992. “Was und wie singt man über die Liebe in Südbrasilien? Lieder deutschstämmiger Immigranten.” In Berichte aus dem ICTM-​Nationalkomitee Deutschland XI, edited by Marianne Bröcker, 155–​71. Bamberg: ICTM-​ Nationalkomitee Deutschland. Schulze, Gerhard. 1993. Die Erlebnis-​Gesellschaft: Kultursoziologe der Gegenwart. Frankfurt am Main: Campus.

Discography Konzertsaal Musik vol. I. Konzertsaal. Sonopress. w/​d Konzertsaal Musik vol. II. Konzertsaal. Nordeste Digital Line. w/​ d Ao vivo. Banda Os Tradicionalistas. Fundação Cultural de Blumenau. w/​d Chucrute Music. Banda Cavalinho. Sonopress. 2001. Oktoberfest Blumenau –​SC. Various Artists. Sonopress. w/​d Tendo festa. Banda Cavalinho. Sonopress. 2004.

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V

Part 

Reluctantly German

It was nothing but her strong accent that identified Nico as German. Together with her looks that she had capitalized on during her early career as a model and actress in Berlin and Paris, her accent might well have functioned as a unique selling point in the New  York avant-​garde scene of the late 1960s. After meeting the Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and recording her first single with Jimmy Page in London, Andy Warhol suggested her for the “chanteuse” of the band The Velvet Underground that he had just begun to manage. Their debut album “The Velvet Underground & Nico” released in 1967 marked the beginning of Nico’s international career as a musician. Though Nico was described as “Nazi-​esque” by her friend Danny Fields, who reported on repeated anti-​Semitic and racist incidents (see Reynolds 2007) and though she created a scandal when during a concert she dedicated “Das Lied der Deutschen” (The Song of the Germans) –​ including the omitted first stanza –​to the incarcerated RAF terrorist Andreas Bader, Nico tried to downplay her German origin throughout her career. The name Nico was reportedly given to her by photographer Herbert Tobias because her civil name Christa Päffgen sounded too German. Though born in Cologne, a city with a pronounced tradition of local patriotism, where the term “kölsche Mädche” (girl from Cologne) almost functions as ennoblement, her 1967 debut album’s title introduced her as a “Chelsea Girl” (referring to Warhol’s 1966 experimental film “The Chelsea Girls” in which Nico played one of the residents of the legendary but sleazy Chelsea Hotel). After moving to Paris in 1956, Nico spent most of her life outside of Germany. There are, however, also a number of German (by nationality) and non-​German musicians who actually live and work in Germany but downplay or actively try to conceal their music’s place of origin. Under the umbrella term “reluctantly German,” this book’s final part compiles articles on popular music “made in Germany” that does not want to be (identified as) “German.” René Michaelsen’s chapter focuses on Hildegard Knef who instead of using one of the well-​ established labels “Liedermacher” or “Schlager” preferred to identify with a non-​German musical tradition and called her music “German chanson.” By doing so she deliberately distanced herself from the Schlager and Liedermacher traditions and instead harked back to the Weimarer cabaret tradition.1 Her chansons highlighted the poetic style of her lyrics which, as Michaelsen argues, paved the way for following German Liedermacher around the Burg Waldeck in the 1960s, who similar to Knef did not possess classically trained voices nor followed singing conventions at that time. Moving forward to the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Heiko Wandler gives a historical account on German (electronic) dance music scenes that targeted an international audience while downplaying their

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national origin. Neither Eurodisco in the 1970s nor Eurodance in the 1990s were exclusively German dance music genres, but both were dominated by producers working in Germany. While their music’s regional identity was occasionally acknowledged by catchphrases such as “Munich sound” in the case of Eurodisco or “The Sound of Frankfurt” in the case of Eurodance, its national origin was concealed in favor of a broader European identity, expressing the opposition to the “original” US-​American disco and techno music. By changing the names of artists from German to English ones or employing black performers (in some cases to pose as the actual musicians in “live” performances), Eurodisco and Eurodance acts such as Boney M, Milli Vanilli or the later Snap! and Culture Beat quite literally hid their German origins from the public. Finally, Oliver Seibt interprets a German youth scene of the early 2000s whose members refer to themselves as “Visus” as an instantiation of a Japonism 2.0. Their self-​denomination refers to the Japanese rock music genre visual-​kei that is at the center of the Visus subcultural activities. As Seibt shows however, this German scene displays a number of crucial differences compared to the Japanese visual-​kei scene, revolving around an imaginary Japan that is as German as the people active in the scene. To top that off, Seibt concludes his chapter with a discussion of one of the most successful German bands in the 2000s, Tokio Hotel. Though the band members never wanted nor considered themselves to be related to Japanese visual-​kei, Tokio Hotel has been written into the Visu scene by journalists and hated by the Visus for that. In a way, Seibt’s chapter is therefore about a German popular music genre that must not exist. Note 1 See also the chapter by Stahrenberg in this volume.

Bibliography Reynolds, Simon. 2007. “From the Velvets to the Void,” The Guardian, March 16. Discography Nico. 1967. Nico. Verve. Nico. 1974. The End…. Island. The Velvet Underground and Nico. 1967. The Velvet Underground & Nico, Verve.

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14

“Meine Lieder sind anders”

Hildegard Knef and the Idea(l) of German Chanson René Michaelsen

Opposition Through Song – Knef and “the German” Hildegard Knef (1925–​2002) was, by any measure, an oddity in German postwar culture: the first woman to be seen nude in German film, German culture’s first successful transatlantic export (675 shows of Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings on Broadway), singer and author of hundreds of song lyrics as well as three volumes of autobiographical prose, sex symbol and role model for self-​ determined women all at once. But regardless in which of her incarnations, she was continuously situated either in opposition to or compliance with a supposedly consistent idea of “the German” throughout her career. In their essay on Hildegard Knef ’s image as a German movie icon, Johannes von Moltke and Hans J. Wulff describe the ambivalent relationship between the singer-​actress and the cultural frame in which she is commonly situated: From early on, her image carries the burden of national signification:  In the permanent balance between a high degree of representativeness and distance, Knef is historically destined to signify several versions of Germanness [throughout her career]. (von Moltke and Wulff 1997, 308) As a passage from her 1982 book So nicht shows, Knef herself questioned her aptitude for representation while at the same time being well aware of her status as a cultural icon. She glances back on her career in interior monologue, addressing herself in the second person: Bloody hell, you survived the war, bombs, hunger, Russian war captivity, escape. Launched postwar film and were lavished with awards, were idol and actress at the same time. Sat through Hollywood without passport or money for three years and were labeled as German. Once returned, in the melodrama “The Sinner” you were a welcome prey to the Germans, who felt the immaculacy of the German woman dragged into dirt again after “Sieg heil,” “Mutterkreuz” and “Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg.” Afterwards, you were the only German to star on Broadway, suffering under the audience’s acclaim three hours every night for two years. […] Liberated yourself, collected awards. Established the new genre Chanson, were the first person to sing own distinct lyrics, sold millions of records, did tours that even a professional athlete might have barely survived. (Knef 1982, 51) 165

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This passage from Knef ’s third book serves as a meditation on her particular relationship to Germany:  While the whole monologue is printed in italics, the only words beside “lavished” that are not italicized are “Deutsche” and “Deutschen”. Knef ’s play with identity is deliberate, for while she is labeled “German” during her years in Hollywood, in the next sentence “the Germans” appear as her enemies, insofar as they still cling to Third Reich stereotypes of women in the process of condemnation that Knef ’s partly nude appearance in the film Die Sünderin (1951) fell prey to. This juxtaposition shows the intricate situation Knef was in during her early years: Being regarded as a proponent of Germanness abroad while at the same time being at odds with the ideas of what it means to be German in her home country. It is significant that Knef comes up with her first self-​application of the word “German” in the next sentence, identifying herself as “the only German” to star in a Broadway show. Obviously, only staking out her own peculiar brand of Germanness opens the way to a process of liberation (“freistrampeln”), which ultimately leads to her discovery of a new genre: German Chanson. By having the whole passage lead up to her musical achievements, Knef deliberately calls upon several tropes of “the German” to be able to come up with her particular reading of the term: Her specific interpretation of Germanness is to be found in her songs. What I want to show in this chapter is that Knef is engaged with nothing less than opening up new spaces for creative use of the German language as a means of projecting identity. Her implicit agenda of a new “international” Germanness through unconventional use of language also requires a new idea of German music, both contained in her concept of German Chanson, which, though harking back to the tradition of German prewar cabaret song, can hardly be called a genre of its own right in postwar Germany, making it a label that practically signified nobody else but Knef. The term Chanson stuck with her music and soon gained wide-​spread circulation: When Knef was awarded the Goldenes Grammophon by her record label Decca in 1964, for instance, the statue honoring 500,000 sold records bore the inscription To Hildegard Knef, for her merits in the rebirth of Chanson in Germany (Trimborn 2007, 273). Her reliance on the French term is indeed significant as it pushes the notions of her music as containing a level of artificiality. Conventionally, French Chanson has always been perceived as a genre midway between popular and art music, employing catchy and intricate melodies to project sublime lyrics of authors like Jacques Prevert, Raymond Queneau, or Boris Vian, who were not mere lyricists, but poets in their own right. In its textual outline, French Chanson may not fully participate in, but is at least tied to, discourses of modern poetry –​a liaison unthinkable in German Schlager. As will be shown, in all her efforts Knef sets out to transcend the boundaries of Germanness lined out by the poetics of Schlager  –​a genre that even in its most exotic moments always stays centered on a particularly German experience –​and instead tries to locate songs sung in German in front of a transnational canvas. By incorporating stylistic means of French Chanson in her lyrics, American singer-​songwriter music in a new way of vocal delivery and international psychedelic sounds in the musical design of her accompaniment, Knef creates a space where being German is just one mode of participation in a greater archive of western sensuality that is not tied exclusively to one specific nationality. Unlike any other singer in Germany during her day, Knef is able to create a self-​sufficient artistic universe in her songs, making her self-​description in a song from 1977 ring all the more true: “Meine Lieder sind anders” (My songs are different).

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Changing the Wallpaper: A New Poetics of Song Lyrics Hildegard Knef ’s 1966 album Ich seh’ die Welt durch Deine Augen (I’m looking at the world though your eyes) can be considered a watershed moment in German postwar popular music. It is the first full album of popular songs in German completely written by a female singer and also the first attempt to bring a pensive, anti-​formulaic stance to popular music sung in German. Before it, popular music in postwar Germany inescapably means Schlager. Without going into too much detail here, it can be said that as a “kind of music not associated with rebellion and protest, but rather with conformism and decency” (Mendívil 2017, 26), Schlager offers a template for musical communication that does not rely on a projection of personal confession: Schlager singers rarely promise a serious view of their interior. If 1950s Schlager occasionally conjures up situations of loneliness and isolation –​as in Freddy Quinn’s “Die Gitarre und das Meer” (The guitar and the sea) –​they are almost always cautiously wrapped up in exotic sceneries and so become part of the confrontation with the “other” that Schlager infinitely fantasizes about in order to keep the ideal space of “Heimat” free from it. The implicit voice ideal of Schlager is therefore similar to that of classical music: Schlager performers tend to sing in bright, full and well-​trained voices. If there is a precursor to Knef ’s posture it is most likely to be found in the performance tradition of prewar German Cabaret Chanson, which presented women with unconventional agendas: Women could be openly male-​consuming, as in Friedrich Hollaender’s “Die hysterische Ziege” (The hysterical goat) and erotically self-​determined, as in Julian Arendt’s “Wegen Emil seine unanständ’ge Lust” (Because of Emil’s naughty lust), both as a reaction to the abusive strategies of men. Furthermore, the “vocally free and improvisational style [of delivery] associated with the diseuse” (Lareau 2000, 115), which was habitualized not by professional singers but by singing actresses like Blandine Ebinger or Lotte Lenya, can be seen as a blueprint for the approach later employed and refined by Hildegard Knef, who had no singing training whatsoever (and didn’t care to hide it). Von Moltke and Wulff ’s (1997, 308) assessment of Knef ’s career as “the mythical comeback of the other German” obviously not only rings true for her work as an actress. All things considered, Knef ’s emergence as a writer of lyrics is still the most striking aspect of her 1966 album, which significantly features the claim Lyrics: Hildegard Knef on the front cover. Take, for instance, a song like “Tage hängen wie Trauerweiden” (Days hang like weeping willows) with its orchestral setting that suggests a classical German Art song more than a Schlager: there is no fixed beat to be heard in the arrangement, just a lush, but still translucent group of strings that subtly supports the melody and the saxophone solo, plus an occasional Glockenspiel. The musical air of instability perfectly complements the lyrics that vaguely describe an elegiac situation of weariness and not feeling connected with the world. Days hang like weeping willows They don’t move, they restrict you They render you helpless like nighttime Here is a song that is closer to poetry than to any classic Schlager lyric: It deals with a particular state of mind without relying on the narration of external events. It makes extensive use of metaphors that have to be figured out by the listeners while relying on a musical structure that is subservient to the utterance of the words. Its elliptical structure makes close listening mandatory;

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otherwise one might get lost in the sketchy texture of half-​sentences not necessarily connected to each other. There are no repetitions and neither a structure of verse and chorus, nor a catchy hook line. The music is strictly conceived as a showcase for the lyrics, which themselves require a much stronger involvement of the listener inasmuch as they ask not to be taken at face value, but instead need to be deciphered. More than that, they also present reality as conditioned by a subject’s perception –​a technique that following Wolfgang Asholt (2010, 142) is one of the main attributes in which French Chanson follows modern poetry. The fact that Knef ’s lyrics share certain qualities with literary writing is also acknowledged by the way these lyrics are distributed to the public: Book publications like Ich brauch Tapetenwechsel (Knef 1972) present her lyrics as autonomous poetry separated from the music, thus strengthening the idea that, similar to the work of French auteur-​interprète Georges Brassens, Knef ’s lyrics are first and foremost conceived as poems to which music is only added later. This hierarchy is however highly debatable, as in her project of fashioning a new attitude for German popular music by supplying it with an internationally framed sense of sonic authorship, Hildegard Knef also relies heavily on aural means. Thoughts Passing Through a Curtain of Beads: Knef ’s Voice To promote the songs from her first self-​written album, Knef takes off on a highly publicized tour of German concert halls in 1966. The venues she performs in are decidedly anti-​Schlager and so is the Jazz quintet that accompanies her: no strings, no choir and no anonymous horn section. The whole setup is designed to allow people to focus on music and lyrics, thus catering to a new subdivision of her fanbase that “admires the singer without caring for the actress” (Trimborn 2007, 265). Accordingly, the anonymous sleeve notes of the ensuing album with the significant title Die neue Knef (The new Knef) suggest close listening as an appropriate way of reception: “Whoever listens to Knef will inevitably pay heed to the lyrics. […] One believes every word she sings, because her lyrics have a deep current and matter.” Finally, another highly idiosyncratic aspect of Knef ’s artistic persona is allowed to come into view: her voice. Much of the discussion of Knef ’s voice centers on an apocryphal quote by Ella Fitzgerald, who is reported to have coined the dictum that Knef was the “greatest singer without a voice.” Signified by the image of a voiceless singer is a turning point in German popular music that Knef stands for: the acceptance of a fragile voice as a legitimate means of artistic expression. Before Knef, the voice-​ideal of German Schlager was mostly identical with that of classical bel canto singing: A voice had to be well-​trained, flexible and resilient to be considered appropriate for public performance, whether it be the sportive soprano of Caterina Valente or the warm baritone of Freddy Quinn. Knef opens up the concept of voice in German popular music to the idea that a restricted, broken voice can attain a higher degree of credibility than a fully formed and developed one. By furnishing the undisguised vulnerability of a voice with notions of authenticity, she participates in one of the most profound shifts in 1960s popular music while simultaneously challenging the common ideal of vocal authority as paramount in the evaluation of a singer’s impact. In doing so, she pushes the attenuation of Germanness in her music one step further, as the new-​found esteem for voices that gain authority from seeming injured and frail is a phenomenon usually linked to the emerging counterculture of American singer-​songwriters, most prominently in the cases of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Neil Young (for the example of Cash see Askerøi 2017).

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When “die Knef ” sings, it’s barely noticeable she’s breathing. No oxygen molecules pass through her trachea, so it seems, but thoughts. While doing that her vocal cords rustle as if those thoughts were just passing through a curtain of beads. (Die neue Knef) These words, taken from the album sleeve of Die neue Knef, form one of the rare assessments that genuinely care for the production of Knef ’s voice: It puts forth the idea of singing as an accidental action that is merely a by-​product in the procedure of transforming thoughts into words. Thus, it marks Knef ’s way of singing as an intellectual activity, thereby putting it in opposition to the bodily qualities of classic Schlager singing. Christian Schröder (2005, 52) supports this estimation by describing Knef ’s singing as “deadpan recitation,” and finally Knef herself situates her style of vocal delivery in the vicinity of the spoken word in an interview when she says: “My Chansons stem from the word, not from the voice.” (quoted after Trimborn 2007, 266). What these appreciations mean becomes clear when focusing on Knef ’s live version of “Ich wollte dich vergessen” (I wanted to forget you), which can also be found on Die neue Knef: Wednesday evening at a quarter to eight You brought me to the airport without saying a word We stood in midst of the noise and didn’t look at each other Awaiting the end that began yesterday. In her concert reading of the song, the studio version of which also appeared on Ich seh die Welt durch deine Augen, Knef constantly blurs the distinction between singing and speaking. While she picks up the first phrase by clearly singing the interval of a perfect fourth (Am Mittwochabend …), the vocal qualities of the line are slowly retrenched syllable by syllable in the words um dreiviertel acht:  viertel is almost reduced to one syllable, as in an act of colloquial speaking, while the acht is deliberately taken back to the rear end of the mouth, thereby stripping the word of all of its inherent vocality. In the next phrase (da hast Du mich wortlos zum Flugplatz gebracht), Knef strengthens the impression of a spontaneous speech act by intentionally rushing the internal rhythm of the words and thus getting out of sync with the band accompaniment. When she continues with Wir standen im Lärm und sah’n uns nicht an, she puts just a little too much emphasis on standen as to make it seem like a short burst of uncontrolled anger. In the last line of the first quartet (erwarten das Ende, das gestern begann), her capacity for creating drama through micro-​timing becomes especially apparent, as she frames almost the whole line in rhythmically accurate singing fashion, before spitting out the final word begann in a sudden withdrawal of vocality, letting the whole introduction end on a surprisingly harsh note of formerly hidden brutality. All along the way, Knef enhances tension through the uncertainty of her utterance: whether she is singing or just emphasizing the inherent rhythmic qualities of spoken language is almost impossible to decide. Even when the rhythm section substitutes the rubato of the introduction with a steady flowing meter in the chorus, Knef continues her puzzling play with the distinctions of voice categories by alternately overplaying and deemphasizing the vocal contents of certain words. When she sings Ich wollte dich vergessen, she turns the common logic of using the inherent vocality of vowels on its head by stressing the consonants in wollte and dich. In the next phrase, Ich dachte es wäre so leicht, she swallows the last word so as to make it almost indistinguishable,

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thereby further obscuring the lyrics. Moments later, she almost bellows the word Eine before continuing the phrase Nacht, die den Tag nie erreicht with a voice soft and tender, staying true to the pitches of the melody and deliberately stressing her vocal cords as to give the word Tag a specifically “sung” quality. All in all, Knef makes use of the full panoply of vocal utterance to create an emotionally nuanced interpretation, drawing from techniques of trained singing as well as from the speech practice of everyday vernacular language. In accordance with the uncommon subjectivity of her lyrics, Knef employs new techniques of personal confession in the utilization of her voice. By creating a style of delivery in which the singing voice is not a given, but only one token in a multitude of vocal signs that range from whispering through speaking to outright screaming, she carves out new spaces of avowal in popular music. By incorporating aspects of anti-​singing into her act of vocality, she not only supplants the sublime irony of prewar cabaret singers like Marlene Dietrich or Claire Waldorff into a modern pop sensibility, but also distances herself from the concept of roleplay that fashioned her precursor’s performances. For a public well accustomed with Knef ’s private life through press coverage and her autobiographic prose writing, one thing is certain: Knef sings about her own experiences and doesn’t perform in character. Knef ’s use of her voice can be seen as a benchmark moment in which German music opens up to an international paradigm shift in vocal performance: She may well be the first German singer to rely on the idea that a higher truth is encapsulated in the honesty of a broken voice that does not hide its shortcomings and that showing one’s own vulnerability channels a higher degree of authenticity. In so doing she silently pioneers a specifically German version of an international watershed in popular music, thus also paving the way for German message-​singers and Liedermacher of the protest era. Islands of Sound: Knef ’s Musical Surroundings In an interview with André Müller (1980, 26), Knef describes herself as “mother of the Liedermacher.” This self-​assessment may seem surprising at first glance, as nothing could be more remote from Knef ’s distinctly upper-​class sophistication than the rustic grass-​roots posture taken by the late 1960s Liedermacher scene gathering at the annual Burg Waldeck festivals. And yet there are certain traits Knef ’s music of the time shares with the emerging Liedermacher movement, most visibly the development of a clear political stance within a song’s lyrics and the ever-​present stylistic obligation towards French Chanson as a blueprint. Still the sonic means employed are vastly different:  While the Liedermacher rely on an aesthetic of purification, provided for by the extensive use of acoustic guitars, to emphasize her points around 1970 Knef sets out to explore the possibilities of surreal multi-​layered sound worlds. During the latter half of the 1960s, though, the different paths taken by the Liedermacher and Knef become more apparent, albeit both still reaching for similar goals. As Eckhard Holler (2007, 119–​24) shows in his assessment of the Burg Waldeck festivals, facing an increasingly turbulent state of affairs in Europe at the end of the 1960s, the Liedermacher scene reacts by putting all kinds of rhetoric embellishment into question. The poetic ambiguity that Chansons rely upon suddenly becomes suspicious, as a famous phrase from Franz-​Josef Degenhardts Song “Manchmal sagen die Kumpanen” (Sometimes the fellows say) from 1968 shows:  “Nuances are just paroxysms in class struggle.” Knef aims for the exact opposite:  She responds to the increasing public perception of the world being in a state of crisis by enhancing the symbolic

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qualities of her lyrics and by stretching out her poetics of constant ambiguity to the instrumental accompaniment of her songs. Her 1970 album simply titled KNEF is a case in point. Whereas in Hildegard Knef ’s earlier albums, she applied the method of symbolically envisioning multi-​faceted states of mind in her lyrics, with KNEF she gets downright metaphysical and political. For instance, “Die Herren dieser Welt” (Masters of this world) angrily accuses politicians of deliberately ignoring environmental issues, while “Ich brauch’ Tapetenwechsel” (I need a change of scene) tells an archetypal story of a breakout from social stereotypes, complete with the ensuing punishment for overstepping the margins of society. But the standout track in regard of Knef ’s updated poetics is the song that most decidedly makes use of the new sonic possibilities of studio work:  “Insel meiner Angst” (Island of my fear). Music makes itself known as a signifying force from the outset of KNEF: The very first sounds listeners hear are pedal notes of electric bass supported by distorted sounds of electric guitar –​ quite an opposition to the jazz notions evoked by the blasting Big Band sounds leading into earlier Knef albums. After a spoken introduction over bass and guitar, the song “Wie viele Menschen waren glücklich dass Du gelebt?” (How many people felt happy that you lived?) segues into half a minute of deep laid-​back funk groove pushed forward by a bass line with a burning guitar solo on top. When Knef finally enters singing, the song has already been in full swing for one of its three minutes, building up an aural backdrop for the voice to be cast upon that in its obvious reliance on sound markers from contemporary Rock music signals a drift away from the subtle detachment projected in former Knef Chansons. The heavy bass sounds resonating throughout KNEF are probably the most obvious token of a fundamental change in the relationship of words and music. By being foregrounded in the mix, the hard-​driving bass lines call attention to the fact that instruments can add layers of meaning to the musical act that simply cannot be provided for by solely one voice. The arrangements that Knef ’s new musical partner, Austrian composer and Jazz pianist Hans Hammerschmid, provides for the album show a new way of musically dealing with the fragility of Knef ’s voice: Whereas on earlier albums the musical accompaniment was designed to complement and support her limited range, it now becomes a tool of expansion, set out to explore not only a song’s but ultimately the whole genre’s implications in realms the voice is too limited for. What this means becomes clear in listening to “Insel meiner Angst.” Knef ’s lyrics tell a classic tale of isolation through fear and recuperation by social interaction: When I needed help Couldn’t find it in myself I remained alone on lightless island On the island of my fear. The way Hans Hammerschmid puts those words to music is decidedly different from the approach his predecessor Charly Niessen might have used. In his arrangement, far from serving only the singer’s needs, music becomes a device for conveying additional layers of meaning. The main tool Hammerschmid uses to give “Insel meiner Angst” the appearance of a semi-​autonomous musical structure is the characteristic use of strings he employs in the song. All throughout KNEF, Hammerschmid explores the fact that the sound of strings is related to a cultural double-​bind: Whereas in popular music, string instruments are often seen of indicators

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of “schmaltzing up,” and therefore to some form a musical shorthand definition for commercialization and sell-​out, in a classical orchestra they are a mandatory prerequisite of less dubious reputation. Hammerschmid’s employment of strings takes this equivocality into account to signify upon the status of Knef ’s music between high and low art. The first bars of the song already set up a fundamental opposition that will be at stake throughout the whole song: The thin sound of static strings is answered by the sudden entry of a prodding bassline alongside drums with a heavy backbeat. While this explicitly groovy “today” sound serves as a signifier of musical timeliness and thereby pushes the “timeless” strings into the background, the gently flowing beat has to face a period of disruption near the end of the first stanza:  Under the words “Als ich Hilfe brauchte” the basic 4/​4-​meter is peculiarly suspended to make way for two bars in 5/​4. This striking irregularity has powerful bearings upon the perception of the song as a piece of popular music –​it is as though a device of exactly the western art music the strings stand for symbolically has accidentally sneaked into the song’s structure. To increase the effect, the same metric displacement is played out again two bars later with the strings supporting the voice lead in lush harmonization. While for some bars strings and voice are equal partners, the strings rise to the foreground once the first stanza has come to a close with the mention of the title phrase “Insel meiner Angst.” Although it contains no metric shift, the ensuing interlude puts the gently flowing pop energy on hold to establish a new focus: bass and drums fall silent and the place is left to the strings, playing a new melody in strict duple meter. Complete with a countermelody and an excursion to relatively far-​flung harmonic terrain for a pop song (the distinctive D major chord occurring after one minute and 23 seconds is an unexpected major mediant in the home key of B major, where D minor would be more likely), this instrumental interlude brings a mode of enunciation to the table that is totally at odds with the music surrounding it. Here elements of classical composition are highlighted as alternative means of signification. Although the sound of the strings is still very much in line with the “syrupy” sound ideal of their employment in much middle of the road popular music, it’s the compositional structure that really makes a difference. Thanks to Hammerschmid, Knef now can rely on musical settings that duplicate poetic topics in sound instead of merely supporting the lyric’s atmosphere. “Insel meiner Angst,” and with it the whole KNEF album, appears as the latest instalment in Knef ’s long-​range project of liberating German popular song from the boundaries set up by Schlager: After establishing a poetic conscience in her lyrics modelled on French Chanson and freeing the use of voice from the burden of a quasi-​operatic obligation by opening it up to intimate and vulnerable modes of enunciation, with Hammerschmid she finally finds the right arranger-​ composer to take on the challenge of setting up a complex sound world to interact with the multiple layers of meaning brought into play by lyrics and voice. In the opposition between archetypal gestures from classical music and contemporary pop sounds, they also update the overcoming of the Europe–​US antithesis that frames Knef ’s career from the outset in purely musical terms. With her eponymous 1970 album, Knef ’s vision of a full-​fledged sonic authorship comes full circle –​an accomplishment hardly rivalled by any other German female singer of the time. The Mythical Comeback of the Other German Hildegard Knef utilized all layers of her performance –​lyrics, voice, and musical accompaniment –​ to transform traits of Germanness in music and reshape them in a wider transnational frame. As a mature woman aware of her feelings, strengths and shortcomings she also championed a new

