2024-04-13 10:57:11
Culture national team
The true story behind “There is only one Rudi Völler”
Status: 14.04.2024 | Reading time: 3 minutes
We are Rudi
Source: picture alliance / dpa/dpaweb
The director of the German national football team has extended his contract until the 2026 World Cup. And now everyone: “There is only one Rudi Völler!” But only very few people know the eventful history of the anthem and its melody.
The name will not only exist once, but as an idol Rudi Völler is unique. This is how Klaus Baumgart would like his hymn to the 1990 world champion to be understood: “One Rudi Völler – there is only one Rudi Völler!” Since 2002, when the solemnly sung man led the German footballers to the World Cup final as coach, the hit has been sung whenever the occasion presents itself. Last week he extended his contract as national team director, which runs until 2024, beyond the 2026 World Cup in America. The catchy tune also remains with the football people.
Everyone knows the melody: “Guantanamera” comes from Cuba. In the early 1930s, José Fernández Diaz, a popular radio host, delivered his news extemporaneously in ten-line verses in the song of Guajira. In the refrain, Fernández Diaz sang: “Guantanamera, Guajira Guantanamera.” Guajira stands for both Caribbean flamenco and the local farm girls from Guantanamo. Even back then, the bay was contractually leased to the USA as a military base – “Guantanamera” also alluded to this.
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It became a common song a few weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis in New York in 1963. Folk singer Pete Seeger commented on the Cold War with “Guantanamera” at Carnegie Hall. The American unions adopted the song as an anthem. The band The Sandpipers from Great Britain first recorded it in 1966. Fernández Diaz had one last major performance with “Guantanamera” at a concert in Lenin Park in the south of Havana in 1976, three years before his death.
In the stadiums of Europe it became a classic, as a battle and insult song. For 50 years, their own teams have been celebrated and others insulted to the catchy tune. There were also hits with German lyrics, Udo Jürgens sang “Who Counts the Tears”. Evangelical congregations sing Diaz’s tune as “Lord of all times”. But that’s where the old German seriousness ends again. “Guantanamera” is preferred, as in the stadium, distorted and made fun of. Willy Astor and Mike Krüger sang “G’wand an ham era”, which meant that we live in the era of robes and worry too much about our wardrobe. „A Cunt in a Mirror“ it was said by the Toten Hosen, which doesn’t need to be translated as a gentleman’s joke. “A beer in the cellar” was Bernd Stelter’s motto.
However, José Fernández Diaz had already drawn on “Guantanamera” by José Martí, the great Cuban romantic. His ballad is the original of the original; Pete Seeger stuck strictly to Martí’s text in 1963. “Yo soy un hombre sincero,” is how it begins: “I am a sincere person.” Were Klaus & Klaus, the creators of “There is only one Rudi Völler,” aware of the poetic reference to the nation’s football hero? You should never underestimate even German mood songs.
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