German Bands Research Articles

Composer Kajiura Yuki and neo-medieval anime soundtracks

This study semiotically interrogates the historical imaginary evinced in the neo-medievalist musical topoi found in Kajiura Yuki’s distinctive music for anime, which is easily recognised by its eclectic mix of sounds and styles gathered from across the globe. Her early scores employed a compositional method practised in Japanese popular music since the 1990s, which treated the creative act as a process of musical curation. This technique is evident in Kajiura’s handling of medieval Gregorian chant, which - as she has explained in interviews - she did not learn from studies in music history but rather from the German band Enigma and their hit album MCMXC a.D. from 1990, where samples of chant were mixed with Euro dance pop and French rap. The anime Noir from 2001 contains an excellent example of her approach, combining chant-based vocal tracks with energetic dance rhythms. Enigma used chant to call on modern neo-medieval tropes that highlight the pleasures of mysticism, religious devotion, and sexuality freed from morality, and Kajiura has replicated this imagery in Noir, making chant the symbol of an ancient criminal order that both worships and overtly sexualises femininity as embodied by the main female characters. Kajiura’s later style expands the technique of the Gregorian chant-influenced sound she developed in her earlier works: shifting away from Latin lyrics to her invented nonsense language of “Kajiurago” (literally “the language of Kajiura” in Japanese), with her ethereal chant delivered primarily by female voices. This shift is partially due to her collaboration with FictionJunction and Kalafina and is also a reflection of the strong female anime protagonists. Her signature sound enlivens the soundscapes of both Fate/Zero (2011) and the blockbuster anime, Demon Slayer (2019). The track “Brace up and run!” opens each episode of the latter, highlighting female voices chanting Kajiurago as a musically haunting reminder of the otherness of the past.

Teutonic Metal: Effects of Place- and Mythology-based Labels on Record Production

Viking, Mesopotamian and Hellenic metal; place-based metal labels full of mythology are commonplace in metal music. Focusing on ‘Teutonic’ metal, this article analyses such labels through a collaboration with one of the genre’s primary record producers: Karl Bauerfeind. Reflection on sixteen selected album productions with German, British, Swedish and Brazilian bands suggests that imagined communities with symbolic boundaries and shared invented traditions not only shape fan and media discourse but have tangible effects and sonic signatures in record productions, as demonstrated by discussions between bands, producers and record companies. The findings suggest that place- or mythology-based labels evoke vivid, partly fictional, historical inspiration for artists and record producers, which are further negotiated in journalistic media and fan discourse. It is suggested that these imagined communities with respective sonic signatures are both meaningful for fans in their ‘communicative leisure’ practices and used by the music industry as ‘instrumental leisure’ in their marketing efforts.

Act Two. What Makes Popular Christian Music “Popular”?

The article discusses the question “What makes Popular Christian Music ‘popular’?” by applying different (competing) concepts of the term “popular” so as to showcase by which criteria Popular Christian Music (labelled as Contemporary Christian Music by the US music industry) can be described as “popular”. Thereby, the article compares both Anglo-American and German-language Christian songs by means of close reading using the examples of the German band Koenige & Priester [Kings & Priests] and US singer Lauren Daigle. Through the presented exemplary analyses, I argue that Christian music uses strategies of popularization comparable to secular popular music. The difference to secular music comes from the fact that the Christian message is a central genre marker of Popular Christian Music, leading me to suggest that the popularity (in the sense of reaching a large audience apart from religious/evangelistic circles) essentially depends on the polysemic properties of the lyrics.

Koncertowe sacrum i profanum – teatralizacja przestrzeni scenicznej na przykładzie zespołu Rammstein

W artykule zwrócono uwagę na problem teatralizacji przestrzeni podczas występów scenicznych grupy Rammstein. Twórczość sceniczna zespołu wykorzystuje środki wyrazu artystycznego, jakie można znaleźć podczas przedstawień teatralnych. Począwszy od oświetlenia, poprzez kostiumy, dekoracje, aż do detali, grupa wykazuje dbałość o szczegóły swoich występów. Niejednokrotnie muzycy sięgają do klipów wideo, przenosząc ich elementy do przestrzeni scenicznej. Niecodzienny, świąteczny charakter wydarzenia, jakim jest koncert zespołu Rammstein, stwarza swoiste przestrzenie, które można określić jako sacrum. W artykule dokonano analizy spektakli muzycznych w świetle teorii Johana Huizingi, Beaty Hoffmann, Wojciecha Siwaka oraz Theodora Adorna i Maxa Horkheimera.

