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The modern German political song is a hybrid of high and low culture. With its roots in the birth of mass culture in the 1920s, it employs communicative strategies of popular song. Yet its tendencies toward philosophical, poetic, and musical sophistication reveal intellectual aspirations. This volume looks at the influence of revolutionary artistic traditions in the lyrics and music of the 'Liedermacher' of east and west Germany: the rediscovery of the revolutionary songs of 1848 by the 1960s West German folk revival, the use of the profane \"carnivalesque\" street-ballad tradition by Wolf Biermann and the GDR duo Wenzel & Mensching, the influence of 1920s artistic experimentation on 'Liedermacher' such as Konstantin Wecker, and the legacy of Hanns Eisler's revolutionary song theory. The book also provides an insider perspective on the countercultural scenes of the two Germanys, examining the conditions in which political songs were written and performed. In view of the decline of the political song form since the fall of communism, the book ends with a look at German avant-garde techno's attempt to create a music that challenges conventional cultural perceptions and attitudes. CONTRIBUTORS: DAVID ROBB, ECKARD HOLLER, ANNETTE BLÜHDORN, PETER THOMPSON. David Robb is Senior Lecturer in German Studies at the Queen's University of Belfast.

Louisville native John Jacob Niles (1892--1980) is considered to be one of our nation's most influential musicians. As a composer and balladeer, Niles drew inspiration from the deep well of traditional Appalachian and African American folk songs. At the age of sixteen Niles wrote one of his most enduring tunes, \"Go 'Way from My Window,\" basing it on a song fragment from a black farm worker. This iconic song has been performed by folk artists ever since and may even have inspired the opening line of Bob Dylan's \"It Ain't Me Babe.\" InI Wonder as I Wander: The Life of John Jacob Niles, the first full-length biography of Niles, Ron Pen offers a rich portrait of the musician's character and career. Using Niles's own accounts from his journals, notebooks, and unpublished autobiography, Pen tracks his rise from farm boy to songwriter and folk collector extraordinaire. Niles was especially interested in documenting the voices of his fellow World War I soldiers, the people of Appalachia, and the spirituals of African Americans. In the 1920s he collaborated with noted photographer Doris Ulmann during trips to Appalachia, where he transcribed, adapted, and arranged traditional songs and ballads such as \"Pretty Polly\" and \"Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair.\" Niles's preservation and presentation of American folk songs earned him the title of \"Dean of American Balladeers,\" and his theatrical use of the dulcimer is credited with contributing to the popularity of that instrument today. Niles's dedication to the folk music tradition lives on in generations of folk revival artists such as Jean Ritchie, Joan Baez, and Oscar Brand.I Wonder as I Wanderexplores the origins and influences of the American folk music resurgence of the 1950s and 1960s, and finally tells the story of a man at the forefront of that movement.

Since his untimely death in 1974 at the age of 26, singer-songwriter Nick Drake has not only gained a huge international audience, which eluded him during his lifetime, but has come to represent the epitome of English romanticism. Drakes small but much-loved body of work has evoked comparisons with Blake, Keats, Vaughan Williams and Delius, placing him within a long line of English mystical Romantics. Yet upon closer inspection Drakes work betrays a myriad of international, cosmopolitan influences and approaches that seem to confound his status as archetypal English troubadour. Nick Drakes music itself hints at a specific English landscape of the kind that he would have wandered through during his lifetime. Yet his interest in blues, jazz and Eastern mysticism imply a broader conception of English national identity in the late 1960s, one far removed from mere parochial nostalgia. Similarly, the framing of Drakes music after his death has done much to situate him as a particular kind of English artist, integrating American counterculture, the English class system and a nostalgic re-imagining of the hippy era for contemporary audiences. Nick Drake: Dreaming England explores how ideas of Englishness have come to be so intimately associated with the cult singer songwriter. Essential reading for any fan of Nick Drake, the book will also appeal to those interested in folk music or English national identity. To hear Culture Clubs podcast on Nick Drake with author Nathan Wiseman-Trowse please click here.