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approach to female identity in the area of serious entertainment mostly dominated by men  –​ tellingly, in Das Urteil Knef (1975, 235) describes succeeding with a concert full of Chansons as “a masculine victory.” Whereas in the decades immediately following World War II, men were entitled to be troubled and brooding characters because of their war experience, while women mostly had to fulfill the task of giving men homely comfort, Knef channeled the “melancholia of being spared out” (Bude 2018) of the German “Trümmer” years into a new kind of self-​confident female eroticism that did not hide its own vulnerability, but rather gained momentum out of the creed of “Look at what we had to cope with –​but we’re still alive” (ibid.). In her eroticism of post-​ war melancholia, Knef not only provided a template for a contemporary female experience, but also found a translation for a paradigm of American popular music in Germany, because “the political pathos of a Dylan or a Phil Ochs is intertwined with the sexiness of somebody exposing and exhibiting his ‘natural’ voice” (Diederichsen 2014, 289). In obfuscating the thresholds between high art and entertainment as well as between French Chanson, German pre-​war Cabaret Song and American Singer-​Songwriter style, Knef appears as the first popular post-​war singer to stake out a new model of Germanness by transcending what is considered German and putting it into a new transnational context. No wonder then that during her later years, when asked about her home country in the TV Show Showgeschichten, Knef would consider herself simply a “citizen of the Atlantic above anything else.” Acknowledgements Sincerest thanks to Heinz Bude, Axel Lindner, Georg Ruby and Philipp Wüschner. Bibliography Asholt, Wolfgang. 2010. “Das goldene Zeitalter des Chansons: Eine andere Geschichte der Lyrik?.” In 20. Jahrhundert –​ Lyrik, edited by Winfried Wehle, 141–​63. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Askerøi, Eirik. 2017. “Spectres of Masculinity: Markers of Vulnerability and Nostalgia in Johnny Cash.” In The Routledge Research Companion to Music and Gender, edited by Stan Hawkins, 63–​76. London: Routledge. Bude, Heinz. 2018. Personal communication between Heinz Bude and the author, Theater im Bauturm, Cologne, June 25, 2018. Diederichsen, Diederich. 2014. Über Pop-​Musik. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Holler, Eckart. 2007. “The Burg Waldeck Festivals, 1964–​1969.” In Protest Song in East and West Germany Since the 1960s, edited by David Robb, 97–​132. Rochester: Camden House. Knef, Hildegard. 1972. Ich brauch Tapetenwechsel. Texte. Vienna: Molden. Knef, Hildegard. 1975. Das Urteil oder Der Gegenmensch. Vienna: Molden. Knef, Hildegard. 1982. So nicht. Hamburg: Knaus. Lareau, Alan. 2000. “ ‘Du hast ja eine Träne im Knopfloch’: Friedrich Hollaender and the Kabarett-​Chanson.” In Die freche Muse /​The impudent muse. Literarisches und politisches Kabarett von 1901 bis 1999, edited by Sigrid Bauschinger, 111–​29. Tübingen: Francke. Mendívil, Julio. 2017. “Schlager and Musical Conservatism in the Post-​War Era.” In German Pop Music. A Companion, edited by Uwe Schütte, 23–​32. Berlin: De Gruyter. Müller, André. 1980. “Hildegard Knef im Gespräch mit André Müller.” In Hildegard Knef:  Tournee, Tournee … Die Schauspielerin –​der Filmstar –​die Autorin –​der Showstar, 23–​32. München: Goldmann. Pflicht, Stephan. 1980. “Hildegard Knef und das Chanson.” In Hildegard Knef: Tournee, Tournee … Die Schauspielerin –​ der Filmstar –​die Autorin –​der Showstar, 73–​80. München: Goldmann. Robb, David. 2007. “Narrative Role-​Play as Communication Strategy in German Protest Song.” In Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s, edited by David Robb, 67–​96. Rochester: Camden House.

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Discography Knef, Hildegard. 1966. Ich seh’ die Welt durch deine Augen, Decca SLK 16383, 33 1/​3 rpm. Knef, Hildegard. 1966. Die neue Knef, Teldec SHZT 537, 33 1/​3 rpm. Knef, Hildegard. 1970. KNEF, Decca SLK 16633, 33 1/​3 rpm.

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How Munich and Frankfurt Brought (Electronic) Dance Music to the Top of the International Charts with Eurodisco and Eurodance –​and Why Germany Was Not Involved Heiko Wandler

German Origins of Eurodisco and Eurodance In contrast to genres such as “Italo Disco,” “UK Garage” or “French House,” which are clearly connected to specific European countries, Eurodisco and Eurodance are not specifically linked to Germany, though Germany-​based producers arguably assumed a leading role in the consolidation of the two genres, and Munich and Frankfurt am Main became epicenters of the production of (electronic) dance music in the 1970s and 1990s respectively. The term “Eurodisco” emerged in popular music magazines during the 1970s. It was used for example in an article in the UK-​based magazine “Blues & Soul” in January 1977 (Abbey 1977) to designate the music of Boney M. Giorgio Moroder’s “Love to Love You Baby” sung by Donna Summer is described as “Eurodisco’s most perfect expression” and “Save Me” (1975) by Silver Convention as the “calling card” of Eurodisco (Shapiro 2005, 101). Echols states that the productions of Moroder “created the sonic template for eurodisco” (2010, 107), and the Oxford Dictionary of Music and Oxford Companion to Music both list “Love to Love You Baby” and Silver Convention’s “Fly, Robin, Fly” as the only examples in the description of Eurodisco. Especially Munich, where both Moroder and Silver Convention were located, appears as significantly contributing to the formation of the genre Eurodisco. Because Moroder, Frank Farian, and Silver Convention producer Michael Kunze are understood as pioneers and figure heads of Eurodisco, it would have been obvious to speak of “German disco” rather than Eurodisco (as Thomas Krettenauer proposes, 2017, 77) but the role “Germany” played in the formation of the genre was rarely made that explicit. Though the genre’s formation took place in several countries across Europe, 20  years later Eurodance became the internationally most widespread popular music from Germany. The commercially most successful Eurodance acts in the 1990s were Snap!, Culture Beat, Real McCoy, and La Bouche from Germany, 2 Unlimited from the Netherlands,1 and Capella, Ice MC, and Eiffel

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65 from Italy (Sfetcu 2014). “Be My Lover” by La Bouche (1995) and “Run Away” and “Another Night” both by Real McCoy (1995) are all examples for the commercial peak of Eurodance and among the five most successful Eurodance songs in the US market ever (ibid.). The PopXport Ranking of the ten most successful German music projects of the 1990s lists five Eurodance projects (Schild 2016). Also, the ranking of 20 hits from the 20 biggest German music projects of the 1990s (ibid.) lists a total of 12 Eurodance projects. But once again, the fact that Eurodance was largely “made in Germany” was never made explicit. In its early years, the genre in Germany was referred to as “dancefloor” or sometimes just “dance,” but after its zenith in the mid-​1990s, the term “Eurodance” was frequently used in compilation titles. One of its first usages was by the US label Interhit Records which initiated the series DMA Dance Vol.1: Eurodance in 1995. Until 1999 four more compilations with this title would follow. With Eurodance and Eurodisco, the prefix “euro-​” was established as a common marketing brand for (electronic) dance music, omitting the German origins of a substantial share of the so-​designated tracks. How Germany Shaped the Sound of Disco Popular music from Germany rarely topped international charts, especially those in the US. The tide began to change with the onset of disco music in Europe in the second half of the 1970s. Germany played a key role in developing a new subgenre of disco which soon became known as “Eurodisco.” The most outstanding producers from this period certainly were Michael Kunze, Frank Farian, and Giorgio Moroder. Kunze together with Sylvester Levay landed a first #1 hit in the US in 1975, with the Silver Convention song “Fly, Robin, Fly.”2 A year later, the follow-​up single “Get Up and Boogie” reached #2 in the US charts. These songs brought something new to the table and became landmarks of the so called “Munich Sound.” Compared to earlier US-​ American disco songs, the beat and the bass were more repetitive and less syncopated while the songs in general were more focused on the bass drum and the bass. Eurodisco tracks often also prominently featured strings, which became a typical element especially for Silver Convention. This style deeply influenced the direction Moroder took with his influential production of “Love to Love You Baby” in 1975 (Lawrence 2003, 174). Silver Convention’s German origins were certainly downplayed. The band consisted of two white and one black female singer. They sang in English and, though it is not clear whose decision it was, two of them changed their names so that they sounded less German: Gertrude Münzer became “Penny McLean,” and Linda Übelherr became “Linda G. Thompson.” Only Ramona Wulf kept her real name. Arguably, the downplaying of a German identity can be interpreted as a strategy to avoid links to Germany’s self-​perceived provinciality in terms of popular music. At the same time, it can be understood as a direct opposition to other images employed by German popular music artists at that time. So far, the band Kraftwerk had been the most successful German band to reach the international charts and shaped the image of German popular music for years. But Kraftwerk’s consolidation of clichés about Germans as robotic and emotionless stood in stark contrast to the Munich sound that was strongly influenced by US-​American soul music. Although stationed in Offenbach and later Rosbach near Frankfurt am Main and therefore not part of the “Munich sound,” Frank Farian produced several international hits with Boney M, a band that became almost as iconic for Eurodisco as Moroder’s productions or Silver Convention.

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Farian’s success started with Boney M’s “Do You Wanna Bump” in 1975 which sold well in the Netherlands and also in Belgium where the song reached Number 8 in the charts. For “Do You Wanna Bump,” Farian worked with session singers (Abbey 1977) and sang the bass and falsetto voices himself (Krettenauer 2017, 83). As the fans demanded live performances (Abbey 1977), he put together a group consisting of three black female singers and one black male dancer who lip-​ synced to Farian’s vocals. For Farian, the music represented something exotic and was clearly outside of the European mainstream (Krettenauer 2017, 83). Very much in line with Farian’s exoticist approach, he opted for Marcia Barrett, Bobby Farrell, Liz Mitchell and Maizie Williams, four black performers from the West Indies (ibid.). Though at this point of time all of them had already lived in Germany for years, Barrett, Mitchell and Williams still felt more at home in London and might well have perceived Germany and their career with Boney M as springboard to return to the UK: “We love to have the opportunity to come to England as a successful act” (Liz Mitchell cited after Abbey 1977). Mitchell seems to rather pragmatically understand the problematic staging of the performers black bodies by a white producer as a means for international success as she says in an interview “ the English-​speaking market is, of course, the biggest in terms of money. So that’s the aim for 1977” (Abbey 1977). Farian, who had been a singer himself for fifteen years and now lent his voice to Bobby Farell who danced and lip-​synced the male vocals on stage likewise, states: “I […] never had a hit. So, I’ll stick with Boney M, it’s international” (Goldman 1978). The obvious strategy for Frank Farian to conquer the British and US-​American charts with Boney M was to create an international image and not one connected to Germany. Boney M’s music employed elements of reggae and disco and therefore Farian thought it fitting to cast only black performers. And the arithmetic seemed to work. The song “Rivers of Babylon” even became a hit in Jamaica where it went to #1 and remained there for six weeks (Goldman 1978). It was also a hit in many other countries, including the UK and the US. Farian believed the unique mixture of different elements, which he had tested beforehand in his own disco Rendezvous with regard to their danceability, to be responsible for the international success. “It is black and white music […] It’s Jamaican melodies with a European feel, for discos.” (ibid.) Meanwhile, in Munich the third key figure of Eurodisco, Giorgio Moroder, together with the British songwriter Pete Bellotte and the vocalist Donna Summer produced music that would serve as a blueprint for electronic dance music for years to come. Born in South Tyrol, Italy, Moroder had moved to Berlin to pursue his international career (Seidl 2012). There he produced Schlager with German, English, or Italian lyrics (for example “Looky, Looky,” published and performed by himself under his given name Giorgio in 1969), which by his account he hated (Lynskey 2015): “I was stuck in Germany, I was just trying to get out” (ibid.). Why, of all cities, he then decided for Munich as his next domain might be explained with the geographical proximity to his Italian home and the city’s lively music scene at that time. Moroder was already using synthesizers in his productions in the 1970s, which was quite uncommon at that time. His first international success was the song “Love to Love You Baby” in 1975, which hit the US charts at #2. With this song, Moroder and Bellotte “were hoping to penetrate the U.S.  charts with ‘something sexier’ and more discofied than their previous efforts” (Echols 2010, 107). It was inspired by the song “Je t’aime … moi non plus” (1969) by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, which had been a success in the UK market. Moroder chose as vocalist and performer the US-​American black singer Donna Summer, who had originally come to Germany years before to sing in the musical Hair. Moroder wanted a sound with “a very catchy bass line, a very emphatic bass drum and a funky guitar, sort of Philadelphia feel”

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(ibid.). The sexy image and feel Moroder was aiming for stood in sharp contrast to the generally clean image of German popular music in the 1970s and capitalized heavily on Donna Summer’s blackness. Moroder felt “the need to distance himself from the Germanness of his music so that it could be perceived as European dance music with the potential to permeate the American market” (Adelt 2016, 137). After Neil Bogart, president of New  York based Casablanca Records, pointed out the potential of the song “on the dancefloor as well as in the bedroom,” the song was expanded to a 20-​minute version (Echols 2010, 108). Only this longer version was a chart success (Brewster 2001) and marked the long-​awaited international breakthrough for Moroder’s vision of disco. Moroder’s later single “I Feel Love” (1977) was a typical disco song, although almost entirely played on synthesizers, aside from a bass drum overdub (McConville 2014). The sequenced synthesizer sounds and the four-​on-​the-​floor beat3 create a repetitive metronomic feel. The sixteenth-​note delay on the eighth-​note bass line creates a pattern that produces a stimulating, hypnotic, and almost nervous sound. The synthesizer sounds and effects (flanger/​chorus, reverb, panning) emphasize the futuristic appeal of the sound. Similar to many Eurodance songs produced about 15 years later, “I Feel Love” combined repetitive electronic drumbeats and electronic sounds with a verse-​chorus structure and catchy vocals which at that time was completely new and unheard of. The result didn’t give a psychedelic experience like the contemporaneous music of German electronic music pioneers Tangerine Dream, but a futuristic dance experience that seemed appealing to many fans of disco music, bringing a new hypnotic and electronic sound to it. Even though Moroder downplayed the Germanness of his music, certain elements entered through the back door and undermined his intentions. For instance, the rigid and mechanically precise rhythm section of “I Feel Love” differed strongly from the more syncopated disco songs from the US. Accordingly, Brian Eno stated that “I Feel Love” had a “mechanical, teutonic beat” (Adelt 2016, 138), and Donna Summer was described as “Teutonic ice queen” (Shapiro 2005, 111). With his production style Moroder had brought a “hard, Teutonic edge to silky disco music,” writes Cary Darling (2016). Eurodisco was described by rock journalists as “sanitized, simplified, mechanized R&B” (Reynolds 2017), and as a “a white-​identified strand of dance music” (Lawrence 2003, 436). It was criticized for its deviation from “black” musical idioms by black music purists who “accused Moroder of chlorinating the black sound” (Brewster 2006, 200). According to producer Tom Moulton, Eurodisco was “geared more for the whites” and “lacked soul”; “the records sounded like machines. They would always use black singers to try to put the soul back into the music” (cited after Lawrence 2003, 257). Shapiro states that “keepers of black music deemed it too robotic, too sterile, too unnatural […] ‘I Feel Love’ was almost devoid of the physicality so often attributed to black people [and] once and for all banished the naturalism ascribed to dance music.” (2005, 110). Nevertheless, reaching #1 in the UK and the Netherlands and #6 on the US charts, “I Feel Love” had a huge international impact. In 1977, Brian Eno said: “This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next 15 years” (Buskin 2009), and he was right. The bassline and electronic drums of “I Feel Love” defined the hi-​NRG genre, later becoming the trademark of Bobby Orlando, the US-​American “king of hi-​NRG” (Shapiro 2000, 42, 45). Compared to disco, hi-​NRG used more electronic sounds, was more repetitive, and often had a faster tempo. Hi-​NRG influenced the overall development of electronic dance music and was crucial in the later formation of Eurodance, which was sometimes also called “euro-​NRG.” In this way Moroder’s music

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influenced the development of electronic dance music in the US and this later in turn influenced the electronic dance music development in Europe and Germany. How Germany Brought Electronic Dance Music to the Top of the International Charts with Eurodance Technotronics “Pump Up the Jam” from Belgium and Italian Black Box’s “Ride on Time” hit the top of the international charts in 1989 and marked the beginning of Eurodance. The combination of a danceable beat inspired by house, techno, and hip hop with catchy vocal hooks as well as the prominent feature of a black singers and the use of English lyrics can be seen as the continuation of the Eurodisco formula, now including elements from US-​American house, techno and hip hop. In the beginning a transnational European phenomenon, Germany soon took over the leading role in the development of Eurodance as a genre in the 1990s. Coming from the club scene, Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti who would later form Snap! had their first international success with the project OFF together with Sven Väth. Their song “Electrica Salsa” (1986) was an international hit, ranking at #86 on the UK charts and #3 in France and Germany. Apart from a few German phrases at the beginning of the track, Väth’s obvious accent, and the release on the compilation The New Sound of Frankfurt, the German origin of the project was never made further explicit. However, with the Eurodance project Snap! Münzing and Anzilotti went a step further and changed their names to Benito Benites and John “Virgo” Garrett III. As Farian or Moroder did in the 1970s, the producers chose to stay in the background and to employ black performers as the public faces for their project. In the case of Snap! they chose the African American rapper Turbo B (Durron Maurice Butler) and singer Penny Ford to perform in their music videos. The line-​up would change throughout the years, but they would stick to the formula and consequently employ black performers. According to Felix Gauder (2018), producer of Eurodance act E-​Rotic, the German music market for electronic dance music in the late 1980s was large enough and German producers did not necessarily need to aim at international markets. Given the huge chart successes of artists of the Neue Deutsche Welle4 just a few years earlier, the desire for an “international sound” –​attested by Eurodance’s heavy reliance on musical elements from US-​American hip hop, techno, and house music –​cannot have been purely economically motivated. Münzing’s aim with the music of Snap! was to produce a kind of “world music”: “one cannot really say that it’s from Germany or from the USA or from Alaska […] and one can listen to it everywhere in the world” (Interview with the SNAP! 1994, 1:49–​2:00, and Thom 2017, 111). Snap!’s “The Power” (1990) was initially produced for the use in DJ sets in clubs. The song featured a sampled rap part taken from a record without legal clearance, which, when the song became unexpectedly successful, was replaced in a second version by a rap part of Turbo B. (Interview with the SNAP! 1996, 13:24–​14:25). This second version of “The Power” reached #1 in the UK and #2 in the US. In total, Snap! hit the UK charts 19 times (including three albums), an outstanding success which was only topped later by the German band Scooter with 22 Top 100 spots in the UK (including five albums).5 But it wasn’t only their commercial success that explains Snap!’s significance. In 1994, Münzing self-​ confidently claimed that 80 percent of what is in the charts was invented by them (Der Spiegel 40 (1994), 268). And, in fact, with “The Power” they established a formula that served as a blueprint for most of the chart-​topping Eurodance songs in the first half of the 1990s, combining hip hop,

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house, and techno-​inspired electronic backing tracks with a male rapper and stable elements of mainstream pop songs such as the verse-​chorus structure with a vocal hook performed by a female singer. Although Germany did not invent Eurodance, Germany’s Snap! developed the Eurodance recipe that was soon to be followed by other German projects like Capitan Hollywood Project, Culture Beat, Maxx, E-​Rotic, Fun Factory, La Bouche, Mr. President, Real McCoy, Magic Affair, and Masterboy, all of them achieving high international chart positions in the early to mid-​ 1990s, including in many cases top ten hits in the UK and in the US. Interestingly, electronic dance music projects like Dance 2 Trance, Jam and Spoon, and U96 that were also combining techno tracks with vocal (or instrumental) hooks but didn’t include a rap part met with similar success in the UK –​Jam and Spoon had a #10 in the UK charts with “Right in the Night (Fall in Love with Music)” for ­example  –​but not in the US. Even Snap!’s “Exterminate!” (1992), which was a hit in Europe reaching #2 in the UK, but did not feature the typical rap part, did not succeed in the US. Thereby, a German rapper obviously wasn’t a viable choice. Münzing of Snap!, for example, states that Masterboy’s lack of an American rapper was the reason the project did not hit the US charts (Interview with the SNAP! 1996, 2:46–​2:57). The Rhein-​Main region with Frankfurt am Main as capital, where the commercially most successful Eurodance projects such as Snap!, La Bouche (partly produced by Frank Farian), Magic Affair, or Culture Beat came from, provided the necessary infrastructure for the special demands of Eurodance line ups. The nearby US military air base was the place to go for Eurodance producers looking for American rappers, whom they directly hired off the base (Gauder 2018). But although the city was as significant for Eurodance as Munich was for Eurodisco –​or even more so –​Frankfurt never played a role in the marketing or the perception of Eurodance productions. With most of the productions, the hired rappers were black but there were also projects such as Masterboy, Real McCoy, or Maxx that included white rappers in the line-​up. With regard to international success, this seems not to have made a significant difference as the high chart positions of Real McCoy in the Billboard Hot 100 shows. However, the preference for black performers is obvious and reminiscent of the exoticist casting strategies of Eurodisco producers like Farian and Moroder. Eurodisco and Eurodance as (Un)Equal Siblings Munich and the Rhein-​Main region played a key role in the formation and consolidation of Eurodisco in the 1970s and of Eurodance in the 1990s, respectively. With Eurodisco, Germany achieved its first and with Eurodance its biggest international commercial success in the field of (electronic) dance music. Both genres had a significant and international impact on popular music in general, and many songs have become prominent pop cultural references. Both genres helped bringing club-​oriented (electronic) dance music from the underground into the mainstream. And the mode of production of Eurodisco and Eurodance tracks was similar in various respects, too: Usually, songs were produced in the studio with the producer instructing musicians, playing instruments and singing himself or using samples with additional vocal performances by singers and rappers, recorded over instrumental backing tracks that in the case of “I Feel Love” and later all Eurodance productions were electronically produced. Only when the song proved to be successful on the dancefloor or on record, would the producers hire performers to appear on stage in live shows and television programs or to populate the music videos. In some cases, such as Boney M’s Bobby Farrell, these performers were not the ones whose voices you would hear on the record (Gauder 2018).

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In both Eurodisco and Eurodance, the producers often casted black performers to give their music a face, as was the case with Boney M and Donna Summer but also with Snap!, Haddaway, Culture Beat, and many other Eurodance projects. With the exception of La Bouche, all band names were English, as were the lyrics and in some cases even the self-​given names that musicians and producers used to cover up their civic identities. And there is another thing the two genres have in common that in a certain sense also explains the hitherto mentioned similarities:  the downplaying of the music’s German origin. While Kraftwerk in the mid-​1970s cultivated an image of cold, emotionless and robotic Germanness by exaggerating already existing clichés about Germans, Eurodisco producers did exactly the opposite and became internationally influential with a new, geographically detached version of disco music (albeit one that, compared to US-​American disco music, was less soul-​influenced and had a more repetitive mechanical feel that eventually was still perceived as Teutonic by some commenters). Especially “I Feel Love” with its almost exclusively electronic, repetitive arrangement had its part in the foundation of US-​American genres such as house music and techno and can be seen as the most important German influence on electronic dance music next to the music of Kraftwerk. Electronic dance music produced in Germany again reached the top of the international charts with Snap!’s “The Power” in 1990. With its combination of a female singer performing the refrain and a male (black) American rapper responsible for the verses, the song established a formula that was applied in the production of many international chart breakers by German Eurodance producers in the first half of the 1990s. If Eurodisco was still sometimes accused of sounding “Teutonic,” nearly 20  years later Eurodance seems to have successfully disguised its German origin in favor of a European identity as embodied in the designation “Eurodance,” that might well have been intended even broader as an international identity. Notes 1 The singer and rapper were from the Netherlands where the project was also produced, but the producers were from Belgium. 2 If not otherwise noted this and the following chart positions are derived from “PopXport Ranking–​Die Liste. Die erfolgreichsten Musiktitel aus Deutschland,” 2016. For the US, charts refer to the US Billboard Hot 100 charts for singles and the Billboard 200 charts for albums. 3 Also called “4-​to-​the-​floor”, the term describes a beat with an equal loud bass drum on every beat in a 4/​4 measure. 4 See Hornberger’s chapter in this volume. 5 Scooter became successful in the second half of the 1990s and had also influences from hardcore techno, so they are not a typical eurodance project.

Bibliography Abbey, John. 1977. “Boney M: The Newest Darlings of Euro Disco.” Blues & Soul, January 1977. Accessed June 3, 2019. www.rocksbackpages.com/​Library/​Article/​boney-​m-​the-​newest-​darlings-​of-​euro-​disco. Adelt, Ulrich. 2016. Krautrock: German Music in the Seventies. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Brackett, David. 2001. “Disco.” In Grove Music Online. Accessed June 3, 2019. https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​gmo/​9781561592630. article.46627. Brewster, Bill. 2001. “Giorgio Moroder. Retrospective by Bill Brewster.” bbc.co.uk. Accessed June 3, 2019. www. rocksbackpages.com/​Library/​Article/​giorgio-​moroder-​2.

