In the pictures below, you can take a look at my recent visit to a yodel festival in the Harz. This is a forested hilly area right in the middle of Germany - right on the former East/West border. Driving there with some music colleagues from Halle, we noted where no-man's-land used to be - we would have been shot taking that trip 20 years ago!
Anyway, besides former borders, the Harz is also known for (a) scenery (b) witches and (c) yodeling. A winning combination.
As for (a), just outside the parklands we visited the town of Wernigerode. It was really ridiculously charming, full of cobblestone streets, half-timbered houses from the 16th century, and a giant, multi-spired city hall of about the same vintage. Also lots of Dutch tourists. You can see us in the town square in the photos.
Inside the national park area, it is a wilderness of Christmas trees. Really: giant fir trees with a perfect triangular shape, ready for twinkly lights and glass balls to be hung about. I never saw a forest that looked so well groomed. No wonder witches like it here.
As for (b), the folk tales tell of witches in the Harz, and that's still what Germans think of when they hear the name. I think these are our classic idea of witches, broomsticks, hats, and all. I'm also pretty sure this is where Hansel and Gretel must have gotten lost and found the gingerbread house - it looks like the spot for that. The only witches we saw were onstage at the yodel festival - apparently, the Harzers, or whatever they're called, are as proud of their supernatural heritage as they are of their history as miners and lumberjacks (see their logo in the photo).
(C) was naturally our real reason for visiting. Screw the pretty trees! Seriously, on August 2 there was a yodel competition going on right in the center of the forest, at the town of Clausthal-Zellerfeld. They had already started when we got there, and we could hear them as soon as we got out of our car. The Harz yodellers have a very particular and unique yodel technique: they alternate beteween head and chest voice extremely rapidly while also alternating vowels, for example; another characteristic is them singing the lower note twice and the upper once so as to make a kind of triplet feeling in countertime to the duple meter of the accompaniment. They also accompany themselves on accordion and/or guitar, and both women and men play both instruments.
We were pretty impressed with them overall, although the Jodellieder (yodel songs with text verses and yodel refrains) were pretty cheesy, all about how great their Heimat was. Also one group apparently wanted to compete in the quintet division simply because there were only two other groups in the category, thus guaranteeing them a trophy. They seemed to have thrown two men in at the last minute, as neither was dressed in the group costume, and the men also didn't know the song but just made sort of vague low-pitched tones in an indeterminate tonality. It was a little startling.
The "free yodel" item was pretty exciting, though. In this the solo competitors (in four categories, divided by sex and also according to whether they'd ever won before - if they had, they were placed in a separate group of "Meisterjodler") had to improvise a yodel for about a minute. Some of these were quite impressive, employing many contrasts in vocal register and tempo.
Yours truly also took part in a way. One of the organizers came over to talk to us, and Helen had already let him know that I too was a yodeller. Thus I was asked to yodel something between some of the competitive parts of the program. After first ascertaining I wouldn't be thrown out if I yodeled in the Swiss style - I don't know any German yodels - I proceeded to do so, to great acclaim. They were a pretty happy audience. Also all five judges spontaneously awarded me with 6.0 points each (out of 6.0). If only I'd been competing!
Alas, we were not so pleased with the outcome of the competition. The young woman who won was indeed good, but so clearly overshadowed by the absolute confidence and strength of an older woman that we were shocked to hear that that woman only took second. We were told that this was due to a technicality: in her free yodel she had apparently quoted a passage from a Jodellied the judges new, so points were deducted.
Another side note to vegetarians: you won't find much to eat at a German yodel competition. The only non-meat items were French fries, ketchup and mustard. Or cake. Helen tried to convince me I could eat a Schmaltzbrot, but I reminded her that Schmalz is lard, which is made of meat. Or is fat not considered meat? Either way, it's nasty. Oh yeah, you can also have beer.
Thus nourished, I proceeded on to Berlin on the extremely slow train. Even slower than usual - some problems on the tracks - and I had to wait for an hour in a boring station where everything except Subway was closed, and then I had to sit for 2 hours in the worst train I've ever been in - including Cuba! While in possession of more electricity, greater speed, and possibly even less smelly restrooms than a Cuban train, it was overcrowded (due to the fact that all passengers from three scheduled trains, of which two never made it, were all squished together), there was no air conditioning, and you couldn't open the windows. It was absolutely suffocating and I actually thought I would pass out from lack of air - you could feel the carbon dioxide level rising, and notice it as people got quieter and quieter. By the time we reached Berlin, it was so hot the windows had actually fogged over. Also, I couldn't even manage to make it to the restroom the whole time because the passage was so crowded, which is why I can't provide you with an accurate smell assessment.
