Franz Josef Degenhardt – Diesmal werd´ich nicht mit ihnen zieh´n – Friedenslieder (1987, vinyl rip)

Jenny Bauer told us in her wonderful Staff Benda Bilili concert review two days ago about her scepticism when listening to “Volksmusik”. Here´s an artist who always cared for the traces of a democratic and critical tradtion in europan “Volksmusik”.

Franz-Josef Degenhardt (born 3 December 1931 in Schwelm, Westphalia) is a German poet, satirist, novelist, and – first and foremost – folksinger/songwriter (Liedermacher) with decidedly left-wing politics. He is also a lawyer, bearing the academic degree of Doctor of Law.

After studying law from 1952 to 1956 in Cologne and Freiburg, he passed the first German state bar examination in 1956 and the second in 1960. From 1961 he worked for the Institute for European Law of the University at Saarbrücken, where he obtained his doctorate in 1966. Degenhardt joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1961, but was forced out in 1971 because of his support for the German Communist Party.

From the early 1960s onward, in addition to practicing law, Degenhardt was also performing and releasing recordings. He is perhaps most famous for his song (and the album of the same name) Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern (“Don’t Play With the Grubby Children,” 1965), but has released close to 50 albums, starting with Zwischen Null Uhr Null und Mitternacht (“Between 00:00 and Midnight,” 1963), renamed Rumpelstilzchen (“Rumpelstiltskin”); his most recent albums Krieg gegen den Krieg (“War against the War”) and Dämmerung (“twilight”) came out in 2003 and 2006. In 1968 Degenhardt was involved in trials of members of the German student movement, principally defending social democrats and communists. At the same time, he was – in his capacity as a singer-songwriter – one of the major voices of the 1968 student movement. On his 1977 album Wildledermantelmann he criticized many of his former comrades from that era for what he saw as their betrayal of socialist ideals and shift towards a social-liberal orientation. The album’s title (roughly, “man with velour coat”) mocks the style of clothing they had supposedly adopted.

Notably, the songs on Degenhardt’s 1986 album Junge Paare Auf Den Bänken (“Young Couples on the Benches”), along with the song Vorsicht Gorilla (“Beware of Gorilla”) on the 1985 album of the same name, are his translations into German of chansons by the French singer-songwriter Georges Brassens, spiritually perhaps one of his closest musical allies.

Degenhardt has also written several novels, most in a rather autobiographical vein, among others: “Zündschnüre” (“Slow Matches”, 1972), “Brandstellen” (“Scenes of Fires”, 1974), “Der Liedermacher” (1982) and “Für ewig und drei Tage” (“For Ever and Three Days”, 1999).Here´s an album released in 1987 called “Diesmal werd´ ich nicht mit ihnen zieh´n – Friedenslieder”.

Tracklist:
01 – Diesmal werde ich nicht mit ihnen ziehen
02 – Ja, das ist die Sprache der Mörder
03 – Wolgograd
04 – In den guten alten Zeiten
05 – Zündschnüresong
06 – Dies Land ist unser Land
07 – Denkbar ist aber immer noch
08 – Der anachronistische Zug oder Freiheit, die sie meinen
09 – Befragung eines Kriegsdienstverweigerers

Franz Josef Degenhardt – Diesmal werd´ich nicht mit ihnen zieh´n – Friedenslieder (vinyl rip, 1987)
(192 kbps, cover art included)

Franz Josef Degenhardt – Diesmal werd´ich nicht mit ihnen zieh´n – Friedenslieder (1987, vinyl rip)

Jenny Bauer told us in her wonderful Staff Benda Bilili concert review two days ago about her scepticism when listening to “Volksmusik”. Here´s an artist who always cared for the traces of a democratic and critical tradtion in europan “Volksmusik”.

Franz-Josef Degenhardt (born 3 December 1931 in Schwelm, Westphalia) is a German poet, satirist, novelist, and – first and foremost – folksinger/songwriter (Liedermacher) with decidedly left-wing politics. He is also a lawyer, bearing the academic degree of Doctor of Law.

