German Joys

Syncopation: Alien to the German Spirit

One thing foreigners notice about ordinary German pop music is its march-like (oom-pa) character and lack of syncopation. Invariably, the thought springs to the foreigner's mind that the music practically invites you to goose-step.

But that's not the response among Germans, at least not the ones you're likely to be hanging out with. Their pop sings are designed to allow simple, salt-of-the-earth people to sing along, lock arms, and rhythmically sway to the music -- a process called schunkeln. Schunkeln is fun after 7 or so beers, but like most German amusements it can last a very long time and involves strict social control and coordination. If you added syncopation to the mix, nobody would know exactly when to sway, and before long there will be howls of 'Scheiße Negermusik!' and perhaps some good-natured bloodshed.

And it seems that Germans have always distrusted syncopated pop music (classical is another story, of course). From Open Culture, a list of rules imposed on a Czech saxophonist under Nazi occupation:

An aspiring tenor saxophone player living in Third Reich-occupied Czechoslovakia, Skvorecky had ample opportunity to experience the Nazis’ “control-freak hatred of jazz.” In the intro to his short novel The Bass Saxophone, he recounts from memory a set of ten bizarre regulations issued by a Gauleiter, a regional Nazi official, that bound local dance orchestras during the Czech occupation.

1. Pieces in foxtrot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the repertoires of light orchestras and dance bands;
2. In this so-called jazz type repertoire, preference is to be given to compositions in a major key and to lyrics expressing joy in life rather than Jewishly gloomy lyrics;
3. As to tempo, preference is also to be given to brisk compositions over slow ones so-called blues); however, the pace must not exceed a certain degree of allegro, commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation. On no account will Negroid excesses in tempo (so-called hot jazz) or in solo performances (so-called breaks) be tolerated;
4. So-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German people (so-called riffs);
5. Strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit (so-called cowbells, flexatone, brushes, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.);
6. Also prohibited are so-called drum breaks longer than half a bar in four-quarter beat (except in stylized military marches);
7. The double bass must be played solely with the bow in so-called jazz compositions;
8. Plucking of the strings is prohibited, since it is damaging to the instrument and detrimental to Aryan musicality; if a so-called pizzicato effect is absolutely desirable for the character of the composition, strict care must be taken lest the string be allowed to patter on the sordine, which is henceforth forbidden;
9. Musicians are likewise forbidden to make vocal improvisations (so-called scat);
10. All light orchestras and dance bands are advised to restrict the use of saxophones of all keys and to substitute for them the violin-cello, the viola or possibly a suitable folk instrument.

A Short Review of 'Poem'

Poem, a 2004 movie by Ralf Schmerberg that I watched for the first time last night on DVD, consists of dramatized recitations of 19 German poems from Goethe onward. Some of the poems are quite famous, others moderately so, and some slightly obscure. The dramatizations aren't connected in any way, save for the framing device of a Tibetan man carrying another man on a handmade back-chair through the mountains, which intervenes every 30 minutes or so and culminates in a poem-accompanied religious ceremony. The poems are presented in utterly different ways: some as direct dramatic declamations; some as accompaniments to documentary-like records of child-rearing, weddings, or religious processions; some as theatrical mini-spectacles; some as accompaniment to scenes which involve no humans at all.

This is a very German movie, in the best way. The poems which are recited by characters on-screen (including David Bennent, Carmen Birk, and Klaus-Maria Brandauer), are recited with whacking great dollops of dramatic flair, in the tradition of German-speaking lands. Some English-speakers, who are accustomed to less stylized poetry recitation in which the 'words are supposed to do all the work', may find this a bit off-putting at first. Yet when this sort of dramatic declamation is done right (as with Brandauer above, rendering every other reading of this Heine poem -- perhaps any Heine poem -- superfluous), it is enthralling. (It's also worth keeping in mind that these poets wrote in a culture in which they would expect their poems to be dramatically declaimed by actors.)

The settings and accompaniment for the poems are never predictable, and, at their best, create a touching, ironic, or bizarre field of interference with the words of the poem itself, as when Ernst Jandl's bleak Believe and Confess (g) (in which he bluntly states that he knows he will never see his dead loved ones again and confesses that he hasn't the 'slightest wish' for this to happen) is accompanied by tear-stained, boozy, unstaged scenes from a very ordinary German wedding, or when Trakl's frothingly mystical Morgenlied (g) is recited by David Bennent, in full knightly armor, wandering down the median of a German highway.

'Poem' is by turns mesmerizing, pretentious, funny, moving, witty, ironic, and preposterous. A few of the musical choices have gotten a bit stale (the music of Arvo Pärt, for all its charm, has become an art-house cliche), and a few of the settings are in questionable taste. But that's what makes 'Poem' so lively -- the filmmakers take risks, and sometimes the rewards are spectacular. Strongly recommended.

