Konstantin Wecker: A Voice of Passion
Konstantin Wecker is a household name in Germany. He is probably the country's best-kept secret to the rest of the world. For over 25 years Wecker's music has made an impact, both socially and artistically, as part of the Liedermacher genre. Liedermacher (literally, "song-maker") was born out of the 1968 student uprisings in Germany and is comparable to Nueva Canciòn of Latin America, the Chanson of France and Québec, and in some ways even the protest songs of American folk music. It is a genre with a broad range of interpretation, including all musical styles, but with one underlying similarity -- lyrics which are strong, and convey a message, usually a political one.
In Wecker's case, his art blends a powerful vocal style, with an original blend of classical, jazz, and rock. His piano is the trademark of his sound, as are his words, which are intense, carefully crafted poems which have always reflected the social and political issues important to Wecker, and reflective of the times in which he lives.
I first discovered Wecker several years ago, when a broadcast entitled Three Voices, Three Worlds, One Vision was shown on a cable television stattion. It was a concert featuring three performers known for their politically infused music -- Joan Baez, Mercedes Sosa of Argentina, and Konstantin Wecker. I was immediately blown away by Wecker's dynamic stage presence and booming, almost operatic vocals. Literally, I had never heard or seen anything like him in my life. My curiosity was piqued.
Over the course of four years I gathered information from as many sources as possible, and eventually synthesized my research in a term paper presented in partial fulfillment of an ethnomusicology course I took in 1995 while in university. I discovered that there are multi-dimensional aspects to Wecker's work both musically and lyrically. Now, three years later, I reflect upon my research with regards to musical additions to Wecker's catalogue since that time, and am more convinced than ever that non-German audiences have a lot to gain from this Liedermacher despite the language barrier and the fact his albums are not widely distributed outside of German-language countries. Thanks to the Internet, these are situations that I hope I can play a part in changing.
Konstantin Wecker came into the world on June the first, 1947 in Munich. He was raised and nurtured towards music in part thanks to his father, Alexander, a strong opera enthusiast. In his youth Wecker dabbled on guitar, violin, and eventually found his way to the piano, which has since become his main instrument. His interest in music, as well as the works of great intellectuals such as Nietsche and Goethe, led him to pursue piano, voice, and philosophy at the University of Munich.
He left university after four years of study in 1970, without taking a degree. Wecker continued to pursue his music while working at odd jobs -- everything from selling insurance to working in pornographic films! In 1972, his first album Die Sadopoetischen Gesange des Konstantin Amadeus Wecker (The Sadopoetical Songs of Konstantin Amadeus Wecker) was released. Someone suggested to him to add to his name "Amadeus," to make it sound more "musical." Sadopoetischen is only one of the words Wecker often creates to uniquely convey an idea which before had been untouched.
His following work continued to establish Wecker as a versatile musician, popular in intellectual circles and amongst students. 1977's Genug ist nicht genug (Enough is not enough) is one of his best-known albums, containing the song "Willy", a poem expressing many of Wecker's feelings at the time about society and justice. "Willy" was reincarnated several years ago on 1993's Uferlos (Boundless), as "Die Ballade von Antonio Amadeu Kiowa," again simply instrumentated only with piano, and presented as an elongated recitation, updated to reflect violent acts in Germany at that time towards immigrants and non-Whites. The song's namesake was a young Angolan refugee who was beaten to death by a group of skinheads.
Wecker's rich, powerful voice soars to music which is categorically undefinable. It includes elements of jazz, rock, folk, and classical influences. Many of his songs fuse the different styles, starting from simple piano and voice, escalating to an arrangement reminiscent of a full orchestra, before reverting back again to piano and voice. These cyclical songs were typical of his earlier work with Team Musikon, a group of talented musicians forming small string and brass sections with whom Wecker worked from the late 70's to the early 80's on such albums as Im nahmen des Wahnsinns (In the Name of Insanity), a live album from 1983 with many Wecker classics, and the earlier Genug ist nicht genug.His piano, though, has always been Wecker's musical mainstay. Undoubtedly a virtuoso, many of his songs have an improvised feel to them. When listening to studio versions versus live ones, he almost never plays the same song the same way more than once.
More recently, Wecker has worked within conventional, contemporary genres, and sticking with it for the course of an entire album. However, he never forgets to add his own touch. Uferlos, from 1993, was very rock-oriented, but even still had elements of other styles, and even cultures. The title track even begins with almost Middle-Eastern or Asian sounding chords. Indeed, Uferlos is an excellent summation of Wecker's music, which knows no bounds.
His following album, 1994's Wenn Du fort bist: Lieder von der Liebe und vom Tod (When You are Gone: Songs of Love and of Death), saw Wecker return to jazz roots, and revealed a very personal side to his songwriting. "Für meinen Vater" ("For my Father") is as personal as anything Wecker has ever written, and even though a non-German speaker like myself can't understand all the words, the raw emotion which comes through in Wecker's voice is truly universal.