Corvus Corax: medieval rock, the minstrel, and cosmopolitanism as anti-nationalism

AbstractThis article explores the German band Corvus Corax and their reinterpretion of the Middle Ages as a creative answer to Germany's problematic history of nationalism. Invoking the community ideals and ideological values of the 1960s and 1970s, which, in the context of the GDR took on even more significance, Corvus Corax borrowed ‘authentic’ medieval texts and melodies, rendering them in acoustic arrangements inspired by medieval performance practices. In short, German ‘folk’ bands invented ‘medieval’ rock to sidestep Nazi connotations with the word ‘folk’. Besides invoking the semantic shift from ‘folk’ to ‘medieval’, I argue that the band adopts the figure of the medieval minstrel and asserts that his multilingual texts, ‘foreign’ instruments and colourful performance practices speak to an inclusive, diverse and cosmopolitan community. Paradoxically, they do so by first positioning the medieval minstrel as a punked-up, marginalised ‘outcast’. The cultural capital of this outcast status helps medieval rock bands like Corvus Corax carve out a space for marginalised voices who, in their new privileged positions, offer a form of retribution for politics of exclusion, racism and authoritarianism.

What Were the So-Called ‘German Bands’ of Pre-World War I Australian Street Life?

‘The ‘German band’ as a concept remains integrally associated with German ethnicity in the Australian public mind though such things as the extroverted oom-pah music of present-day Oktoberfest, or the live and recorded oom-pah music in German or ‘Bavarian’-themed venues. However, the costumed ‘German bands’ that were a feature of nineteenth-century British street and seaside resort life also began to appear ubiquitously in various gold-rush era Australian population centres and remained a fixture of Australian street entertainment until the First World War. Gold-rush era chronicler William Kelly described their music as being able to ‘drive swine into anguish’. Yet they had an opposing reputation for excellence in playing Strauss waltzes, polkas and other popular dance music of the era. They were sought after by dance venue, circus and other theatrical entertainment proprietors and were furthermore hired for private balls, picnics, showgrounds and racetrack entertainment. By appearing at German social functions and venues they buttressed pan-German cultural identity and traditions and, for non-Germans, the sight and sound of a disciplined, groomed and costumed German band provided a mildly exciting cultural tourism experience. In blaring street, circus parade or showground mode they, in fact, conformed to the present-day global stereotype of the Bavarian Biergarten oom-pah band. Through foundation research, this article attempts to apply some social, cultural and musicological ‘flesh and bones’ to what has more or less remained the ‘myth’ of the ubiquitous ‘German bands’ (and their not-always-German bandsmen) that sometimes entertained and charmed pedestrians while at other times represented a social and sonic blot on the streetscapes and public spaces of pre-World War I Australia.

‘Unmistakeable Sauerkrauts’: Local Perceptions of Itinerant German Musicians in New Zealand, 1850–1920

Although largely forgotten today, bands of German musicians (generally from the Westpfalz region) were regular visitors to New Zealand’s shores from the 1850s up until the outbreak of World War I, making them among the earliest professional European musical ensembles to be heard in the country. Plying their trade on the streets and in other public spaces, German bands were also routinely hired to perform for garden parties, school sports days, dances and boat trips, as well as on countless other occasions. Yet despite their apparent popularity, contemporary comment published in newspapers of the day demonstrates that reactions to their performances were decidedly mixed. While some members of the public clearly enjoyed the contribution German bands made to local musical life, others were less than delighted by their (often noisy) presence. In 1893, for example, one Wellington resident complained that ‘a German Band … may be heard braying at every street corner at all hours of the day and night’, while noting also that ‘It is the genuine article, all the performers being wanderers from the “Vaterland”, unmistakeable “sauerkrauts”’ Within weeks of the outbreak of World War I, ten members of a German band had been arrested in Auckland and taken to Somes Island in Wellington harbour, where they were interned for the duration of the conflict. This article examines the New Zealand public’s changing perceptions of this particular brand of street musician from colonial times until shortly after the end of the First World War.