After studying law from 1952 to 1956 in Cologne and Freiburg, he passed the first German state bar examination in 1956 and the second in 1960. From 1961 he worked for the Institute for European Law of the University at Saarbrücken, where he obtained his doctorate in 1966. Degenhardt joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1961, but was forced out in 1971 because of his support for the German Communist Party.

From the early 1960s onward, in addition to practicing law, Degenhardt was also performing and releasing recordings. He is perhaps most famous for his song (and the album of the same name) Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern (“Don’t Play With the Grubby Children,” 1965), but has released close to 50 albums, starting with Zwischen Null Uhr Null und Mitternacht (“Between 00:00 and Midnight,” 1963), renamed Rumpelstilzchen (“Rumpelstiltskin”); his most recent albums Krieg gegen den Krieg (“War against the War”) and Dämmerung (“twilight”) came out in 2003 and 2006. In 1968 Degenhardt was involved in trials of members of the German student movement, principally defending social democrats and communists. At the same time, he was – in his capacity as a singer-songwriter – one of the major voices of the 1968 student movement. On his 1977 album Wildledermantelmann he criticized many of his former comrades from that era for what he saw as their betrayal of socialist ideals and shift towards a social-liberal orientation. The album’s title (roughly, “man with velour coat”) mocks the style of clothing they had supposedly adopted.

Notably, the songs on Degenhardt’s 1986 album Junge Paare Auf Den Bänken (“Young Couples on the Benches”), along with the song Vorsicht Gorilla (“Beware of Gorilla”) on the 1985 album of the same name, are his translations into German of chansons by the French singer-songwriter Georges Brassens, spiritually perhaps one of his closest musical allies.

Degenhardt has also written several novels, most in a rather autobiographical vein, among others: “Zündschnüre” (“Slow Matches”, 1972), “Brandstellen” (“Scenes of Fires”, 1974), “Der Liedermacher” (1982) and “Für ewig und drei Tage” (“For Ever and Three Days”, 1999).Here´s an album released in 1987 called “Diesmal werd´ ich nicht mit ihnen zieh´n – Friedenslieder”.

Tracklist:
01 – Diesmal werde ich nicht mit ihnen ziehen
02 – Ja, das ist die Sprache der Mörder
03 – Wolgograd
04 – In den guten alten Zeiten
05 – Zündschnüresong
06 – Dies Land ist unser Land
07 – Denkbar ist aber immer noch
08 – Der anachronistische Zug oder Freiheit, die sie meinen
09 – Befragung eines Kriegsdienstverweigerers

Franz Josef Degenhardt – Diesmal werd´ich nicht mit ihnen zieh´n – Friedenslieder (vinyl rip, 1987)
(192 kbps, cover art included)

Staff Benda Bilili – Live In Berlin – A Concert Review

“We’re all handicapped people, ain’t we?” – Staff Benda Bilili in Berlin
The couple in front of me danced with an enormous condition through the whole concert in their style of fifties rock’n’roll. Another couple on the left-hand seemed to be captured in an erotic dream, moved ecstatical and embraced. The woman on the right became grief-stricken as she stepped during her meditative interpretation of the music on the bag of my friend. And at the place in front of the stage a group of wheelchair user had the best sight to the musicians on the stage.

In a short introduction we were told, that the band Staff Benda Bilili is now playing their first concert in this formation and their first concert in Berlin. The group is located in Kinshasa, the dome capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country with a long time of different wars. Due to polio, the majority of the members of the band are handicapped and appear in wheelchairs or on crutches. In Lingala, the official language of the DR Congo, “Benda Bilili” means “look beyond appereance”.

In the year 2004 two young french filmmakers met them and made a film of the band and their history, which was extreme successful at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. In Germany the film will be premiered at the Hofer Filmtage end of Octobre 2010. The both filmmaker Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye also brought Staff Benda Bilili together with the record label Crammed Discs, which published their album “Trés Trés Fort” in the year 2009. Now in June, they played at Glastonbury and till autumn they will tour in Europe and go to Japan.