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182   •   Heiko Wandler Brewster, Bill, and Frank Broughton. 2006. Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. New York: Headline Book Publishing. Buskin, Richard, 2009. “Classic Tracks: Donna Summer ‘I Feel Love’.” Sound on Sound, October 2009. Accessed November 29, 2017. www.soundonsound.com/​sos/​oct09/​articles/​classictracks_​1009.htm. Darling, Cary. 2016. “It’s Kraftwerk’s World, We Just Live In It.” Fort Worth Star-​Telegram. Accessed June 23, 2019. https://​ www.star-​telegram.com/​entertainment/​living/​article100226602.html. Echols, Alice. 2010. Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. New York: W. W. Norton. Gauder, Felix. 2018. Interview with the author, May 7. Goldman, Vivien. 1978. “Boney M: Babylon By Limousine.” Melody Maker, December 1978. Accessed June 3, 2019. www. rocksbackpages.com/​Library/​Article/​boney-​m-​babylon-​by-​limousine. Interview with the SNAP! Producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti. 1994. ZDF Logo. Accessed June 3, 2019. https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=MRDbbb7wVgg. Interview with the SNAP! Producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti. 1996. Viva Jam. Accessed May 23, 2019. https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=V7QrVp0QED0 (part 1) and https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=yssqCstF7vI (part 2). Krettenauer, Thomas. 2017. “Hit Men: Giorgio Moroder, Frank Farian and the Eurodisco-​Sound of the 1970s/​80s.” In Perspectives on German Popular Music, edited by Michael Ahlers and Christoph Jacke, 77–​87. New York: Routledge. Lawrence, Tim. 2003. Love Saves the Day:  A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–​1979. Durham:  Duke University Press. Lynskey, Dorian. 2015. “Giorgio Moroder: Dr. Love Machine.” MOJO. Accessed June 3, 2019. www.rocksbackpages.com/​ Library/​Article/​giorgio-​moroder-​dr-​love-​machine. McConville, Davo. 2014. “How We Made: Giorgio Moroder on ‘I Feel Love’.” VICE, Accessed September 5, 2017. https://​ noisey.vice.com/​en_​us/​article/​rz77j6/​how-​we-​made-​giorgio-​moroder-​on-​i-​feel-​love. “Neue Ehrlichkeit –​Mit Tanzmusik aus dem Computer feiern zwei Frankfurter Klangbastler weltweit Erfolge.” 1994. Der Spiegel 40/​1994, 267–​8. Accessed April 18, 2018. http://​magazin.spiegel.de/​EpubDelivery/​spiegel/​pdf/​13683412. “PopXport Ranking –​Die Liste. Die erfolgreichsten Musiktitel aus Deutschland.” 2016. Deutsche Welle. Accessed June 29, 2017. www.dw.com/​downloads/​29625858/​160816-​ranking-​liste-​d.pdf. Reynolds, Simon. 2017. “Song from the Future:  The Story of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s ‘I Feel Love’.” Pitchfork, Accessed June 3, 2019. https://​pitchfork.com/​features/​article/​song-​from-​the-​future-​the-​story-​of-​donna​summer-​and-​giorgio-​moroders-​i-​feel-​love. Schild, Reiner. 2016. “PopXport Ranking. Die zehn erfolgreichsten deutschen Musik-​Acts der 90er Jahre.” Deutsche Welle. Accessed May 29, 2018. www.dw.com/​de/​popxport-​ranking-​die-​zehn-​erfolgreichsten-​deutschen-​musik-​acts-​der-​ 90er-​jahre/​a-​18575273. Seidl, Claudius. 2012. “Giorgio Moroder im Gespräch. ‘Sie waren verrückt diese Leute’.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Accessed June 3, 2019. https://​www.faz.net/​aktuell/​feuilleton/​giorgio-​moroder-​im-​gespraech-​sie-​waren-​ verrueckt-​diese-​leute-​11813301-​p3.html. Sfetcu, Nicolae. 2014. The Music Sound. Electronic publication, retrieved May 28, 2018 via Google Books. Shapiro, Peter. 2000. “Disco –​Playing With a Different Sex.” In Modulations: A History of Electronic Music –​Throbbing Words on Sound, edited by Peter Shapiro, 40–​47. New York: Caipirinha Productions. Shapiro, Peter. 2005. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. London: Faber and Faber. Thom, Nico. 2017. “The Popularization of Electronic Dance Music.” In Perspectives on German Popular Music, edited by Michael Ahlers and Christoph Jacke, 111–​15. New York: Routledge.

Discography Birkin, Janeaund Serge Gainsbourg. 1969. “Je t’aime…moi non plus,” Fontana. Black Box. 1989. “Ride On Time,” Out. Boney M. 1975. “Do You Wanna Bump,” Hansa Records. Boney M. 1976. “Daddy Cool,” Hansa Records. Boney M. 1978. “Rivers Of Babylon,” Hansa Records. Giorgio. 1969. “Looky, Looky,” Hansa Records. Jam & Spoon. 1993. “Right in the Night (Fall in Love with Music),” Dance Pool.

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 Eurodisco and Eurodance   •   183 La Bouche. 1995. “Be My Lover,” MCI. OFF. 1986. “Electrica Salsa,” ZYX Records. Real McCoy. 1993. “Another Night,” Hansa Records. Real McCoy. 1994. “Run Away,” Hansa Records. Silver Convention. 1975. “Save Me,” Jupiter Records. Silver Convention. 1975. “Fly, Robin, Fly,” Jupiter Records. Silver Convention. 1976. “Get Up and Boogie,” Jupiter Records. Snap!. 1990. “The Power,” Logic Records. Snap!. 1992. “Exterminate!,” Logic Records. Summer, Donna. 1975. “Love to Love You Baby,” Casablanca Records. Summer, Donna. 1977. “I Feel Love,” Casablanca Records. Technotronic. 1989. “Pump Up the Jam,” ARS Records. Various Artists. 1987. The New Sound of Frankfurt, ZYX Records. Various Artists. 1995. DMA Dance Vol.1: Eurodance, Interhit Records.

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16

Japonisme1 2.0

German Visual-​kei Fans, Tokio Hotel, and the Popular Music Genre That Must Not Exist Oliver Seibt

I can therefore say that, in my heart and mind, my entire childhood and part of my adolescence unfolded as much in Japan as in France, if not more so. And yet I never went to Japan. It was not for lack of opportunities; no doubt, it was in large measure for fear of comparing that vast reality with what for me was still “le vert paradis des amours enfantines” (the green paradise of childish loves (Charles Baudelaire, “Moesta et Errabunda”)). Claude Lévi-​Strauss2 In the first half of the year 2006, almost every relevant German TV station reported on what Jens Balzer in the Berliner Zeitung on December 23, 2005 had already predicted to become “the next big thing in 2006” (2005b)3: a Germany-​wide scene composed of teens and tweens who, referring to the Japanese rock music genre visual-​kei that stands at the center of all their activities, call themselves Visuals or Visus. The various reports painted a consistent picture of the scene and had the same story to tell about its formation: Watching Japanese anime series such as Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball broadcast from the late 1990s on by private television networks such as RTL 2, young people in Germany were exposed to the songs by Japanese rock bands that were used as end or opening themes of these programs. Musically triggered in this way, they subsequently read up on these bands on the internet and found themselves fascinated not only by the sounds but also by the outstanding looks of so-​called visual-​kei bands such as Malice Mizer, Dir en grey, or D’espairsRay. What usually follows is a scene change and the unavoidable pictures of the overcrowded pedestrian crossing in front of Shibuya Station that are stereotypically used to inform the audience that we are in Tokyo now where, as the voice from the off lets us know, visual-​kei originated as a distinct genre of Japanese rock music in the 1990s. Influenced by “Western” glam rock and glam metal bands and solo artists like David Bowie, Kiss, or Mötley Crüe, the extraordinary looks of visual-​kei artists and their fans were “a form of protest against the rigid and uniform [Japanese] way of life,” as, for example, the narrator of the Galileo4 report on German Visus explains: “You want to stand out of the mass, not drown in it. Young people rebel against it with a shrill outfit.”

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Another scene change … back in Germany where we learn that “in contrast to Japan, visual-​ kei is no rebellious youth movement.” After becoming aware of the exotic musical world of visual-​kei that is so different from those their schoolmates inhabit, the girls –​almost all Visus interviewed for the various reports are female  –​give themselves Japanese names like Yuki or Kiri, start dressing in a “manga style” that combines “the cute and the evil,” and spend several hours per day in front of their computers to get the latest news about their favorite bands, to watch music videos, and to discuss the musicians’ latest outfits, statements, and postures with like-​minded fans on the internet. This is how they make new friends who provide them with a hold in life that they had missed before. Suki, one of the four Visus interviewed for the Polylux5 report, even used the term “self-​ help group” to describe the social support she experiences from her scene mates: “I don’t know how […] but it really seems to help. Many [Visus] are cured [by visual-​kei], so to say.” Because many Visus live in relatively isolated regions of Germany, as we are told, where due to their diverging interests and looks they are mocked by their peers, the only opportunity to meet in person are smaller cons (short for “conventions”) such as the “Kölner Visual Cosplay Treff ” and bigger “Japan Festivals” such as “Hanami –​Con meets Festival” in Ludwigshafen that is organized by Animexx, the registered voluntary “Association of Friends of Anime and Manga” that also operates the eponymous website that became the most important virtual meeting place also for Visus. (Contrary to this narrative, most interviews in the reports are with groups of apparently intimate Visu friends living in big cities, filmed in teen bedrooms with walls plastered with posters of visual-​kei bands.) The highlight at these public events most often is a cosplay (short for “costume play”) competition where the girls present themselves wearing self-​tailored outfits that are most accurate recreations of costumes worn by their favorite Japanese visual-​kei musicians whom they try to mimic as exactly as possible also in terms of posture and charisma (Figure 16.1). But the most important events are the rare concerts of Japanese visual-​kei bands, for that fans from all parts of Germany travel hundreds of kilometers to Berlin, Cologne, or Munich. Within the scene, Dir en grey’s first concert in Germany, in Berlin’s Columbia Halle on May 29, 2005, has become legendary. During an interview we did in July 2011, Matthias Müssig, owner of the Neo Tokyo shops in Munich and Berlin, who together with his companion Christoph Ortner-​ Bach had organized the concert, painted a vivid picture of this outstanding event:6 It was an extremely hot day. Even before anyone had entered the concert hall, it was extremely hot. The fans were hysterical like I  have never witnessed before. The security staff told us that some of them had slept four nights in sleeping bags in front of the hall. Of course, they were completely dehydrated. And then they entered this hot concert hall, and [the band] began to play, and things went crazy. […] The fans started fainting and the head of security came and said […] they needed more people […] Because people were pushing from behind, the fans in the first rows were […] no longer able to move. They stood there with red faces, gasping for air, and the security staff showered them with water. Like chicken in one of these horrible laying batteries. It was a shocking moment for me. And then the head of security told me that his colleagues started collapsing, too. […] The paramedics told me that we really had to call for support. And then the Berlin fire department came and completely closed off the Columbiadamm, all four traffic lanes. Everything was full of emergency cars, all you could see was flashing blue lights. They set up two field hospitals. […] It looked like war, hundreds of people were lying around, being medically

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Figure 16.1  German Visu ~yu~ cosplaying Shun, guitarist of the Japanese visual-​kei band Vidoll

treated. […] I  thought I  was done. I  feared, somebody will come soon and tell me that someone has died. […] The next day, the cover of the Berlin issue of BILD7 showed a picture of [Dir en grey singer] Kyo. It turned out that this was the biggest operation during a concert in the history of the Berlin fire department.8 Though at that time Müssig and Ortner-​Bach were already selling quite a number of imported CDs of Japanese visual-​kei bands in their two shops in Munich and Berlin and through the Neo Tokyo website, nobody had expected the 3,500 tickets for the Dir en grey show being sold out within just three days. There were no European CD releases of Dir en grey yet,9 and there was no offline promotion of the gig nor adverts in any relevant media outlets. The concert might well be the reason why almost all German TV stations reported about the Visu scene in early 2006. But no video footage of the event exists that could have been used for these reports, and so many of them end with some pictures of later concerts by Japanese visual-​ kei bands performing in front of German audiences, most of them from Gan-​Shin’s artist roster. With the exception of the rather naïve and stereotypic explanation of why visual-​kei originated in Japan in the first place,10 nothing of what the discussed TV reports had to say about Japanese visual-​kei and the German Visu scene was inherently wrong. But like most of the academic studies of the phenomenon published in the following years (Gross 2007, 2010a, and 2010b; Hashimoto 2007; Höhn 2007 and 2008), they presented visual-​kei as a Japanese youth subculture

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that expanded through the internet to be adopted by young people in Germany. “It’s probably the first time that a youth culture spread virtually and not in the subculture of a big city,” the voice-​ over in the Polylux report states. Sociologist Marco Höhn (2007, 2008) speaks of visual-​kei as a “Japanese youth culture” that developed into a “translocal youth media scene” (2008, 194): Translocal connective networks can be found […] primarily in the Web 2.0. For the first time, myspace.com and other platforms offer translocal opportunities for the exchange of scene knowledge and information, the self-​presentation of individuals, and the checkout of identities, that is fundamental for visual-​kei. German scene members here have the opportunity to get into contact with young people in Japan, the Japanese scene elites, and with bands […] At a local level, too, it is a Web 2.0 portal that became the most important medium of the German visual-​kei scene: animexx.de originally was an online portal for anime and manga fans, but with about 100,000 members since long developed into the biggest and most important German-​ language internet platform for fans of Japanese popular culture (not only for Visus but also for cosplayers, Gothic Lolitas, computer and roll-​playing gamers, etc.). (Höhn 2008, 201f.) In her ethnographic monograph based on extensive (in situ and virtual) field research conducted among Visus, anthropologist Nadine Heymann defies Höhn’s categorization of visual-​kei as “de-​ territorialized” media culture, not only because “during the last decades there was no subculture that was so strongly focused on a particular country” (i.e. Japan), but because the subcultural networking –​notwithstanding personal contacts in Japan –​happens on a local level and doesn’t transcend the German-​speaking countries. Though some protagonists learn Japanese, it’s not (yet) enough for fluid communication. Facebook pages and blogs are also written in German. They relate to Japan as myth of origin, but the degree of subcultural interconnectedness with Japanese Visus and of knowledge about visual-​kei in Japan is not as high as Höhn claims. (Heymann 2014, 140)11 But lacking a comparative perspective, there is one important fact that is missed by both Höhn and Heymann: there are no “Japanese Visus,” and there is no subculture or scene comparable to that of the German Visus in Japan. The relatively strong impact that  –​compared to other genres of Japanese popular music  –​ visual-​kei had in a number of European and American countries often leads to the assumption that visual-​kei was “big in Japan,” which in fact is not the case, as I soon learned when I arrived in Japan in 2010 for three-​months of field research in the Toyko visual-​kei scene.12 Actually, in the beginning I had severe difficulties identifying concrete sites for my research. Some of the German reports had mentioned the “Harajuku (Cosplay) Bridge” (Jingūbashi) and the adjacent Takeshita street as visual-​kei hotspots in Tokyo. But upon my arrival, cosplaying was officially banned from the bridge, and the few cosplayers that were still around told me that even if a minority of fans of visual-​kei bands occasionally cosplayed their favorite musicians, cosplay and visual-​kei actually were two rather unrelated scenes. Though pictures of visual-​kei musicians –​like those of other celebrities  –​were on sale in the fan shops on Takeshita dôri, and some clothes on offer were reminiscent of their costumes, most of the available fashion was not. I didn’t encounter anybody who visually resembled German Visus. In Nishi-​Shinjuku 7-​chome, I found four closely spaced

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record shops specializing in visual-​kei, where mostly female (but also some male) customers, while shopping for CDs and merchandise, enjoyed the aura of the original outfits of visual-​kei bands worn by some shop window dummies. But unlike the German Visus, these customers didn’t exhibit any visual markers that had identified them as members of a subculture. And even in the life houses that are specialized in visual-​kei concerts such as the Area in Takadanobaba or the Rockmaykan in Meguro, the only people that looked “visual” were the musicians on stage.13 I never heard of an event in any Japanese city that was comparable to the German visual-​kei conventions. And for obvious reasons, in Japan there are neither “Japan Festivals,” such as the “Hanami,” nor online forums like animexx.de where fans of “Japanese popular culture” gather, because there are no fans of Japanese popular culture in general. For Japanese fans of anime, manga, or visual-​kei bands, the fact that their beloved products and their producers stem from Japan is, of course, not that noteworthy. That visual-​kei is not a Japanese subculture that was globally spread through the internet and adopted by German fans, becomes most obvious when one compares the dynamics of the concerts visual-​kei bands give in Japan with those they give in Germany. During my multi-​sited field research on the global spread of visual-​kei, I had the chance to attend both the last concert of D’s “7th Anniversary” tour,14 during which the band presented their (then-​)latest album “7th Rose” to their Japanese fans, as well as the gig they played in Cologne15 during their first overseas tour that led the band to France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, the UK, and Finland. “7th Rose” was the band’s second album release after they had signed a contract with the Japanese major company Avex Trax. During their 2010 Japan tour they accordingly performed in larger venues like Tokyo’s Stellar Ball in Shinagawa that accommodates almost 1,900 people. In Germany, however, where only very few people have ever heard of D, small clubs like Cologne’s (no longer existing) DIE WERKSTATT were sufficient to accommodate the band’s few German fans (and those from other European countries like Switzerland where no gig was scheduled). A band with a major contract that wasn’t extremely famous in Japan but with their fifth album had just reached #37 on the Oricon weekly charts,16 in Germany played in a location that was usually frequented by rather unknown independent bands –​with all the potential for distinction that such a status of a band grants to its fans. During D’s concert in Cologne, it was very easy to identify those fans who had already been to Japan and had seen performances of this or other visual-​kei bands before. Unlike many less experienced fans who showed up in costumes that did not necessarily refer to the current or former outfits of D or any other visual-​kei band but to Japanese popular culture products in general (Figure 16.2), the “Japan veterans” were casually dressed but obviously acquainted with the appropriate codes of visual-​kei behavior. For every song by every visual-​kei band there is a prescribed choreography that is usually compiled from a set of standardized and named moves, so-​called furi, by high-​ranking fans who attend almost all concerts of a given band.17 While the fans in Japan who have to know these choreographies by heart used to compete for the well-​defined positions in the front row in a process known as saizen koushou (front row negotiations),18 in Cologne the knowledgeable fans who were able to perform the appropriate furi deliberately gathered in the back of the hall, while in the front the majority of less informed fans behaved as if they were attending an ordinary heavy metal concert. But the most striking difference –​and the main reason for the claim that there is no such thing as a visual-​kei subculture in Japan –​becomes obvious during the so-​called taiban, concerts usually in smaller venues specialized on visual-​kei such as the aforementioned Area or Rockmaykan, where several bands perform on the same evening. During a taiban, most fans are interested in the performance of one or two of the bands only, and disinterestedly hang out in the vestibule

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Figure 16.2  Fans at the D concert in Cologne, May 17, 2011

while the other bands are playing. Visual-​kei terminology also make clear that these fans are not “visual-​kei fans,” interested in visual-​kei in general, but fans of a particular visual-​kei band only, who accordingly identify not as Visuals or Visus but as bangyaru (a Japanese English abbreviation for “band girl”). And though some come in groups of friends, the concerts in general are much more characterized by competition among the girls for the attention of the musicians on stage then by therapeutic socializing of like-​minded persons, an important aspect of the German Visu scene that was stressed by almost all TV reports and made Marc Fischer (2009) entitle his sensitive report about German Visus “The Empire of Gentleness.”19 The above-​mentioned differences between visual-​kei in Japan and the practices that characterize the German Visu scene might well also apply to the way that fans in other European and American countries deal with Japanese visual-​kei.20 The main reason for my claim that the Visu subculture is an idiosyncratic German phenomenon, is the fact that the process of the Visus’ adaptation of Japanese visual-​kei was situated within a specific German “field of popular music” (in the Bourdieuan sense) in that during the second half of the year 2000 one of the domestically as well as internationally most successful bands in the history of German popular music occupied a very prominent position: Tokio Hotel. Like other forms of identity, subcultural identities are strongly depending on alterities. To be a Visu does not only mean to be a fan of Japanese visual-​kei in particular and of Japan in general, it also means not to be a number of other things. Most Visus interviewed in the TV reports at some point stated that they always felt to be different from their peers, and some explicitly related their interest in Japan to this difference. For many Visus it is important not to be mistaken for an Emo: “Emo is an insult for [Visu] A-​ chan because they just hang around in corners, cut themselves and take drugs” (Fischer 2009, 89). But it is the inevitable comparison with Tokio Hotel that evokes such strong defense reactions on part of most Visus that the widely read news website Spiegel Online even published its report on the scene under the header “Young Japan Fans: ‘We have nothing in common with Tokio Hotel’ ” (Aiger 2009).

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If you want to annoy German visual-​kei fans you have to enquire about the German teenie band that all of their classmates are into. The answer will be: “Tokio Hotel is really the worst [band ever].” Their complaint is that the visual-​kei style is exploited [by Tokio Hotel]. (Raab 2010) And yet the four young musicians from Magdeburg who performed under the name Devilish before they were contracted by Universal Music in 2005 never claimed to be a visual-​kei band. Heavily promoted by Germany’s largest (and much lampooned) teen magazine Bravo, which published a cover story about the band even before the release of their debut single “Durch den Monsun” that stayed in the German charts for 22 weeks, four of them at #1, Tokio Hotel soon were omnipresent in German media (and after they won the 2008 MTV Music Award Best New Artist and the 2009 MTV Europe Award Best Group also in international media). In fact, of the four members, who were never involved in the scene themselves or had any special interest in Japan –​nor did they ever claim so –​only singer Bill Kaulitz (and only in the early phases of the band’s career) vaguely resembled Japanese visual-​kei musicians (Figure 16.3); and that association was, of course, amplified by the band’s name, which was actually chosen only to signify a certain cosmopolitanism and atmosphere of departure:

Figure 16.3  Bill Kaulitz of Tokio Hotel, 2007

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Tokyo somehow is crazy –​though none of us has been there yet. But that’s a good thing because we also didn’t experience yet what we are currently going through. This is why we wanted a city where we have not yet been. And we thought [Tokyo] symbolizes that quite well. And “hotel” because we are constantly on the road. I mean, it could have been “Berliner Rasthof ” but “Tokio Hotel” sounds so much cooler. (Bill Kaulitz in a 2005 interview with Top of the Pops)21 Given Tokio Hotel’s outstanding media presence in the second half of the 2000s, Bill Kaulitz’ vague resemblance to Japanese visual-​kei musicians was reason enough for the Visus to be permanently identified with the band by their peers and the German public in general. That Kaulitz appeared in public with a visual-​kei-​like haircut but obviously was not as genuinely interested in Japan as the Visus, together with the fact that the association of the internationally successful German teeny band with visual-​kei resulted in a number of subsequent reports about “real” Japanese visual-​kei bands in the disdained Bravo, might well explain the Visus’ complaint that Tokio Hotel was capitalizing on visual-​kei. (“Bravo-​Visu” became a common derogatory term for someone who was no “real” Visu.) But it doesn’t explain why Cinema Bizarre (Figure 16.4), a band whose members are actually rooted in the scene22 and visually reference Japanese visual-​kei bands much more explicitly than Tokio Hotel, doesn’t dare to speak of itself as a German “visual-​kei band”: In the media, we are often described as German visual-​kei band. But we are not  –​and we never claimed to be one. […] We met in the scene and we are fans of the scene and have our roots there. But we are no [visual-​kei band] because … I think, visual-​kei must be from Japan because visual-​kei is characterized by J-​Rock, the Japanese language and the Japanese look, that we obviously don’t have. (Cinema Bizarre vocalist Strify in an interview with the JRIG project 2007)

Figure 16.4  Cinema Bizarre in Hamburg, 2008

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What follows from Strify’s explanation is that as a German you can be a Visu, provided you are genuinely interested in Japan in general and in Japanese visual-​kei in particular, but you apparently cannot be a visual-​kei musician yourself because there is this one difference that cannot be overcome but that is constitutive for the Visu identity:23 the difference between their German selves and the Japaneseness (that for the Visus also is an embodied, “racial” quality) of those they team up with to jointly inhabit a “Japan” that Stephanie Klasen (referring to the title of a book by Salman Rushdie) calls an “imaginary homeland.” As an imaginary world in that the well-​known images of Japan mix with the world of anime and manga, “Japan” is the place where romantic enthusiasm and desires can be fulfilled. It is a fantasyscape in that together with like-​minded people and intimates you can experience adventures. […] For the fans of Japan, […] Japan is so fascinating because on the one hand it is exotic and sufficiently far away so that their imagination of Japan can stay vague enough not to get into conflict with their fantasyscape Japan. (Klasen 2013, 300-​301) Tokio Hotel as a band prominently featured in and representing the Visus’ actual homeland Germany definitely are not admitted to this imaginary homeland. Being too close and too “real,” they threaten to destroy its imaginary quality. “Japan is literally unimaginable outside its positioning vis-​à-​vis the West,” as Marilyn Ivy once put it (1995, 4). This certainly applies for German Visus, too, and therefore is visual-​kei the one genre of German popular music that must not exist. Notes 1 The term Japonisme was coined in 1872 by French art critic Philippe Burty to designate the fascination of contemporary Parisian artists such as Éduard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh for ukiyo-​ e. Depicting the popular culture of eighteenth and nineteenth century Edo, after the Meiji restoration in 1868 the Japanese woodblock prints found their way into European art collections and had a strong impact on the work of French but also of British and German artists. The term ukiyo-​e translates as “picture(s) of the floating world.” 2 Quoted from Kawada 2013, xi. 3 All translations are by the author. 4 Galileo is a daily knowledge show broadcasted by the private TV channel Pro 7 since 1998. The almost 14-​minute-​long program about the German Visu scene broadcast on March 2, 2009, was not only the most extensive report on the subject, but also somewhat belated. The most intensive coverage of the topic on television as well as in print media happened from late 2005 to mid-​2006. 5 Polylux, a monthly culture magazine broadcasted by the public TV channel Das Erste from 1997 to 2008 was the first TV program to report on the German Visu scene on October 27, 2005. The report was announced with the words “A Way out of children’s depression –​The new youth movement visual-​kei”. 6 A report on this concert also was the first in a series the unofficial chronicler of visual-​kei concerts in Germany, Jens Balzer, wrote for the Berliner Zeitung (Balzer 2005a; on later concerts by Moi dix mois, MUCC, D’espairsRay, and X Japan also see Balzer 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, and 2011). 7 Germany’s biggest tabloid newspaper. 8 Interview with Matthias Müssig in Munich, July 23, 2011. 9 In 2004, Müssig and Ortner-​Bach founded the Gan-​Shin label to release recordings by Japanese visual-​kei bands for the European markets. In 2009, Dir en grey was transferred to the sister label Okami Records because the association with the “colorful visual kei bands” on the Gan-​Shin website repelled heavy metal fans who had also become interested in the band that in the second half of the 2000s no longer identified as a visual-​kei band and played the internationally renowned heavy metal festival Wacken Open Air in 2007 and 2011.