‘The Above Mentioned Aliens’: Rudolf Mersy’s German Band in New Zealand, 1913–1919

In early August 1914—within a fortnight of the outbreak of World War I—Auckland police arrested twenty-four German nationals and sent them for internment in Wellington. Strikingly, twelve of these so-called ‘enemy aliens’ comprised a German band led by Rudolf Mersy (1867–1949), a composer renowned in his homeland as the ‘Aschbacher Mozart’. Drawing upon previously restricted files held at Archives New Zealand (Wellington), this article uncovers the origins of these musicians, their activity in New Zealand prior to the advent of war, and the circumstances surrounding their internment. Somewhat surprisingly, given the cramped (and at times brutal) conditions on Somes Island, Mersy and his fellow bandsmen continued to be active as musicians throughout their captivity. The extant documents, which include official reports and confiscated letters written by the Prisoners of War (POWs) to family members, also reveal poignant details concerning their daily lives. Yet despite their earlier successes as touring musicians, in the immediate aftermath of the war lingering anti-German sentiment and the advent of recorded sound combined to ensure the disappearance of the once perennially popular German Band from the global musical scene.

Using Music and Image to Raise Spiritual and Moral Questions in the Foreign Language Classroom: Exploring the Söhne Mannheims

MUSIC OFFERS TO language teachers benefits in terms of language exposure, cultural information, and multisensory appeal. This article describes how the use of music videos offers potential for exploring spiritual and moral concerns, especially as the intersections between words, sounds, and images are explored. Exploring how (in this case) specifically German voices address faith-related questions with specific reference to their own cultural context may at the same time deepen moral, spiritual, and cultural learning. The examples described are drawn from the music videos release by the German band Söhne Mannheims.

Rammstein and Ostalgie: Longing for Yesteryear

Ostalgie, former East Germans' desire for the time before German reunification, has played a growing part in the lives of citizens of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). This article examines whether and to what extent this theme is present in the works of Rammstein, the world-famous German band whose members all grew up in the GDR. Our analysis reveals the thematic prominence of Ostalgie in this band's works, and further that this theme has not diminished—indeed, it appears to have expanded—over the course of Rammstein's career.

The Sound of Yourself Listening: Faust and the Politics of the Unpolitical

This article discusses Krautrock's perhaps most iconic formation, the German band Faust, and its immensely successful first four albums of the early 1970s. The article first focuses on the ways in which the band's avant-garde self-image continues to cover up the ways in which their creative output was tied to social and political questions that faced Germany in the wake of the generational upheaval of the late 1960s. Supported, in part, by original interviews with three of Faust's founding members, this article then broadly re-examines the band's subtle social attentiveness that is often buried beneath musical experimentations and extra-musical reflections. In the end, one can therefore conclude that Faust's until now overlooked politics of the unpolitical constituted a musical project aimed to question the status quo and Germany's inability to confront its past adequately.

