Music, Modernity, and the Foreign in the New Germany

Abstract

Music, Modernity, and the Foreign in the New Germany * Philip V. Bohlman (bio) Straßenmusik Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Andean Musicians in Freiburg im Breisgau, September 1993 (Photo by Philip V. Bohlman) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Hanjo Albers, “The Man with the Piano on the Pedestrian Zone in Freiburg,” September 1993 (Photo by Philip V. Bohlman) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. “Lied der Waise” (“Orphan’s Song”) Source: Chemjo Winawer, “Etwas über jüdische Bühnenmusik,” Monatsblätter—Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin 4 (10), 8; oral tradition; and Abraham Goldfaden’s The Witch. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Harpist and Dulcimer Player, Freiburg im Breisgau, September 1993 (Photo by Philip V. Bohlman) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. Accordion Player on the Cathedral Square, Freiburg im Breisgau, September 1993 (Photo by Philip V. Bohlman) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 6. “Moorlied” (“Song of the Moor”) Source: Das Lagerliederbuch: Lieder gesungen, gesammelt und geschrieben im Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen (1942), 5. Reprint, Dortmund: Verlag “pläne,” 1980. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 7. “Das Zirkus-Knorke-Lied” (“The Song of the Circus-Knorke”) Source: “Kinderecke,” Monatsbläatter—Kulturbund Deutscher Juden 2 (May 1934), 12. Music fills the streets of the New Germany. 1 Straßenmusik, or “street music,” is everywhere to be heard. On a given day in virtually any German city with a population greater than one hundred thousand, one can encounter an array of performance sites separated from each other by, perhaps, one hundred feet, a distance sufficient to prevent the performances of one group from interfering with those of another. On this same day, the musicians performing would surely represent various mixtures of Andean pan-pipe music, a Slavic folk-music troupe, a youthful chamber trio from the local music academy, Roma or Sinti musicians assuming various guises, an American with a guitar and minimal stock of songs from the 1950s and 1960s folk-music revival, and a desperate-looking German in a wheelchair, playing a cassette recorder as a musical instrument. After one has spent some time in German cities, it may well seem that music is a permanent fixture; the Andean pan-pipe ensembles are everywhere; so too is Irish folk music in one form or another. Street musicians, nevertheless, are mobile, and many travel from city to city so that they might find new audiences, ready for new sounds and new entertainment. Passersby respond to this street music in different ways. Some listen intently, particularly to the most foreign and exotic music, or to the youthful prodigies from the music academy. If the musical performance is not particularly accomplished or the musicians present a rather ragged-looking front, pedestrians march quickly by, looking with an intense nervousness in another direction, but usually still dropping some coins in the hat or guitar case on the sidewalk. [End Page 121] For the most part, street musicians earn well from their performances. They are sensitive to the flow of pedestrian traffic and rarely situate themselves in such a way that they intrude upon the coming and going along the street. To intrude physically with pedestrian traffic would also bring them into conflict both with the merchants, whose shops are the eventual goal of the pedestrians, and with the police, whose responsibility it is to maintain orderliness. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that street music has come to provide one of the ways with which German cities represent and disseminate their own public images. Street music makes the city a pleasant place to visit and to shop, to enjoy and to be entertained. Other musical traditions frequently inflect this soundscape, and the exact mixture of tra-ditions usually indicates shifting public attitudes toward the ways in which the city represents the past and present. In the New Germany, these shifting public attitudes are evident in the growing presence of foreignness, not just the Slavic troupes from Eastern Europe, which have increased markedly in number during the past four years, but in the repertories drawn from Jewish and Turkish traditions. These repertories transform the streets...