Wilhelm Liefland (1980)

Transit Walk - Transit Talk

Journal
At the 'Workshop Freie Musik ' (Free Music Production and Berlin Academy of Fine Arts) in 1979, when Jost Gebers - at last successfully - could host GDR musicians (a GDR-workshop of their own was to follow), Ernst-Ludwig “Luten” Petrowsky, as, ts, cl, fl, misc. reeds, slips a book into my hands. He rolls and improvises in colloquial syntax and the harmonic tone of his native Mecklenburgish Low German dialect: this might as well be pure theory but, actually, it should interest you, too:

Günter Mayer, World View - View of Notes. On the Dialectics of Musical Material. Reclam, Leipzig, 1978. 472 pages.

Contents: Hegel and Music - On Beethoven's Personal Style - Eisler's Material Theory - Arnold Schönberg in Hanns Eisler's Opinion - On Musical Interpretation of the Documentary - Dessau's Material Practice -
Glossary of names used in the book, starting with Achilles, Adorno and ending with Kurt Weill, Peter Weiss, J. J. Winckelmann, Zarlino.

To me, someone living in the FRG, this workshop means a very first live meeting with GDR-musicians, with GDR-Jazz-performers, GDR-Free-Jazz-performers, with GDR-Jazz-Avantgarde, if one still wishes to apply such a military-imperialistic expression used as a code and taken from the arsenal of middle-class aesthetics to an anarchist-artistic innovation. Free Jazz was clear. There were FMP- and Amiga-records; stories, reports, reviews illustrated the imminence of American, Western, European New Jazz. That Schönberg, Eisler, Weill, Dessau as well as Folk and Proletarian Heritage, concrete and serial music, twelve-tone and atonal music along with the periodic were equally doing well was pointed out by Breuker, Brötzmann, Bley as well as by the Londoners, the Dutch, the Cologne and Wuppertal performers and by Niebergall, Mangelsdorff, Schoof, Schlippenbach and the Japanese, too. Theorizing was the result of reflection and, since 1968, of political agitation (secondary to music). The music came from the musicians. In linguistic terms, music is a tautology; it denotes itself. However language may illustrate this, it never is identical with music. Specifically American and, even more, German Jazz critics have been suffering to date from this never quite comprehended distinction.
What to the West was the year of 1968, to the East it was their year of 1949, the year when the German Democratic Republic was established. Such becomes evident from a Western popular saying of 1968, reading: “Why don't you go over there right away?”
In his preface on page 7, Günter Mayer addresses us from 'over there':

Dogma I
“The discussion that has been progressing within the last few years until recently, on the correlation between Politics and Music, between political commitment and musical quality, political and musical progress, always recurs to the basic problems analyzed in this book. In this context, the problems we must solve - a new quality of musical culture in our Socialist countries in accordance with respective factual historic conditions - always recur on the agenda. Moreover, the actuality of the material-problem is clearly reflected by the discussions among the politicizing musicians in context with the general practice of Anti-imperialist, Democratic and Socialist forces.

Interruption Magazine 'Pflasterstrand' Frankfurt/Main:

Yeah, well, forces. There's nothing goin' without power. Hans.
There's a lot to be done. Let it be. Lutz.
There's nothing to do. Let's start doing it. Heipe

…..forces, predominantly in the Western European countries. And this actuality is equally demonstrated by representatives of bourgeois views who are stimulated by this politization and their subsequent skeptical reactions in the Capitalist countries -

BREATH OF BROTHERHOOD

- and not only there.”

Dogma II or Anti-Aphorism
By the standards of Western Jazz Historiography, the development of this improvised black-and-white music after Bebop, Cool, Hardbop and the first climaxes of Free Jazz around the mid-sixties in the US and, for Eastern Europe in general, Czechoslovakia, the People's Republic of Poland, Yugoslavia or the GDR in particular, can be explained.
We temporarily assume that political-ideological boundaries provoke aesthetic musical variables in the universal music of Jazz, particularly in 'Free Jazz'. In brief: modern Free and Post Free has been emancipated from American supremacy, in the FRG and Western Europe as well as in the GDR.

