Music Video: Moop Mama - Liebe

I have always taken a certain perverse pleasure in music that defies rules and genres.  I enjoy the polka/punk stylings of Polkacide.  I groove on Deutsch/reggae rhythm of Seeed.  Even the lounge/new wave hybrid of Nouvelle Vague excites me, despite its almost hypnotic mellowness.  So, what happens when you combine hip-hop with jazz and marching band instrumentation (yes, even including a sousaphone!)?  You get Moop Mama from Munich, and in particular, you get their single from 2012, Liebe.

A year or so ago, I wrote about another band called LaBrassBanda that has become quite popular here in Germany that comes from rural Bavaria, and that also combines rap with brass.  But while LaBrassBanda brings in more classical instrumentation and influences combined with a more traditional rock and roll rhythm section, Moop Mama is essentially a marching band with vocals rapped at hyper speed.  Moop Mama describes their style as "urban brass".  I think of it more as a half-time-show with attitude.

Bundesvision 2012: Bavaria

Despite my oppressively busy schedule these days, in the interest of preserving my sanity, I though I should finally kick off my preview of the 2012 Bundesvision Song Contest.

Today, we start out in Bavaria with a refreshing change of pace: Fiva & Das Phantom Orchester with Die Stadt gehört wieder mir.

Now let me preface this preview by saying that - overall - I like rap and hip-hop.  Put together some good, clever lyrics and a fresh beat, and it is tough not to like the genre.  Heck, I'll even go so far to say that the stereotypical "gangsta" attitude has its place in the genre, as long as it is an organic outgrowth of the social milieu from which the artist comes.  But I quickly run out of patience, and more importantly interest, when the music becomes all about trying to mimic this "gangsta" stereotype, and not about being honest and taking the music to a new level.  I think this problem becomes particularly egregious when you have non-American hip-hop artists trying to pretend that they come straight out of Compton, when they actually come straight out of Heidelberg (or Osaka, or Montreal, or you name it).

Climbing off of my rickety soapbox, I come back to Fiva & Das Phantom Orchester.  Fiva is a rapper who is comfortable in her European skin.  She doesn't try to pose as some tough inner city thug.  Instead, with her backing band made up of DJ, percussion, and a string section, Fiva lays down an infectious jazzy groove and some engaging vocals, while never forgetting who she is or where she comes from.  I would rather listen to this than to European "gangsta" rap any day of the week.

Prediction:  As evidenced by the past two years' experience, just because I like something doesn't mean that the voting German public will agree with me.  I think Fiva & Das Phantom Orchester will find it's niche audience, but it will not be much more than a niche.  I predict Die Stadt gehört wieder mir will land somewhere in the bottom half of the field.

Bundesvision 2011: Bavaria

Andreas Bourani - Eisberg

As if to finally signal the end of my summer vacation, upon my return home I see that the Bundesvision 2011 songs have finally been announced.  That gives me precious little time to preview all 16 entrants, so without any further ado let us begin with Bavaria's entry: Andreas Bourani and his song Eisberg.

As I get older, I find that I am learning to enjoy well-crafted and well-executed "alternative" pop ballads.  Maybe I'm getting soft in my dotage, or maybe I'm simply slowing down, but I actually find inoffensive and unremarkable songs like Eisberg kind of appealing.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want to give the impression that this song is dull.  Far from it.  Rather, much of its appeal comes from the fact that it is easy on the ears, it has some pretty decent hooks while not being overly ambitious or experimental, and it is sung by an artist with a remarkably smooth, pleasing, and well-trained voice.  Best of all, at least in my own mind, Eisberg does not adhere to conspicuous and self-conscious cliche, as do so many other pop ballads in the world today.

Prediction:  Well-executed ballads seem to do reasonably well in competitions like this.  I don't think that Eisberg has an iceberg's chance in Hades of winning, but I predict that it will place respectably somewhere in the top half of the pack.

Live Show: LaBrassBanda

One of the pitfalls of tracking popular music in the non-English speaking world is that, unless I travel overseas, I am unlikely to see many of my favorite bands perform live.  One of the advantages of living in Washington, DC is that, if any of my favorite bands do visit the United States, DC is usually one of the places they play. 

Last night I had the rare treat of being able to see LaBrassBanda perform live at Strathmore, in Bethesda, MD.  It was a typical sultry summer evening, and this was a free outdoor performance with the audience casually lounging on the grass mere feet from the band, but all of this helped to contribute to a very festive and relaxed evening with the band.  The crowd was an interesting mix of older Strathmore "regulars" who show up for all of the venue's free concerts, families with young children like my own, employees and friends of the German Embassy that hosted the concert, and 20-something year-old Germans who were obviously already familiar with LaBrassBanda and were there to dance the night away.

Those of you who have seen Labrassbanda's performances on YouTube, or on their recently released video "Live im Circus Krone München" will have a pretty fair idea of what the show was like.  For over an hour and a half, the increasingly energetic crowd was treated to lots of raucous horns, a spectacularly tight rhythm section, and the kind of high-speed Bavarian German rap vocals that leaves your head spinning and you gasping for breath.  The older people in the audience enjoyed the virtuoso musicianship, while the kids and the young adults enjoyed the opportunity to work up a healthy sweat by dancing like maniacs.

As lead singer Stefan Dettl told us at the beginning of the show, this was LaBrassBanda's first ever performance in the United States.  I am incredibly happy that I could be there to welcome them.  If their reception on the other two stops on their brief U.S. tour is as warm as it was at Strathmore, I hope that they will return for many more performances.

BTW:  If you want to see more of LaBrassBanda playing live (in addition to seeing my earlier post on them from a few weeks ago), check out their songs:  Des konst glam, Aussenriess, or I Like da Butty Man.

Bundesvision 2010: Bavaria

Blumentopf: Solala

One could be forgiven if the term "hop-hop" does not immediately pop into one's head when one thinks of Bavaria. But Blumentopf has been busting out the rhymes for well over a decade from Bavaria's capital city, Munich.

Blumentopf's entry for Bundesvision is their track Solala. Perhaps it was an unintentional comment on their song, but solala translates roughly to "so-so", and frankly that's how this song strikes me. Perhaps it's almost inevitable that an ensemble hip-hop act like Blumentopf would be compared to the Beastie Boys - which I never particularly liked either. But surely, Blumentopf does nothing with their music to discourage this comparison. The lyrics bounce from one rapper to another over a Casio sounding back beat based on Queen's Another One Bites the Dust. Some of Blumentopf's other music is far more interesting and engaging, but here it just sounds like it has all been done before.

Perhaps the saving grace of Solala are its lyrics, which are about as pointed and obliquely political as you can get in a mass media music competition. Unfortunately, lyrics alone are seldom enough to make a song more than solala.

Prediction: If this were a judged competition, and if the wind was blowing in the right direction, I'd say that Blumentopf and Solala might have a shot. As this competition is judged by the public calling in on their phones, I have somewhat less faith. Solala simply lacks the musical hook that is needed to set it above the competition. My prediction is that Solala will place somewhere in the bottom third.