Wolf at the door

[imomus]

Well, I've been for a year now in Germany and I don't think I've said anything about the German socialist folk songwriters known as the liedermacher. The other day I saw one of the most famous of them, Wolf Biermann, on a programme celebrating the 90th birthday of theatre director George Tabori. Biermann and Tabori have both been involved with the Berliner Ensemble, the theatre Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel founded in East Berlin in 1949. On the TV festschrifte, Tabori sat there while old friends came up one by one and sang him a song or recounted an anecdote. It was rather moving to see this parade of socialist-humanist thespians in a kind of red-tinted This Is Your Life. Tabori was undoubtedly the coolest 90 year-old I've ever seen. His dramatic head of silver hair was swept back and he wore an elegant suit with lots of exposed seams (very Brechtian that, to 'show all working'). Well, Biermann came on and sang a song accompanied by his grating, almost out-of-tune guitar. There seemed to be an endless parade of verses, which, although I didn't understand, I pictured as a poem in the style of Gunter Grass, political yet somewhat absurdist -- some kind of political fable full of concrete imagery of food, cooking and animals.

As I pointed out in my essay dialogue The Electro-Acoustics of Humanism (talking there about Georges Brassens), the thing that often strikes me about these songwriters a texte -- generally thought of as literary figures who treat music as something secondary -- is that they're often texturally much more distinctive than we have any right to expect. Their voices and guitars make interesting sounds in themselves, so you can get a lot from their work even if you don't speak the language they're singing in. They use odd timings and tunings, their voices have an interesting quality -- rough, intelligent, sensual or angry -- and there's a compelling otherness in the way they seem to emerge from a world of literary humanism, of simple choices, passionate alliances and vanished struggles, a world where it was easy to fight for what you knew to be right. Their commitment is the opposite of the whiny, self-pityingly vague, narrowly-personal defeatism which characterises much capitalist music industry output: 'Radiohead emotion', I call it, but it could just as well be Norah Jones covering Nick Drake, with a commentary by Brad Pitt.

In the post-war period committed literary songwriters existed all over the world. In Italy they were called cantautore, singing authors, and that's really the most accurate description; they often had parallel careers as poets, dramaturgs and political activists. Leonard Cohen, although not directly engaged politically, is a familiar western example. Think of him singing 'The Partisan' -- 'freedom soon will come'. Think of the Chilean Victor Jara, murdered by the military dictatorship the US supported to replace the democratically-elected Salvador Allende. In Germany, think of Wolf Biermann singing his cover of Boris Vian's 'The Deserter':

Monsieur Le President
This letter is for you
Maybe you'll read it through
If you can find the time
I've just received today
My military orders
To go defend our borders
Before Wednesday night
Monsieur Le President
I've decided to refuse you
I wasn't put on Earth to
Destroy poor human beings
I'm sorry if you're mad
But this has to be said
My decision is made:
I've decided to desert



In the 50s and 60s America had committed folk singers: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the young Bob Dylan. But Biermann (born in Hamburg in 1936) was in a different situation: Germany in the post-war period was split between a capitalist and a communist state, with the line running right down the centre of Berlin. Socialist folk singers couldn't keep their head in the clouds. They had, right on their doorstep, a real socialist state. They had to decide whether to go there or not, for a start -- whether to collaborate with or criticize 'actually-existing socialism'. Biermann, after forming his socialist ideals in the West as a Youth Pioneer, went to study and live in East Berlin. Brecht composer Hanns Eisler befriended and encouraged him, and Biermann become involved with the Berliner Ensemble. But his experience of the East German police state led to a bitterly conflicted state of mind. While hanging onto his socialist ideals, Biermann soon fell foul of the socialist authorities. Accused of 'class betrayal' and 'obscenity', he was stripped of his East German citizenship. Whilst re-asserting his socialist ideals, Biermann spent much of the post-communist period attacking public figures for their links with the Stasi (the East German secret police) and trying to raise money for people, like himself, victimised in Honnecker's East Germany.

I haven't heard much Biermann, but I liked the Eisler-ish feel of his guitar playing and the bitter and cutting tone of his voice. I'm going to look out for his 1969 album 'Chausseestrasse 131' and maybe the video of his 1976 live show. You can hear some soundclips of Biermann at BMG's site. Type 'Biermann' into the slot marked 'Artist Suche' and a list of clips will appear.

Meanwhile, on a different subject, here's an mp3 of how BBC Radio 3's Mixing It presented the Momus and Anne Laplantine track 'A Spratch O' Thyme' on last night's show:

A Spratch O' Thyme (on Mixing It)