During the concert the music, a mixture of funk, rumba and reggae, african beats and psychedelic, changed song by song their melody focus. While swinging my hips to the groove, I took a look at the band. Today it was a formation with seven members, in Cannes they have been nine. The guitarist who is setting the tone with his electric guitar, is in a wheelchair. Kabose Kabamba, one of the singers, is dancing with his crutches. The one in the front wheelchair is the founder and leader of the band, Ricky Likabu. The bassist Paulin Kiara-Maigi played on an acoustic bass guitar, which filled the space with a tight sound. Cubain Kabeya, the drummer, uses instead of a highhead a silver paper, which looks like a mixture of a tin and fine silver. Also uncommon for my eyes was the instrument which played the youngest musician of the band, Roger Landu. It looked like a mini harp, almost the size of a sheet of paper, but instead of a constant bow it had on one side a foursquare tin as sound box, which is amplified – a great sound came out which brought my friend to look for a synthesizer. This instrument is called satonge.

During all this looking, listening and dancing I asked myself, am I just listening to “Volksmusik”, or what are the foundations of this music? Staff Benda Bilili once described their music as a kind of newspaper for Kinshasa. This is what a lot of styles of music come from, telling stories of an area and of people, who don’t have a lobby. But always when the word “Volksmusik” comes in my mind I have to think of the conservative European style and my hips refreeze.

Berlin, 18th of August 2010
Jenny Bauer

Staff Benda Bilili – Live In Berlin – A Concert Review

“We’re all handicapped people, ain’t we?” – Staff Benda Bilili in Berlin
The couple in front of me danced with an enormous condition through the whole concert in their style of fifties rock’n’roll. Another couple on the left-hand seemed to be captured in an erotic dream, moved ecstatical and embraced. The woman on the right became grief-stricken as she stepped during her meditative interpretation of the music on the bag of my friend. And at the place in front of the stage a group of wheelchair user had the best sight to the musicians on the stage.

In a short introduction we were told, that the band Staff Benda Bilili is now playing their first concert in this formation and their first concert in Berlin. The group is located in Kinshasa, the dome capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country with a long time of different wars. Due to polio, the majority of the members of the band are handicapped and appear in wheelchairs or on crutches. In Lingala, the official language of the DR Congo, “Benda Bilili” means “look beyond appereance”.

In the year 2004 two young french filmmakers met them and made a film of the band and their history, which was extreme successful at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. In Germany the film will be premiered at the Hofer Filmtage end of Octobre 2010. The both filmmaker Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye also brought Staff Benda Bilili together with the record label Crammed Discs, which published their album “Trés Trés Fort” in the year 2009. Now in June, they played at Glastonbury and till autumn they will tour in Europe and go to Japan.

During the concert the music, a mixture of funk, rumba and reggae, african beats and psychedelic, changed song by song their melody focus. While swinging my hips to the groove, I took a look at the band. Today it was a formation with seven members, in Cannes they have been nine. The guitarist who is setting the tone with his electric guitar, is in a wheelchair. Kabose Kabamba, one of the singers, is dancing with his crutches. The one in the front wheelchair is the founder and leader of the band, Ricky Likabu. The bassist Paulin Kiara-Maigi played on an acoustic bass guitar, which filled the space with a tight sound. Cubain Kabeya, the drummer, uses instead of a highhead a silver paper, which looks like a mixture of a tin and fine silver. Also uncommon for my eyes was the instrument which played the youngest musician of the band, Roger Landu. It looked like a mini harp, almost the size of a sheet of paper, but instead of a constant bow it had on one side a foursquare tin as sound box, which is amplified – a great sound came out which brought my friend to look for a synthesizer. This instrument is called satonge.

During all this looking, listening and dancing I asked myself, am I just listening to “Volksmusik”, or what are the foundations of this music? Staff Benda Bilili once described their music as a kind of newspaper for Kinshasa. This is what a lot of styles of music come from, telling stories of an area and of people, who don’t have a lobby. But always when the word “Volksmusik” comes in my mind I have to think of the conservative European style and my hips refreeze.