Aphorism III or Anti-Dogma
It's swinging.
Big Band up-to-date. The R(adio) D(ancing) O(rchestra) Berlin directed by Günter Gollasch. Recorded by the GDR radio station 'Rundfunk der DDR'. Amiga Jazz 855 568 - VEB Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin GDR. Takes from 1971 to 1976. Composition and arrangements by Jerzy Milian.
Basie-Style – Blues-Rock - Medium Bounce - Ballad. Now and then, Luten Petrowsky temporarily leaves the traditional sector heading for Freedom, wherever that is.

Aphorism-Dogma IV - Official
Excerpt from: GDR Handbook. Scientific direction: Peter Christian Ludz assisted by Johannes Kappe. Edited by the Federal Ministry for Bi-lateral German Relations. Published by Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1975, p. 439:

JAZZ
“In the GDR, a distinction is being made between three essential trends in the development of Jazz: one 'popular-democratic' trend, signifying the initial phase of Jazz development and still powerful to-date; the trends of 'commercialized Jazz' and those of 'snobbish Jazz', dated to have come up after World War II. After initial resentment to Jazz and temporary prohibition (among others, prohibition of Jazz radio broadcasts). Today its “progressiv, popular-democratic tendencies” …… “in the framework of multifarious measures to encourage musical arts in the GDR” …. “have their equal rank among other forms and styles of universal musical culture.”
As early as 1958, the protection against influences of “bourgeois decadence” of the Fine Arts and the SED's conception of life led to an overall ban of Western dance music when an order on program scheduling of popular and dancing music became affective. (A similar direction prohibiting broadcasts of Western popular and dance music was issued in 1973, after a prosperous period for a multitude of discotheques during the preceding 2 years (by the Order on Discotheque Performances – so-called – Discotheque-Order', [GBI. I, No. 4, p. 38f.]). These measures also affected Jazz which, as one feared, would transmit a contagious ' American Way of Life' and, therefore, its influences in respect to the developing of a native cultural mass production, in particular Folk Music, and were regarded to be something negative. After the year of 1961, the situation relaxed. In 1965, the concert series of ‘Jazz in der Kammer' - still in existence - was initiated. These performances sponsored by the ‘ Deutsches Theater Berlin’ at intervals of six weeks are intended of primarily to present those contemporary trends of modern Jazz independent of immediate Western influence. In connection with this series and in cooperation with the sponsors of the Berlin Jazz Evening Performances, in 1973, the concert series 'Jazz Scene' was initiated by the ‘Volkstheater Rostock’. There as well, native ensembles and bands from abroad, predominantly from neighboring Socialist countries, are being presented on-stage. Irregardless of any kind of restriction - in defense against Western Jazz music -, in some Socialist countries, specifically in Poland, Czechoslovakia and the GDR, the development of Jazz shows phenomena similar to those in non-Socialist countries.
There as well, a synthesis of Jazz and contemporary European Avantgarde is intended, composers and performers being Jazz musicians as well as composers and students of composition of so-called Serious Music. Above all, the Jazz Festival at Warsaw ('Jazz Jamboree') and, secondly, the Prague Jazz Festival provide for an Eastern European forum for contemporary Jazz (Free Jazz). Since 1971, there has been an annual Dixieland Festival at Dresden, where bands form various countries are performing.
Among the leading GDR Jazz musicians i.e. Jazz ensembles, there are trombonist Konrad Bauer…

SUPPL. '80: + Brother Johannes Bauer, tb - WL
….the Friedhelm-Schönfeld-Trio, the Gollasch Big Band, the band Praxis II, the band SOK, the Synopsis Band and the Old Memory Jazz Band."

Made-up Aphorisms or Alternative Dogmas V Following - Not Official
The Positivist in his armchair:
What's correct is correct.
The Hegelian in his armchair:
Is it right or am I right or are the facts unpleasant?
Percussionist Baby Sommer at his instrument:
Hombre! Come out!
Alex at the press conference:
Shit!
Grace Bumbry with a Gospel Choir:
Haaah’’’ hahahahahaaaahmmmm / mmm / mm / mhhaaaahahahaha ‘’’haaaH
The skeptical utopian in his armchair:
What does not exist now still can become….
A German Jazz critic:
Lo, all there is came to you by ME, saith the Lord Zabidoo.