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German Visual-kei Fans vs Tokio Hotel   •   193 10 If strict social control was the only thinkable reason for musicians wearing extreme costumes and make-​up, it should also explain the emergence of glam rock and glam metal in the first place. But while the genesis of these “Western” genres that admittedly influenced the formation of visual-​kei is usually explained as a backlash on previous rock music genres, in the case of Japan an allegedly more “culture immanent” reason makes the better headlines. 11 That a significant number of Visus (not only) in the reports habitually mispronounce “visual-​kei” (ˈvɪʒəwəl-​keɪ) and speak of or even write “visual-​key” instead gives proof to Heymann’s claim that their knowledge of the Japanese language is not always profound; -​kei in Japanese means “system” or “lineage”. 12 The research trip was part of a multi-​sited research project on the recent global spread of Japanese popular music that I conducted as a post-​doctoral researcher for the University of Heidelberg’s DFG-​Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” between 2009 and 2011. 13 My observation is backed by Miya, guitarist of MUCC, according to whom “the audience in Germany is different from that in Japan, much more styled […] In Japan, our fans […] at the concerts are dressed rather casually” (quoted from Raab 2010). 14 Tokyo, April 25, 2010. 15 May 17, 2011. 16 https://​www.generasia.com/​wiki/​7th_​Rose_​(album), accessed May 1, 2019. Overall, the album charted for three weeks. 17 Because it is strictly forbidden to film or make photographs during concerts, this aspect of visual-​kei in Japan is hardly ever mediated online. 18 On visual-​kei terminology, see http://​macchalatte.blogspot.com/​2013/​03/​visual-​dictionary.html, accessed May 1, 2019). 19 For more information about visual-​kei in Japan, also see Seibt 2012, 2014, and 2015. 20 For a comparative overview of the visual-​kei reception in 87 different countries see the “Globalizing Visual Kei” web series by Megan Pfeifle (2011). 21 See https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=pmyQd7rd9FU, accessed May 13, 2019. 22 Cinema Bizarre was founded by guitarist Yu (Hannes de Buhr) and singer Strify (Andreas Hudec) who met at an anime convention in Koblenz in 2005. In 2007, their debut single “Lovesongs (They Kill Me)” and their debut album “Final Attraction” both reached #9 of the German charts, and in 2009 Cinema Bizarre toured the US as support of Lady Gaga. The band broke up in 2010. 23 As it is for the identities of those other “Japan fans” that the Visus institutionally are so intertwined with, the fans of manga and anime, cosplayers, and Gothic Lolitas.

Bibliography Aiger, Sophie. 2009. “Junge Japan Fans: ‘Mit Tokio Hotel haben wir nichts gemein’,” Spiegel Online, May 26. Accessed March 18, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​2Yo2OJV. Balzer, Jens. 2005a. “Mad Stalin sucht Tokiomausi,” Berliner Zeitung, May 30. Accessed March 18, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​ 2HlFSnF. —​—​—​2005b. “Rückkehr der Rüschenbluse,” Berliner Zeitung, December 23. Accessed March 18, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​ 2vSWsWJ. —​—​—​2006a. “Ballerinen des Satans,” Berliner Zeitung, March 21. Accessed March 18, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​2WF1nWV. —​—​—​2006b. “Nach Visual Kei kommt nun Eroguro Kei,” Berliner Zeitung, May 9. Accessed March 18, 2019. http://​bit. ly/​2HhUOo4. —​—​—​2006c. “Hier gibt es keine Verklettungsgefahr,” Berliner Zeitung, November 24. Accessed March 18, 2019. http://​ bit.ly/​2Yq3mPy. —​—​—​2009. “Prinzessin Lillifee im Sadomaso-​Gewölbe,” Berliner Zeitung, October 13. Accessed March 18, 2019. http://​ bit.ly/​2YuY1qd. —​—​—​2011. “Dutte, Kutten, Kimonos,” Berliner Zeitung, July 6. Accessed March 18, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​2HgNRDG. Fischer, Marc. 2009. “Das Reich der Sanften,” Spiegel Special Nr. 1. Accessed May 22, 2019. http://​magazin.spiegel.de/​ EpubDelivery/​spiegel/​pdf/​65977021,. Gross, Friederike von. 2007. “Der Erwerb einkommensrelevanter Leistungskompetenzen in Jugendkulturen am Beispiel der Visual Kei-​Szene.” In Arbeit und Identität im Jugendalter, ed. by Jürgen Mansel and Heike Kahlert, 183–​200. Weinheim/​München: Juventa.

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194   •   Oliver Seibt —​—​—​2010a. “Mediennutzung und informelles Lernen in Jugendszenen am Beispiel der Visual Kei-​Szene.” In Jugend –​ Medien –​Kultur: Medienpädagogische Konzepte und Projekte, ed. by Jürgen Lauffer and Renate Röllecke, 54–​64. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. —​—​—​2010b. “Visual kei –​jugendliche Musikfans im Internet.” In Digitale Jugendkulturen, ed. by Kai-​Uwe Hugger, 151–​ 67. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Hashimoto, Miyuki. 2007. “Visual Kei Otaku Identity: An Intercultural Analysis.” Intercultural Communication Studies 16(1),  87–​99. Heymann, Nadine. 2014. Visual Kei. Körper und Geschlecht in einer translokalen Subkultur. Bielefeld: transcript. Höhn, Marco. 2007. “Visual Kei. Eine mädchendominierte Jugendkultur aus Japan etabliert sich in Deutschland.” In Krasse Töchter. Mädchen in Jugendkulturen, ed. by Gabriele Rohmann, 45–​54. Berlin: Archiv der Jugendkulturen Verlag. —​ —​ —​​2008. “Visual Kei. Vom Wandel einer japanischen Jugendkultur zu einer translokalen Medienkultur.” In Medienkultur und soziales Handeln, ed. by Tanja Thomas, 193–​207. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Ivy, Marilyn. 1995. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. JRIG (Japanese Rockmusic Influences in Germany) Project. 2007a. Visual Kei (video documentary). Kehl: Jugendkeller St. Nepomuk. Part 1 www.youtube.com/​watch?v=nrLSkHhhTuM (no longer available). JRIG (Japanese Rockmusic Influences in Germany) Project. 2007b. Visual Kei (video documentary). Kehl: Jugendkeller St. Nepomuk. Part 2 accessed May 8, 2019. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=2lqTFF-​JNc0&feature=related. JRIG (Japanese Rockmusic Influences in Germany) Project. 2007c. Visual Kei (video documentary). Kehl: Jugendkeller St. Nepomuk. Part 3 accessed May 8, 2019. www.youtube.com/​watch?v=UpSduaOfQ-​w&feature=related. Kawada, Junzo. 2013. “Foreword” to The Other Face of the Moon, by Claude Lévi-​Strauss, ix-​xiii. Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Klasen, Stephanie. 2013. “Imaginäre Heimat Japan.” In Nipponspiration:  Japonismus und japanische Populärkultur im deutschsprachigen Raum, ed. by Michiko Mae and Elisabeth Scherer, 279–​306. Vienna: Böhlau. Pfeifle, Meg. 2011. “Globalizing Visual Kei: A Web Series,” JaME World, March 28–​August 28. Accessed May 22, 2019. www.jame-​world.com/​us/​themes-​884-​globalizing-​visual-​kei-​a-​web-​series.html. Raab, Klaus. 2010. “Visual Kei auf Deutsch  –​Warum Tokio Hotel so aussieht wie Tokio Hotel,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17. Accessed March 29, 2019. http://​bit.ly/​2Hj6UMC. Seibt, Oliver. 2012. “Asagi’s Voice: Learning How to Desire with Japanese visual-​kei.” In Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities: Unlimited Voices in East Asia and the West, ed. by Christian Utz and Frederick Lau, 249–​67. New York: Routledge. —​—​—​2014. “Headbanging Ringelreihen:  Ambivalenz und Latenz als Merkmale von japanischem visual-​kei,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 3: 40–​43. —​—​—​2015 “Expeditions of Desire.” In Seismographic Sounds –​Visions of a New World, ed. by Thomas Burkhalter, Theresa Beyer, and Hannes Liechti, 321–​6. Bern: Norient.

Discography Cinema Bizarre. 2007. Lovesongs (They Kill Me), Island, Universal Music. MaxiCD. —​—​— 2007. Final Attraction, Island, Universal Music. CD album. D. 2010. 7th Rose, Avex Trax. CD album. Tokio Hotel. 2005. Durch den Monsun, Island, Universal Music. MaxiCD.

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17

The Germaican Connection German Reggae Abroad Martin Ringsmut

Intro: Gentleman at Baía das Gatas When I became involved as an editor in this book project, it turned out that I would not only be editing the chapters but also contributing the Coda. At that time, I was occupied with doing fieldwork in Cape Verde for my dissertation, which had nothing to do with German popular music. But other authors in this series had also taken their stay abroad as the starting point for their Coda (e.g. Martinelli 2014), so I set out to explore the reception of German popular music on the islands. Soon, people would have me listen to music from Modern Talking, Rammstein and, even more often, Eurodance hits from acts such as Snap! or Haddaway (see Wandler, this volume). But these situations were rare and the people I talked to were largely oblivious to German popular music. I had already given up on my first idea to write about the reception of German popular music from a Cape Verdean perspective, when a friend of mine, who was involved in the organization of the festival Baía das Gatas on the Cape Verdean island São Vicente, said to me: “Did you know that Gentleman is playing at Baía this year? He is German too, right?” Indeed, Gentleman is a German musician who is well known in Cape Verde as a reggae artist. As reggae in general has been very popular on the islands, I was confident I could find enough situations to investigate the reception of reggae from Germany abroad –​starting at Baía das Gatas. As I heard many times in Cape Verde, if you are into reggae music, there is no way you haven’t heard of Gentleman. With well-​known songs like “Superior” or “Dem Gone,” Gentleman is one of the few European reggae artists who has gained international success and acknowledgement in reggae’s “motherland,” Jamaica. Interestingly, the fact that Gentleman is a German musician did not play any part in either the promotion of his concert or the reception of his music. Rather, in the case of his Cape Verdean concert, Gentleman being German went mostly unnoticed by Cape Verdean reggae fans, who at times were surprised when they learned that they were listening to a German artist. They would not link German popular music to reggae. Unsurprisingly, when I talked to some of the festival-​goers, they stated that they did not know any German popular musician –​even those who knew that Gentleman was a German. Other German bigshots like Seeed or Natty U were unknown to the people I talked to in São Vicente, and only Patrice, who had played at Baía das Gatas the year before Gentleman, was a familiar name to some reggae fans. When I asked whether they thought that Gentleman being a German reggae artist was something extraordinary, most replies were something along the lines 197

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of “no, not really.” I thought about the concerts of Cape Verdean popular musicians in Germany, where the Cape Verdeannes of the musicians is often the main focus of concert promotions. With regard to Gentleman it seemed to be quite the opposite. Gentleman headlined the festival as an internationally successful reggae star and not as a German popular music artist. Is there something different about German artists or is it just in the case of Gentleman? How are Gentleman and German reggae musicians in general perceived in other countries, like Jamaica? How German can Reggae be? Is “German reggae” even relevant in international music markets? In this chapter, leaving the Cape Verdean islands behind in favor of a more global perspective, I analyze the discursive contexts of reggae made in Germany with special regard to issues of cultural appropriation. I examine the significance of the adjective ‘German’ attached to the genre in the context of a discussion of global power relations. In the following, I will give a short introduction to reggae’s history in Germany and discuss the conceptualizations of German reggae based on two examples before I attend to the question of cultural appropriation. A Very Short Introduction to German Reggae Music1 When “Marley mania” broke out in the 1970s, reggae found its way to Germany. In its wake, many other Jamaican roots reggae musicians followed Bob Marley’s footsteps and began playing concerts all over the globe. Having no Jamaican diaspora that could have acted as culture bearers for reggae, the music had to be imported by Jamaican artists. When artists like Peter Tosh and Black Uhuru played their first concerts in West Germany during the 1980s, they sparked a development of Germany’s own reggae culture, with artists, jams and sound systems.2 This early phase was marked by the inception of The Reggae Sunsplash festival in 1986, which was renamed Summer Jam in 1988, and which has become one of Europe’s largest reggae festivals, frequently inviting major reggae acts from around the world to Germany. As Karnik and Philipps write, small “roots enclaves” in West-​German cities were established, bringing forth their own music, which included, among others, Kööm’s 1983 album Urlaub vom Tag (break from the day) –​the first reggae record sung in German (Karnik and Philipps 2007, 48). Natty U from Dortmund, whose English lyrics are an approximation to Jamaican patois, became one of the most influential German reggae musicians during the late 1980s and 1990s. He was also the first German reggae musician to perform in Jamaica, and his album Fool For Your Love (1990) was played on Jamaican radio. (Karnik and Philipps 2007, 66) The 1990s also marked the beginning of Germany’s own sound system culture with the establishment of the Cologne-​based Pow Pow Movement and the Silly Walks Movement from Hamburg (today Silly Walks Discotheque), two of the most influential and international successful sound systems from Germany. After German reunification, eastern Germany also entered the map of international reggae culture. Not only is Gentleman’s The Far East Band located in Leipzig, but also the Germaican record label (today Germaica digital), founded in 1999, is based there. Label founder Pionear began to produce and release international reggae artists in 2000 and created an international infrastructure that also promoted German reggae artists around the world.3 He lived in Jamaica for two years before coming back to Germany and founding Germaican records. In a sense, the 1990s can be seen as “apprentice years,” when many German reggae artists travelled to Jamaica in order to learn about Jamaican culture and get the newest reggae releases directly from the source. As Pow Pow Movement’s4 Ingo Rheinbay recollects, the first source of reggae music and knowledge about Jamaican culture for him and many other Germans was the British radio station

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BFBS,5 which broadcast Rodigan’s Rockers, a radio show established in 1984 and solely dedicated to Jamaican music.6 We (friends and members of Pow Pow Movement) were always searching for information about Jamaican music. There was no internet where you could just look up something. We had to rely on radio and the little information we got from friends or sometimes a newspaper. Rodigan’s show was really the first source on everything reggae. We made cassettes and shared our records. We also went to a party in London hosted by Rodigan before we decided we had to travel to Jamaica. (Personal communication, January 31, 2018, my translation) David Rodigan’s show influenced German reggae artists. At least for West Germany, the first regularly available source of Jamaican music came via England, with David Rodigan as a key figure. He served as a mentor for the first sound systems in Germany (Personal communication, January 31, 2018), who started to organize reggae parties after the Jamaican model. During the 1990s, German reggae artists began to long for a direct connection to Jamaican culture. Musicians like Gentleman, Patrice, and the crew of the Pow Pow Movement are but a few who repeatedly travelled to Jamaica. Being acknowledged and accepted in Jamaica was something of an accolade: When we went to Jamaica together with Gentleman, it was like a revelation. We went to parties and got to see the real stuff. Gentleman took part in a talent show and even won. Can you believe that? He had learned patois and was really engaged with Jamaican culture. We were able to visit all the legendary studios in Kingston were our favorite music had been produced. We even did a record session with Ninjaman for 200$. We spent all our money in the record stores and brought it back to Germany. The younger generation does not seem to be that interested in Jamaican culture anymore. But for us it has always been very important to have that. (Personal communication, January 31, 2018) As Köhlings and Lilly7 argue, the broad reception of reggae music in Germany was predominantly characterized by what they called “misunderstandings” (Köhlings and Lilly 2013). Reggae had been synonymous with Rastafari music, and while Bob Marley’s “One Love” message was appropriated by the predominantly left-​wing audience to protest nuclear power and military armaments, issues of black liberation and spirituality seemed to be ignored completely (Köhlings and Lilly 2013, 6). The image of Jamaican culture that many Germans had (and probably still have) was that of a Ganja smoking, easy-​going sunshine nation. In the early 2000s however, when voices of gay rights organizations denouncing homophobic lyrics and behavior in Jamaican dancehall music became louder (Köhlings and Lilly 2013, 9–​16), the image had changed drastically. Those Germans who had been travelling to Jamaica took up the task of mediating between German and Jamaican culture: We always saw ourselves, at least partly, as educators. It is important to us to give a little background on Jamaican culture. People who are only listening to reggae and think it is all about one love are ignorant of the fact that Jamaica is not a paradise but has its problems. At the same time, if you look at the debate on homophobia it is the same way. We don’t excuse the violence

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or homophobic behavior, but people need to understand the culture behind instead of judging in a colonial manner. (Ellen Köhlings, personal communication, October 27, 2017) In the 2000s, while many Jamaican artists where discredited or even banned from playing shows in Europe, German reggae was at its peak. Reggae songs frequently charted. For instance, Gentleman gained international success with his 2002 album Journey to Jah and the 2004 album Confidence, featuring the song “Superior,” which became an international hit. Patrice entered international charts with his 2005 album Nile and founded his own label and studio under the name Supow in 2006. Both Gentleman and Patrice aimed at an international audience and kept close ties to Jamaican musicians and producers. While Gentleman has always been oriented towards a faithfulness to Jamaican culture (Karnik and Philipps 2007, 116–​22), Patrice started out as a singer-​songwriter before performing as a reggae artist. Later he started incorporating different musical styles and expanded the genre’s musical vocabulary without losing his image as a reggae artist, despite his unease with this label (personal communication, December 12, 2012). The band Seeed from Berlin operated in the same fashion and incorporated different languages and visual and musical styles on their 2002 album New Dubby Conquerors. Seeed used their dancehall-​oriented music to promote a multi-​cultural and cosmopolitan image of Berlin “metropolitans.” During the 2000s, the genre had considerably diversified, and new musicians entered the field without directly relating to Jamaica, for, as journalist and author Olaf Karnik points out, reggae had already become part of Germany’s culture (Karnik 2011).8 Before I  discuss the reception of German reggae in Jamaican media alongside issues of cultural appropriation, I need to delve further into the question of what German reggae is, or what it might be beyond the sum of its actors. As musical genres are usually understood as negotiated through social and discursive practices rather than defined by intrinsic factors (Fabbri 1982; Mendívil 2008, 168), we need to look at the specific topics that serve as the foundation of these negotiations of reggae as a genre in general and of German reggae in particular. What is German Reggae Anyway? Since the 1960s, “reggae” has become an umbrella term that covers different forms of Jamaican popular music, including genres like rocksteady, ska, roots reggae or dancehall (Burkhart and Pfleiderer 2017, 56). These genres may vary greatly in terms of musical aesthetics, lyrical content and worldviews. However, there are some structural similarities and modes of production common in most contemporary reggae music, one of them being the riddim/​voicing system. As Peter Manuel and Wayne Marshall explain, From the early 1970s reggae music –​whose most popular form since around 1980 has been called ‘dancehall’ –​has relied upon the phenomenon of the ‘riddim’, that is, an autonomous accompanimental track, typically based on an ostinato (which often includes melodic instrumentation as well as percussion). While a dancehall song consists of a deejay singing (or ‘voicing’) over a riddim, the riddim is not exclusive to that song, but is typically used in many other songs –​a practice which is, for example, uncharacteristic of rap, which also uses sampled

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accompanimental ostinatos. On occasion, the same voicing may be re-​released with different riddims. Accordingly, the riddim has its own name, its own producer and owner, and its own musical life independent of particular voicings by deejays. (Manuel and Marshall 2006, 447–​8) The distinction between song, riddim and voicing is not only important in order to understand Jamaican cultural production, it is also crucial to the understanding of cultural appropriation in German reggae and its complexities. A prominent example is the riddim “Doctor’s Darling” by Seeed.9 In 2002, the band produced this riddim based on Gregory Isaacs’s 1982 “Night Nurse.” It was then voiced by many international artists including Sizzla’s “Pure Love,” Michael Rose’s “Jah Love hot” or Seeed’s own voicing together with Anthony B. and Gentleman, many of which were included in Germaican records’ riddim compilation Riddim Driven –​Doctor’s Darling in 2002. The voicing of this riddim by the Jamaican singer Tanya Stephens became a #1 hit in Trinidad and popular throughout the world. In the light of its globalized production, does it make sense to call Doctor’s Darling German reggae? Before trying to answer this question, let us consider another example, that of the Berlin based reggae musician Nosliw. Before ending his career in 2017, the German musician had released more than three albums, several EP’s and countless Singles. His releases presented a wide stylistic range between roots oriented and electronic dancehall tracks. The German lyrics on albums like Mittendrin cover –​like his Jamaican role models –​social as well as personal problems. However, the lyrics do not adopt Jamaican themes of oppression and injustice, but rather foster a social criticism that is tailored to social problems and inequalities in Germany. In 2016, he was invited by the Goethe Institut10 to play shows and promote German culture through workshops in Benin, Cameroon, Senegal and Togo. In this context, Nosliw’s music is definitely accepted as being German reggae. Like the music of Seeed, Nosliw appropriated reggae and transformed it by adding distinct references to Germany as a place of origin and reception. The Goethe Institut’s website even features an article by Olaf Karnik, stating that reggae has long since developed into an integral part of Germany’s popular culture (Karnik 2011). However, asking whether “Doctor’s Darling” is German reggae is still missing the point. Although there definitely is such a thing as German reggae  –​whether made by Germans for Germans or promoted to others as German reggae –​on the international market, the category “German reggae” is non-​existent. “German reggae” as a category is relevant only to the German market. Additionally, albums by German artists such as Gentleman or Patrice are recorded and produced both in Jamaica and Europe, and riddims like Pow Pow Movement’s “Blaze” or “Superior” undergo different voicings which travel around the world. As Ellen Köhlings puts it, “the aim is to be international. Everybody wants to sound international regardless of whether its Jamaican, German or African” (Ellen Köhlings, personal communication, October 27, 2017). Doctor’s Darling can be understood as a manifestation of an international reggae culture that transcends national borders. Production and distribution technologies further this process of globalization, making it increasingly difficult to trace back the histories of riddims. The riddim/​voicing system also poses several problems in terms of copyright and ownership. As Manuel and Marshall write, The wide circulation of riddims can give rise to various superficial impressions. One of these impressions is that of fair, orderly and well-​regulated system of contracts, licensings and the like; another is the notion of the pool of riddims serving as a creative commons, undergirded

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by an anti-​materialistic Jamaican willingness to share; a third impression is that of a Hobbesian wild-​west scene in which ownership and profits are determined at best by handshakes and more often at gunpoint. Each of these scenarios contains a kernel of truth, although the reality is considerably more complex. (Manuel and Marshall 2006, 462) These “superficial impressions” highlight the ambivalences in Jamaican reggae culture towards ownership and copyright. Besides the monetary or material aspects in the debates about copyright and ownership, there is another layer, which includes a more idealistic view focusing on appreciation and respect. Both layers operate simultaneously and are further complicated when analyzing instances of cultural appropriation outside of Jamaica. German Reggae: Cultural Appropriation and Jamaican Media Cultural appropriation is not harmful per se. In fact, cultural appropriation must be seen as an integral part of culture which enables cultural transmission and innovation (Ziff and Rao 1997, 6); e.g. it is impossible to imagine this book without the widespread appropriation of the Phoenician alphabet or Hindu-​Arabic numerals. However, as long as cultural practices are tied to a specific group of people (community, nation, etc.), cultural appropriation always implies a power relation between those whose culture is appropriated and those who appropriate (ibid., 3). In the following section, I will focus on asymmetrical power relations in cultural appropriation, namely between Jamaican reggae artists and actors of the western-dominated music markets. In this context, two types of argument against cultural appropriation conceptualized by James Young (2005; 2006) come to mind. The first type of argument is summarized under the term “aesthetic handicap thesis” (Young 2006, 455), meaning that artists who engage in a foreign culture or tradition are likely to produce aesthetically inferior cultural products. Although German reggae musicians have been confronted with this kind of argument (Karnik and Philipps 2007, 44–​60), I think that the second type of argument (Young 2005, 135), which attacks cultural appropriation from a moral point of view, is far more interesting in this context. Cultural appropriation becomes a matter of moral objection if the (potential) offense caused by it outweighs its social merits (ibid., 139). Young begins his discussion by distinguishing cultural appropriations that cause harm from those that only offend. He distinguishes further between grades and the gravity of offenses, taking different power constellations into account, and coming to the conclusion that offensive cultural appropriation cannot be discarded on a purely moral basis per se (ibid., 146). I will not object to the philosophical reasoning leading Young to this conclusion, which I have only presented here in a very abridged form. Rather, I want to object to Young’s differentiation between offense and harm. Although this distinction may have its merits when analyzing specific cases of cultural appropriation, it becomes problematic when analyzing global power relations between marginalized cultures and capitalist music markets where the appropriation and commodification of cultural contents are used to solidify neo-​colonial structures (e.g. Alleyne 1994; Skjelbo 2015). For instance, Hasani Walters, who frequently writes for the Jamaican Gleaner,11 states with respect to the iTunes reggae charts: Apart from the Jamaican reggae icon Robert Nesta ‘Bob’ Marley and the Legend albums (Bonus Track, Remastered, and deluxe editions sold as separate entities), there is not much

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Jamaican presence among the top-​10 selling offerings. Marley holds the number one spot in 17 of 22 international markets. Of the other five markets, he is second in four and number five in the remaining. […] So of the 220 available spots on the 22 charts reflective of the top-​10 sales in reggae-​heavy countries such as France, Germany, Australia, United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Japan, New Zealand and Spain, that’s pretty much it for Jamaicans. (Walters 2012) With regard to “high-​riding entertainers” from Jamaica like Beenie Man or Bounty Killer, Walter even attests a complete absence from the charts (Walters 2012). Even though I do not want to suggest that the iTunes charts are a valid criterion either for the analysis of global power relations in reggae or for cultural appropriation, I  argue that Walters’ discussion nevertheless indicates a general trend in Jamaican popular and journalistic discourse. To complicate things further, the debate about the appropriation of Jamaican popular music by Western musicians is not limited to or centered around a victim narrative of Western oppressors who exploit and take away Jamaican culture. For instance, in the same Gleaner article there is an interview excerpt with Jamaican dancehall star Busy Signal in which the musician acknowledges international reggae musicians like Gentleman or Alborosie as taking part in Jamaican culture and its worldwide promotion (Walters 2012). In 2003, Gentleman was also interviewed by the Gleaner. In the article, Gentleman’s proficiency in Jamaican Creole and his mastering of cultural codes –​despite being a foreigner –​was the main focus. Here, as well as in other articles and interviews with the musician, Gentleman is introduced as a German musician who performs Jamaican culture (e.g. “A Gentleman in the Reggae World” 2003). The same can be said about other German acts like Silly Walks and Pow Pow Movement. Their Germanness is initially noted, but it does not affect the reception of their music in Jamaican media. Reggae is understood as a global phenomenon that –​ although mostly oriented towards Jamaican culture  –​functions independently from national borders. As Carolyn Cooper writes: In the 1990s, reggae is no longer an exclusively Jamaican cultural product. The processes of globalization and transnationalization of popular culture through the operations of international capital within the multinational recorded music industry have transformed reggae music into “world beat” music, infinitely exploitable in a variety of supranational contexts. For example, the emergence of reggae/​ragga performers like Alpha Blondy from the Ivory Coast, Lucky Dube from South Africa, Apache Indian from the UK, Snow from Canada, Bigga Haitian from Haiti/​New York, and Nahki from Japan illustrates this global dispersal and transformation of Jamaican popular culture. (Cooper 1996, 103) In a globalized reggae culture, the marker “German” becomes insignificant. Returning to Young’s conception of cultural appropriation, we could surmise that in the case of appropriation of Jamaican music by the aforementioned German musicians, there are no problematic power relations that cause or might cause offense or even harm. It is not my intention to accuse German reggae musicians of exploitation of Jamaican culture. In fact, the commitment to learn Jamaican cultural codes and the respect for Jamaican culture are well received and acknowledged in Jamaican media. However, I would argue that the very system which enables cultural exchange between Jamaica and Germany is characterized by unequal power relations when considering,

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for example, the indexing of certain albums with homophobic lyrics or the ban of concerts of performers such as Bounty Killer, a situation which has no equivalent in Jamaica. Furthermore, the fact that Gentleman’s music is perceived around the world as “reggae” instead of “German reggae” can also be seen a result of unequal power relations in worldbeat industries which usually uses national markers to indicate Otherness and to valorize exoticism (Goodwin and Gore 1990; Born and Hesmondhalgh 2000). Gentleman and other German artists have earned (or been given) the privilege of largely escaping this exoticization –​something that many non-​Western musicians have not. Conclusion In the end, we arrive at a paradoxical conclusion. On the one hand, following the Goethe Institut and German media, there is such a thing as German reggae, a musical culture that is performed and perceived as distinctively German. On the other hand, following Jamaican media, reggae musicians and my Cape Verdean informants, there is no such thing as German reggae, only reggae that happens to be made by Germans. The paradox is resolved when considering the different discourses in Germany, Jamaica and the rest of the world through which people are trying to make sense of German reggae/​reggae from Germany. International collaborations and productions have become standard practice in many popular music cultures. In that, reggae is no exception. The international production and circulation of riddims especially defies any attempt to define German reggae by means of musical analysis, determination of origin of the musicians, or place of production. What German reggae/​reggae from Germany is or what it might be varies and has to be negotiated in different contexts. As I have argued, the music of Gentleman, Patrice, Seeed, Natty U and many other musicians is a product of cultural appropriation.12 Germany has had no considerable Jamaican diaspora. Reggae had to be imported via England or directly from Jamaica before the Germans themselves engaged in the production of reggae culture. For many German reggae musicians, Jamaica was the main point of reference; their own cultural production was always oriented to the current trends on the island. Mediating knowledge about Jamaican culture has been a prime objective of German reggae musicians, journalists and music enthusiasts. However, the basis on which the cultural exchange and the flow of cultural goods is determined has to be critically analyzed in order to uncover and acknowledge the asymmetries that define global reggae culture and the Germaican connection. Notes 1 This introduction gives a general idea about the development of reggae in Germany and is not meant to be in any way exhaustive. For a more detailed history of German reggae, see Karnik and Philipps 2007 and Pfleiderer 2018. 2 I have found no reliable sources on the situation of reggae in East Germany between the 1970s and the German reunification. 3 For an overview and history of the label, see the Germaican record’s website http://​www.germaica.net/​. 4 One of Germany’s longest running sound systems. 5 British Forces Broadcasting Service. 6 See also Mrozek’s chapter on the significance of the presence of allied soldiers in post-​war Germany. 7 Ellen Köhlings and Pete Lilly are both chief editors of the German reggae magazine Riddim. Although they usually work in a journalistic manner, both of them participated multiple times in scholarly exchanges about reggae culture in Jamaica and are well established in the academic occupation with reggae.