<i>Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History Richard O. Davies Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History. By Joseph A. Amato (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2008. xvi plus 279 pp.). Professional historians have tended to leave the field of family history to genealogists and amateur family historians, and so it was with considerable curiosity that I opened Joseph Amato's most recent book. This was particularly so, given his penchant for tackling offbeat subjects with a freshness and ingenuity that gives them special significance, as he did in Dust: A History of the Small and Invisible (2002) and On Foot: A History of Walking (2004). In his pioneering book on the potentials of local and regional history, Rethinking Home; A Case for Writing Local History (2002), Amato demonstrates the utility of studying the intersection of local and regional narratives with larger historical forces. Now, he makes a case for the serious study of family history. His exhaustive research into the many twists and turns, ups and (mostly) downs, of seven generations of his own family's experience in America has produced a compelling social history that should be of interest to scholars concerned about the intersection of major historical forces with the lives of ordinary citizens. The reader comes away from this family history with an enhanced appreciation of the powerful impact of pervasive poverty in which generation after generation often lived after arriving in America. It is truly a compelling study of the [End Page 1058] lives of ordinary citizens from the colonial era to the present. It makes a strong argument for history written "from the bottom up." The familiar Horatio Alger theme is largely absent in this narrative, however, it was not for lack of will or effort that poverty and an unrelenting struggle for survival remained a constant for many of his ancestors. Try hard they did, but economic and social conditions prevented them from obtaining productive farmland or making the jump from day laborer to the middle class. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary research tools he developed as the founding director of the Center for Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest Minnesota State University, Amato provides a complex narrative that has rescued scores of heretofore nondescript persons from the dusty files of state archives, county deed offices, raw census data, court house records, factory pay records, cemetery records, and local newspapers. He supplements these sources with oral histories and the small number of letters, diaries, and legal documents that somehow survived the multiple migrations of his family. Amato's diligent research effort led him back into the early 1600s when the Boudrot family immigrated to French Acadia. After establishing themselves as successful wetland farmers, the family of Pierre Boudrot, along with 7,000 other Acadians, suffered the indignities and total impoverishment of being prisoners of war and wards of state in hostile colonial Massachusetts in 1755. There they were treated shamefully as "French Neutrals," hated for being both Catholic and friends and allies of the Indians. Similar tales of difficult struggles against prejudice and poverty abound in Amato's heritage. The O'Briens arrived from Ireland about 1815, and became part of the Irish work crews that helped construct the Erie Canal, subsequently moving westward to work on canals in Ohio, Indiana, and eventually Wisconsin. It is there, in the emerging industrial centers that transformed Wisconsin in mid-nineteenth century that Mary Jane O'Brien married a neighbor, Jacob Lindsau in 1871. Jacob's father had arrived from West Prussia to work in the mills in Appleton. The couple relocated to the booming industrial center of Menasha, where Jacob strived to move into the middle class. Jacob was elected city alderman, played in the German band, opened a bicycle shop, and ran a small tavern (hence Jacob's Well) that provided a popular meeting place for ethnic mill workers and the epicenter of Jacob's brief political career. But Jacob's life ended in great disappointment. His business was the target of tossed rocks and a customer boycott as he fell victim to reckless charges of sedition by the Wisconsin Loyalty League. As Amato writes, "Jacob, like other...

Hot swing and the dissolute life: youth, style and popular music in Europe 1939–49

In the late thirties, the syncopated rhythms of American jazz swept through Europe, an event encouraged by both the US record industry and Hollywood. In Germany, Fascist resistance to jazz culminated in the imposition of a ban by the Reich Chamber of Music on ‘jazzified, judified dance music’, a convenient way of dealing with American competition. Nevertheless Gene Krupa and Teddy Wilson were still entered in Brunswick's German catalogue for 1939, and German bands continued to swing (on radio and records) into the forties. It is not wholly surprising to read of Goebbels and Goering dancing, in uniform, to the swing music of Jack Hylton and his Orchestra at the Berlin Press Ball in 1937. Among the young, however, swing was already beginning to symbolise a resistance to authority and non-cooperation with the Third Reich. Even newspaper articles intended to demonstrate the demoralising and corruptive effects of jazz whetted the appetite. Thus, a Frankfurter Zeitung article on ‘The Jitterbug’ attacked the bandleader Harry James, but also explained the latest swing terms such as ‘jive’ and ‘hep-cat’.

German bands

German bands Get access C. H. Sp. P C. H. Sp. P Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s8-VI, Issue 142, 15 September 1894, Page 215, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-VI.142.215g Published: 15 September 1894

German bands

German bands Get access W. P. M. W. P. M. 1Shepperton Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s8-VI, Issue 142, 15 September 1894, Page 215, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-VI.142.215i Published: 15 September 1894

German bands

German bands

German Bands

German Bands

German Bands

German Bands

German bands

German bands Get access F. C. Birkbeck Terry F. C. Birkbeck Terry Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s8-VI, Issue 133, 14 July 1894, Page 28, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-VI.133.28d Published: 14 July 1894

Folk-lore: German bands

Folk-lore: German bands