Wagner's 'Fungal' Genius

Nicholas Spice has a brilliant essay called 'Is Wagner Bad for Us?' on the LRB website, which includes this passage, one of the finest English-language descriptions of Wagner's innovations I've come across:

The state in which he found the art of opera in the middle of the 19th century didn’t please him. He deplored its tired routines and swept them away. Where a traditional opera typically hauled itself along through a series of arias, duets and ensemble pieces, strung along a line of recitative, Wagner integrated words, drama and music into a discourse of continuous gesture. This did a lot to dismantle the structures which in traditional opera keep the audience at a distance from the action. In an opera by Rossini or Donizetti, we hop from one aria or duet or ensemble to another, negotiating an archipelago of self-sufficient pieces of music, and this acts as a kind of Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt, repeatedly ejecting us from the narrative, an effect the custom of applauding individual numbers as though they were concert items made even more pronounced. Wagner replaced this ‘singing of pieces of music’ with a free declamatory vocal style, embedding his singers in the fabric of the drama and rarely permitting them to sing at the same time as each other. In his mature operas, the ebb and flow of the action is controlled by music (Wagner partly characterised it as ‘endless melody’) which loosens the certainties of diatonic harmony and gives a wide berth to effects of unwanted closure in the musical syntax. As a result, the listener is given only rare opportunities to bail out of the musical and dramatic argument.

It is a central aspect of Wagner’s genius (Mann writes about it wonderfully) that he conceived a way to draw the literary and musical components of his operas towards each other. His understanding of the ideographic potential of music – the capacity of music to suggest things, characteristics and ideas – was something quite special to him, and it probably partly accounts for our sense of his work as in certain fundamental respects different from most other music in the classical canon....

As the works unfold, the listener moves continuously and fluidly between the music on the one hand and the drama on the other, holding them in a kind of dynamic equilibrium in the mind. The patterned integration of the leitmotifs into the musical fabric – like small marine fossils in certain kinds of sedimentary rock – symbolises the accumulation of experience over time (it was this aspect of Wagner that so excited Proust). And as a formal device, the leitmotifs helped Wagner give coherence and unity to immense spans of musical narrative. Wherever we surface in the onward stream of these operas, whether listening to them or reading them in score, we see a landscape of familiar forms, though always subtly evolving and combining in a kaleidoscope of shifting permutations.

The words often used to describe the effect of Wagner’s work – ‘seduction’, ‘irresistibility’, ‘enchantment’ – and the way Wagner is spoken of as a magician or sorcerer or trickster, suggest dark and inscrutable arts; and, given that the stories he tells and the music through which he tells them, are full of emotional drama, at times extreme, we might assume that his power derives from his passion, and that if we feel a loss of will in the face of his work, it is because we have been overwhelmed and swept away by a lava stream of expression or irradiated by a blast of psycho-spiritual energy, or – and this is perhaps the most common trope of all – drugged. Echoing an observation of Mann’s, Boulez has said of Wagner that ‘his genius was both hot-headed – even irrational – and extremely analytical.’ Brecht said that Wagner’s art ‘creates fog’ and Tolstoy thought you could achieve the same effect more quickly by getting drunk or smoking opium. But what has always struck me about Wagner’s work – certainly, the seven mature operas – is not that they enthral us through bewilderment or narcosis, but how unnervingly intelligible they are, and how, in being so intelligible, they hold our attention, and, in holding our attention, draw us ineluctably in.

Later, Spice notes the commentary of English composer Thomas Adès:

Only last year, Thomas Adès described Wagner’s music as ‘fungal’, lamenting his influence on the composers who followed him: ‘his grubby fingerprints’ are ‘everywhere’. ‘Fungal’ is in one sense rather a good image for the modular patterning of Wagner’s music, but it also suggests infestation, decay, sickness and a tendency to spread uncontrollably, while the phrase ‘grubby fingerprints’ brings to mind something insalubrious, if not criminal.

 

27 Minutes of 'Heart of Glass'

Better than the original. Actually, it is the original. Or is it?

One Man's Cheesy '90s Nostalgia is Another Man's Hot Trend

We Anglo-Saxons are a race of reckless innovators, especially those of us who risked everything to cross the Atlantic and found the Land of Opportunity. It's our job to create the trends everyone else imitates, and we take it on gladly. Meanwhile, we look at the Continent with bemusement. There, 'stars' that would long have been forced down into the septic tank of obscurity continue to be venerated by millions of people. Hugh Schofield noted the curious French tolerance of Johnny Hallyday:

In fact, when one looks around, one realises that there is an unusual level of flattery - one might even say obsequiousness - in French public life, especially when it comes to culture.

If you have ever watched French television, you will get the picture.

A typical mid-evening programme is a chat show on which the invitees are members of the small, unchanging - and therefore ageing - club of national celebrities.

Behind in rows of seats, a youthful audience hand-picked for telegenic good looks bursts into applause at every anecdote or hackneyed clip from the archives.

At the more serious end of the market, the annual literary season is in September, when there is a rush of new publications and the big book prizes like the Goncourt are announced.

Here, too, listening to the reviews is like being beaten about the head with a powder puff.