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 German Reggae  Abroad   •   205 8 Since the late 2000s however, the interest in German reggae has decreased and only few musicians are active and recognized on the international reggae market. Despite that, the reggae scene in Germany remains alive and well, although on a smaller scale. (Pete Lilly, personal communication, October 27, 2017) 9 This Riddim came up frequently in conversations with students who took part in my “Global Reggae” seminar at the university of Cologne in 2017. It is also featured in an interview with Gentleman that was published in the German Riddim magazine and quoted again in Köhlings and Lilly 2012, 69–​70. 10 Named after the German author Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the Goethe Institut is a non-​profit organization that promotes German language and culture across the globe. 11 One of Jamaica’s oldest and most read newspapers. 12 For different takes on this theme, see for instance Solomon’s, Michaelsen’s or Seibt’s chapters in this volume.

Bibliography Alleyne, Mike. 1994. “Positive Vibration? Capitalist Textual Hegemony and Bob Marley.” Caribbean Studies 27 (3/​ 4): 224–​41. Burkhart, Benjamin, and Martin Pfleiderer. 2017. “Reggae.” Handbuch Popkultur, edited by Thomas Hecken and Marcus Kleiner, 57–​62. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh, eds. 2000. Western Music and Its Others:  Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cooper, Carolyn. 1996. “Race and the Cultural Politics of Self-​Representation: A View from the University of the West Indies.” Research in African Literatures 27 (4): 97–​105. Fabbri, Franco. 1982. “What Kind of Music?” Popular Music (2): 131–​43. “A Gentleman in the Reggae World” 2003. The Gleaner, November 7. Accessed 03 April 2018. http://​old.jamaica-​gleaner. com/​gleaner/​20031107/​ent/​ent2.html. Goodwin, Andrew, and Joe Gore. 1990. “World Beat and the Cultural Imperialism Debate.” Socialist Review 20 (3): 63–​80. Karnik, Olaf. 2011. “Reggae in Germany.” Accessed 03 April 2018. www.goethe.de/​en/​kul/​mus/​gen/​pop/​glo/​20455014. html. Karnik, Olaf, and Helmut Philipps. 2007. Reggae in Deutschland. Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch. Köhlings, Ellen, and Pete Lilly. 2012. “The Evolution of Reggae in Europe with a Focus on Germany.” Global Reggae, edited by Carolyn Cooper, 69–​93. Kingston: Canoe Press. ———​. 2013. “From One Love to One Hate? –​Europe’s Perception of Jamaican Homophobia Expressed in Song Lyrics.” International Reggae. Current and Future Trends in Jamaican Popular Music, edited by Donna Hope, 2–​29. Kingston: Pelican. Manuel, Peter, and Wayne Marshall. 2006. “The Riddim Method:  Aesthetics, Practice, and Ownership in Jamaican Dancehall.” Popular Music 25 (3): 447–​70. Martinelli, Dario. 2014. “Lasciatemi Cantare and Other Diseases: Italian Popular Music, as Represented Abroad.” Made in Italy, edited by Franco Fabbri and Goffredo Plastino, 207–​20. London: Routledge. Mendívil, Julio. 2008. Ein musikalisches Stück Heimat. Ethnologische Beobachtungen zum deutschen Schlager. Bielefeld, transcript. Pfleiderer, Martin. 2018. “Soul Rebels and Dubby Conquerors: Reggae and Dancehall Music in Germany in the 1990s and Early 2000s.” Popular Music 37 (1): 81–​99. Skjelbo, Johannes Frandsen. 2015. “Jamaican Dancehall Censored:  Music, Homophobia, and the Black Body in the Postcolonial World.” Danish Musicology Online, Special Edition: 131–​53. Walter, Hasani. 2012. “Struggle for Jamaican Reggae Acts.” The Gleaner, August 23. Accessed April 3, 2018. http://​jamaica-​ gleaner.com/​gleaner/​20120823/​ent/​ent1.html. Young, James. 2005. “Profound Offense and Cultural Appropriation.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (2): 135–​46. —​—​—​. 2006. “Art, Authenticity and Appropriation.” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 1 (3): 455–​76. Ziff, Bruce, and Pratima Rao. 1997. “Introduction to Cultural Appropriation: A Framework for Analysis.” In Borrowed Power:  Essays on Cultural Appropriation, edited by Bruce Ziff and Pratima Rao, 1–​27. New Brunswick:  Rutgers University Press.

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Discography Gentleman. 2002. Journey to Jah. Four Music, FOR 6006 2, compact disc. Gentleman. 2004. Confidence. Four Music FOR 517896 2, compact disc. Kööm. 1983. Urlaub vom Tag. Jah Records, 7046, 33⅓ rpm. Natty U. 1990. Fool for your Love. T’Bwana Sound, TBS CD 275, compact disc. Nosliw. 2004. Mittendrin. Rootdown Records, RDM 13010–​2, compact disc. Patrice.2005. Nile. Yo Mama’s Recording YPS 9370012, compact disc. Seeed. 2001. New Dubby Conquerors. Downbeat (3), 8573 87840-​1, 33⅓ rpm. Various Artists. 2004. Riddim Driven: Doctor’s Darling. VP Records, VPCD 2250, compact disc.

Interviews Lilly, Pete. Personal communication, October 27, 2017. Köhlings, Ellen. Personal communication, October 27, 2017. Patrice. personal communication, December 12, 2012. Rheinbay, Ingo. Personal communication, January 31, 2018.

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Standing up against Discrimination and Exclusion An Interview with Kutlu Yurtseven (Microphone Mafia)

Conducted, translated and edited by Monika E. Schoop

Kutlu Yurtseven is the co-​founder of the Cologne-​based hip hop group Microphone Mafia. Founded in 1989, Microphone Mafia are one of the first German hip hop groups. Formerly a six piece, founding members Kutlu Yurtseven and Rossi Pennino have continued up to the present day. The group is well known for addressing the experiences of second-​generation immigrants and speaking up against racism, xenophobia and discrimination of all kinds. In their music, the group has utilized multiple languages, most prominently Turkish, Italian and German, and has gained a following inside and outside of Germany. In the 1990s, the band shortly attracted the attention of major labels and MTV but quickly resumed their independent status, releasing their tracks via their own label. Since 2008 Microphone Mafia has collaborated with Esther Bejarano, musician and survivor of the concentration camps Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. Under the name Bejarano und Microphone Mafia the rappers have performed alongside with Esther, her son Joram and her daughter Edna, the three of whom also formed the band Coincidence. Besides his music activities, Kutlu Yurtseven works as a teacher and has appeared as an actor in critically acclaimed theater pieces on the authorities’ failures in the investigations of right-​wing terrorist group NSU (Die Lücke), on religion and belief (Glaubenskämpfer), and the impact of the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016 (Istanbul). Monika:  Tell me about the background of Microphone Mafia. How and when did you start? Kutlu:  I’ve known Rossi and Önder, the co-​founders, since elementary school. We were also in the same soccer club; the same youth center and we all grew up in Cologne Flittard. 1989 was the first summer I was home alone and did not drive to Turkey with my parents. In this summer the rap wave hit. Rossi did breakdance, I tried it too, but I didn’t enjoy it because it hurts, I also played soccer and basketball at that time. Rossi was an incredibly good breaker and Önder was all in it because of the DJ thing. And there was Markus, another friend of ours and Pierro, we were all hanging out in the youth center. Markus was also a DJ and Pierro was the first to get a sampler. This was also the time I transferred to grammar school and that’s where I met Dennis. I told him, “We want to start a rap band.” And he said, “I just 207

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got back from America and I also totally dig rap!” We met in the market square. Rossi did beatboxing, and I rapped my lyrics. That’s how it started. We were two Germans, two Italians and two Turks. That’s how we saw ourselves back then. But after all, we were all from Cologne! I wrote the lyrics, I was the singer of the band, I always sang the choruses and rapped a bit. It was mostly Dennis who rapped, because back then the rap we were exposed to was mostly in English, from America or the UK. Although France was important, too. When we were looking for a band name, Dennis said, “Let’s call ourselves TCA!” Because NWA was huge at that time, and we listened to that a lot. TCA stood for Tough Cool Aces. We were 17, so that was okay (laughs). When we wrote our first lyrics, Rossi said, “I cannot do this in English and German sounds shitty.” We did not want to rap in German because it was considered such a harsh language at that time. So he wrote in Italian. And I thought if he writes in Italian, I will write in Turkish! That’s how the language mix came about. There was no conscious concept behind it. At some point we renamed TCA to Microphone Mafia, because we had grown out of the name. Imagine, you’re 26 or 27 and you still call yourselves Tough Cool Aces! Monika:  Were you also influenced by hip hop from Turkey or Italy at that time? Kutlu: No, and that’s special. Rap, especially in Turkish or Italian, first got popular in Germany before gaining a following in the home countries [see Solomon, this volume]. Bands who rapped in Turkish, Italian, Serbo-​Croatian or Bosnian were first refined in Germany and then went to the home countries. Many bands in Turkey for example consider migrant bands from Germany a huge influence. People simply found it cool to hear this type of music in Germany and appreciated being able to understand it –​and not only hearing English or German. For us, we recorded our first album entirely in German as late as 1998. We have to admit that we did not sound that great in German. People keep telling us we have a better flow in Italian or Turkish because that’s what we’ve been doing for the past 30 years. Monika:  Tell me about your parents. They came to Germany as migrant workers, the so-​called Gastarbeiter? Kutlu:  Exactly. My father came to Germany in 68 and in 69 my mother came to Germany with my brother. For Rossi’s parents it was similar, I guess. At least for his father, he was already here in 65, then he went back and returned. Önder’s parents also. And Pierro’s parents, they are migrants. We are migrant children so to speak. Monika:  What impact did this background have for your music? Kutlu:  Well, the important thing is, it was the reason why we started with rap. If I had told my dad, “Dad, I want to make music, I need a guitar or a bass,” you know, everything was a bit more expensive back then, he would have replied, “Yes, you’ll get your guitar, but only once we are back in Turkey.” We actually had a packed suitcase in our apartment. This was the first suitcase we wanted to go back with, well that at least my parents wanted to go back with. So, you never really made yourself at home here, also mentally because you always thought that you would go back one day. It only stopped when I graduated from high school, when my brother married and my nephew was born. That’s when it occurred to everybody that there will be no going back and that everything was nothing but an illusion. You always thought you were going back one day. At home, you had to follow the Turkish rules. Outside, you had to be German. However, you never fully met the expectations of either culture. Someone would always tell you, you don’t fully belong, there is something wrong with you. And then rap came to Germany. A musical style informed by black people, by Hispanics. You only

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needed a piece of paper and a beat or beatboxing and you were set. It does not matter where you’re from, which religion you are and whether there is a way back or not. This was our island, our culture of young people for young people, our way of being able to tell what pisses you off. In 91 we recorded our first song “Stop,” a song against racism. Now it’s 2018 and our environment has not allowed us to change much. People keep telling us our music is melancholic. Not knowing where you are from is still part of us. And it’s our task to make sure that our kids do not experience this anymore. I just got back from Turkey and you simply feel this. You’re here in Germany and you say, “Hey, I am looking forward to Turkey, and seeing friends and family.” And when you’re there you say, “It’s about time to go back.” You’re always torn. I see it as a wealth but it is also difficult. Difficult because people treat you accordingly. This is why we started with rap. It was our way of speaking our minds, showing that we are no longer marginalized. We used art because if we told you this, you’d get bored. With music it’s easy. And access was easy. Monika:  Today you are known as a very political band. How did you politicize yourselves? Kutlu:  We were always against racism, discrimination and exclusion. But in fact, when we started out, we were not explicitly political. Our lyrics had homophobic and sexist lines, without us actually being aware of it. And over time, with conversations and dealing with our own history, this changed. So did the perception of our parents. For us, they had been yes-​sayers for the longest time. We said, “They kneel down, they accept everything and do not fight back.” And then we joined Kanak Attak, a network of artists, journalists, authors, and migrants, who represented the history of migration from their perspective. And we saw this video of the Ford Strike1 and thought, wow! Monika:  Did your father join the Ford Strike? Kutlu:  My father worked at Ford but he joined the company in 1976, three years after the strike. He felt let down by the unions. He repeatedly said that. My mother went on strike at Ronson2 so that she would get a pay rise of one German mark per hour. When I joined Kanak Attak I realized that my parents are by no means yes-​sayers and if, there was only one reason for it: us. I remember sitting at the table with my parents. I said, “The Germans are pissing me off. They look at you and immediately put you in a box.” My father was sitting there and I was just about to head to work. “Like a robot,” I continued, “Look at us, it’s five in the morning, I am going to work, you are going to work, what’s that all about?” And then he said, “You should be glad. Do you know what would have happened had we stayed in Turkey? Do you think you would have all of this? The university education? We have enough to eat here, we are fine.” And I replied, “Yes, but you don’t understand what they’re saying! We understand every word and we have to react!” And then he said, “You know, sometimes not understanding, whether intentional or unintentional, is a great virtue and a key to happiness.” This was our everyday struggle. Then we finally started asking our parents how they had come here. We did not know anything. In fact, we were the ignorant ones, not our parents. That’s how we became more and more political and got into the labor movement. We were incredibly lucky that people talked to us and didn’t judge us. We were at a festival here in Cologne and I had this text –​not because I am a nationalist –​“Ne mutlu türküm diyene,” “How lucky you are to call yourself a Turk.” That’s how it started and then I went into this sermon against racism. This older guy walked up to me, “Don’t do this, Kutlu! Not here!” This was my first encounter with the Antifa. He talked to me, and I said, “Yes, I completely understand that!” I didn’t perform the song. The same with Beats against Fascism. We had

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this song called “In dein Arsch dummer Junge” (lit. In your ass stupid boy). We really rocked and when we got off the stage Milto, he’s a theater director now and also used to be part of Kanak Attak, walked up to me, “Let me introduce this guy here, he wants to talk to you.” And as we were sitting around the table he goes, “You’re a great band, your messages are great but what you consider punishment is love to me.” We were like, “What?” We did not get what he was trying to tell us. And he went on, “In your ass stupid boy. I’m gay. For me that’s love but you consider it punishment or a dishonor.” And we were like, “Yes, he’s right.” And we talked for about two hours. After this, we changed the lyrics to “In your ear stupid boy, hardcore in your ear stupid boy.” But after the third show we realized this is not working. We still knew the old lines and the audience too. And that’s when we stopped playing it for good. Despite the fact that it was the best beat on the record and everyone envied us for it. That’s how we engaged in conversations with people and opened up. We didn’t accept everything, though. It wasn’t like we had to chum up. That’s how we became political. But we are not just a political band. We are a band but we are political people. That’s a big difference. You don’t have to make political songs as a political band, as a political person. There are also many people who write political songs and there is nothing political about their attitude. I don’t condemn this, but there’s this gap. Monika:  Were you in any way affected by the xenophobic attacks that took place in Germany in the early 1990s?3 Rostock-​Lichtenhagen, Mölln and so on? Kutlu:  In this regard, we were like many others, I guess. Rostock-​Lichtenhagen, Hoyerswerda, we found it unsettling but for us it was a televised event. We released the song “Stop,” which is about the attacks. It came out in 1992, we recorded it end of 91. That’s when Hoyerswerda and later Rostock-​Lichtenhagen happened. But to be honest, we weren’t personally affected. It was more of an artistic approach. And then the house in Mölln was torched and we thought, oh shit! Those are Turks. Suddenly this felt much closer. Of course, this is ridiculous but that’s the way we were, I mean, I was young. When the attack in Solingen happened, it was suddenly in front of our doorstep. We went out to the streets, to the highway, the cities. In retrospect we did not always channel our anger in the right way but I still think it was important. The feeling of helplessness that it is happening again and again and nobody is doing anything about it made us incredibly angry. Of course, this had an impact on our music. I believe it had an impact on everyone who made music during that time, except for the Fantastische 4.4 Did I just diss them? A little critique. That’s okay, too. (Laughs) They don’t have to do that. Monika:  Have you experienced racism yourself? Kutlu:  Yes. Not more or less than others. There’s this story: I was in the day care after school. At that time there was no all-​day school, so you went to the day care after school. As we’re sitting there, eating –​we had lentil soup that day –​our caregiver comes and says, “From today on we pray!” Yes, of course, we pray, no problem. I open my hands to pray just as a Muslim does and he says, “No, you pray like a Christian!” I went, “No, man, we can pray but I pray like a Muslim!” I was 11 or 12 years old. Then he said, “If you don’t pray like a Christian, you won’t get anything to eat.” I don’t give a fuck! And then my Turkish friends said, “Come on, pray like a Christian so we can finally eat!” (Laughs) I did not care if he wanted to teach me or discipline me, it was all about the way he treated me. We never had to pray before, so why now? I got up and left. And then I sat on the wall in front of our house and waited. My father came home at 4:30 in the afternoon and asked: “What happened?”

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I  told him everything, and he said, “Give me five minutes.” He drove away, came back, I don’t know what he said or what he did, but after that the caregiver always crossed to the other side of the street when he saw me. These things happened but they did not affect my everyday life. This would be bad. But they exist. What bothers me much more is that my primary school teacher could not imagine me going to grammar school. And then I went to grammar school and to university! However, it really motivated me to show everyone that I can do it. And that’s what I blame young people for today. For not making an effort. There are no equal opportunities but this also applies to many German families with a weak socio-​economic background. There is no such thing as equal opportunities but you have to make the best of it. My mother and especially my father had a strong impact on me. That’s why I have always kept a day job. I never solely relied on music. It’s not easy to drive back from Munich at night and start working at 9 in the morning the next day. But for me this is necessary in order to do my art happily and seriously! Monika:  In your music, you speak up against racism and fascism. What is the power of music in this regard? Kutlu:  I simply believe that culture is beautiful. It flatters the soul. The same with paintings graffiti, theater … There is this sensitivity, it’s not finger-​wagging. I believe if you keep talking about it, it will sound like a sermon at some point. You quickly start to like hearing yourself talking. This can happen to you as an artist as well but I think it’s easier to reach people. Well for us, I am talking about myself here. There are people who talk to you and you can listen to them for 10 hours. For me, music is a better mode of communication. With music, with the melody and the artistic work you’re on the same plane with your audience. You sing and express your feelings and people say, “Ok, yes, I am with you, I feel the same –​or maybe I don’t.” And we’re happy to convey this artistically. But does it have greater significance than everyday work? No! I am very lucky to be in a position to make art the way I feel it, so that others can feel it, too. And it is nice to have a political message but still be able to flatter the soul and to party. This is part of it. Politics should also be about partying, and not always about educating people. Without making fun of it or making it appear crude. But this is the artist’s job! Monika:  How would you describe your relationship to Germany? Kutlu:  This is my home. I mean, I live here. But place is irrelevant, it is all about the people who are here. Germany would not mean anything to me if it wasn’t for the people around me. Turkey would not mean anything to me if the people who are there, and who I live with, did not exist. If I didn’t feel comfortable. All my commitment here in Germany to change my environment and make it better, I would not do this if I didn’t care about Germany, the people in Germany. This is the place where my parents got along. This is the place of my childhood. I remember it. It’s a part of me. Especially the city of Cologne. I mean, I have never moved away from Cologne. Which is good. It is my home but in the same way Istanbul is my home, and Naples used to be my home for three months. As I said it is always about the people. You can live in the most beautiful place on earth and still not feel happy because people do not relate to you and you don’t have anything in common. What is the use of the place, then? Monika:  Do you see yourself as German? Kutlu:  I’m from Cologne. I simply believe I am from Cologne, I am a part of Germany. At the same time, I am a citizen of Istanbul and also belong to Turkey. It’s again the personal

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connections. As soon as you have a personal connection, you belong somewhere. But German? I still have the Turkish passport, that’s really funny. People said, “Yes, then you are a Turk after all.” And I replied, “Yes, possibly. But I might be from Cologne after all.” (Laughs) I don’t worry about this. I can feel like a Turk, I can feel like a Kurd, I can feel like a German, I can feel like an Italian. You know, we were in Cuba, and I felt like a Cuban for two weeks, period. Sometimes I identify as German, sometimes I don’t want to have anything to do with it. That actually shows that we have arrived here. But I haven’t asked myself in a long time, whether I’m German or not. I am from Cologne. Monika:  This is actually a difficult topic for many. For me, too. It’s hard to separate German identity from the country’s history and the Nazi period. Kutlu:  I would like to quote Esther Bejarano here: “It is not your fault but if you don’t pay attention to what’s happening in the present, then you’re guilty.” Monika:  I read this interview where you said that in the 1990s you thought that in 20 years you would no longer have to rap about racism. This of course did not happen. How do you see the development in the past two decades? Kutlu:  That was the naivety of youth! (Laughs) When we started with Esther in 2008, there was no PEGIDA,5 AfD,6 Charlie Hebdo, or IS. And then there was the NSU7. So much happened in the past years, this was just a utopian idea. It is not that everything got worse. Rostock-​Lichtenhagen and Hoyerswerda did not happen in 2018. But what’s worrying right now is that you realize the extent to which it is ingrained in the authorities. It is now at the center of society, it has become visible. Jan, Chaoze One,8 told me after the NSU: “You’ve been rapping about this for years and then suddenly it turns out that everything is even worse than you thought.” It is this entanglement. There is this deafening silence and you fight against it but you realize how hard it is right now to fight it. It is also the media, you know. Someone posts something on Facebook and suddenly millions of people know about it. It’s the same with sexualized violence against women and children. It also existed in the past but now it is much more visible because of digital media. The brutalization of society has increased. I believe in the past people were more empathic. When I see people in Dresden’s market square screaming, “Drown, drown!” when women and children are drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. People are dying! Hatred is also saying, “I am entitled to my opinion, aren’t I?” At the same time more and more eyewitnesses of World War II and the Holocaust are dying. You simply don’t know what is going to happen in the future. However, is it worse than before? No. It has to motivate you to continue. You cannot get it out of people’s heads. You can only get them to open up. Those whose thoughts are not yet poisoned and who dare to speak up. And those are the majority. We are still the majority right now. But if we prefer to be silent, I do not know how this is going to end. Monika:  When did you actually start dealing with the memory of the Nazi past and memory culture in Germany? Kutlu:  We covered the Nazi period in school, of course and I  also took up history in university. I always found it interesting how there is a red thread from the period after World War I to the Nazi period and what happened during the Nazi period. I read many books about this. But it actually started with a rap workshop. The kids had this book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. We selected passages and turned them into a rap. It was the part where the son of the SS chief officer is talking to the Jewish boy in the concentration camp on the

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other side of the fence. The former says: “My father has several stars on his uniform,” and the Jewish boy goes, “My father has only one.” We turned this into a rap. At about the same time, I got contacted by the DGB, the German Trade Union Confederation and their campaign Schlauer statt Rechts (lit. smarter instead of right-​wing). Their goal was to modernize memory work. I suggested, “Let’s rap diaries, let’s rap letters!” That’s when I really started engaging with memory work. I also remember the series Holocaust, the film that caused an uproar in Germany. It was 11:30 at night during school vacations. I see the flames and then in large letters HOLOCAUST. My dad turned to me, “Off to bed!” I was still young, really young. I recall myself sitting in front of the TV not knowing what Holocaust means. After we read about it in school and saw films, this came back to my mind. Monika:  How did the collaboration with Auschwitz survivor Esther Bejarano come about? Kutlu:  In 2007, Antonia9 of the DGB youth organization approached me and told me about their plans to start the campaign Schlauer statt Rechts. Their goal was to make memory work more accessible to youths, and to educate about music of the far right, Nazi symbols and structures. And this should involve artists who fight back. She asked me, “How do you imagine memory work?” And I replied, “Lets rap letters and diaries. This is today’s mouthpiece.” And I said, “I already did this with The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, with Brecht, and I cannot hurt anyone doing this. But with texts like that, it could happen that someone says is he mocking us? Is he relativizing what happened?” That’s when I realized I needed someone who helps me and tells me when I am going too far. I imagined sitting down with someone and the person would tell me: “This text is okay and this one isn’t.” Then I heard that Esther and her children are already doing something similar with their band Coincidence. That she is a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp, takes part in educational activities and goes into schools. I asked myself how can I possibly get in touch with Esther Bejarano? Then a friend of mine organized a concert with Coincidence and gave me the phone number of her son Joram. I rang him up and he said, “No, I cannot imagine this. I am not interested.” But our lyrics finally convinced him. We recorded three songs and sent them to him. And he said, “Yes, the lyrics are special, you can give my mom a call.” I called Esther and she went, “Why is the Mafia calling me?” And I said, “We are a music group and we have a stupid band name.” I was about to play a solo gig at the Flora in Hamburg on March 7, 2008 and I told her, I would visit her on Sunday. We met and listened to each other’s music. We started out with six songs and now we have two and a half albums. We are celebrating our tenth anniversary on September 1st. I really believe that people who belong together will eventually find each other. In our case it is very intense. Never had I thought that we’d be on stage with Esther for 10 years. That we’d travel the world together. Not even my wildest dreams would have been close to what it’s like right now. It was a match. We knew it after our first joint studio session when she said, “Never before have people expressed so well what I felt at that time.” We knew that something on a personal level was happening here. Not musically, not politically, but emotionally! Monika:  What are the key themes in your music? Kutlu:  Humanity. And ultimately what hatred can lead to. Exclusion. Where it can lead and what we can do against it. Humanity and a smile. Resistance also needs laughter. It has to win people over and not only teach them. You can accomplish much more with a smile. We all have our prejudices, each one of us. But being aware of these and fighting these and also openly conveying this struggle, that is at the heart of our cooperation.

