From radio propaganda in Rwanda to torture in Guantanamo Bay, bloodshed accompanied by a soundtrack of reggae during the civil war in Sierra Leone to the calls to battle of the Marseillaise: What does music have to do with war? The cultural anthropologist Angela Dreßler explores this question, and in the process discovers how music is supposed to put fears of another military putsch to rest in war-torn Guinea-Bissau. To article in German...
The connections between war and music are as diverse as they are many. One hundred years after the First World War, the festival program of Singing the War looks at the manifestations of these relationships since then, from technologies developed for use in war that would later take on a central role in music (radio, the loudspeaker, recording, etc.) to music as war propaganda, as a form of resistance, as a means of processing, etc. Singing the War draws an arc over the century to draw attention to just how close war is to Europe today. A Discussion with Bernd Scherer and the curators of the festival Detlef Diederichsen and Holger Schulze. To article...
The German version of this interview first appeared in September 2015 in a supplement issued with the newspaper taz for 100 Years of Now. On October 3, F.S.K. performed Ein Haufen Scheiss und ein zertrümmertes Klavier as part of the opening of 100 Years of Now. A multimedia documentation of the event can be found in the HKW Mediathek. The accompanying volume Krieg Singen is part of the book series 100 Years of Now Library. To article in German...