Berlin, 18th of August 2010
Jenny Bauer

6. Festival des politischen Liedes – Rote Lieder (1976, Eterna, vinyl rip)

From 1970 to 1990 there was the “Festival des politischen Liedes” (“festival of the political song”) in Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic. The festival was a meeting place for politically engaged musicians from the whole world and and interested audience. You find information about the participants and history in the archive on http://www.songklub.de

The 6th “Festival des politischen Liedes” happened in Eat Berlin in February, 7th to 14th, 1976 and featured artists like Perry Friedman, Pete Wyoming, Ted McKenna, Santocas, Oktoberclub and many more.

Tracklist:

01 – Mannesmannballade [Peter, Paul und Barmberk]
02 – Scottish folk dances [The Whistlebinkies]
03 – Auf,auf zum kampf [Perry Friedman]
04 – Bjelorusski woksal [Studentisches Liedtheater]
05 – Kampf dem schicksal [Gruppe Rafidain]
06 – The blackleg miner [Ted McKenna]
07 – Poder popular [Santocas]
08 – Ein Friendenslied [Oktoberklub]
09 – Kapitalens almene krise [Sören Sidevinds Spillemänd]
10 – Se abrirán las grandes alamedas [Angel e Isabel Parra]
11 – Freedom [Pete Wyoming]
12 – Les communistas [Pia Colombo]
13 – Optimistisches Lied [Gruppe Schicht]
14 – Experiencia [Luis Cilia und Pedro Cabal]
15 – Nos vemos en la Habana [Grupo Moncada]

6. Festival des politischen Liedes – Rote Lieder (1976, vinyl rip)

5. Festival des politischen Liedes – Rote Lieder (1975, Eterna, vinyl rip)

The list of international and Eastern and Western German singers and musicians that have played over the years at the “Festival des politischen Liedes” is impressive. The broad mixture of different music from different countries along with the caught atmosphere is represented on the Eterna albums documenting these festivals.

Over the years there are songs of the Sands Family from Northern Ireland who have toured the GDR regularly since 1974, having been an important influence for the development of the Eastern folk revival. Among the interantional guests have been the Chilenian bands Inti Illimani and Quilapayún, Kaláka from Hungary, José Alfonso from Portugal.
Then the German singers and bands – from the East people like Gerhard Gundermann, Oktoberclub, Schicht, Wacholder; from the West Hannes Wader, Dieter Süverkrüp, Franz Joself Degenhardt.

The fifth festival was organised between February, 9th and the 15th, 1975 in East Berlin.

Tracklist:

01 – Settimelli – Todos a la Plaza
02 – Rubén Ortiz-Torres – Zamba del Che
03 – The Laggan – The work of the weavers
04 – Acorn & Smith – Old ways – Hurray for the farmers
05 – Gruppe Lingua – Baikal-Amur-Magistrale
06 – Klaus Schneider & Gerd Kern – Kurzer Bericht über Leo D., Maurer
07 – José Martí – Guantanamera
08 – José Afonso – Grândola, Vila Morena
09 – Nicolás Guillén & Gema – Yo te daré la libertad
10 – Xasteria – Eviva libertad
11 – András & Pablo Neruda – Das Meer braust weiter
12 – Campos & Allende – Las últimas palabras
13 – Kumiko Yokoi – Sensha wa ugokenai
14 – Sören Sidevinds Spillemänd – Skipper Klement
15 – Franz Josef Degenhardt – Kommt an den Tisch unter Pflaumenbäumen

5. Festival des politischen Liedes – Rote Lieder (1975, vinyl rip)
(192 kbps, front cover inlcuded)

Christof Schlingensief – R.I.P.

German theater and opera director Christoph Schlingensief, who was also a renowned actor and artist, has died yesterday at the age of 49 after suffering from lung cancer for more than two years, according to a spokesman of the Ruhrtriennale festival.

