by Genevieve Williams
"We're in a road movie to Berlin
Can't drive out the way we drove in
So sneak out this glass of bourbon
And we'll go…"
| They Might Be Giants, "Road Movie to Berlin" |
Compared to London or Paris, Berlin's entrance onto the European cultural scene has been recent. While the aforementioned cities' influence stretches over hundreds or even thousands of years, Berlin's status as a cultural force really dates only from the 18th century. The city has, however, more than made up for lost time; and, one can argue, has had to overcome even greater obstacles. Despite Nazi rule, wartime destruction, and the city's division for a substantial part of the 20th century, Berlin has endured as a major cultural center. Today it boasts two opera houses, the world-renowed Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra--led in the past hundred years by two of the 20th century's greatest conductors, Wilhelm Fürtwangler and Herbert von Karajan--several other classical orchestras and ensembles, and a vibrant popular music scene.
While not as influential or glamourous as Vienna, Berlin has earned quite a few musical accolades, not the least of which is Kurt Weill's Berlin Requiem. Although mostly known in the United States for his theatre compositions and songs such as "Mack the Knife", Weill was also a classical composer of great skill and sensitivity, who considered the Requiem one of his best works. A cantata written expressly for radio performance, the piece was not broadcast in its namesake city until after its premiere in Frankfurt, largely because of its anti-war sentiment.
Another example, if an indirect one, is Paul Hindemith's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. Titled after the Walt Whitman poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln, Hindemith's work is an elegy not only for an American president (Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his case), but also for World War II. Hindemith, who like Weill and many other artists was forced to leave Germany during the Nazi regime and who emigrated to the United States, simultaneously conveys his passion for his new homeland, and his grief over the one he left behind.
Berlin has inspired songs by German and foreign songwriters alike. One of the most often-recorded wartime songs was the hit "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin", which was recorded by everyone from the Andrews Sisters to Bing Crosby to Glenn Miller. The song not only references a specific and important element of the war, but also exemplifies the spirit of wartime music: "There'll be a hot time in the town of Berlin/When the Yanks go marching in/I want to be there boy, spread some joy/When they take old Berlin."
Although Marlene Dietrich is primarily known as an actress, she was also a singer with a cabaret act that was popular around the world. Many of her songs were about, or referred to, the city of Berlin; "In the Ruins of Berlin," which she sang in the 1948 film A Foreign Affair, was one such. Another, "Ich Hab Noch Einen Koffer in Berlin" ("I Have Another Suitcase in Berlin"), describes the singer's bittersweet longing for the city using the suitcase as a metaphor--possibly the earliest use of baggage to represent someone's mental or emotional state.
A more recent singer to refer to Berlin in song is Nina Hagen, a New Wave vocalist originally from East Germany who emigrated to the West during the 1970s. Most recently, she recorded the Ramones tune "Born to Die in Berlin," which might or might not be a commentary on the city's recent divided status: "Sometimes I feel like screamin'/Sometimes I feel I just can't win/Sometimes I'm feelin' my soul is as restless as the wind/Maybe I was born to die in Berlin." In fact, most recent songs about the city refer to the Wall, even if in the past tense. In a way, it has been Berlin's most notable feature, having had unpredictable effects; the two opera houses, for instance, each of which was constructed in the other half of the city from the other, during the 45 years of the Wall's existence.
Of course there are plenty of songs about the Berlin Wall, but perhaps none get to the heart of the matter as does Bruce Cockburn's "Berlin Tonight," recorded in the mid-1980s: "Dull twilight spits hesitant sulphur rain/Sky been down around our ears for weeks/Only once--gap-glimpsed moon over that anal-retentive border wall/As we laughed through some midnight checkpoint under yellow urban cloud."
In many songs, as in Lou Reed's "Berlin," the Wall is simply a fact of life: "In Berlin by the wall/You were five feet ten inches tall/It was very nice/Candlelight and Dubonnet on ice." The song went on to be recorded by a variety of artists, including the aforementioned Hagen and 1980s pop group Icehouse. And of course there's the Early Day Miners' "East Berlin at Night," Red Sovine's "East of West Berlin," and, especially, Tim Lawson's "Goodbye East Berlin": "Goodbye East Berlin/Your wall has come and gone/The fading face of a sin/The righting of a wrong."
Indeed, in many respects Berlin's had a harder time of it than most. Nonetheless, it shares certain attributes in common with any other city; song lyrics brim over with meditations on traffic, roads in and out, parties attended, and people met. The mostly-forgettable 1980s German synth-pop group Alphaville is not often given much credit for depth, but the group had a few complimentary words for its native city in "Summer in Berlin": "Summer in Berlin, it's alright/The heat of the sun/Which is stored in the pavement/Feels so fine." And if the city's also produced grimmer, darker music from groups like pioneering industrialists Einstürzende Neubauten "Steh Auf Berlin"), it has thus contributed to a burgeoning musical genre that has gone on to spawn subgenres of its own. It may not sound optimistic, but it reinforces Berlin's influence on the wider musical stage, which mirrors the reunited's city's renewed importance in European affairs.
Even so, Berlin is unlikely to forget its own history. Reinhard Mey, an active and highly respected songwriter in Germany who's sometimes compared to Leonard Cohen, sums up the city's experience of the last hundred years in "Mein Berlin" ("My Berlin"): "That was my Berlin/Resistance and contradictions, reality and utopias/That was my Berlin."
Genevieve Williams is a freelance writer specializing in music, book reviews, and film. She is a former music editor for Amazon.com and a regular contributor to Blues Revue.