Some German witch had clearly not appreciated my Swiss yodeling!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
The Serene City, part 1
Just returned last week from an impromptu vacation. My friend childhood friend Tianna was recently and unexpectedly passing through Berlin following several months constructing ships made of trash on the coast of Slovenia, sailing them across the Adriatic to Venice, and crashing the Venice Biennale pirate-style, with grappling hooks, then dismantling the ships again in the Lagoon of Death. All true: see it at
http://todseelie.com/serenissima/
http://www.swimmingcities.org/
Anyway, she asked me if I wanted to go along with her as she drove her Citroen van from Venice back to Slovenia to give to a fisherman who had helped the trash-boat crew out with a boat and given them fish, which they had forgotten about, and had then caused the craft to be re-christened Stinky. He also didn't mind when they attached one of the van's seats to the top of the boat and fixed up a rope allowing them to drive the thing from the cooler and more ventilated roof area. Clearly, he deserved this van, which can double as sleeping quarters in a pinch.
So I said, what the heck? And I flew to Italy.
I arrived in Venice late, well past dark, and sorted out the vaporettos only with confusion.But it was a beautiful time to ride down the Grand Canal, which I hardly remember from my last time in Venice nearly 20 years ago (principal memory: being lost). The architecture is really something, as you can see the time when Venice was a world trading center and one of the spots where East habitually met West - if principally, and sadly, through the Venetians' sacking of Constantinople. Still, it was also astonishing how often grandeur was met with decay: a number of those grand old mansions opening onto the city's central waterway are apparently uninhabited, even uninhabitable, and while work appeared to be going on in some, others were simply boarded up. I'd certianly like to take one, but doubt I could afford the upkeep, especially with the rising water levels...
Anyway, some boat confusion led to me getting off at a different stop than planned, but no worries. Tianna and her friend Christoph soon turned up in a boat and, quite illegally, pulled up at the vaporetto stop long enough for me to drop my luggage and myself onboard. With Tianna serving as figurehead, holding a big battery-powered lamp as our headlight, we made our way across the lagoon with the lights of Lido in the distance, pulling into a side canal at Zattere and ducking under the low-hanging bridges. The parking situation in Venice is no better than in other crowded cities, only sloshier: wherever there are poles sticking out of the water, there are private parking spots you can't use, so you with your tiny skiff are stuck searching for any spot with something to tie up to. Christoph thus let us out near his door, since it was here we were to spend the night, and left again.
Air conditioning here means leaving your window to the street open, which unfortunately also lets mosquitos and noise in. Unaccustomed to the sounds of drunken tourists laughing and seagulls pecking at trash, I didn't sleep well my first night, but I was nonetheless excited to reacquaint myself with the city. The first thing to be done was clearly to drink coffee and, if possible, have gelato, and these tasks were quickly accomplished. After that, we headed for Certosa, a small undeveloped island where vaporettos often only stop when requested. It was here that Tianna had spent much of her time, as had the boats made of trash, during their unauthorized visit to the Biennale. The city owns the island but it is run by a group of former Olympic sailors, all born and raised on nearby Lido. Its main feature is a complex consisting of a boat-building workshop, offices, a hotel and cafe, and a bunch of large modern sculptures scattered about. You reach all this just as soon as you come off the long pier. Just behind this is a compound where art school is sometimes held, along with a very handy bathroom, shower, and laundry building. Off to one side is a marina, where numerous fancy sailboats are moored, with all the comforts of home for (as far as I could tell) a bunch of Germans.
We had lunch with one of these: a well-off German with a sailboat who had kindly loaned it to Tianna's gang for much-needed sleeping and cooking quarters, providing them with a rather cozy home away from home. He also proposed to one of the project's carpenters, and she had provisionally accepted, and they were due to sail off into the sunset - quite literally - the next day, on their way across the Adriatic to the Dalmation islands.
We also stopped by the boat-building workshops, where hand-made gondolas are being produced for the city of Venice, also by Germans, including our host. These things are quite impressive and gorgeous, but those guys looked busy so we went on our way.