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Monika: With Bejarano and Microphone Mafia you follow a very interesting approach, taking historically significant songs and reworking them into new compositions. What’s behind this? Kutlu:  This was the underlying idea of the whole thing. Taking older texts and reworking them. We were really lucky that Esther was singing these songs at that time. We took the CD Per la Vita by Coincidence and reworked the songs into rap versions. For the second album, we slightly changed our approach. We took our own Microphone Mafia songs. We tried bringing the past fights and struggles into the here and now. The original songs can be applied one-​to-​one to the current situation and are still up to date. And we just recorded four new songs. We picked songs that have a special importance to Esther’s life, our lives. To our shared life. There is Esther’s favorite song “Das Lied des Weibs des Nazisoldaten,” the song of the Nazi soldier’s wife. Then we took on the great challenge to record the song “Du hast Glück bei den Frauen Bel Ami.” Esther was admitted to the girl’s orchestra in Auschwitz with that song. We deliberated for quite a while what we could rap about. The song is basically a love song, a very charming song. And we rap about what the song meant for Esther, its importance for her life. Then there is “Krazni.” She sang this song with the Ukrainian prisoners at Ravensbrück concentration camp, when they manipulated the electronic chips for Siemens. The last song was written by Microphone Mafia and Joram. It’s for Joram’s grandchild. Monika:  Now to my last question. On stage, you often stress that you consider yourself an antifascist. What does antifascism mean to you personally? Kutlu:  Advocating for humanity. For me antifascism stands against any kind of exclusion. Antifascism means standing up against any form of discrimination, including mockery. When someone’s been made fun of, this is not considered fascist but someone who’s being made fun of all of the time won’t lead a happy life. Really any form of discrimination, be it because of sexual orientation, gender identity and so on. I mean it is 2018 and we are still discussing whether women should have equal rights. It is about humanity, not only on a political level but also in everyday life. Cologne, August 24, 2018 Notes 1 The Ford Strike was a major strike at the Ford automotive plant in Cologne, lasting from August 24 to August 29, 1973. Migrant workers, mostly of Turkish descent, laid down their work to protest the layoff of around 300 Turkish workers and general working conditions of migrant workers. 2 The company Ronson was a manufacturer of lighters. 3 Hoyerswerda, Rostock-​Lichtenhagen, Solingen and Mölln were part of a series of xenophobic attacks that took place shortly after the German reunification. 4 The Fantatische Vier (also Fanta 4) are a well-​known German hip hop group, founded in 1986. 5 Pegida (short for Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, lit. Patriotic Europeans against Islamization of the occident) is a racist, xenophobic and an anti-​Islam organization. Since 2014 they regularly host rallies, especially in their mainstay, the city of Dresden. 6 The Alternative für Deutschland (short AfD, lit. Alternative for Germany) is a German right wing party founded in 2013. Over the past years they have steadily gained seats in federal parliaments as well as the Bundestag. 7 The Nationalsozialistische Untergrund (short NSU, lit. National Socialist Underground) was a German neo-​Nazi terror organization who committed several xenophobic murders and bombings between 2000 and 2007. The attacks left ten people dead, among them Turks, Kurds, a Greek citizen and a German policewoman. Despite surveillance by

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 Interview with Kutlu Yurtseven   •   215 the Federal Office for Constitutional Protection, the group evaded law enforcement for a long time. Murders were blamed on the Turkish mafia, victims were treated as perpetrators. The investigations were characterized by major failure and possibly involvement of the authorities. Up to the present day the number of people who were part of the network remains unknown. 8 Jan Hertel, known as Chaoze One, is a German Rapper, active against racism and xenophobia. He has frequently collaborated with Microphone Mafia. 9 Antonia Kühn was the Youth Secretary of the German Trade Union Youth (DGB-​Jugend).

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Further Reading

Adelt, Ulrich. 2012a. “Machines with a Heart: German Identity in the Music of Can and Kraftwerk.” Popular Music and Society 35 (3): 359–​74. Adelt, Ulrich. 2012b. “Stunde Null: Postwar German Identity in the Music of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 24 (1): 39–​56. Adelt, Ulrich. 2016. Krautrock: German Music in the Seventies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ahlers, Michael, and Christoph Jacke, eds. 2017. Perspectives on German Popular Music. New York: Routledge. Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2010. “Multilingualism, Ethnicity and Genre in Germany’s Migrant Hip Hop.” In Languages of Global Hip Hop, edited by Marina Terkourafi, 19–​43. London: Continuum. Applegate, Celia. 1992. “What is German Music? Reflections on the Role of Art in the Creation of the Nation.” German Studies Review 15: 21–​32. Applegate, Celia, and Pamela Potter, eds. 2002. Music and German National Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Awosusi, Anita, ed. 1997. Die Musik der Sinti und Roma. Band 2:  Der Sinti-​Jazz. Heidelberg:  Dokumentations-​und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma. Badenoch, Alexander. 2008. Voices in Ruins: West German Radio Across the 1945 Divide. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Barber-​Kersovan, Alenka. 2003. “German Nazi Bands: Between Provocation and Repression.” In Policing Pop, edited by Martin Cloonan and Reebee Garofalo, 186–​204. Philadelphia: Temple Univ Press. Baumann, Max Peter. 2000. “‘Wir gehen die Wege ohne Grenzen…’ –​Zur Musik der Roma und Sinti.” In Music, Language and Literature of the Roma and Sinti, edited by Max Peter Baumann, 461–​77. Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung. Bauschinger, Sigrid, ed. 2000. Die freche Muse. The impudent muse. Literarisches und politisches Kabarett von 1901 bis 1999. Tübingen: Francke. Becker, Tobias. 2013. “Die Anfänge der Schlagerindustrie:  Intermedialität und wirtschaftliche Verflechtung vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg.” Lied und populäre Kultur /​Song and Popular Culture, 58: 11–​39 Bergmeier, Horst, and Rainer E. Lotz. 2007. Booklet, “Der Jazz in Deutschland. Teil 2. Die Swing-​Jahre” (3 x compact disc). Holste-​Oldendorf: Bear Family Records. Binas, Susanne. 1996. “Die ‘anderen Bands’ und ihre Kassettenproduktionen –​Zwischen organsiertem Kulturbetrieb und selbstorgansierten Kulturformen.” In Rockmusik und Politik. Analysen, Interviews und Dokumente; Forschungen zur DDR-​Geschichte, edited by Peter Wicke and Lothar Müller, 48–​62. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. Binas, Susanne. 2003. “Nach den Regeln von Märkten und Wettbewerb  –​Musikproduzenten im Osten” In Labor Ostdeutschland –​Kulturelle Praxis im gesellschaftlichen Wandel, edited by Kristina Bauer-​Volke and Ina Dietzsch, 120–​34. Halle/​Bonn: Kulturstiftung des Bundes und Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Binas-​Preisendörfer, Susanne. 2012. “In a Musical No-​Man’s-​Land –​Unheard-​of Productions on the Fringes of the Rock-​ Culture.” In Sound Exchange –​Experimentelle Musikkulturen in Mittelosteuropa, edited by Carsten Seiffarth, Carsten Stabenow, and Golo Föllmer, 72–​98. Saarbrücken: PFAU. Binas-​Preisendörfer, Susanne. 2018. “Klangliche Repräsentationen des Mauerfalls.” In Klang als Geschichtsmedium, edited by Anna Langenbruch, 183–​217. Bielefeld: transcript. Birdsall, Carolyn. 2012. Nazi-​Soundscapes:  Sound, Technology and Urban Space in Germany, 1933–​1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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 Further Reading   •   217 Blühdorn, Annette. 2003. Pop and Poetry –​Pleasure and Protest: Udo Lindenberg, Konstantin Wecker, and the Tradtion of German Cabaret. Oxford: Peter Lang. Bohlman, Philip V. 1994. “Music, Modernity, and the Foreign in the New Germany.” Modernism/​Modernity 1: 121–​52. Botsch, Gideon, Jan Raabe, and Christoph Schulze, eds. 2019. Rechtsrock  –​Aufstieg und Wandel neonazistischer Jugendkultur am Beispiel Brandenburgs. Berlin: be.bra. Bottà, Giacomo. 2006. “Interculturalism and New Russians in Berlin.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 8 (2). http://​docs.lib.purdue.edu/​clcweb/​vol8/​iss2/​5/​ (accessed June 17, 2007). Bretschneider, Simon. 2018. Tanzmusik in der DDR  –​Dresdner Musiker zwischen Kulturpolitik und internationalem Musikmarkt, 1945–​1961. Bielefeld: transcript. Brown, Timothy S. 2006. “ ‘Keeping it Real’ in a Different ’Hood –​(African-​)Americanization and Hip Hop in Germany.” In The Vinyl Ain’t Final –​Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, edited by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 137–​50. London: Pluto Press. Büsser, Martin. 2001. Wie klingt die neue Mitte? Fulda: Ventil. Büsser, Martin. 2002. Popmusik. 2nd ed. Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Chaker, Sarah. 2014. Schwarzmetall und Todesblei. Über den Umgang mit Musik in den Black-​und Death-​Metal-​Szenen Deutschlands. Berlin: Archiv der Jugendkulturen Verlag. Cope, Julian. 1996. Krautrocksampler  –​One Head’s Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik  –​1968 Onwards. 2nd ed. Löhrbach: Head Heritage. Currid, Brian. 2006. A National Acoustics: Music and Mass Publicity in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dedekind, Henning. 2008. Krautrock: Underground, LSD und kosmische Kuriere. Höfen: Hannibal. Dehnel, Gerd, and Christian Hentschel, eds. 2008. Es brennt der Wald … Die Rockszene im Ostblock. Berlin:  Verlag Neues Leben. Denk, Felix, and Sven von Thülen. 2014a. Der Klang der Familie:  Berlin, Techno und die Wende. Berlin:  Suhrkamp Taschenbuch. Denk, Felix, and Sven von Thülen. 2014b. Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall. Norderstedt: BoD. Dieckmann, Christoph, and Harald Hauswald. 2018. Like A Rolling Stone. Berlin: Jaron Verlag. Diederichsen, Diedrich. 2014. Über Pop-​Musik. Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch. Dietrich, Wolfgang. 2002. Samba, Samba: Eine politikwissenschaftliche Untersuchung zur fernen Erotik Lateinamerikas in den Schlagern des 20. Jahrhunderts. Strasshof: Vier-​Viertel Verlag. Dornbusch, Christian, and Jan Raabe, eds. 2002. RechtsRock  –​Bestandsaufnahme und Gegenstrategien. Münster: Unrast. Dyck, Kirsten. 2017. Reichsrock –​The International Web of White-​Power and Neo-​Nazi Hate Music. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Elflein, Dietmar. 1998. “From Krauts with Attitudes to Turks with Attitudes:  Some Aspects of Hip-​Hop History in Germany.” Popular Music 17 (3): 255–​65. Elflein, Dietmar. 2015. “Can’t Get Laid in Germany  –​Rammstein’s ‘Pussy’ (2009).” In Song Interpretation in 21st-​ Century Pop Music, edited by Ralf von Appen, André Doehring, Dietrich Helms, and Allan F. Moore, 97–​113. Farnham: Ashgate. Elflein, Dietmar. 2018. “ ‘Shame Shame Shame!’ Deutsche Coverversionen und Bearbeitungen US-​Amerikanischer Soul-​ und Funkmusik 1958–​1975.” In Pop Weiter Denken –​Neue Anstöße aus Jazz Studies, Philosophie, Musiktheorie und Geschichte, edited by Ralf von Appen and André Doehring, 171–​93. Bielefeld: transcript. Endreß, Alexander. 2013. “Pop-​, Rock-​und Jazzausbildung in Deutschland –​Möglichkeiten, Qualifizierungsziele und Perspektiven für junge Musikerinnen und Musiker.” Deutsches Musikinformationszentrum. www.miz.org/​static_​de/​ themenportale/​einfuehrungstexte_​pdf/​04_​JazzRockPop/​endress.pdf (accessed February 6, 2015). Fechner, Eberhard. 1988. Die Comedian Harmonists: Sechs Lebensläufe. Weinheim: Quadriga-​Verlag. Fenemore, Mark. 2009. Sex, Thugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll:  Teenage Rebels in Cold-​War East Germany. Oxford:  Berghahn Books. Gebesmair, Andreas. 2015. “When Balkan became Popular:  The Role of Cultural Intermediaries in Communicating Regional Musics.” In Speaking in Tongues –​Pop lokal global, edited by Dietrich Helms and Thomas Phleps, 89–​102. Bielefeld: transcript. Gehlke, David E. 2017. Damn the Machine: The Story of Noise Records. Pittsburgh: Deliberation Press. Geisthövel, Alexa, and Bodo Mrozek, eds. 2014. Popgeschichte, vol. 1: Konzepte und Methoden. Bielefeld: transcript.

218

218   •   Further Reading Görlich, Christopher. 2006. “Capri, Constanza und der verlorene Ort  –​DDR-​ Schlagertexte über ferne Welten.” Zeitgeschichte-​online. www.zeitgeschichte-​online.de/​thema/​capri-​constanza-​und-​der-​verlorene-​ort (accessed February 19, 2015). Grabowsky, Ingo, and Martin Lücke. 2008. Die 100 Schlager des Jahrhunderts:  Vorgestellt von Martin Lücke und Ingo Grabowsky. Hamburg: EVA –​Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Grabowsky, Ingo, and Martin Lücke. 2010. Schlager! Eine musikalische Zeitreise von A bis Z. Erlangen: Edition Spielbein. Greve, Martin. 2003. Die Musik der imaginären Türkei –​Musik und Musikleben im Kontext der Migration aus der Türkei in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler. Greve, Martin. 2011. “Migration von Musik aus der Türkei nach Deutschland.” Heinrich Böll Stiftung. https://​heimatkunde. boell.de/​2011/​11/​18/​migration-​von-​musik-​aus-​der-​tuerkei-​nach-​deutschland (accessed March 14, 2017). Hall, M. M., et al. 2016. Beyond No Future: Cultures of German Punk. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Haring, Hermann:  1984, Rock aus Deutschland, West. Von d.  Rattles bis Nena. 2 Jahrzehnte Heimatklang. Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt. Hecken, Thomas, and Marcus S. Kleiner, eds. 2017. Handbuch Popkultur. Stuttgart: Metzler. Helms, Dietrich, and Thomas Phleps, eds. 2014. Geschichte Wird Gemacht  –​Zur Historiographie populärer Musik. Bielefeld: transcript. Henn-​Memmesheimer, Beate, and Georg Albert. 2009. “ ‘Russendisko’. Motive und Effekte eines innovativen Tauschs.” In Russkoe v nemetskikh diskursakh, nemetskoe v russkikh diskursakh:  Materialy rossiisko-​germanskogo seminara 27 iiunia–​3 iiulia 2009, edited by Olga Kafanova and Nina Razumova, 7–​35. Tomsk:  Tomskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet (TGU). Herbst, Jan-​Peter. 2019. “The Formation of the West German Power Metal Scene and the Question of a ‘Teutonic’ Sound.” Metal Music Studies 5 (2): 201–​23. Herbst, Jan-​Peter. 2020. “From Bach to Helloween: ‘Teutonic’ Stereotypes in the History of Popular Music and Heavy Metal.” Metal Music Studies 6 (1): 87–​108. Heymann, Nadine. 2014. Visual Kei. Körper und Geschlecht in einer translokalen Subkultur. Bielefeld: transcript. Hindrichs, Thorsten. 2007. “Chasing the ‘magic formula’ for success: Ralph Siegel and the Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson.” In A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, edited by Ivan Raykoff and Robert Deam Tobin, 49–​59. Farnham: Ashgate. Holert, Tom, and Mark Terkessidis, ed. 1996. Mainstream der Minderheiten. Pop in der Kontrollgesellschaft. Berlin: Edition ID-​Archiv. Hornberger, Barbara. 2011. Geschichte wird gemacht:  Die Neue Deutsche Welle. Eine Epoche deutscher Popmusik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Hornberger, Barbara. 2014. “Geschichte wird gemacht. Eine kulturpoetische Untersuchung von ‘Ein Jahr (Es geht voran)’.” In Geschichte Wird Gemacht –​Zur Historiographie populärer Musik, edited by Dietrich Helms and Thomas Phleps, 77–​99. Bielefeld: transcript. Hügel, Hans-​Otto. 2007. Lob des Mainstream. Zu Begriff und Geschichte von Unterhaltung und Populärer Kultur. Köln: Herbert von Halem. Hüser, Dietmar, ed. 2017. Populärkultur transnational. Lesen, Hören, Sehen und Erleben im Europa der langen 1960er Jahre, Bielefeld: transcript. Jockwer, Axel. 2004. Unterhaltungsmusik im Dritten Reich. PhD diss., Universität Konstanz. Kaden, Christian. 1993. Des Lebens wilder Kreis –​Musik im Zivilisationsprozeß. Kassel: Bärenreiter. Kahnke, Corinna. 2013. “Transnationale Teutonen:  Rammstein Representing the Berlin Republic.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 25 (2): 185–​97. Karnik, Olaf, and Helmut Philipps. 2007. Reggae in Deutschland. Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch. Kater, Michael H. 1992. Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press. Kaya, Ayhan. 2001. ‘Sicher in Kreuzberg’ –​Constructing Diasporas –​Turkish Hip-​Hop Youth in Berlin. Bielefeld: transcript. Kaya, Verda. 2015. HipHop Zwischen Istanbul und Berlin  –​Eine (deutsch-​)türkische Jugendkultur im lokalen und transnationalen Beziehungsgeflecht. Bielefeld: transcript. Knauer, Wolfram. 2019. ‘Play yourself, man!’ Die Geschichte des Jazz in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Reclam. Koch, Arne, and Sei Harris. 2009. “The Sound of Yourself Listening: Faust and the Politics of the Unpolitical.” Popular Music and Society 32 (5) (Special Issue: Krautrock): 579–​94. Köhlings, Ellen, and Pete Lilly. 2012. “The Evolution of Reggae in Europe with a Focus on Germany.” Global Reggae, edited by Carolyn Cooper, 69–​93. Kingston: Canoe Press.

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 Further Reading   •   219 Köhlings, Ellen, and Pete Lilly. 2013. “From One Love to One Hate?  –​Europe’s Perception of Jamaican Homophobia Expressed in Song Lyrics.” In International Reggae: Current and Future Trends in Jamaican Popular Music, edited by Donna Hope, 2–​29. Kingston: Pelican Publishing. Kosnick, Kira. 2007. Migrant Media –​Turkish Broadcasting and Multicultural Politics in Berlin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kotsopoulos, Nikos. 2010. Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy. London: Black Dog. Kucher, Katharina. 2007. “Vom Flüchtlingslager in die Konzertsäle: Die Geschichte des Don Kosaken Chores.” Osteuropa 57 (5): 57–​68. Larkey, Edward. 2006. “Hedging their Bets: East German Rock Music and German Unification.” Zeitgeschichte-​online. www.zeitgeschichte-​online.de/​t hema/​hedging-​t heir-​b ets-​e ast-​german-​rock-​music-​and-​german-​unification (accessed February 19, 2015). Larkey, Edward. 2007. Rotes Rockradio:  populäre Musik und die Kommerzialisierung des DDR-​Rundfunks. Berlin:  Lit Verlag. Leggewie, Claus, and Erik Meyer, eds. 2017. Global Pop: Das Buch zur Weltmusik. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler. Leitner, Olaf. 1983. Rockszene DDR:  Aspekte einer Massenkultur im Sozialismus. Reinbek bei Hamburg:  Rowohlt Taschenbuch. Leitner, Olaf. 1994. “Rock Music in the GDR: An Epitaph.” In Rocking the State: Rock Music and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia, edited by Sabrina Petra Ramet, 17–​40. Boulder: Westview Press. Littlejohn, John T. 2009. “Introduction.” Popular Music and Society 32 (5) (Special Issue: Krautrock): 577–​8. Littlejohn, John T. 2009. “Kraftwerk: Language, Lucre, and Loss of Identity.” Popular Music and Society 32 (5) (Special Issue: Krautrock): 635–​53. Littlejohn, John T. and Michael T. Putnam, eds. 2013. Rammstein on Fire: New Perspectives on the Music and Performances. London: McFarland & Company. Loh, Hannes, and Murat Güngör. 2002. Fear Of A  Kanak Planet  –​HipHop zwischen Weltkultur und Nazi-​ Rap. Höfen: Hannibal Verlag. Lotz, Rainer E. 1982. Hot Dance Bands in Germany, vol. 2: The 1920s. Menden: Der Jazzfreund. Love, Nancy S. 2016. Trendy Fascism –​White Power Music and the Future of Democracy. New York: SUNY Press. Maas, Georg, and Hartmut Reszel. 1998. “Whatever Happened to…: The Decline and Renaissance of Rock in the Former GDR.” Popular Music 17 (3): 267–​77. Maase, Kaspar. 1992. BRAVO Amerika:  Erkundigungen zur Jugendkultur der Bundesrepublik in den fünfziger Jahren. Hamburg: Junius. Mader, Matthias, Otger Jeske, and Arno Hofmann. 1998. Heavy Metal –​Made in Germany. Berlin: I.P. Verlag. Mendívil, Julio. 2008. Ein musikalisches Stück Heimat:  Ethnologische Beobachtungen zum deutschen Schlager. Bielefeld: transcript. Miller-​Idriss, Cynthia. 2017. The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mills, Ted. 2016. “Watch the Proto-​Punk Band The Monks Sow Chaos on German TV, 1966: A Great Concert Moment on YouTube.” Open Culture. www.openculture.com/​2016/​10/​the-​monks-​sow-​chaos-​on-​german-​tv-​1966.html (accessed May 19, 2017). Mohr, Tim, 2018. Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Mrozek, Bodo, Alexa Geisthövel, and Jürgen Danyel, eds. 2014. Popgeschichte: Band 2: Zeithistorische Fallstudien 1958–​ 1988. vol. 2. Bielefeld: transcript. Mrozek, Bodo. 2019. Jugend –​Pop –​Kultur: Eine transnationale Geschichte. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Mueller, Agnes C., ed. 2004. German Pop Culture –​How ‘American’ Is It? Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Nardi, Carlo. 2014. “Gateway of Sound:  Reassessing the Role of Audio Mastering in the Art of Record Production.” dancecult 6 (1): 8–​25. https://​dj.dancecult.net/​index.php/​dancecult/​index (accessed 04.08.2014). Okunew, Nikolai. 2016. “ ‘Satan Demands Total Annihilation’: Heavy Metal in the German Democratic Republic.” Metal Music Studies 2 (2): 199–​214. Pekacz, Jolanta. 1994. “Did Rock Smash the Wall? The Role of Rock in Political Transition.” Popular Music 13 (1): 41–​9. Pennay, Mark. 2001. “Rap in Germany –​The Birth of a Genre.” In Global Noise –​Rap and Hip-​hop Outside the USA, edited by Tony Mitchell, 111–​33. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

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220   •   Further Reading Pfleiderer, Martin. 2011. “Popular Music Research in German-​Speaking Countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).” IASMP@Journal. Online Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, 2 (1–​2): 46–​50. Pfleiderer, Martin. 2018. “Soul Rebels and Dubby Conquerors. Reggae and Dancehall Music in Germany in the 1990s and early 2000s.” Popular Music, 37 (1): 81–​99. Poiger, Uta G. 2000. Jazz, Rock, and Rebels:  Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press. Putnam, Michael T. 2009. “Music as a Weapon:  Reactions and Responses to RAF Terrorism in the Music of Ton Steine Scherben and their Successors in Post-​9/​11 Music.” Popular Music and Society 32 (5) (Special Issue: Krautrock): 595–​606. Putnam, Michael, and Juliane Schicker. 2014. “Straight Outta Marzahn: (Re)Constructing Communicative Memory in East Germany through Hip Hop.” Popular Music and Society 37 (1): 85–​100. Radke, Evelyn. 2005. “ ‘Russische Exotik’ –​Sovremennaia russkaia muzyka v Germanii.” In Russkaia rok-​poeziia: tekst i kontekst 8, edited by Iu.V. Domanskii, 202–​16. Tver’: Tverskoi gosudarstvennyi universitet. Ramos Flores, María Bernardete. 1997. Oktoberfest. Turismo, festa e Cultura na estação do Chopp. Florianópolis: Letras contemporáneas. Rauhut, Michael. 1993. Beat in der Grauzone. DDR-​Rock 1964–​1972  –​Politik und Alltag. Berlin:  Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf. Rauhut, Michael. 1996. “Ohr an Masse  –​Rockmusik im Fadenkreuz der Stasi.” In Rockmusik und Politik. Analysen, Interviews und Dokumente; Forschungen zur DDR-​Geschichte, edited by Peter Wicke and Lothar Müller, 28–​47. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. Rauhut, Michael. 2002. Rock in der DDR 1964 bis 1989. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Rauhut, Michael. 2017. “With God and Guitars: Popular Music, Socialism, and the Church in East Germany.” Popular Music and Society 40 (3): 292–​309. Rauhut, Michael. 2019. One Sound, Two Worlds: The Blues in a Divided Germany, 1945–​1990. New York: Berghahn Books. Reinecke, David M. 2009. “ ‘When I Count to Four…’: James Brown, Kraftwerk, and the Practice of Musical Time Keeping before Techno.” Popular Music and Society 32 (5) (Special Issue: Krautrock): 607–​16. Reinhard, Ursula. 1992. “Was und wie singt man über die Liebe in Südbrasilien? Lieder deutschstämmiger Immigranten.” In Berichte aus dem ICTM-​Nationalkomitee Deutschland XI edited by Marianne Bröcker, 155–​71. Bamberg: ICTM-​ Nationalkomitee Deutschland. Reisloh, Jens. 2011. Deutschsprachige Popmusik: Zwischen Morgenrot und Hundekot: Von den Anfängen um 1970 bis ins 21. Jahrhundert. Grundlagenwerk –​Neues Deutsches Lied (NDL). Münster: Telos Verlag. Reitsamer, Rosa. 2006. “Walk on the White Side.” In Female Consequences. Feminismus, Antirassismus, Popmusik, edited by Rosa Reitsamer and Rupert Weinzierl, 169–​79. Vienna: Löcker. Ringsmut, Martin. 2015. “Killing the distance:  Eine musikethnologische Untersuchung der Konstruktion von Nähe im Tonstudio.” In Sound und Performance: Positionen –​Methoden –​Analysen, edited by Wolf-​Dieter Ernst, Arno Mungen, Nora Niethammer, and Berenika Szymanski-​Düll, 511–​25. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. Ringsmut, Martin. 2018. “Musical Cyborgs as Social Beings –​Reflections on Popular Music Production and Translations of the Social in Two Recording Environments in Cologne.” In Darüber hinaus… Populäre Musik und Überschreitungen, edited by Stefanie Alisch, Susanne Binas-​Preisendörfer, and Werner Jauk, 149–​61. Oldenburg: BIS-​Verlag. Robb, David, ed. 2007. Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s. Rochester: Camden House. Robb, David. 2016. “Censorship, Dissent and the Metaphorical Language of GDR Rock.” In Popular Music in Eastern Europe: Breaking the Cold War Paradigm, edited by Ewa Mazierska, 109–​28. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Rutten, Ellen. 2007. “Tanz um den roten Stern –​Die Russendisko zwischen Ostalgie und SozArt.” Osteuropa 57 (5): 109–​24. Schär, Christian. 1991. Der Schlager und seine Tänze im Deutschland der 20er Jahre. Zürich: Chronos. Schiller, Melanie. 2018. Soundtracking Germany. Popular Music and National Identity. London: Rowman and Littlefield Int. Schiller, Melanie. 2020. “Heino, Rammstein and the Double-​Ironic Melancholia of Germanness.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 23 (2): 261–​80. Schmieding, Leonhard. 2014. Das ist unsere Party: HipHop in der DDR. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Schneider, Frank Apunkt. 2015. Deutschpop halt’s Maul! Fulda: Ventil. Schulze, Christoph. 2017. Etikettenschwindel  –​Die Autonomen Nationalisten zwischen Pop und Antimoderne, Freiburg: Tectum. Schutte, Sabine, ed. 1987. Ich will aber gerade vom Leben singen… Über populäre Musik vom ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert bis zum Ende der Weimarer Republik. Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch.

