2024-10-06 10:35:40
Why do you want more shipping traffic? What is a good sailor? And how should his “banana texts” be understood? Herbert Grönemeyer’s friend, the writer Michael Lentz, dares to carry out an in-depth analysis and refutes the three most stubborn prejudices.
Many Germans, including his admirers, say: Grönemeyer can’t dance. Grönemeyer can’t sing. Grönemeyer’s poetry is strange. Michael Lentz indulges these popular prejudices “Grönemeyer” all the way. In his in-depth analysis, the writer, as a friend of the singer and a profound connoisseur of his work, lets the choreographer Pina Bausch, who experienced Grönemeyer’s first steps at the Schauspielhaus in Bochum, say: “He danced wonderfully, he knows how to dance wonderfully.”
Lentz dedicates a separate chapter to the voice, in which he examines the micro and macro intonation, the “harshness of melancholy” and the “social beauty” of the songs: “It is difficult to draw the conclusion from his different vocal qualities that Herbert Grönemeyer cannot sing a short circuit.”
Lentz is named together with Roland Barthes and Theodor W. Adorno Nepomuceno RivaWürzburg musicologist who, in his 2015 essay “Popularity through pre-programmed problems of understanding: the relationship between voice, sound and text in the songs of Herbert Grönemeyer”, responds to the criticism according to which Grönemeyer’s singing techniques and singing styles do not they are quite diverse for all the influences in his work, from country and chanson to reggae, drum’n’bass and hip hop. “There is almost no genre that cannot be mixed with Grönemeyer’s singing,” writes Riva: “His musical individuality is never lost. He has mastered the “lyrical expression” of the ballad, “in a style inexperienced but almost classic vocal”. as well as the “pressed and powerful vocal technique, which can sometimes turn into moans and screams” of rock music. Lentz himself speaks of a singer who knows how to do well with his voice, who in reality always sings loudly to himself, but who appreciates audience resonance. He attributes the barking to the area’s “short, dry native tongue.”
Lentzen’s textual exegesis runs through the entire book: from the Ruhr idiom to the pseudo-English “banana lyrics” that are written to accompany the finished music (“Herbert Grönemeyer doesn’t set the lyrics to music, he sets the music to music “), and the quasi-German versions of the “blind texts” of the stadium anthem.
“It was healthy, it was cow”
“The abbreviated language in which the lyrics of Herbert Grönemeyer’s songs partly consist has to do with the linguistic and mental peculiarities of the Ruhr area,” writes Lentz. “And also the cultural diversity – the Ruhr area as a ‘multi-ethnic state’ finds an echo in the texts – Grönemeyer himself explained this in more detail at a poetry conference in Leipzig in 2012: The language is more of a signal in short. ” , abrupt sentences when people communicate in the well must go upstairs to get some fresh air and return home safely. What shapes people in their self-irony and solidarity, as well as the work of their most popular voice: “At the moment is right” and “Everything remains different.”
On the other hand, Grönemeyer himself is influenced by English, the native language of his musical socialization. After finding the right harmonies for a beautiful melody, after arranging and recording everything in the studio, he gets to work on the lyrics, approaching German through an artificial English-sounding language: “Was sani on your door / Was sapi on your growth / What will be on your love / The edge is where I wait / The edge is where I place This has become “At the seaside”to a text as it appears in the booklet. Or not, because his librettos are always printed before his songs are finished. It’s not the printed word that counts, but the sung one. But this word is valid, however mysterious and enigmatic it may seem. Why do you want more shipping traffic? What is a deep snow buddy or a good sailor?
But this is also the other Grönemeyer, who sings about life and the country, not just as he feels it, but as he sees it. “Smile” and “Tanzen” were his songs critical of coal in the 1980s. Michael Lentz recognizes in his songs from the 90s, also from the Ruhrpott socialization, a sense of solidarity for the East German moods and the state of unity. The “bilingual country” in “homeland” and in “new land” the “Dabeiland” and the “country two” with their intuition: “I like this country / I like the people / I don’t like the state.” Like all great songwriters, he also manages songs that always know more than their author suspects.
In 2018 on “Tumult” it was said “Case in case” about a right-wing extremist virus plaguing a people among the people: “It’s anger, it’s presumptuous / The little crowd cleans things up / It’s fear that believes it needs to be clean / And always risky and bad Through songs as he invites it to those who feel that this is intended and who consider Grönemeyer to be a systematic person who, as an artist, overextends his capabilities and should concentrate on singing and leave politics to those politicians who despise it even more Without going into absurdities such as the demand for a folk singer without conviction, Lentz writes: “The political dimension is imprinted in the history of the language as a means of expression, it is a reflection of social developments; Herbert Grönemeyer observes it very closely. His songs are an archive of existing mentalities.”
Anyone who has ever tried to sing and dance at the VfL football stadium “Bochum” knows what Lentz means in his study of the music and its creator, in disguise of biography, when he concludes: As a total work of art, Grönemeyer “ has become a socio-political seismographic “It has become the main medium”.
Michael Lentz: Grönemeyer. S Fischer, 368 pages, 28 euros
#Michael #Lentz #book #Grönemeyer #Secret #Herbert