Our way next took us to the uninhabited part of the island, technically off-limits as it is more or less under construction. What's there at the moment is mostly the ruins of a lot of bunkers from WWII, now generally roofless and under the control of creeping greenery. There was also a larger building, apparently a monastery from long before, with a big tree growing right in the middle. A little further on was an enormous woodpile consisting of the trees that have been done away with during construction, and these logs were covered with goats. Live goats. Wild goats. Someone had apparently brought a few over a couple of generations ago, and those few have now grown into a gang of perhaps 50. Apparently, they now live permanently next to this woodpile, on a mound covering an old foundation and now home to some shady tress, and in two old bunkers, one of which was full of stale rolls. Maybe the restaurant dumps its leftovers here? Goats are supposed to eat anything, but these ones wouldn't touch the bread. Perhaps they, like Tianna, have a gluten allergy. At any rate, Tianna was able to get close enough to pick up the smallest baby in the group, and few things are cuter than a tiny baby goat.
Returning to the German sailboat, now populated by a couple of German fashion designers who were dressed the part, we decided for some reason all to pile into Christoph's little skiff to hitch a ride back into the city proper. With the fashion designers, the boat builders, someone's girlfriend who couldn't swim, Christoph's friend from Hamburg, and us two Americans, we totalled 12. The boat was riding low in the water and really we should have known we were asking for trouble, since Christoph had revealed to us that his boat motor had earlier stopped working and then mysteriously started again. (It was a free boat, anyhow.) So we were not really too surprised when, in fact, the boat did break down in the middle of the lagoon, when we were about equally far from any possible land. We had come prepared with oars, but before we had any chance to use them, Mateo, one of the Olympians, sped by and we flagged him down, then tossed him a rope for a tow back to Certosa. It was a little bit hilarious to have all these people packed into a tiny boat, towed back to civilization... a little bit rub-a-dub-dub, 12 folks in a tub...
At any rate, the rest of the evening was pleasant enough if longer-lasting than expected. Back on Certosa there was a little going-away get-together going on, consisting of an international assortment of people sitting around a picnic table eating chips and drinking beer. We joined in, and couldn't stop joining in, because Christoph had forgotten we needed to go back to his apartment to pick up my stuff. It was after midnight before we made it to that night's lodging on Lido, and where once again sleep was in short supply. "I'm so tired, I'm going right to bed," said Tianna's colleague, with whom we'd be sharing a living room. reat! I thought - no staying up all night talking, and I can get some sleep too. Unfortunately, I hadn't known he was a snorer. Even with earplugs AND my iPod playing relaxing music I couldn't block out the sound, and I was in dire need of coffee in the morning, as it was going to be a long drive to Slovenia.
http://todseelie.com/serenissima/
http://www.swimmingcities.org/
Anyway, she asked me if I wanted to go along with her as she drove her Citroen van from Venice back to Slovenia to give to a fisherman who had helped the trash-boat crew out with a boat and given them fish, which they had forgotten about, and had then caused the craft to be re-christened Stinky. He also didn't mind when they attached one of the van's seats to the top of the boat and fixed up a rope allowing them to drive the thing from the cooler and more ventilated roof area. Clearly, he deserved this van, which can double as sleeping quarters in a pinch.
So I said, what the heck? And I flew to Italy.
I arrived in Venice late, well past dark, and sorted out the vaporettos only with confusion.But it was a beautiful time to ride down the Grand Canal, which I hardly remember from my last time in Venice nearly 20 years ago (principal memory: being lost). The architecture is really something, as you can see the time when Venice was a world trading center and one of the spots where East habitually met West - if principally, and sadly, through the Venetians' sacking of Constantinople. Still, it was also astonishing how often grandeur was met with decay: a number of those grand old mansions opening onto the city's central waterway are apparently uninhabited, even uninhabitable, and while work appeared to be going on in some, others were simply boarded up. I'd certianly like to take one, but doubt I could afford the upkeep, especially with the rising water levels...
