Folk Club Bonn in January 2025 - the Spanish-speaking world
We chose the motto at the request of our featured artists,
who made full use of the theme in their performance. Of course, other artists
also endeavoured to contribute something to the theme. You can find out about
the result in the course of the report.
John Harrison, who opened the evening as usual,
didn't even try to make a connection with his introductory song. ‘The Folker’
by Fred Wedlock, uses the melody of the song The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel
and plants a witty lyric of a satire on the songs of a folk musician on top of
it. With ‘The Snows They Melt The Soonest (When The Wind Begins To Sing)’,
which doesn't really fit the theme but the season, he nevertheless made a
connection with a huge balancing act: the English, melancholy love song from
the first half of the 19th century mentions ‘the raging Main’ in one line. John
links this to the term ‘The Spanish Main’ used at the time. At the time the
song was written, this collective term referred to the coastline of the Central
American mainland, virtually from Florida to Guyana, which, with a few
exceptions, belonged to Spain. It remains to be seen whether it is true that
the song line refers to this in particular. But it is certainly a nice attempt
by John. Thematically, ‘Ramblin’ Blues’ by Robert Johnson also belongs in a
different corner, but we always enjoy listening to the blues.
Caroline Bernotat had also brought a few songs with her, but these were more in keeping with the theme of the joys and sorrows of love. There just wasn't anything ‘Spanish’ in the repertoire. ‘Halt mich’, “Waiting By The Phone”, “Sweet Thoughts Meandering” were the titles of her songs, with which Caroline revealed a lot about her soul life - courageously and beautifully presented - much applause for Caroline.
Miguel Garcia González was able to bag a score of
100%. After all, he comes from Mexico and would have fulfilled the theme
without any further effort. But we were presented with three beautiful songs in
Spanish. ‘Luna’ was written by Miguel himself and is about a childhood love for
a woman called Luna. ‘La Llorona’ (The Weeper) is a folk song about a
repeatedly varied theme from Mexican mythology. La Llorona represents a woman
who has been deceived by her husband and kills her own children and herself out
of revenge or grief. She then stalks unfaithful men as a ghost and punishes
them - creepy, but wonderfully suitable material for a song. In Miguel's song,
the story is somewhat different: the woman's husband dies in the war and she is
left pregnant. But even in this version, she eventually turns into a ghost. The
song ‘Señor’ was written by Miguel's friend Daniel Henry Carpintero, with whom
Miguel plays in the band JerMexiCana. Señor’ is about a dog with whom Daniel
had a special relationship - a touching song in which the language changes
several times from English to Spanish and back again.
Andreas Kulik took us further east instead of west with songs from his Polish homeland. Andreas' favourite band is the group Stare Dobre Małzénstwo, or Good Old Marriage. The group is very popular in Poland with their mostly poetic songs. We started with ‘Opadły mgły wstaje nowy dzień’ (The fog is settling, a new day is dawning). Andreas explained that the basic idea of the song was that the next day we would have the opportunity to do things differently or even better than before. ‘Szczęście’ (Happiness) is the title of another song by the same group. Andreas himself penned a song in which he processed the experiences of the Corona period. ‘Turn The World Upside Down’ is the title and yes, for many of us the world seemed to be turned upside down “back then”.
Gerd Schinkel really went all out for the evening,
digging up songs by Spanish singer Joaquín Sabina for us and providing them
with German lyrics. ‘Dug up’ is perhaps not quite right, as Sabina's music is
very popular in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries (including Argentina
in particular). In Germany, however, you hear little or nothing about him in
the media. With my rather modest knowledge of Spanish, I once compared Gerd's
lyrics with the originals. Gerd has really achieved a masterly feat in creating
new poetry from existing poetry while remaining very close to the meaning of
the originals, which revolve in great detail around the theme of ‘He with her
and she with him’. ‘Vier, Fünf, Sechs war'n vorbei’ (Y nos dieron las diez),
“Und ist es schließlich hell” (Y si amanece por fin) and “Vor dem Kamin” (A la
orilla de la chimenea) are the titles of his songs. Lots of applause for Gerd,
who brought us closer to this beautiful music with his translation into German.
Mario Dompke, our tireless troubadour, had brought
two songs with political content for the evening, which deal with the causes of
conflicts and wars. ‘Der Gläubige‘ (’The Believer") explores the topic of
religion as a seemingly eternal cause of intolerance and conflict. ‘The Tyrant’
refers to the Iraq war, in which a tyrant was removed, but the victorious side
used flimsy arguments and even lies to justify its intervention and, unlike the
loser, got away unpunished.
In one set each in the first and second part of the evening, the duo consisting of Ismael de Barcelona and Thomas Monnerjahn then shone with melodies for which the theme of the evening was actually intended: the Spanish-speaking world. ‘Jazz Meets Flamenco’ is the title of the album from which the two presented samples.
Descriptions of instrumental pieces are one of those things, and I'm not good at them, but I can assure you: it was a phenomenal performance. The virtuosity of the two guitarists, who are at the highest technical level, went beyond all limits. The audience had also anticipated this quite correctly, and the number of listeners almost exceeded the capacity of the room. We estimate that, at a rough count, there were around 120 people in the room - more than ever before, or very rarely before. We assume that a large proportion had come specifically to hear and see Ismael and Thomas.
For all those who still want to know which pieces they heard
or possibly missed because they didn't turn up, here is the list: Entre dos
aquas (Paco de Lucia), Bossa Dorado (Dorado Schmitt), Milonga (Jorge Cardoso),
Noche en Cartagena (Thomas Monnerjahn), Pharaon (Gipy Kings), A Manuel (Ismael
de Barcelona), Nueve de Julio (José Luis Padula), Mediterranean Sundance/Rio
Ancho (Al Di Meola/Paco de Lucia) and Concierto de Aranjuez (beginning of the
2nd movement, by Joaquín Rodrigo). Connoisseurs of guitar music can imagine the
chunks of virtuosity that the two of them had to deal with that evening. There
are also video recordings on the Internet at
https://www.ismaelythomas.de/. The
audience was completely over the moon after every piece and, of course,
especially at the end of Ismael and Thomas' performance.
Anyone who would like to hear them again, or even once at
all, will soon have the opportunity to do so on 6 February 2025 at the Harmonie
(Frongasse 28-30, 53121 Bonn).
Despite, or perhaps because of, the exhaustion after the
performance of the two guitar virtuosos, the audience sang the traditional
‘Jock Stewart’ and then wandered home, pumped full of happiness hormones.