In an unprecedented move, Wecker visited Cameroon in the mid-90'sand returned with the sounds of Africa in his heart and mind. After teaming up with the choir, Les Voices d'Espérance de Douala, Gamsig was born in 1996, an album combining African rhythms accented (in more ways than one) by Wecker's thick Bavarian dialect. It is an album that is truly original; two diverse cultures are brought together, not to mention all the different languages. The choir sings in African languages, French, and even English at times. Wecker himself even joins in at one point with the choir on the gospel song "If You Follow," the lyrics of which were written by a member of the group. It was the first and only time I have ever heard the man sing a word of English.
Most recently, Brecht is an album that is indisputably German. To coincide with 1998 being the Brecht Centenary in honor of the satirist/poet's birth in 1858, Wecker picked a selection of Bertholt Brecht's poems and set them to his own music. Brecht himself has strong ties to the Liedermacher movement, even though he died in 1956, more than a decade before the 1968 student uprising. The word Liedermacher has its roots in Brecht's term Stückeschreiber, ("play-writer") stressing the "workaday" quality of artistic creation, as Richard J. Rundell of New Mexico State University wrote in his paper "West Germany's Liedermacher: Pop Music and Social Criticism." Anyone who is familiar with Wecker's earlier work will find the songs on Brecht immediately characteristic of classic Wecker, while a few evoke German cabaret of the 1920's and 30's.
Yet in spite of the musical richness of Wecker's work, the main focus of his songs has always been directed towards his lyrics. Critical and passionate, his songs can be examined within the framework of a trinity -- songs about life, songs about love, and songs with social and politically critical dimensions. In all cases, his lyrical approach is direct and precise in language and content. Look at the blunt quality of the refrain from "Genug ist nicht genug:"
Genug ist nicht genug
ich laß mich nicht belügen.
Schon Schweigen ist Betrug,
genug kann nie genügen.
Enough is not enough
I do not allow myself to be lied to.
Silence is deceit,
Enough can never be enough.
"Genug" is a song about life; "Was ich an dir mag" ("What I Love About You," from Uferlos) is a song about love. In it, Wecker talks about the fear of describing a love in such common, everyday spoken words as "Ich liebe dich" ("I love you"):
Was ich an dir mag, ist das Geheime
jedes Wort zuviel ist schon Gefahr,
denn so schnell verfällt ins Allgemeine,
Was zuvor so ganz besonders war.
What I love about you is a mystery
Every word is so dangerous,
Because they fall too quickly and make common
What before was so very special.
In stark contrast, using an old-fashioned troubadour style that is hard to recreate in English, "Liebeslied im Alten Stil" ("Love Song in an Old Voice," from Uferlos) presents a love affair amounting to nothing more than a shallow sexual experience:
Was für ein Gefühl
Tiefer als das Meer
doch wie tief ist das Meer?
Oh, what a feeling
Deeper than the sea
But how deep is the sea?
Still other kinds of love that Wecker sings about is love for his family, like in "Für meinen Vater," and even a song like "Genug ist nicht genug" shows a love affair of a different kind, with life in general as opposed to a specific person.
But it is the social and political commentary that has brought Wecker so much recognition. Like many Germans born in the years following World War II, he came of age during the 1968 student protests against the brutal past of the nation, which shadows the land even to this day. It's a dilemma that Wecker struggled with for a long time, that of his love for his country contrasted against the horror of the atrocities committed in its name. To express these feelings he uses a deep sarcasm and, once again, a lyrical bluntness to directly confront the issues. In "Die Weisse Rose" ("The White Rose") he sings about members of a resistance movement named after the flower of everlasting love, who were later executed in Munich towards the end of the Nazi regime:
Ihr wärt hier so wichtig, Sophie und Hans,
Alexander und all die andern
eure Schlichtheit und euer Mut,
euer Gottvertrauen -- ach, tät das gut!
Denn die Menschlichkeit, man kann's verstehn,
ist hierzulande eher ungern gesehn
und beschloß deshalb auszuwandern.
You would be so important here,
Sophie and Hans,
Alexander, and the others;
Simplicity and your courage
Your faith in God -- ah, that would do so much good!
Humanity, one can see,
is not appreciated here,
and so I decided to leave.
For people of such courage and integrity to be murdered for their beliefs is the ultimate sacrifice, and for those admiral qualities Wecker thanks them, even though there is an irony implicit in the fact that these people were killed for those very traits -- courage, faith, hope for mankind. The leaving of which Wecker sings in the last line could be interpreted either literally, in terms of his own desire for physical separation from Munich (and he did, in fact, live in the Toscana region of Italy for many years), or mentally, to either block out such thoughts (which is unlikely given Wecker's willingness to confront the horrific) or to attempt to rise above the mentality which led to this destruction.
