EVERY GENRE PROJECT - August 31 - Liedermacher

Genre of the Day - Liedermacher 

Album of the Day - Weißes Papier by Element of Crime (1993)

August 31, 2024

As an explosive, crushing month in my personal life comes to a close, I can’t help but feel a bit exhausted at sitting down and writing an article. I’d be remiss to not feel a sense of celebration at eight months of this project, though; we’re two-thirds of the way through the year, yet I feel both marveled by and bewildered at the fact that I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the music this world has to offer. I am so thankful to be speaking to an ever-growing audience—it took more than a few months to gain traction—and that many of you bear with me and keep reading as my writing has bordered on diaristic in recent weeks and my musical explorations have become inextricably tied to personal ponderings. 

Today’s genre centers us in the ponderings of German singer-songwriters. Liedermacher translates literally to song-maker, as on-the-nose a translation as German ever is. We covered lied way back in the day—now it’s time to get into the heads of the makers. Delving into liedermacher is a chance to examine German political and social expressions during the era of urgency and earnestness internationally proclaimed by folk songwriters in the 1960s and ‘70s. Singers in leftist and dissident circles from across both sides of the Berlin wall sought to capture dissatisfaction and fatigue in hopes for a better future. The ‘70s was marked by an economic slowdown in West Germany’s previous fortunes, and accordingly, new experiments in living flourished as dozens of communes popped up using derelict buildings. It’s fair to assume that the per-capita rate of musicians within a commune is much higher than that of typical communities, and many politically-minded musicians got their start in these refuges.

Musically, liedermacher initially sketched a more insular cultural expression with a penchant for cabaret influences and instrumentation and lyrics drawn from or inspired by older folk tunes, literature, poetry, and theatrical works rather than the foreign blues and rock influences dominant among other German musical movements. Artists like Wolf Biermann weren’t afraid to mince words, though with a poetic flair. His boldness in particular did not come without a price—authorities revoked his East German citizenship for his transgressive lyrics. In his song “Ballade of the Prussian Icarus,” he takes a jab at the country’s isolationism: “Surrounded by this wire band / has ours become a lonesome land / cut off by leaden waves?” Amidst the tenuous political environment across the two Germanies, liedermacher artists rallied against authoritarianism and channeled the social dissatisfaction of those living under two competing governments. These singer-songwriters’ visions ran the gamut of pressing and taboo issues, from environmentalism and anti-nuclearism to militarism and reckonings with the shame of Nazism.  

Liedermacher stood the test of time post-reunification, though like other singer-songwriter movements internationally, the political components have dampened in favor of melancholic personal expressions. Even so, Element of Crime’s 1993 “Weißes Papier” (“White Paper”) is a soul-catching album compelling enough to possibly make me do the impossible and embark on a Duolingo German journey. “Mehr als sie erlaubt” draws back the curtains with a cabaret romp, stormy electric guitar lurking beneath the surface as lead singer Sven Regener vividly spins the tale of a dangerous liaison. The lilting, jazzy bass and gorgeous accordions and horn ensembles of “Weißes Papier” set a bewitching background to the lyrics, yearning for extraterrestrial escapism to forget about everything on Earth touched by a former love. From “Und du wartest” and its electric bite melting into psychedelic flanging and longing horns to “Alten resten since Chance[‘s]” skippy levity, you feel the beauty and the thoughtfulness beyond the language barrier; even if you can’t understand the lyrics, liedermacher prompts us to appreciate how people across the world use their voices for aspirations greater than themselves.