Founded in 1984 as a fun punk band, the golden lemons mix with socially critical texts.
Photo: Imago/Pop-Eye
The idea is still widespread, music as the epitome of the beautiful spirit is to be largely held out of the sphere of politics. Does your book point in the opposite direction?
Yes, it was important to me to use German -speaking pop music how closely pop and politics are connected. This is reflected in the development phase of modern pop music in the early 1950s in the then deeply racist USA, where you can observe a black music – i.e. the adaptation of black music tradition through a white mainstream music market. That was the starting shot, and in the following decades it has always been shown how important the voice of pop music is in the context of politics.
Is there anything like apolitical music at all?
Some people would answer this question. On the other hand, I believe that there are no apolitical people, no apolitical life and therefore no apolitical music. Because music is always an expression of how I articulate and position myself within a social world. If you consciously look away in a world of political crises, it is a political act. And when I sing love songs that traditionally reproduce heteronormative images, that’s political too.
What makes political songs interesting for you? Do you necessarily have to reflect your private political view in your attitude?
No. In my book I analyzed 260 songs. And if they only reflected my political views, it would be a little boring. I was concerned with a form of historiography, so music is exciting for me when it tells me something substantial about the time of origin. In my opinion, this succeeds, especially when it is exhilarated and takes up an attitude. As a rule, it does not offer a delicate analysis in a small scale.
Interview
wikipedia/Marvin Böhm
The media scientist has with “no power for nobody” Marcus S. smaller (Born 1973) recently presented a book in which he outlines a German cultural history of the past 80 years based on well -known pop songs. In an interview with »ND«, the professor reports on the University of Popular Arts in Berlin about the relationship between pop and politics, the right pressure in pop and the question of why songs can be so easily run into their opposite.
Although there are exceptions …
Yes, for example in the song “The citizens of Rostock, Mannheim etc.” from the golden lemons from 1994, who tries to reflect on the events around the racist riots in Rostock-Lichtenhagen or Mannheim in a very fine, dialectical way. Typical for the area of pop music, however, is a song like “No power for nobody”, which has become a slogan over time that stays in the head for people. In the tradition of German-speaking pop music from Germany, the general policy overlaps the concrete-political, i.e. the detailed case analysis of concrete historical events. This is a moment that pop music makes quite strong: the reduction of complexity and the resulting immediate connection capacity and the challenge for opinion formation.
The political charge of a song does not necessarily have to be created from the start, right? For example, they lead the song “Looking for Freedom” by David Hasselhoff in the book.
Yes, you can always exploit songs and thus retrospectively give them a meaning that is not created in the song itself. At that time, Hasselhoff stylized himself as a cultural leading figure of the turning time.
Another, often cited example is the song “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen, which was played at Donald Trump campaign events, even though it is directed against US imperialism.
Exactly, this is a phenomenon that can be observed frequently: that rights acquire popular left -wing content and use it. This has become the classic strategy of neo-fascism: to operate right-wing extremist politics with the left, guerrilla-like revolution. The other way around, there have been blinkers for a long time due to comprehensible reasons. A very current counter-example is the group command internet, which recently hijacked with her album »Malle Antifa« Ballermann hits from left. Very successful, I think.
Why is the content of songs generally so easy to run into your obvious opposite?
I had a conversation with Ingo Knollmann from the Donots for the book, who said that when writing political songs, you have to make sure that they cannot be hijacked by political opponents. A line like “no one is illegal” would never be taken from rights.
But does not also suffer the quality of art, the strength of which is often precisely to deliberate levels of meaning – and to encourage the listeners to think?
This is the conflict in which you are located. I think without any ambivalence backdrops, pop music would be completely boring. But at the same time, it is a question of musical socialization how pop and politics are ideally brought together: whether with the shelter of the shelter or a space of meaning that is as open as possible. I can gain aesthetically both.
Compared to the United States or Great Britain, there was a long time to observe in Germany in Germany in terms of clear political messages in pop music. Do you share the impression?
Absolutely. In the book I lead the song “Wolves in the middle of May” by Franz-Josef Degenhardt from 1965 as a musical turning point, since he is one of the first German-language songs of the long-term episodes of the Shoah in the middle of the Republic of Republic of FRG. And that at a time when the NPD had just been founded and had achieved the first election sequence. The hit music was the soundtrack of repression in the Economic Wonderland FRG.
How did it look like this in the GDR?
Similar. There, too, the shallow hit was initially the central medium of popular entertainment music. And, like in the FRG, this predominant mood tipped over with the popularization of songwriters such as Wolf Biermann, who confronted society with critical, sometimes unpleasant questions. The difference was: in the GDR it was more risky to comment politically critically. There you threatened a ban on performance or even jail, in the FRG a hate campaign of the »picture«.
If you look at the current negotiation of political issues in pop, it is striking that a media virulent and highly important topic such as climate change hardly plays a role – in contrast to identity policy issues. Why is that?
I agree with this impression. If you compare the Fridays-for-Future movement, it is striking that-unlike the 68 movement-it has no soundtrack for its revolution. I believe that pop music for the climate -related youth no longer plays the same role as for previous generations. Although it is often heard, it is no longer to the extent that it is a means of political articulation, at least in Germany. There was environmentally moving music in the 1980s, but the majority of which was performed in an unsavory manner with a raised, pedagogical index finger, such as in the well -known piece “Charlemagne” of goosebumps from 1983. However, this does not have to do with the nature of pop music.
An increasing pressure of rights has been observed nationally and internationally for many years. To what extent is this also reflected in pop music?
Basically, it can be said that there has explicitly contributed to the aesthetic development of pop music in Germany. Everything that ideologically constitutes right pop music was already in the Nazi camp of the 1930s: Come to us, be in the process of singing the flag song, fight, victory, death to the political opponents and so on. It is all the more remarkable that right -wing extremists and neo -Nazi music are currently experiencing an unexpected renaissance in young people on the network. At Tikkok, too, the strengthening of a right lifestyle contraryness has been observed for some time, which is handling with phrased anti-establishment slogans. The right rate in Germany, especially the younger generation, has now assumed proportions that are rightly placed in a traditional line with the baseball bats years from the nineties. And I believe that music can potentiate this growing aggression and anger with the inherent summoning potential.
Marcus S. Kleiner: No power for nobody. Pop and politics in Germany. Reclam, 440 pages, born, € 34.
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