The two musical selections you hear are both compositions of Christian Kolonovits:

1. The Soundtrack to the Film "North Face"
2. Musical Preview of the Erl Passion Play.

If you are interested in learning more about the Passion Plays, please have a look at my book length review of Oberammergau:

https://mellenpress.com/book/Adam-J-Sacks/9848/

The Passion Play is the original living theater, a ritual of belief in and of community and of course the theatrical chronicle of the last week, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, The oldest in Europe is 422 years old and takes place every six years in Erl, Austria, just now completing its five month run. This story has been told for millenia, and its transition into theater goes back to the first living nativity scenes, some believe started by St. Francis himself in Greccio in 1223.

The Passion Play’s is Europe’s first major theatrical endeavor since Greek Tragedy. Even with an interim of a millennium and a half, it bears many marks of ancient Greek theater. Earliest references to the Passion Plays of the Alps region of the early 1600s often refer to it as a "tragedy." Indeed, it emerged out of the conditions of wartime and plague of the Thirty Years War which absolutely ravaged Central Europe. The central dramatic crux of this Catholic Passion play is the death of a child at the hands of its parents, as found in Orestia and Medea and the drama of denial or recognition of divine incarnation as most clearly seen in the Bacchae of Euripides.

The Passion Play is also one mammoth piece of folk art; though on a monumental scale, 30% of the host town is involved and not just as actors, as almost every role is cast for two. Most of the sets and costumes are also handcrafted by locals, The recurrence every half decade or so more resembles a religious pilgrimage, subverting any facile boundary between theatrical make believe and the “true myth” of religious ritual.

The production in Erl is distinct from its slightly more renown neighbor in Oberammergau across the border in Bavaria. Erl is actually older, performed more frequently (every six instead of every ten years) and unlike Oberammergau it does not deliberately eschew advanced technology. Erl by contrast feels like a moving film set in full surround. The role of the music this year puts this contrast in ever sharper relief. The talents of composer Christian Kolonovits, author of the film score for the film Northface were retained by the production for the first time. An austro-pop master and leader in the field of pop-orchestral crossover, such as his work with the Scorpions, his soundtrack, played by 40 orchestra members all either born or now living in Erl, is embedded inside the staging and provides narrative arc as significant as the newly written text itself. The actors confirmed that the music provides the drama of living film, and provides a constant pulse to enliven their acting.

The presence of microphones and electronic instruments are only the sonic tip of the ice berg when it comes to the marked ideological and theological clash between the two productions. Erl is adamantly modern in its techniques but also defiantly traditional in its postulates of plot and characterization, if at a much quicker pace, what was once six hours now takes around 2. This is the Passion Play as a modern, but unreformed tell all. Indeed, every Sunday on stage, the largest parterre in Austria, the production is preceeded by a Mass. The priest is quick to point out the similarity in content between his mass and the passion play.

Welcome again and thank you for joining us for another episode of "Music and Politics." As ever our discussions precede and finish with musical selections. Today's two musical texts are pre-war historical and are presented in full. These are shellac recordings made in the 1930s by members inside the institution that is our discussion to day the Jewish Kulturbund of Nazi Germany They are:

1. The Orchestra of the Jewish Kulturbund performs "Jewish Dance," part of the suite named "Uriel Acosta," recorded in 1935, a modern composition by Karol Rathaus, student of Franz Schreker. He escaped Nazi Germany in 1933 ultimately serving as a longstanding composition professor at Queens College.
2. The Choir of the Kulturbund here performs "Moaus Zur," this is an ironic liturgical poem known in English as the "Rock of Ages." Choir director Berthold Sander, A trained Kapellmeister at the Conservatory in Frankfurt, he served in that function in Mainz and Hildesheim before the handover of power to the Nazis. A leading Kulturbund activist for seven years, in 1941 he was deported to Theresienstadt from where he never returned.

By the Law of April 7, 1933, Jewish writers and artists were no longer allowed to be members of public orchestras or opera or theater companies, to have concert agents, or to join artists’ clubs or organizations. In the wake of this mass firing, the Kuturbund was formed. It is entirely probable that the Nazis would never have invoked such a solution if left to their own devices, if only for the fact that an operating set of procedures for Jewish exclusion had not been established. Although the Cultural League could easily insert itself into Nazi structures, it was the result of Jewish self-assertion, an initiative that achieved more through its independence of motivation that it would have at the behest of the Nazi cultural bureaucracy. It also should be noted that the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden or Cultural League of German Jews as it was originally called, fulfilled in a dual manner what could be referred to as a Nazi state of desired norms with reference to the Jewish minority in Germany. First, it solved the problem of Jewish mass unemployment and appeared to elide the costs of Jewish exclusion in an attractive framework which would not damage the international reputation of the new German government. If the Jews had a thriving cultural life supported by the government than the stories of persecution would appear implausible. Second, in addition to the “extraction” of politically undesirable or culturally modernist elements, Nazi cultural essentialism sought to remove Jewish cultural production, regardless of its national or aesthetic orientation from the larger German cultural sphere. Nazi essentialism refers to the fact that identity was determined through race of biology not choice or religion, and that one did not have to consciously express racially undesirable traits in order for them to appear.