Anyway, some boat confusion led to me getting off at a different stop than planned, but no worries. Tianna and her friend Christoph soon turned up in a boat and, quite illegally, pulled up at the vaporetto stop long enough for me to drop my luggage and myself onboard. With Tianna serving as figurehead, holding a big battery-powered lamp as our headlight, we made our way across the lagoon with the lights of Lido in the distance, pulling into a side canal at Zattere and ducking under the low-hanging bridges. The parking situation in Venice is no better than in other crowded cities, only sloshier: wherever there are poles sticking out of the water, there are private parking spots you can't use, so you with your tiny skiff are stuck searching for any spot with something to tie up to. Christoph thus let us out near his door, since it was here we were to spend the night, and left again.
Air conditioning here means leaving your window to the street open, which unfortunately also lets mosquitos and noise in. Unaccustomed to the sounds of drunken tourists laughing and seagulls pecking at trash, I didn't sleep well my first night, but I was nonetheless excited to reacquaint myself with the city. The first thing to be done was clearly to drink coffee and, if possible, have gelato, and these tasks were quickly accomplished. After that, we headed for Certosa, a small undeveloped island where vaporettos often only stop when requested. It was here that Tianna had spent much of her time, as had the boats made of trash, during their unauthorized visit to the Biennale. The city owns the island but it is run by a group of former Olympic sailors, all born and raised on nearby Lido. Its main feature is a complex consisting of a boat-building workshop, offices, a hotel and cafe, and a bunch of large modern sculptures scattered about. You reach all this just as soon as you come off the long pier. Just behind this is a compound where art school is sometimes held, along with a very handy bathroom, shower, and laundry building. Off to one side is a marina, where numerous fancy sailboats are moored, with all the comforts of home for (as far as I could tell) a bunch of Germans.
We had lunch with one of these: a well-off German with a sailboat who had kindly loaned it to Tianna's gang for much-needed sleeping and cooking quarters, providing them with a rather cozy home away from home. He also proposed to one of the project's carpenters, and she had provisionally accepted, and they were due to sail off into the sunset - quite literally - the next day, on their way across the Adriatic to the Dalmation islands.
We also stopped by the boat-building workshops, where hand-made gondolas are being produced for the city of Venice, also by Germans, including our host. These things are quite impressive and gorgeous, but those guys looked busy so we went on our way.
Our way next took us to the uninhabited part of the island, technically off-limits as it is more or less under construction. What's there at the moment is mostly the ruins of a lot of bunkers from WWII, now generally roofless and under the control of creeping greenery. There was also a larger building, apparently a monastery from long before, with a big tree growing right in the middle. A little further on was an enormous woodpile consisting of the trees that have been done away with during construction, and these logs were covered with goats. Live goats. Wild goats. Someone had apparently brought a few over a couple of generations ago, and those few have now grown into a gang of perhaps 50. Apparently, they now live permanently next to this woodpile, on a mound covering an old foundation and now home to some shady tress, and in two old bunkers, one of which was full of stale rolls. Maybe the restaurant dumps its leftovers here? Goats are supposed to eat anything, but these ones wouldn't touch the bread. Perhaps they, like Tianna, have a gluten allergy. At any rate, Tianna was able to get close enough to pick up the smallest baby in the group, and few things are cuter than a tiny baby goat.
Returning to the German sailboat, now populated by a couple of German fashion designers who were dressed the part, we decided for some reason all to pile into Christoph's little skiff to hitch a ride back into the city proper. With the fashion designers, the boat builders, someone's girlfriend who couldn't swim, Christoph's friend from Hamburg, and us two Americans, we totalled 12. The boat was riding low in the water and really we should have known we were asking for trouble, since Christoph had revealed to us that his boat motor had earlier stopped working and then mysteriously started again. (It was a free boat, anyhow.) So we were not really too surprised when, in fact, the boat did break down in the middle of the lagoon, when we were about equally far from any possible land. We had come prepared with oars, but before we had any chance to use them, Mateo, one of the Olympians, sped by and we flagged him down, then tossed him a rope for a tow back to Certosa. It was a little bit hilarious to have all these people packed into a tiny boat, towed back to civilization... a little bit rub-a-dub-dub, 12 folks in a tub...
