Music and Politics
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mp/
Music and PoliticsPersecution and Resistance Resounded: Trajectories of WWII Musical Memorializations in Germany
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9460447.0015.201
Martin RingsmutSummer 2021This special issue of Music & Politics presents some of the major outcomes of a three-year-long collaborative research project between the University of Cologne and the Leuphana University in Lüneburg. The researchers set out to explore the roles of music in past and current memorialization and commemoration practices in Germany. While working on separate case studies, similar issues concerning the memorialization of WWII emerged. Through regular discussions on memory theories, a set of concepts arising from modern memory studies has come to shape our understanding of socially shared memories and the role of music in memorialization processes.Music and Politics152https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0015.201Rapping against Old and New Nazis: Bejarano and Microphone Mafia’s Multidirectional Musical Memory Work
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9460447.0015.202
Monika E. SchoopSummer 2021It is January 27, 2015, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp. Esther Bejarano steps on the stage of a Cologne theater in a former factory building. The diminutive woman of 90 years of age appears fragile as she takes a seat at a small desk in the center of the stage. The audience falls silent. Her voice is firm as she starts to read about her deportation to Auschwitz and her time as a member of the camp’s orchestra; Esther bears witness to the inconceivable atrocities of the Nazi regime. Recounting her memories of the end of WWII and the liberation, Esther ends her testimony and invites the audience to what she terms “my revenge on the Nazis.” Together with rapper Kutlu Yurtseven and her son Joram Bejarano, who plays the bass, she embarks on a musical journey, weaving together multiple histories of antifascist resistance. The three perform songs from the camps and ghettos—partisan and Jewish songs, as well as original compositions—always combining multiple languages, including German, Turkish, French, Italian, and Yiddish. Today’s repertoire ranges from a defiant intonation of the Jewish resistance song “Mir lebn eybig” to “Avanti Popolo” and “Bella Ciao.” In their reworking of historical antifascist songs, and especially through the infusion of rap, they draw parallels between the Nazi atrocities and right-wing terrorism and racist attacks of the 1990s and the new century. The cross-generational and transcultural group of Esther, the Jewish concentration camp survivor, Joram, who was born in Israel, and Kutlu, the son of Turkish migrant workers, makes their voices heard against “old and new Nazis” and for a peaceful future.Music and Politics152https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0015.202Maro Drom: Music and Mnemonic Imagination in the Commemoration of German Sinti Victims during WWII
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9460447.0015.203
Martin RingsmutSummer 2021At the beginning of June 2018, the Cologne “Zigeunerwagenfestival” (Gypsy wagon festival) invited guests and passers-by who walked along the Rhine promenade in Deutz to sit in the cool shade under old trees, to listen to a variety of live music, to enjoy food and drink, and to gain insights into the history and culture of German Sinti. The centerpiece of this four-day festival was a large, wooden-clad circus wagon. It stood in a semicircle with a couple of tents in which hot and cold drinks, cakes, and freshly cooked hot meals were served. Festooned with colorful garlands, with views of the Rhine and the iconic skyline of Cologne in the background, the festival attracted hundreds of people who talked of a Pariser Flair am Rheinufer (a Parisian flair on the banks of the Rhine). Over the course of four days, the festival provided a varied program of different musical acts, film screenings, public discussions, and readings, as well as a commemoration ceremony for the predominantly Sinti victims who had been deported to various concentration camps in May 1940. The festival was organized by the “Zigeunerfestkommitee” (Gypsy festival committee) and Maro Drom, a grassroots association newly founded by members of the Sinti community in Cologne and their affiliates. Two other installations in Worringen and Ehrenfeld followed in the same year. All three festivals featured a similar program, including Sinti-led interactive workshops and presentations, music, discussions, and film screenings.Music and Politics152https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0015.203Rapping the Shoah: (Counter-)Narratives and Judaism in German Hip-Hop
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9460447.0015.204
Thomas Sebastian KöhnSummer 2021The Berlin-based rap artist Ben Salomo combines discursive negotiations of “being Jewish” with statements against racism, discrimination, and right-wing populism in his songs. In this process, he draws on memories connected to National Socialism and the Holocaust and interweaves them with other historiographic and political representations. The track “Identität” (Identity), which was released on his 2016 album Es gibt nur einen (There is only one), makes this particularly clear. Salomo uses aspects of Jewish history and liturgy and connects them to autobiographical, family, and wider collective memories. The track was uploaded to YouTube with an accompanying music video and currently has about 193,000 views. In this article, I will use Salomo’s work as a focus for broader musical considerations to investigate how negotiations and interweavings of memory, history, and politics are built upon the relationship of narratives and counter-narratives.Music and Politics152https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0015.204Memory is a Weapon: Ton Steine Scherben’s Use of WWII Memory in the Political Upheavals of the 1970s
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9460447.0015.205
Sidney KönigSumThe “Agit-Rock” band Ton Steine Scherben is one of the most unusual musical phenomena in German postwar history. A highly politicized rock band, their music is often considered the de facto soundtrack of the political upheavals of 1970s West Germany, and is still frequently played at demonstrations. Their singular status in German music culture is evidenced by numerous cover versions of their songs by artists of nearly all genres of popular music. There can be little doubt about their influence on German pop music culture. Yet, despite their lasting impact, the Scherben were never commercially successful. They were never signed to a major label, opting instead to produce and distribute their music themselves via leftist bookstores, and the band’s staunchly anti-capitalist stance and rootedness in the 1970s West German leftist scene often led them to play in support of causes that involved little to no compensation. Given these factors, the fact that the Scherben are so well known is a testament to how much their music reverberated within their generation and for subsequent generations.Music and Politics152https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0015.205About the Authors
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9460447.0015.206
Summer 2021Thomas Sebastian Köhn studied musicology at the University of Oldenburg, with a focus on the cultural history of music, gender studies, and media. From 2019 to 2020, he was a doctoral researcher in the project “Sounding Memories: Nazi Persecution and Anti-Nazi Resistance in the Music of Contemporary Germany,” funded by the German Research Foundation (2017–2020). In 2021, he began working as a doctoral researcher at the Chair of Musicology, with a special focus on Popular Music Studies, at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. He conducts research on memories of the Holocaust and World War II in contemporary German-language hip-hop by Jewish artists, combining approaches from music and media analysis and ethnomusicology. His research interests include the intersections between musicology, sound studies, intersectionality research, and cultural memory studies.Music and Politics152https://doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0015.206