Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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WACHOLDER

German folk group formed '78. Core lineup: Matthias Kiessling (b 18 May '56, 'somewhere in the Erzgebirge'), vocals, guitars, keyboards, percussion; J”rg Kokott (b 5 Jun '55, Leipzig), vocals, guitars, mandolin, mandocello, bass; Scarlett Seeboldt (b 30 May '59, Strausberg nr Berlin), vocals, accordion, tin whistle. First concert as Wacholder (Juniper) April '78 in Cottbus where they were studying, with the core trio and three others; in May they gave their first broadcast; debut album was Herr Wirt, so l”sche unsre Br„nde ('Landlord, that's how we put out our fires') '83 on Amiga. It wasn't easy being a folkie in East Germany: they had to obtain permission to record there, their material was scrutinized, and the losses of folklore in two world wars meant that everybody relied on the same few sources for material, suffering from the memory of Nazi appropriation of folk music for political purposes. Thus while Wacholder was able to keep going in Musikkneipen (music pubs) etc with various lineups they did not make another album for six years. Kokott departed '87; Es ist an der Zeit ('High Time') '89 on Blue Song found them reduced to Kiessling, Seeboldt and Matthias Wegner augmented by guests incl. Kokott; the album incl. Joe South's 'Games People Play' (sung in English with a distinctive Dick Gaughan lilt) and the excruciating trad. 'Leaving Of Liverpool', but there was little originality to the arrangements. There were programmes for children (Ach wie gut, dass niemand weiss/'Oh how good that nobody knows') and one celebrating the bicentennial of poet Heinrich Heine; then reunification '90 changed everything. Wacholder contributed a Seeboldt setting of Goethe, 'Osterspatziergang' ('Easter Stroll') to the Tanz&FolkFest '91 album on hei-deck, marking Germany's successful folk and world music festival, the trio augmented by former members Kokott and Almut Walther, followed by the disappointing Grosse Zeiten ('Great Times') '93 on Stockfisch; but with In Der Heimat Ist Es Sch”n ('It's Beautiful In The Homeland') '94 on Stockfisch they began deploying a Berlin cabaret edge; e.g. the title track aped the clich‚s of German society with verses such as 'Whoever has neither money nor work/Has himself to blame in the end/For this is a free country/Which is how God wanted it.' They trailered 'Alte Berliner Moritat' ('Old Berlin Street Ballad') from their next album on the folk sampler It's Only Kraut But I Like It '96: this was a fortuitous discovery courtesy of a member of their audience; the Moritat street ballad mimics the English broadside tradition (Tom Cheesman's The Shocking Ballad Picture Show: German Popular Literature And Cultural History '94 puts the Moritat literary tradition into a cultural context). Landgang, a CD-ROM release on Stockfisch '96, displayed rockist affinities, as in the Chris Rea-inflected 'Abends, wenn ich noch nicht schlafen kann' ('Of an evening when I still can't sleep'); but with Seeboldt's theatrical tendencies, e.g. using Heine's profound ironies in an adaptation of 'Zur Beruhigung' ('To Reassure'), Wacholder was coming of age and developing escape velocity. While much of the German folk scene was developing regional voices (Thomas Felder with his Swabian dialect, Saure Gummern with their Hessian voice or Hundsbuam Miserablige with a Bavarian flavour), Wacholder was not only toasting a Berlin tradition, but recharging their glasses and coining new toasts.