‘Amerrrika ist wunderrrbarrr’: promotion of Germany through Radio Goethe’s cultural export of German popular music to North America

Abstract

AbstractMuch has been written about the cultural, social and political impact of German popular music within the country, but the role of German popular music outside of Germany has not been sufficiently examined. The research presented here is designed to investigate an example of Germany’s export of contemporary popular music as state-sponsored promotion of its national (pop) culture. San Francisco’s weekly radio programme Radio Goethe – The German Voice, which distributes popular music from German-speaking countries to English-speaking audiences, is explored. The main purposes of this programme are to portray a modern Germany to a foreign audience and to arouse interest in the country. The weekly 60-minute series began airing in 1996 and is sponsored by the German federal government. Radio Goethe is carried by over thirty college radio stations in the USA, Canada and New Zealand, and in 2004 the German creator and host of the series received a Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz) for his intercultural work. This article briefly documents the history of the series and critically examines the presentation, style and language of the music. The results of qualitative research on the meanings that listeners assign to the music – based on questionnaires and focus group interviews with American members of the show’s audience – are presented. This case study is framed within existing debates about the relationships between popular music, national identity, cultural representation, and state-supported music export. Data from interviews with the founder of the show and the cultural ambassador of Germany in San Francisco are analysed to clarify the goals of and assumptions behind the radio series.