Political and social compromise and dependence coexisted with cultural autonomy. The “collaboration” of the Cultural League, if one were to call it such, could not be subsumed under the categories of the collusive, i.e. shared ideological suppositions, or the combatative, i.e. as a facade for an active resistance, because the aim of such “spiritual resistance” is not at all contiguous with the goals of material resistance and, by extension, actual physical survival. Cultural autonomy is characterized by the fact that even after ideological or material appropriation or instrumental use under a political regime, authoritarian or otherwise, there is still a space of artistic purposiveness

This episode is a lecture delivered at the Historisches Seminar at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich. It is preceded by an introduction and two musical works:

1. Gloria: Cum Sancto Spiritu (1926) Berlin Philharmonic Chrous, conducted by Siegfried Ochs
2. Bist du Bei Mir, sung by contralto, Paula Salomon-Lindberg, believed to be recorded after 1933, accompanied by Rudolf Schwarz on the piano. (He survived the Holocaust and went on to become the conductor of the Birmingham City Orchestra where he mentored a young Simon Rattle.

As Glen Gould once observed, Bach had “little impact in his own time,” and certainly not outside of his native region of provincial Saxony. When speaking of Bach therefore, one must inevitably grapple with the phenomenon of revival. It was Adoph Marx who referred to Bach as a “temple long shut down.” It is a point of musical historical fact, that much of Bach’s oeuvre, from the passions to the cantatas, entered widespread circulation only belatedly, decades after the composer’s own lifetime and only due to the efforts of others. Conspicuous amongst these others were German Jews, specifically based in Berlin.

Felix Mendelssohn’s 1829 Berlin “premiere” of the St. Matthew Passion at the Sing-Akademie looms particularly large in legend. For some it formed the basis not only of the specific German cultural attachment to music, but even the establishment of music as having a distinctly public ethical function.

I would like to make use of the intellectual brace offered by the Marxist-Messianist cultural critic,Walter Benjamin, namely his notion of “secular priesthood.” Benjamin himself embodied this concept as did the activists to be discussed here. He advised that poets and artists of the productivity obsessed bourgeois epoch, as first developed in 19th Century Paris, had to grapple with a new conception of work distinct from the feudal idea of leisure formerly linked to such creative endeavors. Benjamin held that those most comfortable in their own skin as artists were those who most closely resembled “secular priests.” He sought to draw a contrast to modern artists who rushed into mass entertainment, the avant garde or who cultivated a proletarian ethos aimed at the most unfortunate. Within this analysis, the activists of “care for Bach” fit in neatly: modern without being avant garde, collectivist while not proletarian, edifying rather than distracting. Devotion to Bach provided a cultural highway to navigate around distinctly modern and potentially hazardous turn-offs.

Furthermore, it has almost become a platitude to suggest that the oeuvre of Bach is amongst the best proofs for the existence of an omniscient deity. In this sense, Bach functions in ways distinct from all other composers. This has become something of a stand-alone discourse and subject in the English-speaking world. To name one example, the biologist Lewis Thomas, in response to questions about which music be aboard the Voyager space craft, suggested that sending the complete works of Bach to extraterrestrials would be “boasting.” The figures here were ahead of their time in illustrating an attraction to Bach based on the power of persuasive belief itself, not one specifically or exclusively Christian. Belief itself is especially pertinent in the German Jewish context where the hope for integration and ultimately even survival itself required an inordinate amount of belief in one’s external reality, one that was tragically in the end misplaced.

At a time when America's democracy can seem like its teetering on the brink, its worth remembering that West German Democracy was a shining success story in its democracy and the cultural attraction to its freedoms. This was a singular case, where after World War Two the occupying army was not seen as a threat or a terror but rather as a glimpse of a better life. The reactions to rock were by no means universally positive, with some, especially ex-storm troopers even dreaming of "rock n roll" concentration camps.