"Die Weisse Rose" is from 1982. But even in the 1990's, he continued to be inspired by the wrath of lingering fascism and violence. The racially-motivated attack upon, and subsequent death of, Angolan refugee Antonio Amadeu Kiowa inspired him to re-write his classic "Willy," the one-way conversation with a friend (known simply as Willy) from Genug ist nicht genug. This time, Wecker's voice is more mature, with the underlying bitterness of a man who has seen the very acts and attitudes he denounced twenty years prior once again show their ugliness. It is far more cynical and, in the end, more powerful than the original, with its biting refrain calling for solidarity; a togetherness to form a collective strength against further violence and hatred:
Gestern habns an Amadeu daschlagn
aber heit, aber heit, aber heit,
heit halt ma zsamm.
Yesterday they struck Amadeu dead
But today . . .
Today we will stand together.
To this day, Wecker's strongest and best-known political song is "Sage nein!" ("Say no!"), also from Uferlos. Unlike the American slogan "Say No" which was coined during the Reagan administration, referring to abstinance from drugs and was never particularly effective, Wecker's "Sage nein!" is a cry for peace, a plea against all forms of hatred and prejudice. In the song, he attacks everything from Holocaust deniers to the institutional racism found in the school system. No part of society is innocent; fighting hatred is something which must engage all of us:
Ob als Penner oder sanger,
Bänker oder Müßiggänger,
ob als Schuler oder Leher,
Hausfrau oder Straßenkehrer,
ob du sechs bist oder hundert -
Sei nicht nur erschrect, verwundert,
tobe, zürne, bring dich ein:
Sage nein!
Whether you're a tramp or a singer,
Banker or idler,
Whether a student or a teacher,
Housewife or streetcleaner,
Whether you are six or a hundred
Don't just be frightened or astonished
Bring your anger; roar as one:
Say no!
The power and conviction of this song is very real; Wecker's vocals are uninhibited, dramatic, yet always in control. It is a serious song with a serious message and Wecker inscribes the emotional qualities through several changes in dynamics. He maintains a steady charge during the verses which have an aural quality of forward motion, a march towards tolerance accompanied by the repetitive snare drum pattern. The song rises in volume during the refrains to a climactic point that never entirely resolves.
"Genug is nicht genug," in many ways, summarizes Wecker's philosophy of life, that being that one should live to the fullest. Indeed, Wecker practices what he sings, and in his career has released around 30 albums, including several film scores. Even so, he has never achieved a great degree of commercial success, but continues to have a loyal base of fans and critical acclaim. Konstantin Wecker continues to build his career on fusing different musical styles and performance techniques. There are no fixed rules, no formulas that he employs; he makes his art out of the unconventional. But it is time that his music crossed not only boundaries of musical genres and lyrical subject matter, it is time it crossed geographic boundaries as well. His albums are not readily available in CD stores outside of German-speaking countries, particularly Germany and Austria, a fact which is more than lamentable. We can gain so much from his passion and his drive. Even though our cultures might be different, we share many of the same social and political ills to which no nation is immune. Noth America has had its share of Antonio Amadeu Kiowas, its share of institutional racism.
Any good music store will have something you can ask for by the name World Music Catalogue -- they should know what you are talking about -- which is organized into two large books that look like the Yellow Pages. Artists are listed in alphabetical order with a selection of available titles. Thanks to modern technology Wecker's albums can easily be purchased through Internet merchants that specialize in exporting German albums, such as German Music Express (http://www.musicexpress.com).
The discovery of Wecker's music, to me, was like discovering a hidden treasure and has continued to be a motivating force in my life. I run an independent Web site about Konstantin Wecker at http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/~calypso/wecker.html. Dubbed The "Other" Konstantin Wecker Page, it contains photos, the original draft of my university term paper from 1995, photos, English rhyming translations of songs such as "Sage nein!" and "Genug ist nicht genug" and a comprehensive bibliography including albums, books, films, and articles. It is the only English-language information available about Wecker to the best of my knowledge, and is in co-operation with the Official Konstantin Wecker Site in Austria (http://members.magnet.at/maywald/wecker.html).
Selected Discography:
Genug ist nicht genug. Polydor 821 108-2, 1977.
This was Wecker's breakthrough album, and received the Deutsche Kleinkunstpreis for 1977/78.
Im namen des Wahnsinns. Polydor 815 397-2, 1983.
A live album featuring many of Wecker's important songs to that date, with a love brass and string section providing complex instrumental arrangements.
Uferlos. BMG Ariola/Global Musicon 74321 13085 2, 1993.
This album was a somewhat of a commercial success. "Sage nein!" even made it onto the charts, and remains Wecker's political anthem.
Gamsig. BMG Ariola/Global Musicon 74321 31268 2, 1996.
Even though it was met with mixed reviews, the mix of cultures and languages makes this album a true original.
Brecht. BMG Ariola/Global Musicon 74321 542 742, 1998.
In many ways, Brecht is a return to Wecker's roots -- this is a very "German" sounding album, and has much of the instrumentation of his earlier work.
Author Biography: Paula E. Kirman is a freelance writer and Web designer in Edmonton, Canada. She has an interest in the music of cultures from around the world, particularly in the singer/songwriter genre. You can reach her via email at paula@calypsoconsulting.com.