Nothing is ever mediocre, let alone bad.

Everything is uplifting, exquisite, crafted, delicate, challenging, or that most irritating of French words: "engage", which means "committed", though to what is never spelled out.

...

One realises after a while that the French view their stars almost as members of the family. They enjoy going to see them in the same way they enjoy catching up with the latest family gossip.

That kind of conservatism is actually quite refreshing after the brutal neophilia (the constant need for the new and the culling of everything that is familiar) that one associates with British culture.

The bad reason is that it is all about self-protection.

Succumbing to sycophancy, after all, is a way of reassuring oneself that all is good in the world, when clearly it is not.

Seen like that, the French are merely deluding themselves that their culture matters the way it once did: sticking their fingers in their ears, if you like, and whistling to Johnny Hallyday.

Much of this applies equally to Germany. Die Zeit, despite its many virtues, is probably the worst offender here, dutifully reprinting every syllable that drops from the mouth of Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Helmut Schmidt. In the culture pages, virtually every writer, no matter how obscure, is dutifully given the epithet groß (great). Pop acts that are long-forgotten (or who have degenerated into jokes) in the Anglo-Saxon world --  Metallica, Ozzie Osbourne (g) -- fondly embrace Germany as a sort of geriatro-rocker retirement home. Quondam innovators Kraftwerk, who haven't released any genuinely new music in decades, continue to pack them in in Germany (and to be fair, MOMA, where their concerts were billed as a 'curated' retrospective, drenched with nostalgia).

Which brings me to this clip from the 1996 direct-to-video movie 'Vibrations':

Someone in the US unearthed it and it's become a minor Internet sensation under the heading '90s nostalgia. Yet in Germany, 'techno' music is alive and well -- in fact, the 2010 version of the Love Parade attracted almost a million people. If it hadn't been for the overcrowding that killed 21 people at that event, it would still be going on.

Sunday Music Blogging: Roots Radics Rockers Reggae

Listening to Bunny Wailer's 'Roots Radics Rockers Reggae', from 1987:

I kept thinking: hmm, where have I heard that melody before? Somewhere, long ago, in a very different form. And then it hit me: Stiff Little Fingers!

The original is from 1981. So the 1987 Bunny Wailer song, performed by a genuine rootsman from Jamaica, is actually a cover (albeit hugely transformed) of a six-year-old song by a Belfast punk band.

'Luxury Problems' is a Masterpiece

On the strength of David Pescovitz's recommendation at BoingBoing, I downloaded (legally, I might add) UK techno-dub guru Andy Stott's new album, Luxury Problems. One reason it caught my interest is because the title's a literal translation of a great German word, Luxusproblem. But the album itself is shockingly fantastic. RA reviews it:

Luxury Problems has all the hallmarks of its two predecessors, namely the drab atmosphere and sluggish rhythms. But it also has more conventional beauty than those records, thanks in part to fantastic vocals from his old piano teacher, Alison Skidmore. It's tempting to think of her as the missing ingredient in Stott's reinvented sound; in equal parts mournful and seductive, sometimes even operatic, she gives his music a sexy and haunting feel that makes you think of Portishead or Massive Attack. Stott's music, in all of its exquisite gloom, has long stood up on its own, but it still benefits enormously from this bold addition.

I've now listened to it several times on my Sennheiser 180 wireless headphones, and I'm more impressed each time. Stott's tracks have a typical trip-hoppy structure, with a slow intro that's gradually embellished with more and more beats, a climax, and then a ghostly outro. But the samples and loops are fascinating and original, and the contrast of Alison Skidmore's ethereal voice (overdubbed, transposed, and manipulated in a thousand other ways) with the pulsing, menacing, often-danceable beats is, well, nothing short of mystical. Here's a video for 'Numb' (but note that to really enjoy this, you've got to play it loud on a good stereo or headphones).

Friday Music Blogging: 'Reef' from DJ/Rupture

Rupture's making his mixes available online for free here, at 'negrophonic.com'.

Can Live Session Free For Download

Over at Aquarium Drunkard, there's a download available of a 1975 concert by CAN about which they make the following remarks:

There are those among us who will shudder when I say this, but let’s face facts: Can was a jam band. Indeed, jamming was at the heart of pretty much everything the legendary krautrockers did. Rather than a group centered around a songwriter, Can was a collective of improvisers whose primary modus operandi in the studio was — not unlike Miles Davis’ and Teo Macero’s approach in the 1970s — to play freely as the tape rolled, and then, later, edit the best bits together. This mix of spontaneous interplay and after-the-fact composition is one of the keys to the success of their well-nigh unparalleled run of LPs form the late 60s to the mid 70s.

Tuesday Music Blogging: A Podcast on Franco

Here's a 2+ hour long podcast on Franco, the great Congolese bandleader, courtesy of United World Radio:

Show #19 - Legends of Africa: Franco by United World Radio on Mixcloud

See also the Franco & T.P. OK Jazz Restored website for digital copies and critical appraisals of sundry Franco rarities.