| Eberhard Leclerc |
17 juni 2009 22:20 |
Voor wie net als de (linkse ) publieke omroepen in Europa heeft liggen slapen:
Een analyse van de politieke ontwikkelingen in de Duitse Muzik Szene.
Door Ruth Elkins, 2006:
Rap music and the far right: Germany goes gangsta
"A new wave of rap music is sweeping Germany: sexist and violent .
"If it doesn't work out with hip hop," shrugs Bushido, Germany's most notorious rap star, "then I'll just sell drugs."
It probably won't come to that. The 26-year-old half Tunisian Berliner is turning the world of German hip hop upside down. The child of a German mother and an immigrant father is attracting, against all normal logic, a massive audience of neo-Nazis who love his hard-edged, racist and nationalistic lyrics.
There has never been any doubting Bushido's bad boy credentials. He is currently, and not for the first time, in an Austrian jail, waiting to see if he must stand trial on GBH charges. Earlier this month, an unfortunate 20-year-old Austrian man made the mistake of wandering too close to Bushido's pimped-up 7 Series BMW. It is alleged the rapper and his two bodyguards suspected the man had punctured the tyres, and beat him senseless. Bushido could face 10 years in jail.
Bushido's latest brush with the law was par for the course for a true gangsta rapper. 50 Cent, Ja Rule, Snoop Dogg: all the American rap stars worth their platinum discs and pimped-out Hummers have had run-ins with the law or spent time behind bars. But there is something different about Bushido, a beefy man with five tattoos. He has sparked a huge debate in Germany, a country still new to gangsta rap, about how racist and offensive song lyrics can be before they become outright neo-Nazi propaganda.
Until very recently, true gangsta rap had been strictly an American import. Spotty German teenagers would don baseball caps and baggy jeans and listen to the likes of Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent rap about things that seemed to come from a different world - the streets of the American inner city ghettos. They were pretty offensive, of course, their songs laced with profoundly sexist content: all men were pimps; all women were bitches. Now Germany has its own gangsta rappers. Bushido is to the fore, joined by his foul-mouthed colleagues: Fler, Sido, B-Tight, Kool Savas, Eko Fresh, Brainless Wankers and a collective calling themselves Der Frauenartzt (the Gynaecologist.)
In the past year, these rappers who once could only dream of minor fame on the fringes of the Germany's parochial music industry have made it to the mainstream. Their CDs regularly top the charts, their loves lives are followed by the tabloids, their concerts are sold out. Yet they are declaring open warfare on Germany's safe and comfortable consensus society.
The new wave of German gangsta rap, says Aggro Berlin, the most successful and notorious of the Berlin independent record labels representing German rap stars, is simply reflective of the hard times in Germany, a country whose economy continues to dip in and out of recession and where unemployment nudges 5 million.
But Germany does not have ghettos or race riots, it is, say panicked politicians, in no way comparable with US culture. Germany's new found gangsta rap is glamorising a fantasy of American ghetto life which should be banned, not encouraged. Still, the likes of Bushido seem to want to polarise society. Even the titles of his raps are upsetting the authorities.
"Gang Bang" is a nauseating account of violent group sex. " Dreckstück" (Piece of Dirt) is entirely misogynistic and features the lyrics: "Just because you're a woman, doesn't mean I won't beat you till you're blue." Again and again the lyrics of Bushido and his gangsta rapper homies openly flirt with fascism. "Salutiert, steht stramm, Ich bin der Leader wie A," (Salute, stand to attention, I am the leader like 'A'), raps Bushido. The 'A', of course, stands for Adolf. A rap collective called Mor were heavily criticised for rapping lyrics where " Wack MCs" were sent to the "gas showers" and "children to the concentration camps."
Fler, 24, another Berlin bad boy went one further. His latest hit, " Neue Deutsche Welle" (New German Wave) which went gold within two weeks of its release, features the ultra nationalistic lyrics: "That is black, red, gold, hard and proud, you might not see it in me, but believe me, my mom (sic) is German". The CD was advertised with an adapted pre-Polish invasion Adolf Hitler quote: "From May 1st, we will shoot back". His name on the CD cover was written in Third Reich style gothic print. The video to "Neue Deutsche Welle", constantly played on Germany's rolling music channels is set in a deprived high-rise East Berlin estate and features German flag waving, a complete taboo, as well as the ultimate Nazi symbol, an eagle, landing on the rapper's shoulder. Rumours flew recently that he had called his producer, DJ Ilan a " money grabbing Jewish pig." Germany's newspapers were outraged, but Fler didn't bother to deny it. Germany's far-right party, The NPD has even recommended "Neue Deutsche Welle" to party members.
No wonder the German ultra right is so enthralled.
"Though I think it is wrong to over-exaggerate the problem, the far right are definitely getting more interested in German hip hop
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