Schlingensief directed numerous movies, plays and operas, including an internationally recognized production of “Parsifal” for the Wagner summer festival in the southern German city of Bayreuth in 2004.

Recently, he had been working on a project in the West African country of Burkina Faso, setting up a “village of opera,” which was to combine video, live actors and music.

His last major production was the “Via Intolleranza II” opera project in Brussels last year. He was engaged to curate Germany’s pavilion at the Biennale in Venice next year.

Schlingensief, who was born in the central German town of Oberhausen on 24 October 1960, was often controversial, but also “one of the most important artists in the country,” according to the director of The Museum for Modern Art in Frankfurt, Susanne Gaensheimer.

In 1998, Schlingensief founded the political party “Opportunity 2000” and took part in national elections, asking people to vote for themselves.

He also invited people to join an anti-chancellor swim in the then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s holiday retreat in Lake Wolfgang in Austria. His aim was to cause the lake to overflow with six million people in it, the number representing Germany’s unemployed at the time.

Between 1997 and 2002, he presented the talk shows “Talk 2000” and “U 3000”.

His struggle with lung cancer was the subject of diaries, describing his treatment and his fear of death in meticulous detail.

To remember the great work of Christof Schlingensief we will bring up again our “Rocky Dutschke” posting form 2007 (see here). Rest in peace!

Christof Schlingensief – R.I.P.

German theater and opera director Christoph Schlingensief, who was also a renowned actor and artist, has died yesterday at the age of 49 after suffering from lung cancer for more than two years, according to a spokesman of the Ruhrtriennale festival.

Schlingensief directed numerous movies, plays and operas, including an internationally recognized production of “Parsifal” for the Wagner summer festival in the southern German city of Bayreuth in 2004.

Recently, he had been working on a project in the West African country of Burkina Faso, setting up a “village of opera,” which was to combine video, live actors and music.

His last major production was the “Via Intolleranza II” opera project in Brussels last year. He was engaged to curate Germany’s pavilion at the Biennale in Venice next year.

Schlingensief, who was born in the central German town of Oberhausen on 24 October 1960, was often controversial, but also “one of the most important artists in the country,” according to the director of The Museum for Modern Art in Frankfurt, Susanne Gaensheimer.

In 1998, Schlingensief founded the political party “Opportunity 2000” and took part in national elections, asking people to vote for themselves.

He also invited people to join an anti-chancellor swim in the then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s holiday retreat in Lake Wolfgang in Austria. His aim was to cause the lake to overflow with six million people in it, the number representing Germany’s unemployed at the time.

Between 1997 and 2002, he presented the talk shows “Talk 2000” and “U 3000”.

His struggle with lung cancer was the subject of diaries, describing his treatment and his fear of death in meticulous detail.

To remember the great work of Christof Schlingensief we will bring up again our “Rocky Dutschke” posting form 2007 (see below). Rest in peace!

Christof Schlingensief – Three Radio Plays (Rocky Dutschke `68, Freakstars 3000 & Lager ohne Grenzen)

Christoph Schlingensief (born October 24, 1960 in Oberhausen) is a German film director, theatre director, actor, author, artist, and talkshow host. He lives in Berlin.

In the beginning he organized culture-events in the cellar of his parents house. Artists like Helge Schneider or Theo Jörgensmann performned at this place.
He created controversial and provocative theatre pieces as well as motion pictures. One of his main works, the so-called “Germany-Trilogy” consisting of the movies “Hundert Jahre Adolf Hitler”(“A Hundred Years Of Adolf Hitler”), “Das deutsche Kettensägenmassaker”(“The German Chainsaw-Massacre) and “Terror 2000” which handle three markpoints in German history of the 20th century. While “Hundert Jahre Adolf Hitler” is about the last hours of Adolf Hitler, “Das deutsche Kettensägen-Massaker” heads the German reunion of 1989 and shows a few East-German people who cross the border to visit West-Germany and get slaughtered by a psychopathic family with non-running chainsaws. “Terror 2000” is about the 1970´s Red Army Faction terror in Germany.