Before we start our conversation with trained sociologist and chef Ronald Herrmann, we listen to Peter Kraus's "Du Gehörst Mir" and Ted Herold's "Küss Mich," two stellar yet overlooked examples of early West German Rock from the late 1950s.

In this episode we cover:

• What was unique about post-war Germany's Rock Culture

• How did both Elvis and the Beatles play a distinct role in German rock development?

• How did Rock trigger rioting in post-war Germany?

• What role and impact did Nazism still have in post-war Germany especially in the attempt to police the new Rock culture?

• What role did racism play in the reception of rock?

• How did fashion play a role in cultural provocation?

• Who was the "German Elvis"? (Answer: Peter Kraus)

• How did Germany's Colonial Empire in Africa still influence the reception of rock?

Dear Friends, please like, rate and comment, any input is most highly valued.

A great thanks to our conversation partner today, Ronald Hermann and do stop by Ronald's restaurant in the Wedding District of Berlin, the "ExRotaprint Kantine," for delightful continental cuisine. Unbeatable prices and it has 4.8 star rating on google!

In this episode we speak with a representative from Estonia's quinquennial Song and Dance Festival one of the largest of its kind in the world. Maris shares personal memories of how students in the late 1980s stood up to Soviet uniformed authorities and refused to stop singing. We address:

• what differentiates this festival from others of its kind?
• what place this festival has in the collective memory and identity of Estonians?
• How has recent global instability and the conflict over Ukraine impacted the festival?
• where does mass singing come from and what effect does it have on the body and mind?

The Estonian Song and Dance Festival, the largest of its kind in Europe, with over ten thousand dancers and thirty thousand choral singers, is an astonishing presentation of mass from one of the smallest ethnostates in the world, with just over one million in size. An incredible display of minority nationalism and cultural perseverance, this festival has its roots in the Lutheran choral traditions imprinted here by Baltic German settlers, the descendants of the Teutonic Knights of the medieval crusades. Dating back far before the more familiar mass demonstrations of totalitarian states, these jaw dropping exercises in coordination and harmonizing are an index of how communal singing is a key mark of personal uplift and social bonding especially in days of the scarring and even erasure of the civic by so-called social media. (Maybe it should be called unsocial or even antisocial media.) Whether digital dislocation or anxieties due to the poked Russian bear next door knocking closely on the door, this year's affair sold out in record time.

Please enjoy and don't forget to comment, like and subscribe. We value each and every one of you dear friends. :

In this episode, we continue to examine the toxic brew that is Wagnerism with Dr Larry Mass. In this concluding discussion of his musical life, we cover his growing awareness of the dark underbelly of the musical phenomenon once still often brushed under the rug. Dr Mass helps us to both understand musical listening under the framework of addiction but also the complex processes of psychological dissimulation and denial that take place in the mind of the addict and the musical listener. Finally, given his historically significant role as an early observer of the AIDS epidemic, Dr Mass reveals how a changing political landscape can actually effect the way even much older music sounds and is understood. Thanks for joining us again and please like, rate and subscribe. Fare thee all well.

Welcome dear listeners as we confront what some refer to as the defining issue of our times: Palestine. We welcome as our guest arts communicator and educator, Marianna Ellenberg who has consistently integrated avant-garde and experimental music into her stage productions. She offers a personal perspective onto the blowback of the latest, devastating round of bloody conflict onto the arts world, onto periodicals, residences, galleries and more. Along the way we discuss the motivations and intricacies behind identifications with this conflict and attempt to parse out the perennially difficult distinction between antizionism and antisemitism. We also explore the "theater" of protest," and the gaps that often emerge between the making of effective statements and serving the actual interests of those suffering on the ground. Thank you for your time and attention and please do like, review, rate, and subscribe .

Welcome dear listeners to the first episode of a recurring segment on Hip-Hop and Politics. Today we welcome MC MasD from Dujeous to dive into Afrocentricity and XClan. Dujeous was a leading live instrumental Hip-Hop band of the 90s and 00s in NYC, reminiscent of the Roots. They had a great selling single entitled "Spilt Milk" and a critically acclaimed album "City Limits." We touch on the roots of Pan-African thought in the early 20th Century with DuBois and then discuss the Afrocentric renaissance in 1990s Hip-Hop. Variations on a theme are also analyzed such as distinctions between an orientation to Egypt and an orientation toward Ethiopia. We find references to the ancient Egyptian Gods, the Bible and then a move toward Islam. We hope to lay the groundwork for future episodes to come so please do rate, subscribe and support. Fare thee well.