Coincidences
Movement 1:
Celeste. Pilz-Niebergall-Schmitt-Trio. Trion 3901, 1978.
The instrumental trio consisting of bass, bass clarinet which is often arranged with the reeds, consequently with the saxophones; percussion builds up a special, free counterpoint, connecting themes and concentrating sounds in such a way that the sum of all spontaneous action and reaction with its paradox of static movement becomes a kind of classic of Free Music.

Movement 2:
Hiking Day at Freiberg. From: Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Amiga Jazz 855 621. Petrowsky, ts, as; Klaus Koch, b; Günter “Baby” Sommer, dr, perc. Rec. in 1976.
In a similar ensemble make-up, the band is building up a similar sound architecture by lineaments independent of each other, whose “symphonic” chordal effects are not constructed. The total of events is more dynamic. The remark that both musics would be similar and different because of the dichotomy of their social systems presently is a fallacy of profane Marxism and consequently false reasoning and experiencing. Both musics, however, are open/close systems, the quadrature.

Conclusio:
Jean-Paul Sartre, Marxism and Existentialism, Rowohlt 1979 (fr. 1960), p.82:
“One will never fully comprehend the occurrence of systematic processes as there is Capitalism or Colonialism, by considering the resultant of antagonistic forces to be a mean value. What we must understand is the fact that individuals do not collide like molecules rather that each individual on the basis of given conditions and diverging or directly opposing interests understands and transcends the projects of the other. On the basis of transcending and again transcending these transcendences alone, can a social object take shape, something which all at once is there as a meaningful and relevant reality and, therefore, will be something in which everyone will be able to discover a trace of himself; in brief: a human creation without creator.”

Mystifying perception:
That something like that's possible, is a miracle. Aunt Herta.

Socratic Question:
Why, oh Alcibiades, do the projects of Free Music and dialectical materialism with its political forms of expressing both Socialism and Anarchy often come so excitingly close?
Why shouldn't they, o Socrates?


Poem:

frontiers on the horizon decay

rudi dutschke

got there yet?

of the tides

no piercing gaze

greets them

no foot

nor hand

no angry word

nor kind

nothing

the febrile nails

dried out

"yes of course!

for a world without frontiers!"

cssr / gdr

reversible in german

usa / canada

frg / denmark

france / brittany

editors office / underground tunnel

planetree avenue / clearing bank

hacked off as punishment

my friend

haven't caught on yet?

free

way speak out of your mind

into the fire

the chatter of

the dusk

washes up knowledge

can't be missed the sea the mountain head in sand

anothers death among us

get below mankinds skin?

I startet

small living

in a way with hands

and feet through hamlet

town and always passing the stand

fast world at first still dragging

my cross back my heart in its place and the head

wind round my ears would not

hear

frontiers on the horizon

decay

Journal
Autumn of 1977. With Dr. Carl Corino, I make arrangements for a feature on GDR-Jazz for the 'Hessischer Rundfunk' radio station. - obliadooh is everywhere - they will say. I will go to Berlin/GDR. I'm driving that direction. Before I arrive, I have an alcoholic relapse. I've been off liquor for two years. Being as drunk as a thousand Americans, I think I can make it, as usual with a euphoric brain. I take a flight to West Berlin. I show up at the FMP-store at Behaimstraße. After reassuring Jost, - not trusting myself, I drink his sherry. My friends already wait for me at Christburger Straße in Berlin/GDR. Among them: Franz Koglmann, tp, flh, from Austria. I'll learn that only two years later. I drive off. It gets to be a binge on the way to Checkpoint Bornholmer Straße. There, still on the Western side, somewhere, sometime, probably in view of the border – black-out. The appointment does not take place.
When the temporary sickness was over, after I had enjoyed Wulf Teichmann's hospitality and with Jost's support, I returned to Frankfurt with new identification papers (these had been confiscated by King Alcohol - see FMP 0060, Rüdiger Carl Inc.) and payed the bill to the West Berlin Police Authorities for stationary police treatment (detoxification cell). Then, the following year, when my head was clear again, I was in Berlin/GDR for an entire afternoon of conversation.

Translation: Rosemarie Jung (text) & Geoffrey Roberts (poem)

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