In 1993 he debuted as a theatre director at the Berliner Volksbühne with “100 Years of the CDU – Games Without Frontiers”. This was followed by various projects outside the theatre, such as the Mission project for drug addicts and the homeless at Hamburg Central Station in 1997, “Passion Impossible – 7 Days Emergency Call for Germany” or, in 2000, the Big Brother game for asylum seekers in Vienna, “Please Love Austria”.

In 1997 he was arrested at documenta X during an art action because he used a sign with the inscription “Kill Helmut Kohl”. In 1998 he founded the party “Chance 2000” (“Opportunity 2000”) and took part in the campaign for elections to the Bundestag.

Schlingensief is an extremely provocative artist and his major targets are the German and Austrian identity.

Christof Schlingensief produced a few radio plays, we present four of them in this posting:
“Lager ohne Grenzen” about the Kosovo war, “Freakstars 3000” about the normality of handicapped people and two versions of the mind-blowing radio play “Rocky Dutschke `68”.

“Rocky Dutschke `68” was produced in 1997 by the WDR (German radio station) and won the “Prix Futura”. It is a remake of a theatre play for the “Volksbühne” in Berlin.
This audio collage simulates a meeting of some student activists of the 1968 generation in a radio studio: Amonst others Wolf Biermann, Marget Kleinert (editor of the “Thoughts without pain”-broadcasting) and Heiner Müller are talking about hobbys, work and Rudi Dutschke. This fake broadcasting “assimilates” German history and present and reflects some phenomenons of our trivial media society. Full of provocation and cynicism it shows the thoughtless dealings with language, music and ideologic ideas.

“One of the best radio-shows I ever experienced,” as R3000 wrote about this recording over at http://themoreyouthinkaboutit.blogspot.com/ – thanks a lot for bringing the work of Schlingensief back to my attention!

Christof Schlingensief – Three Radio Plays

4. Festival des politischen Liedes – Rote Lieder (1974, Eterna, vinyl rip)

Political songs had a major forum in Eastern Germany: The “Festival des politischen Liedes”, a festival for political songs that took place every year between 1970 and 1990 in East Berlin. The festival was founded and until 1980 also organised by the FDJ, the Eastern German official youth association. Each year between 50 and 80 bands and musicians from about 30 different countries came to present political songs as well as folk and world music with a political touch.

It was one of the few “windows” to the big wide world, a chance to see many international bands and musicians, to get a bit of the flair of cultures from foreign countries where normal Eatern German folk was not allowed to go to, of internationalism. For young people this festival was a highlight of the year: “The festival broke with the every day life of the GDR. Nights without closing times. Political Carnival. Exceptional situations. Conjugal crisises. Moments of falling in love. New unexpected lyrics and melodies. Different views of the world. Different people that you would otherwise never had met.” This is how Hans-Eckart Wenzel remembers the festivals. He reminds that tickets for the festival were always short, and a lot of people had to stay outside.

The fourth “Festival des politischen Liedes” took place in Berlin, February 10th to 16th, 1974 with artists like Inti-Illimani, Miriam Makeba, The Sands Family and many others. This album features original recordings from this festival.

.

Tracklist:

01 Canción Del Poder Popular [Inti-Illimani]
02 Wohin Bringen Sie Den Jungen [Thermopyles]
03 Salaspilsz [Iskatjeli]
04 Alla Mattina Con La Luna [Luciano Francisci]
05 A Desalambrar [Daniel Viglietti]
06 Die Ölkonzerne [Oktober-Klub]
07 Lied Von Der Führenden Rolle Der Arbeiterklasse Gegenüber Dem Adel [Reinhold Andert]
08 The Winds Are Singing Freedom [The Sands Family]
09 Afrika [Miriam Makeba]
10 Por Todo Chile [Isabel Parra Und Patricio Castillo]
11 Ruce [Mensi Bratri]
12 Vamos Ahora [Quinteto Tiempo]

4. Festival des politischen Liedes – Rote Lieder (1974, Eterna, vinyl rip)

(192 kbps, cover art included)