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 Further Reading   •   221 Schütte, Uwe, ed. 2017. German Pop Music: A Companion. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Scott, Derek B. 2019. German Operetta on Broadway and in the West End, 1900–​ 1940. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Shahan, Cyrus M. 2013. Punk Rock and German Crisis:  Adaptation and Resistance after 1977. New  York:  Palgrave Macmillan. Shryane, Jennifer. 2016. Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten: German Experimental Music. London: Routledge. Siegfried, Detlef. 2017. Time is On My Side. Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre. 2nd. ed. Göttingen: Wallstein. Sievers, Florian. 2013. “An Oral History of Electronic Music in East Germany.” Red Bull Music Academy. www. redbullmusicacademy.com/​magazine/​east-​german-​electronic-​music-​oral-​history (accessed 15.10.2013). Simmeth, Alexander. 2016. Krautrock transnational. Die Neuerfindung der Popmusik in der BRD, 1968–​ 1978. Bielefeld: transcript. Sneeringer, Julia. 2019. A Social History of Early Rock ‘n’ Roll in Germany: Hamburg from Burlesque to The Beatles, 1956–​ 69. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Solomon, Thomas. 2008. “Diverse Diasporas: Multiple Identities in ‘Turkish Rap’ in Germany.” In Music from Turkey in the Diaspora, edited by Ursula Hemetek and Hande Sağlam, 77–​88. Vienna: Institut für Volksmusikforschung und Ethnomusikologie. Stahl, Geoff, ed. 2014. Poor, But Sexy –​Reflections on Berlin Scenes. Bern: Peter Lang. Stahrenberg, Carolin. 2012. Hot Spots von Café bis Kabarett. Musikalische Handlungsräume im Berlin Mischa Spolianskys 1918–​1933. Münster: Waxmann, 162–​77. Stahrenberg, Carolin, and Nils Grosch. 2014. “The Transcultural Function of Stage, Song and Other Media: Intermediality in Berlin Popular Musical Theatre of the 1920s.” In Popular Musical Theatre in Germany and Britain, 1890–​1939, edited by Len Platt, David Linton, and Tobias Becker, 187–​200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stubbs, David. 2014. Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany. London: Faber & Faber. Teipel, Jürgen. 2012. Verschwende Deine Jugend: Ein Doku-​Roman über den deutschen Punk und New Wave. Erweiterte Fassung. Revised and expanded ed. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. Ullmaier, Johannes, 1995. Pop Shoot Pop. Über Historisierung und Kanonbildung in der Popmusik. Rüsselsheim: Verlag Frank Hofmann. Vayo, Lloyd Isaac. 2009. “What’s Old is NEU! Benjamin Meets Rother and Dinger.” Popular Music and Society 32 (5) (Special Issue: Krautrock): 617–​34. Ventsel, Aimar. 2012. “This is Not My Country, My Country is the GDR:  East German Punk and Socio-​Economic Processes After German Reunification.” Punk & Post-​Punk 1 (3): 343–​59. Verlan, Sascha, and Hannes Loh. 2002. 20 Jahre HipHop in Deutschland. Höfen: Hannibal. Vogt, Sabine. 2005. Clubräume  –​Freiräume. Musikalische Lebensentwürfe in den Jugendkulturen Berlins. Kassel: Bärenreiter. von Dirke, Sabine. 2004. “Hip-​Hop Made in Germany –​From Old School to the Kanaksta Movement.” In German Pop Culture –​How ‘American’ Is It?, edited by Agnes C. Mueller, 96–​112. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Wagner, Christoph. 2013. Der Klang der Revolte:  Die magischen Jahre des westdeutschen Musik-​ Underground. Mainz: Schott Music. Wagner, Christoph. 2017. Träume aus dem Untergrund  –​Als Beatfans, Hippies und Folkfreaks Baden-​Württemberg aufmischten. Tübingen: Silberburg Verlag. Waltz, Alexis. 2013. Nightclubbing: Berlin’s Ostgut –​Berghain Before It Was Berghain. Red Bull Music Academy. www. redbullmusicacademy.com/​magazine/​nightclubbing-​ostgut (accessed 15.10.2013). Wehn, Jan, and Davide Bortot. 2019. Könnt ihr uns hören? Eine Oral History des deutschen Rap. Berlin: Ullstein fünf. Wicke, Peter. 1992. “The Times They Are A-​Changin’: Rock Music and Political Change in East Germany.” In Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, edited by Reebee Garofalo, 81–​92. Boston: South End Press. Wicke, Peter. 1998a. “‘Born in the GDR’:  Ostrock between Ostalgia and Cultural Self-​Assertion.” Debatte. Review of Contemporary German Affairs 6 (2): 148–​56. Wicke, Peter. 1998b. Von Mozart zu Madonna. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Pop. Leipzig: Gustav Kiepenheuer. Wicke, Peter. 2011a. “Lili Marleen (Lale Andersen).” In Songlexikon. Encyclopedia of Songs, edited by Michael Fischer and Christofer Jost. www.songlexikon.de/​songs/​lilimarleen (accessed 23.10.2019). Wicke, Peter. 2011b. Rock und Pop –​Von Elvis Presley bis Lady Gaga. Wissen. München: Verlag C.H. Beck. Wicke, Peter. 2019. Rammstein. 100 Seiten. Ditzingen: Reclam.

222

222   •   Further Reading Wicke, Peter, and Lothar Müller, eds. 1996. Rockmusik und Politik. Analysen, Interviews und Dokumente. Berlin: Christoph Links. Wickström, David-​Emil. 2007. “Marusia Visits Berlin –​Cultural Flows Surrounding the Russendisko.” Musik og Forskning 31:  65–​84. Wickström, David-​Emil. 2009. “The Russendisko and Music from and of the Post-​Soviet Diaspora.” In Diasporas: Critical and Inter-​Disciplinary Perspectives, edited by Jane Fernandez, 65–​74. Oxford: Inter-​Disciplinary Press. Wickström, David-​Emil. 2014. Rocking St. Petersburg:  Transcultural Flows and Identity Politics in Post-​Soviet Popular Music. 2nd revised and expanded ed. Stuttgart: ibidem Press. Wolffram, Knud. 1992. Tanzdielen und Vergnügungspaläste. Berliner Nachtleben in den dreißiger und vierziger Jahren. Berlin: Edition Hentrich. Zaddach, Wolf-​Georg. 2018. Heavy Metal in der DDR –​Szene, Akteure, Praktiken. Bielefeld: transcript.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures. 2 Unlimited (band) 175 “80 Millionen” (song) 91, 95, 96–​7 “99 Luftballons” (song) 133 Abdurrahman 119 Abraham, Paul 42 Absurd (band) 146 Abwärts (band) 135 Accept (band) 82, 83, 84–​5 Acid House (genre) 64 Adorno, Theodor W. 122–​3, 129 Advanced Chemistry (band) 112, 133 AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) 1, 95, 96, 152n10, 212, 214n6 African American music 42, 53, 178; in Germany 128; influence of 75; influence on Krautrock 73 Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force 115 Afşar, Esin 119 AG Geige 58–​9, 60 Agostini, Dante 20 Aguirre, the Wrath of God (film) 78 Akbayram, Edip 119 Alborosie 203 “alternative” music 61 American Forces Network (AFN) 123 American music 100, 173 Americanisms 32 Americanization 74, 75, 82, 100, 122, 129 AMIGA 60, 62 Amon Düül I and II (band) 72, 73, 74, 75, 76 Anadolu rock/​Anadolu pop 115, 116, 119 And Justice for All (album) 85 Andersen, Lale 42

Angra (band) 88 “Another Night” (song) 176 Anthony, Ray 124 Anthony B. 201 antifascism 214 Antigamente era assim (album) 156–​7 anti-​Semitism 4, 5, 6, 40, 42, 43, 96, 163 “Anton aus Tirol” (song) 160 Anzilotti, Luca 179 Appetite for Destruction (album) 85 Armstrong, Louis 124 Die Ärzte (band) 63 Ash Ra Tempel (album) 77 Ash Ra Tempel (band) 69, 74, 77–​8 Ashra 77 “Atemlos” (song) 99 “Auf Uns” (song) 97n5 Avantasia (band) 86 Axer, Oliver 40, 41 Aziza-​A 117, 117 Baker, Chet 128 Baker, Josephine (“La Baker”) 32 “Balkan” music 104 Balls to the Wall (album) 83 Balzer, Jens 7–​8, 184, 192n6 Banda Cavalinho (band) 158, 160 Banda de Caneco (band) 156, 161n9 bands: Belorussian 106; dance 29, 33, 42; marching 44; military 29, 31; Russian underground 108; Soviet 104–​8; Ukrainian 106 Barberina nightclub 33 Bargeld, Blixa 90, 92, 95, 97

223

224

224   •   Index Barrett, Marcia 177 “Be Deutsch!” (video) 2–​3, 11, 12 “Be My Lover” (song) 176 “Beat im Audimax” concert series 18 beat music 49–​51 Beenie Man (band) 203 Befindlichkeitspop 95 Behind the Eight Ball (album) 84 Behren, Peter 141 Bejarano, Esther 207, 213–​14 Béla, Dajos 29, 42 Belafonte, Harry 124 Bellotte, Pete 100, 124, 177 Belorussian bands 106 Ben Chamo, Sophie Albers 3 Bendzko, Tim 95 Benites, Benito (Michael Münzing) 179 Benze, Susanne 40 Berlin 31–​3; club and disco scene 126–​8; club culture in 63–​5; Cold War in 123; Russian migration to 103, 104–​5 Berlin, Ben 43 Berlin, Specter (Eric Remberg) 7, 14n11 Berlin Love Parade 66 Berlin Wall 24–​5, 27, 58–​9, 62, 63–​5; media commemorations 65–​6 Berliner Rundfunk 123 Biermann, Wolf 59, 67n6 Big Beat 64 Billig, Michael 95 Billy’s Band (band) 106 Biodeutsche 9–​10 “Bir yabancının hayatı” (song) 113 Birkin, Jane 177 Black Bottom 32 black metal 146 Black Monk Time (album) 127 black music see African American music Black Uhuru (band) 198 Blackblood (Karakan) 113 blackfacing 129 Blind Guardian (band) 86 Blood and Honour 148 Blue Eyed Devils 147 blues masses 55 blues music 27, 43, 51; and GDR youth culture 53–​4; rock 77 “Bluesers” 52–​3, 55

Blumenau (Brazil): German music in 154, 156–​9; history as German colony 155–​6 B-​Movie –​Das wilde Westberlin (documentary) 66 Boe B. 115, 117 Bogart, Neil 178 Böhländer, Carlo 44 Böhmermann, Jan 2–​4, 11, 12 Böhse Onkelz (band) 145, 146 Boltendahl, Chris “Bolle” 86 Boney M 164, 175, 176–​7, 180, 181 “Born in the USA” (song) 93 Bounty Killer (band) 203, 204 Bourani, Andreas 95, 97n5 Bowie, David 63, 184 Brötzmann, Peter 73 Brain (label) 73, 74 Brainwash (band) 147 Braun, Oscar 31 breakdance 112, 128, 207 British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) 123 “Broadway Melody of 1936” (film musical) 44 Broder, Hendryk M. 6 Brutal Attack (band) 146 Burger, Gary 127 Burnzum project 146 Busy Signal (dance hall star) 203 Butler, Durron Maurice (Turbo B) 179 Cabaret Blauer Vogel 33 cabaret music 32, 126, 163, 166, 167, 172–​3 Cakewalk 32 Can (band) 69, 71, 74, 75 Capella (band) 175 Capitan Hollywood Project 180 Carste, Hans 41 Cartel (album) 118–​19, 118 Cartel (band) 118–​19, 118 Casablanca Records (label) 178 Casanova (musical revue) 33–​4 cassette labels 61 Cavalinho Branco (band) 156, 161n9 Cave, Nick 63 Celtic Frost (band) 87 Chameleon (album) 86 chansons: French 166, 168, 172–​3; German 163, 165–​73 Chaoze One (Jan Hertel) 212, 215n8 Charell, Erik 32, 42

225

 Index   •   225 Charleston (dance) 32, 42 Charlie Hebdo 212 Charly and his Orchestra 44 Chast’ Zhizni (album) 107 Chill Fresh (Michael Huber) 113 “Chopp Motorrad” (song) 158, 160 Chow, Rey 92 chucrute music 158 Chucrute Music (CD) 158 Cinema Bizarre (band) 191–​2, 191, 193n22 City (band) 21 Clarke, Kenny 20 classical music 17, 84, 167, 172 Club 18 (radio show) 125 club culture 63–​5 Clueso 95 Cluster (band) 73 Cocker, Joe 61 Coincidence (band) 207, 213, 214 Cold War 123; Ether Politics 125–​6 Collin, Erwin 35 Combat 18; terrorist network 151 Comedian Harmonists (band) 27, 33–​5 Comedy Harmonists see Comedian Harmonists Commey, Ruby 5 communal living 71, 75–​6, 78 Confidence (album) 200 consumer capitalism 75, 76 consumer culture 109n2 consumer socialism 50 conventions (cons) 185 cosmopolitanism 71, 75, 78, 190 cosplay 185, 186, 187 Crazy World (album) 83 Crossing (band) 107–​8 cultural appropriation 201–​4 cultural intermediaries 102–​3, 109n2 cultural production 104 Culture Beat (band) 164, 175, 180, 181 Cut ’em T (DJ) 115 Cycowski, Roman 35 Cymophane Records 146 Czukay, Holger 74 D (band) 188 Da Crime Posse (band) 118, 119 “Da da da (ich lieb dich nicht du liebst mich nicht)” (song) 141

“Da vorne steht ’ne Ampel” (song) 140 DAF (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft) (band) 135, 137, 141 Dahlke, Kurt “Der Pyrolator” 139 Dahmen, Udo 13, 19–​22, 23; interview 16–​17 Dance 2 Trance (band) 180 dance bands 29, 33, 42 dance clubs/​dance halls 126, 127 dance forms, imported 32 dance music 18, 163–​4, 177, 178–​9, 180, 181 dance orchestras 33, 41, 42 dancehall music 200 Danzi, Michael 33 “Das Lied des Weibs des Nazisoldaten” (song) 214 de Buhr, Hannes (Yu) 193n22 de Weill, Benny 41 deconstruction 92 Delgado-​Lopez, Gabi  137 “Dem Gone” (song) 197 Depeche Mode (band) 61 Derezon (DJ) 115 Derrida, Jacques 92 D’espairsRay (band) 184 deterritorialization 71–​2, 76 Deutsche Grammophon (record label) 43 Deutsche Schallplatten GmbH Berlin 62 Deutscher, Drafi 157 Deutsches Tanz-​und Unterhaltungsorchester 42, 45n4 “Deutschland” (song) 2 “Deutschland” (music video) 4, 5–​8, 11–​12 Deutschrock 72; see also Krautrock Devilish (band) 190 Dewey, Mike 124 Dierks, Dieter 69 Digger (band) 86 digital capitalism 65 dilettantism 75, 140, 141, 142 DIN A Testbild (band) 141 Dinter, Klaus 75 Dir en grey (band) 184, 185–​6, 192n9 Dirkschneider, Udo 83, 84–​5 disc jockeys 112, 128 disco music 177; in Germany 175–​9; Italo 175; US-​American 164, 181 disco scene 126–​8 DJ Ötzi 160

226

226   •   Index DJing 112, 128 DMA Dance Vol. 1: Eurodance (album) 176 “Do You Wanna Bump” (song) 177 “Doctor’s Darling” (song) 201 Donaldson, Ian Stuart 148 Dorau, Andreas 135, 139 Dorsey, Jimmy 124 Dostal, Nico 42 Der Dritte Weg (DDW) 151 drugs 52, 76, 77, 189 “Du hast Glück bei den Frauen Bel Ami” (song) 214 “Du sollst mein Glücksstern sein” (song) 44 Dylan, Bob 61 East Germany (DDR): changes in weekly routine 62–​3; characteristics of the youth scenes 52–​5; cultural and media policy 59–​62; everyday reality 51–​2; music-​based youth cultures in 48–​56; state involvement with music 59–​60, 61; state policies 49–​51; see also Berlin Wall Eastblok Musik (label) 102, 105, 106, 108 Eastern Europe, influence of 29, 32 Ebinger, Blandine 167 Edguy (band) 86 Egoldt, Herbert 146 Eiffel 65 (band) 175–​6 Einstürzende Neubauten (band) 90, 92, 93, 97n1, 135, 139, 140–​1 “Electrica Salsa” (song) 179 electronic music 65, 66, 71, 73, 163–​4, 177, 178–​9, 180, 181 electro-​pop culture  58 Element of Crime (band) 63 Elsaesser, Thomas 90–​1 emceeing 128 EMI (label) 85, 87 Eminger, André 151 Emo 189 Endstufe (band) 145, 146 English-​language lyrics 69, 82, 116, 124; in Eurodance and Eurodisco 179, 181 Eno, Brian 178 “Entartete Musik” 42, 43 Erci-​E (rapper)  118 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip (President of Turkey) 2, 9, 13n4 E-​Rotic (band) 179, 180

Es ist Zeit (album) 117, 117 Essen Song Days 71, 72, 78 Etté, Bernard 42 Eurodance 164, 175, 197; and Eurodisco 180–​1; German influence on 179–​80; German origins of 176; international sound of 179 Eurodisco 164, 175, 176, 177–​9; and Eurodance 180–​1 euro-​NRG  178 European free jazz 73, 85; see also jazz music Even, Jenny 41 exoticism 32, 40, 91, 96, 104, 105, 159, 166, 167, 177, 180, 185, 192, 204 Der Expander des Fortschritts (band) 60 experimental music 73 experimental rock 74; see also rock music “Exterminate!” (song) 180 Extrabreit (band) 135 “Eye of the Tiger” (song) 93 Fabbri, Franco 21 Falco 135 fan clubs 125–​6 Fantastische Vier (Fanta 4) (band) 210, 214n4 Far East Band 198 Farian, Frank 175, 176–​7, 180 Bang, Farid 4, 5 Farrell, Bobby 177, 180 Faust (band) 71, 73, 74, 75–​6, 78 Faust IV (album) 73 “Faust Manifesto” 75–​6 FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend) (Free German Youth) 19, 21, 25n5, 60, 61 Fenstermacher, Frank 139, 140 Fields, Danny 163 film music 33, 42 Fischer, Helene 99 Floh de Cologne (band) 73 Flores, Ramos 159 “Fly, Robin, Fly” (song) 175, 176 folk festivals 128 folk instruments 117 folk music 73, 116, 154; in the GDR 50 folk rock 51, 73; see also rock music Fool For Your Love (album) 198 For Our Country (New Forum proclamation) 62 Ford, Penny 179 foreign music 99

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 Index   •   227 Foxtrot 32 Foyer des Arts (band) 135, 139 France, influence of 31–​2 Frank, Arno 6 Frankfurt am Main 180; electronic music in 175 Freed, Alan 124 Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth; FDJ) 19, 21, 25n5, 60, 61 French chansons 166, 168, 172–​3 French House (genre) 175 Frenck, Tommy 150 Freund, Julius 30–​1 Fricke, Florian 78 Frith, Simon 52 Fritsch, Julian (MaKss Damage) 147 Fritz, Philipp 3 Frl. Menke 135, 141, 142 Froese, Edgar 77 Frolic at Five (radio show) 124 Frommermann, Harry 34, 35 Fuhs, Julian 33 Fun Factory (band) 180 funk 128 Gainsbourg, Serge 177 Gamma Ray (band) 86 Gan-​Shin (label)  192n9 Garrett, John “Virgo” III (Luca Anzilotti) 179 Gastarbeiter 99, 101, 111, 112, 208 Gauder, Felix 179 Geniale Dilletanten (band) 139 Gentleman 197–​8, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204 Geri Reig (album) 139 Germaican record label (Germaica digital) 198 German chansons 163, 165–​73 German cinema 90–​1 German disco 175–​9 German Federal Music Industry Association BVMI 4 German-​language lyrics 74, 76, 92, 95–​6, 99, 129, 133, 135–​6, 141, 146; combined with Portuguese 158, 159–​60; by Hildegard Knef 167–​8; in rap music 208; in reggae music 198 German Pop-​Poets  95–​6 German punk 136; see also punk music German Reggae music: as cultural appropriation 202–​4; defined 200–​2; introduction to 198–​200; vs. reggae from Germany 204

German Soccer Association (DFB) 9 Germania (personification of the German nation) 5, 7–​8, 11–​12 Germanization 114 Germanness 2, 13, 75, 77; appeal of 91–​4; in Blumenau 155–​6, 158; of Eurodisco 178; exclusion from 111; expressions of 133; international 166; of James Last 91; in Knef ’s music 172; and kosmische Musik 76; of Kraftwerk 181; and NDW 136; as negative characteristic 86–​7; and the Pop Poets 95–​6; in popular music 27, 90, 95; of Rammstein 93; and Schlager music 166 Germany: disco music in 176–​9; and Eurodance 179–​80; right-​wing political parties 150–​1; Russian emigration to 103, 109n1; touring in 106 Gesellschaft für Musikforschung (German Musicological Society) 22 “Get Up and Boogie” (song) 176 G.I. Blues (film) 127 Gialdini, Guido 31 Giesinger, Max 70, 91, 95, 96, 97 glam rock 184; see also rock music globalization 72, 75, 201, 203 Gloryhammer (band) 88 Godwin, Paul 29, 33 Gomis, Louis Emilio 128 götterdämmer rock 73; see also Krautrock Göttsching, Manuel 77 gramophone records 29, 34–​5 Grand Master Flash & the Furious Five (band) 112 Graupner, Kurt 76 Grave Digger (band) 86, 88 Great Britain: garage bands 175; juvenile subcultures in 136 “Grenzen der Kunstfreiheit” 4 Grönemeyer, Herbert 65 Grothe, Franz 42 “guest workers” see Gastarbeiter Gündoğan, İlkay 9 Guns n’ Roses (band) 85 Guru Guru (band) 72, 77 Gurzhy, Yuriy 101–​2, 104 Hadamovsky, Eugen 43 Haddaway (band) 181, 197 Hagen, Nina 63 Haley, Bill 49, 124