At any rate, the rest of the evening was pleasant enough if longer-lasting than expected. Back on Certosa there was a little going-away get-together going on, consisting of an international assortment of people sitting around a picnic table eating chips and drinking beer. We joined in, and couldn't stop joining in, because Christoph had forgotten we needed to go back to his apartment to pick up my stuff. It was after midnight before we made it to that night's lodging on Lido, and where once again sleep was in short supply. "I'm so tired, I'm going right to bed," said Tianna's colleague, with whom we'd be sharing a living room. reat! I thought - no staying up all night talking, and I can get some sleep too. Unfortunately, I hadn't known he was a snorer. Even with earplugs AND my iPod playing relaxing music I couldn't block out the sound, and I was in dire need of coffee in the morning, as it was going to be a long drive to Slovenia.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Air guitar
I know I have been very remiss in my blogging, and I hope to remedy that soon. In the meantime, I would like to share with you the joy of air guitar.
In order to clear my post-dissertation mind, I decided that the next topic calling out for research was competitive air instrument playing. If you have seen the moving Air Guitar Nation, you will probably know why. Actually, it fits very much with my interest in dance, gender, and the body because it is a (usually) masculine-identified kind of bodily performance, which is kind of a rarity in Anglo-American culture, at least.
I attended the German national air guitar championships last week to see what was what, and we observed some stimulating performances. Look at some pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/salsasydney/BerlinAirGuitar?authkey=Gv1sRgCIvHyI-6xsDGpAE&feat=directlink
Nearly half the competitors this year were women, which is a huge departure from past years when 0-1 women was the average number. Also, a huge number of them were from Hildesheim, which is not exactly a metropolis. It turned out that both of these unusual circumstances were due to the fact that a professor at the university there had been giving a course called "Aesthetics of air guitar" in which students had to come up with their own air guitar moves and try them out on each other weekly.
These students were pretty impressive. THey had clearly thought a lot about air guitar performance! So many in the audience felt the contestants were robbed when it was announced that this year's winner was once again Heart Buckboard, already a four-time winner. His performance was good, but in the round where everyone must improvise along with a song chosen by the jury, one of the Hildesheim women was clearly better. Also, another Hildesheimer, who performed a geek character who receives his guitar from heaven and is overtaken by it, forcing his body into strange and bizarre movements like the duck walk, was more creative. He came in third, a Berlin woman called Mel from Hell second (also an impressive performance, involving an introduction borrowed from Schlager, or schmaltzy German pop ballads). Buckboards will again be representing Germany at the International championships in Finland, which I'll be attending in August.
I am working on putting together my air character - airacter? - for next year.
In order to clear my post-dissertation mind, I decided that the next topic calling out for research was competitive air instrument playing. If you have seen the moving Air Guitar Nation, you will probably know why. Actually, it fits very much with my interest in dance, gender, and the body because it is a (usually) masculine-identified kind of bodily performance, which is kind of a rarity in Anglo-American culture, at least.
I attended the German national air guitar championships last week to see what was what, and we observed some stimulating performances. Look at some pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/salsasydney/BerlinAirGuitar?authkey=Gv1sRgCIvHyI-6xsDGpAE&feat=directlink
Nearly half the competitors this year were women, which is a huge departure from past years when 0-1 women was the average number. Also, a huge number of them were from Hildesheim, which is not exactly a metropolis. It turned out that both of these unusual circumstances were due to the fact that a professor at the university there had been giving a course called "Aesthetics of air guitar" in which students had to come up with their own air guitar moves and try them out on each other weekly.
These students were pretty impressive. THey had clearly thought a lot about air guitar performance! So many in the audience felt the contestants were robbed when it was announced that this year's winner was once again Heart Buckboard, already a four-time winner. His performance was good, but in the round where everyone must improvise along with a song chosen by the jury, one of the Hildesheim women was clearly better. Also, another Hildesheimer, who performed a geek character who receives his guitar from heaven and is overtaken by it, forcing his body into strange and bizarre movements like the duck walk, was more creative. He came in third, a Berlin woman called Mel from Hell second (also an impressive performance, involving an introduction borrowed from Schlager, or schmaltzy German pop ballads). Buckboards will again be representing Germany at the International championships in Finland, which I'll be attending in August.
I am working on putting together my air character - airacter? - for next year.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Another web page
Hi people, and sorry to those who are receiving this twice.
Just wanted to let you know I also have another web page. It is kind of under construction still, but I also have a blog there (on issues basically unrelated to Dominican accordion music).
Visit me at: http://sydneyhutchinson.com/
Just wanted to let you know I also have another web page. It is kind of under construction still, but I also have a blog there (on issues basically unrelated to Dominican accordion music).
Visit me at: http://sydneyhutchinson.com/
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