228

228   •   Index “Hallo Blumenau” (song) 157, 159 Hallyday, Johnny 127 HammerFall (band) 88 Hammerschmid, Hans 171, 172 Hampton, Lionel 124 Hannerz, Ulf 102–​3, 104, 105, 106 Hans-​a-​Plast (band)  135 Heavy Metal Breakdown (album) 86 heavy metal music 55; see also metal music Hebdige, Dick 136 Heimatmusik 158 Heise, Thorsten 150, 151 Helloween (band) 83, 84–​6, 87, 88 Helloween (EP) 84 Hendrix, Jimi 73, 77 Heppner, Peter 94 Herting, Mike 17 Herzog, Werner 78 Hesterberg, Trude 32 Heymann, Nadine 187 Hildebrandt, Hilde 41 hi-​NRG genre  178 hip hop music 105, 152n6; in Germany 112; oriental 114–​18, 119; and RechtsRap 147; Turkish 99–​100, 109n9 “Hitler’s Hit Parade” (documentary) 40–​1 Hoffmann, Alois 157 Hoffmann, Wolf 82–​3, 85 Höcke, Björn 13n9 Högl, Helmut 157–​8, 159 Högl, Michael 157 Högl Fun Band 157 Höhn, Marco 187 Hollaender, Friedrich 30, 33, 42 Hollaender, Victor 30–​1 Hollywood, Tony 24 homophobia 42, 199–​200, 204, 209 Honecker, Erich 59 Hornuff, Daniel 6 Hosianna Mantra (album) 78 “Hot Club Combo” 44 Hot Club Munich 127–​8 Howland, Chris “Mr. Pumpernickel” 124 Hubay, Jenö 33 Huber, Michael (Chill Fresh) 113 Hudak, George 124 Hudec, Andreas (Strify) 193n22 Huhn, Charlie 83

Hutcheon, Linda 93 Hütter, Ralf 74 hybridity 71–​2, 76, 78 Hyde, Alex 33 “I Feel Love” (song) 178, 180, 181 Ia ne Gagarin (album) 107 Ice MC (band) 175 Ich seh’ die Welt durch Deine Augen (album) 167 Ideal (band) 135, 142 identity: cultural 10, 11, 12, 159–​60; ethnic 11, 12; female 173; German 2, 3–​4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 74, 78, 94–​5, 176; “man machine” 74–​5; multicultural 74; national 9, 10, 11, 71, 78, 90, 92, 94, 211–​12; post-​national 75; regional 164; socialist 50; subcultural 137, 189; Turkish 119; Visu 192 immigration 10, 33, 99–​100; ethnic categories of immigrants 103; Soviet migration to Germany 103, 104; Turkish 112 The Incredible Al (Alpertunga Köksal) 113 “Industrie-​Mädchen” (song)  138 “Insel meiner Angst” (song) 171–​2 Interhit Records (label) 176 International Auschwitz Committee 4–​5 Iron Maiden (band) 82 Iron Savior (band) 86 irony 71, 75, 93, 94, 138 Isherwood, Christopher 43 Islamic Force 115–​16, 115, 116 Islamisation 95 Italian Black Box (band) 179 Italian rap 208; see also rap music Italo Disco 175 Iva Nova (band) 108 Jagger, Mick 65 “Jah Love hot” 201 Jahnich, Oliver 7 Jam and Spoon (band) 180 Jamaican music 197–​204 jammers 125 Japan: as imaginary homeland 192; see also visual-​kei Japonisme 164, 184–​92 Jary, Michael 42 jazz music 18, 19, 42, 43–​4, 124; Adorno’s critique of 122–​3, 129; European free jazz 73,

229

 Index   •   229 85; jazz rock 73; political interpretations of 49–​50; popularity with German youth 123; rehabilitated by the GDR 49–​50 Jones, Brian 163 Joost, Oskar 42 Journey to Jah (album) 200 J-​Rock  191 “Jung, Brutal, Gutaussehend” (album) 4 Kah, Hubert 135, 141, 142 Kaiser, Rolf-​Ulrich  72, 76 Kamelot (band) 88 Kaminer, Wladimir 101–​2, 104–​5 Kanak Attak network 209 Karakan (Blackblood) 113, 118 Kasparek, Rolf “Rock ’n’ Rolf ” 86 Kaulitz, Bill 190–​1, 190 “Kebabträume” (song) 137 Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 1 (album) 84, 87 Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 2 (album) 85, 87 Keine Macht für Niemand (album) 76 Kerrang! (magazine) 81 King Crimson 75 King Size Terror (band) 113, 118 Kiske, Michael 83 Kiss (band) 184 Kiz (band) 141 Klasen, Stephanie 192 Klein, Felix 4 Klezmer music 104 KMR (rapper) 113, 114 Knarf Rellöm (band) 94, 97 KNEF (album) 171–​2 Knef, Hildegard 163; as cultural icon 165–​6; distinctive vocal rendering 168–​70; German concert tour 168; interview with Miller 170; as lyricist 167–​8; as “mother of the Liedermacher” 170–​1; unique style of 167, 172–​3 Knobloch, Charlotte 4 Köksal, Alpertunga (The Incredible Al) 113 Kollegah 4, 5 Kollo, Walter 30 Kommune I 75 Kontaktstudiengang Popularmusik (Contact Degree Course in Popular Music) 22 Konzertsaal Musik (trio) 158–​9 Kööm (band) 198 Koray, Erkin 115

Kosmische Kuriere (label) 72 kosmische Musik 71, 76–​8 Kraan (band) 21, 69, 73 Kraftklub (band) 63 Kraftwerk (band) 69, 71, 74–​5, 78, 96, 176, 181 Krautrock 17, 21, 69, 71; beginning at Essen Song Days 72; defined 72–​4; deterritorialization and hybridity 71–​2; and identity politics 74–​6; see also kosmische Musik; rock music Krawinkel, Kalle 141 “Krazni” (song) 214 Krebs, Dieter 83 Kretschmar, Olaf “Gemse” 64 Kreuder, Peter 42 Kruspe, Richard Zven 5 Kube, Uli “Dionys” 22 Kühn, Antonia 213, 215n9 Künneke, Eduard 42 Kunze, Michael 176 Kutschera, Anton 31 Küttner, Michael 17 Kuze, Michael 175 “La Baker” (Josephine Baker) 32 La Bouche (band) 175, 176, 180, 181 Lake (band) 21 Lambsdorf, Alexander Graf 4 Landser (band) 146, 149 Last, James 70, 91 Leander, Zarah 41 Led Zeppelin (band) 75 Leitkultur 10 Leitner, Olaf 20 Leningrad (band) 101 Lenya, Lotte 167 Levay, Sylvester 176 “Leylim ley” (song) 116 Liapis Trubetskoi (band) 101 Liedermacher music 163, 170 “Lili Marleen” (song) 42 Lincke, Paul 30, 42 Lindemann, Till 2, 5, 12 Lindenberg, Udo 20 Lippmann, Horst 44 Lippmann, Walter 92 Lissak, Alexander 106 Livaneli, Zülfü 116 Live Aid concert 24

230

230   •   Index Live in London (album) 75 Lobo, Sascha 3 Löhner-​Beda, Fritz  43 Lokomotive Kreuzberg (band) 63 Looptown (album) 113 Lorand, Edith 29, 33 “Love to Love You Baby” (song) 175, 176, 177 Lübcke, Walter 151 Die Lunikoff Verschörung (band) 146, 149 Lutter, Adalbert 42 lyrics; English 69, 82, 116, 124, 179, 181; Portuguese 158, 159–​60; Russian 101, 103, 105, 107; Turkish 113, 116; see also German-​language  lyrics Made in Germany (album) 133 “Made in Germany” (song) 133 Magic Affair (band) 180 Mahmut, DJ 113, 114 MaKss Damage (Julian Fritsch) 147 Malaria! (band) 63, 135, 139 Male (band) 135 Malice Mizer (band) 184 Man Machine (album) 74 Manço, Barış 115, 116–​17, 119 Mangelsdorff, Emil 44 Mara (band) 101 marching bands 44 marching songs 44–​5 Marcuse, Herbert 72 Markscheider Kunst (band) 108 Markus 135, 141, 142 Marley, Robert Nesta ‘Bob’ 198, 199, 202–​3 “Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht” (song) 157–​8 Marreca (CD) 158 Marteria (band) 63 Masterboy (band) 180 Masterplan (band) 86 Matthäus, Lothar 9 Maxx (band) 180 McLean, Penny (Gertrude Münzer) 176 Meine, Klaus 82 “Meine Lieder sind anders” (song) 166 Meisel, Will 42 The Meistersextett 35 Melly, George 54

melodic speed metal 82; see also metal music The Melody Makers 35 memory work 213 Merseybeat 157 Merz, Friedrich 10 Mesaj (album) 115, 115 “The Message” (song) 112 message rap 120n3 Metal Hammer (magazine) 81 Metal Heart (album) 83 metal music 106; bands 69, 82; black metal 146; in Britain 81; consistency and truthfulness 86–​7; glam 184; global 88; heavy 55; historical context 81–​2; melodic speed metal 82; original German style 84–​6; pirate metal 86; power metal 82, 84, 88; in the US 82 Metallica (band) 82, 85 Meuser, Micki 20 Meyer-​Gergs, Friedrich  41 Microphone Mafia (band) 13, 207–​8, 214 migrant rap 112–​14 military bands 29, 31 Milli Vanilli (band) 164 minimalism 74, 127 Mistinguett (chanteuse) 32 Mitchell, Guy 124 Mitchell, Liz 177 Mittagspause (band) 135 Mittendrin (album) 201 Möbius, Hendrik 146 Modellversuch Popularmusik (Pilot Course in Popular Music) 22 Modern Music Records 81 Modern Talking (band) 197 Moğollar 115 Momper, Walter 65 The Monks (band) 127 Moondawn (album) 78 Moritz R 139, 140 Moroder, Giorgio 100, 124, 175, 176, 177–​8 Moshpit (band) 147 Mothers of Invention (band) 72 Mötley Crüe (band) 86, 184 motorik 73 Moulton, Tim 178 Mr. President (band) 180 Mraz, George 128 Muff Potter (band) 94

231

 Index   •   231 Müller, Heiner 62 Munich 180; electronic music in 175; Eurodisco in 177 Munich sound 164, 176 Münzer, Gertrude (Penny McLean) 176 Münzing, Michael 179, 180 Murat G 113, 114 Muratov, Andrei 106 music: African American 42, 55, 73, 75, 128, 178; alternative 61; American 100, 173; Balkan 104; beat 49–​51; cabaret 32, 126, 163, 166, 167, 172–​3; chucrute 158; classical 17, 84, 167, 172; dance 18, 163–​4, 177, 178–​9, 180, 181; dancehall 200; disco 164, 175–​9, 181; electronic 65, 66, 71, 73, 163–​4, 177, 178–​9, 180, 181; “entartete” 42, 43; experimental 73; film 33, 42; folk 50, 73, 116, 154; foreign 99; funk 128; Jamaican 197–​204; Klezmer 104; kosmische 71, 76–​8; Liedermacher 163, 170; musique concrète 74; polka 157; singer-​songwriter 145, 167–​8, 172–​3; ska 104, 200; swing 44, 124; techno 64, 66, 181; traditional “German” 156, 161; volkstümlische 157; Western 105; world 74; see also hip hop music; jazz music; Krautrock; Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW); popular music; punk music; rap music; reggae music music festivals 63, 81, 101, 192n9; folk 128; RechtsRock 150–​1; reggae music 198; see also Essen Song Days music revues 42 musical theatre 29, 30, 32, 33 musicology 17, 19 musique concrète 74 Müssig, Matthias 185–​6, 192n9 “Der Mussolini” (song) 137 “My Melody” (song) 116 mystification 136–​8 National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) 145, 146 National Socialist Hardcore (NSHC) 145; in Germany 147; in the US 147 nationalism 6, 94, 95, 116, 119, 134 Natty U 197, 198, 204 Nelson, Rudolf 42 Nena 133, 135 Neo Hate (band) 147 neo-​Nazism 55, 112, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 214–​15n7; and music 148

Neonbabies (band) 135 Neu! (band) 71, 74, 75, 76 Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) 133, 135–​43, 179; mainstream tactical affirmation 140–​2; subcultures and subversion 136–​7; subversion with a traffic light 139–​40; tactical affirmation 137–​9 Neue Rechte 7, 14n15 New Age of Earth (album) 77 New Dubby Conquerors (album) 200 New Forum movement 62 New Left 72 new wave see Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWoBHM) 81, 82, 84 New Yorker Original Jazz Orchestra 33 Nico (Christa Päffgen) 8–​9, 163 Niel, Herms 44 Niessen, Charly 171 “Night Nurse” (song) 201 Nile (album) 200 Noise (label) 81, 85, 87 NOM (band) 108 Nosliw 201 n-​rap (nationalist-​rap) 147; see also rap music NSS /​n’Socialist Soundsystem 147, 152n7 NSU (Nationalsozialistische Untergrund) 212, 214n6 Nuclear Blast (label) 69 Nussel Birq-​Buam (band) 157 Ohr (label) 72, 74, 76 oi!-​punk 145; see also punk music Okami Records (label) 192n9 Oktoberfest 133, 154–​61 Olympic Games (1936) 27, 39, 44 Omurca, Muhsin 9 “One Love” (song) 199 operettas 42 oriental hip hop 114–​18, 119; see also hip hop music oriental rap 112, 114–​18; see also rap music “Original Teddies” 44 Ortner-​Bach, Christoph 185–​6, 192n9 OUT (band) 20 Out of this World (album) 85 Özdemir, Cem 10 Özil, Mehzut 9

232

232   •   Index Padaratz, Gilson 158 Päffgen, Christa (Nico) 8–​9 Page, Jimmy 163 Palais Schaumburg (band) 135 Pankow (band) 21 PAROCKTIKUM 61 Parparov, Alexey 106 Party auf dem Todestreifen –​Soundtrack der Wende 59, 66 Patrice 197, 199, 200, 201, 204 Peel, John 73 peepl (booking agency) 106 Peepl Rock Festival 101, 107 PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes) 1, 3, 95, 96, 212, 214n5 Pekacz, Jolanta 48 Pell, Axel Rudi 88 Pennino, Rossi 207–​8 pentatonic blues rock 76; see also rock music Per la Vita (CD) 214 Pierce, William 146 Pile of Skulls (album) 87 Piligrim Rock 106 Pilz (label) 74 Pink Bubbles Go Ape (album) 85–​6 Pink Floyd 73 pirate metal 86; see also metal music Der Plan (band) 135, 138, 139–​40 Poensgen, Johannes K. 7 polka music 157 Polydor (record company) 76 Polyphonwerke AG 43 Pop, Iggy 63 Popakademie Baden-​Württemberg 16 Popol Vuh (band) 69, 73, 78 popular communities 125–​6 popular music 22, 101–​9; academic institutionalization of 13, 16; in the GDR 18–​19, 49–​50; German identity in 12–​13; influences from eastern Europe 29; made by “Germans” 8–​9, 12; made in Germany 8–​9, 12–​13; and National Socialism 39–​45; normalizing function of 41; political dimensions of 55; post-​Soviet 99; propaganda lyrics in 39; on the radio 18; in the Roaring Twenties 32–​5; Russian-​language 105; and social positioning 52–​3; state involvement with 61; vs. state power 50; transnational

networks 29, 33, 35, 43; and Western Allied occupation 122–​9; and youth movements 51–​2; see also music Popularmusik see popular music Portuguese lyrics 158, 159–​60 post-​Soviet music: cultural intermediaries 102–​3; German speaking audiences 104–​5; musical boundaries 106–​8; post-​Soviet migration to Germany 103; Russian-​speaking audiences  105–​6 Pow Pow Movement 198, 199, 201, 203 power metal 82, 84, 88; see also metal music “The Power” (song) 181 Presley, Elvis 49, 122, 124, 126, 127, 129 Die Prinzen (band) 63 propaganda 126; in radio broadcasts 123 Protestant church 55 provocation 2, 6, 7, 58, 62, 136–​8, 141 psychedelic drugs 52, 76, 77, 189 psychedelic rock 74; see also rock music Psychedelic Underground (album) 73 public address systems 27, 39 The Puhdys (band) 18, 63 Pulit, Ted ‘Bullet’ 84 “Pump Up the Jam” (song) 179 punk music 23, 52, 61, 104, 135; distinguishing from 140; and GDR youth culture 54; German 136; imported 135; oi!-​punk 145 “Pure Love” (song) 201 “Pussy” (song) 93 “Der Pyrolator” (Kurt Dahlke) 139 “quiet sounds” 42, 45 Quinn, Freddy 167 Raabe, Max (and his Palastorchester) 29 racism 7, 9, 42, 111, 112, 116, 117, 119, 149, 152n4, 163, 209–​10, 212 Radio 4U 65 radio broadcasting: Allied 100; Allied radio in Germany 123–​6; American Forces Network (AFN) 112; Berliner Rundfunk 123; in East Germany 60–​1; in Nazi Germany 45; popularity among German youth 126; Radio Free Europe 127; Voice of America 123; in West Berlin 63 Radio Forces Françaises de Berlin (FFB) 123 Radio Free Europe 127 radio orchestras 42

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 Index   •   233 Radiohead (band) 79 Rafael, Simone 7 Rage (band) 86 Ragnaröck (band) 146 Rammstein (band) 2, 4, 5–​8, 11–​12, 63, 69, 70, 93, 96, 97n1, 197 Ramsey, Bill 127 rap music 13; in Eurodance 180; in Germany 208–​9; Italian 208; message rap 120n3; migrant rap 112–​14; n-​rap (nationalist-​rap) 147; oriental rap 112, 114–​18; RechtsRap 145; Turkish 111–​20, 120n2, 208 Rapid Foray (album) 87 The Rattles (band) 127 ravers 66 Read, Hugo 17 Real McCoy (band) 175, 176, 180 RechtsRap 145 RechtsRock 133–​4, 145, 152n2; brief history 146–​7; core functions 145; festivals at Themar 150–​1; marketing of 148–​9; modes of presentation 148; observations on “doing” 147–​9; and right-​wing extremism 149–​51 record industry 34–​5, 76; after the fall of the Wall 62; in East Germany 60, 61; under National Socialism 43 Reece, David 83, 85 Reeder, Mark 66 Regener, Michael “Lunikoff ” 146, 151 reggae music 13, 104, 177; roots reggae 200; song, riddim and voicing 200–​201; see also German reggae music Reggae Sunsplash festival 198 Reichsmusikkammer 42–​3, 45n5 Reinhard, Ursula 155 Reiser, Rio 76 Remberg, Eric (Specter Berlin) 5, 7, 14n11 Remmler, Stephan 141 Rennicke, Frank 147 Resistance Records 146 The Revelers 33–​4, 35 Revue Nègre 32 Rheinbay, Ingo 198 Rhythmus der Welt (radio show) 124 RIAS Treffpunkt 123 RIAS youth radio 124–​5 Richter, Steffen 151 riddim 200–​1

“Ride on Time” (song) 179 Riechmann, Wolfgang 74 Riefling, Dieter 151, 152 “Right in the Night (Fall in Love with Music)” (song) 180 right-​wing extremism 10, 145–​51, 152n3, 152n4, 152n5 “Rivers of Babylon” (song) 177 “Rock against Communism” (RAC) 145, 146, 152n1 rock music 27, 106; art 51; blues rock 77; classic 51; disco 51; electronic 51; experimental 74; folk 51, 73; glam 184; international 157; pentatonic blues 76; political interpretations of 49–​51; psychedelic 51, 74; punk’s attack on 136–​7; southern 51; teutonic 73; visual-​kei 164; see also Krautrock Rock-​O-​Rama (label)  146 rocksteady 200 Rodigan, David 199 Rosenberg, Iris 4 Rother, Michael 75 Rufus Zuphall 17 “Run Away” (song) 176 Running Wild (band) 86–​7, 88 Russendisko Records (label) 101, 104–​5, 108 Russia, influence of 32–​3 Russian-​language lyrics 101, 103, 105, 107 Russian underground bands 108 Salve a Banda (album) 157 “Save Me” (song) 175 Schabowski, Günter 59, 65 Schachmeister, Efim 43 Schaper, Hendrik 20 “Schaukellied” 30–​1 Schlager der Woche 123, 124–​5 Schlager music 29, 30, 32, 73, 99, 122–​9, 133, 140, 142, 143n3, 159, 161n1, 163; on Allied radio 123–​5; “Ballermam” 158; in Blumenau 154, 156, 157; by Brazilians 154, 160; folk-​style 154, 157; and NDW 142; and popular communities 125–​6; as traditional German music 158 Schlauer statt Rechts campaign 213 Schmidt, Irmin 74 Schmidtke, Sebastian 150, 151 Schoof, Manfred 73 Schröder, Patrick 150

234

234   •   Index Schulze, Klaus 73, 74, 77, 78 Schulz-​Köhn, Dietrich  43–​4 Schuricke, Rudi 41, 42 Schwebel, Thomas 138 Scooter (band) 179, 181n5 Scorpions (band) 9, 82, 83 Seeed (band) 197, 200, 201, 204 Seidler-​Winkler, Bruno  42 sheet music 29, 31 Shimmy 32 Siebert, Armin 106 silent film orchestras 42 Silly (band) 63 Silly Walks Movement 198, 203 Silver Convention (band) 175, 176 Sinan, Ozan 118 singer-​songwriter music 145, 167–​8, 172–​3 ska music 104, 200 SkaZka Orchestra (band) 108 skinheads 55, 112, 119, 145, 146, 147 Skrewdriver (band) 145, 146, 148 Slayer (band) 82 Sloterdijk, Peter 65 Smallwood, Rod 85 Snap! (band) 164, 175, 179–​80, 181, 197 socialist personality 50, 55 Soldatensender 935 123 soldier songs 42 soldiers’ clubs 126–​8 sound system culture 198 sound technologies 27, 41, 45 Soviet bands 104–​8 Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED; Socialist Unity Party of Germany) 49 Spliff (band) 63, 135, 142 Splin (band) 101 Spoliansky, Mischa 33, 42 Sprachgesang zum Untergang 147 Springsteen, Bruce 61, 93 Stauffer, Ernst “Teddy” 44 Steamhammer/​SPV  82 Steidl, Max 31 Stephan, Felix 6 Stephens, Tanya 201 stereotyping 90, 92–​3, 97 “Sternenhimmel” (song) 142 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 73 Stockhausen, Markus 17

“Stop” (song) 209, 210 Strify (Andreas Hudec) 191–​2, 193n22 Ströbele, Carolin 3 Stronger than Ever (album) 86 subcultures, subversion in 136–​7 subversion: and NDW 138–​9; in subcultures 136–​7; with a traffic light 139–​40 Summer, Donna 175, 177–​8, 181 Summer Jam festival 198 Die Sünderin (film) 166 “Superior” (song) 197, 200 Supow (label) 200 Survivor (band) 93 Suzuki, Damo 74 swing music 44, 124 Swing-​Heinis 43 synthesizers 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 116, 137, 139, 141, 177, 178 S.Y.P.H. (band) 138 tactical affirmation 133, 136, 140; going mainstream 140–​2; and NDW 137–​9 “Tage hängen wie Trauerweiden” (song) 167–​8 Tago Mago (album) 74 Tangerine Dream (band) 69, 72, 73, 74, 77–​8, 178 Tanok na Maidani Kongo (TNMK) (band) 101 techno clubs 64 techno music 64, 66, 181 Technotronics (band) 179 Teipel, Jürgen 136 Telefunken 39 Telefunken-​Swing-​Orchester  44 Temples of Gold (album) 84 terrorism 151 terrorist groups 137 Terrorsphära (band) 147 teutonic rock 73; see also Krautrock “The Power” (song) 179–​80 “Theresienstadt” (movie) 41 Thompson, Linda G. (Linda Übelherr) 176 Thunderhead (band) 84 Tibi, Bassam 10 Tocotronic (band) 94, 97 Tokio Hotel (band) 164, 189–​92, 190 Tokyo, visual-​kei in 187–​8 Ton Steine Scherben (band) 76 The Torquays (band) 127 Tosh, Peter 198

235

 Index   •   235 Totenburg (band) 146 “Trampers” 52–​3, 55 Trenkler, Winfried 73 Trio (band) 135, 139, 140–​1 Truman Doctrine 124 Turbo B 179 Turkish hip hop 99–​100, 109n9 Turkish-​language lyrics 113, 116 Turkish rap 111–​20, 120n2, 208; exporting 118–​19; social and cultural context of 111–​13 Turkishness 119 turntablism 112, 115 Tykwer, Tom 43 U96 (band) 180 Übelherr, Linda (Linda G. Thompson) 176 Uhlmann, Thees 1 Ukrainian bands 106 Under Jolly Roger (album) 86 United Kingdom see Great Britain United States: German criticism of 122; influence of 32, 43–​4, 51, 76, 112; popular culture 44; as representative of global imperialism 49; see also Americanization United States Information Agency (USIA) 124 Urlaub vom Tag (album) 198 V2 (band) 87 Valente, Caterina 168 Valetti, Rosa 32 van Dyk, Paul 63, 94, 97 Väth, Sven 179 VEB Deutsche Schallplatte 60, 62 Velvet Underground & Nico (album) 163 The Velvet Underground (band) 163 Victory (band) 83–​4 Vikernes, Varg 146 visual-​kei 184–​92 Visus 164, 184–​5, 186, 187, 192; compared to Japanese visual-​kei 188–​9 vocalists, English-​native  82–​4 Voice of America 123 Voigt, Udo 152n8 Volkan T 113, 114 Volksmusik 50, 73, 116, 154 Volkstümliche Musik 157 von der Heyde, Andreas 158 von Schlippenbach, Alexander 73

Wacken Open Air (festival) 69, 81, 192n9 “Wahrheit” (song) 147 Walls of Jericho (album) 84 Warhol, Andy 163 Weber, Marek 42 Weber, Ralph 10, 14n17 Wehner, Heinz 44 Weiland, Ernst “Bimbo” 41 Weill, Kurt 32 Weimar period 29–​35 Weintraub, Stefan 42 Weintraub Syncopators 42 Wesnigk, C. Cay 40 Westernization 129; see also Americanization white supremacists 134, 149 white-​power music 145, 148, 152n2, 152n4; Polish 147; in the US 146–​7; see also RechtsRock The Whole World is Your Home (album) 116–​17, 116 Wicke, Peter 13, 48; interview 16–​25 Wilco (band) 79 Wilders, Geert 93 Wiley, Kehinde 7 Williams, Hank 127 Williams, Maizie 177 “Wind of Change” (song) 69 Winter, Horst 41 Wirtschaftswunder (band) 139 Witch Hunter (album) 86 Witthüser & Westrupp 73 Wohlleben, Ralf 151 Wolfssohn, Michael 4 The Word is Subversion (album) 113 world cities 102 World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem 4 world music 74 Wulf, Ramona 176 xenophobia 1, 11, 95, 96, 112, 115, 134, 207, 210, 214n3, 214n5, 215n8 Yad Vashem 4 Yeti (album) 75 “Yetmedi mi?” (song) 119 youth cultures: autonomy 53–​4; in the GDR 52–​3; politics 54–​5; relevance 54; style 53 Yu (Hannes de Buhr) 193n22 Yurtseven, Kutlu 13, 99; interview 207–​14

236

236   •   Index Zappa, Frank 72, 73 ZDF-​Hitparade 141, 143n7 Zeit (album) 77 Zekri, Sonja 6

Zong (label) 62 Zucker Eventagentur 106 “Zurück zum Beton” (song) 138 Zwei Krawatten (musical revue) 33