Issue 5 7/98

The FolkWorld Editors' column

The online editorial from the Mollis

Short news arrived earlier this month (July) from Scotland: One of the best known and best loved persons in the Scottish folk music scene and a dear friend of us, Danny Kyle, has passed away in the same week as Ossian's founder member George Jackson. Find out more in our News.
But now to our theme:

Deutschfolk musicians, the prophetes in their own country - do they really exist?

The background of this editorial: During the last few months quite a few of our readers from all over the world have asked about German folk music, recommendations for German folk bands, bands with German bagpipes, German hurdy gurdy etc.

Hoelderlin Express' Elke Rogge; photo by The Mollis We thought about this, and found that we did not know that many German bands we would like to recommend, and - believe it or not - we could not remember a Deutschfolk-Band playing the German Dudelsack (bagpipes). So we decided to ask in the only and quite popular German folk music e-mailing list 'folkmail' for infos on German bands with German folk music. So here is who answered to our request:

Strange enough - this seems to have brought us not very much further. The title of Jams article in the last issue was 'Prophets in their own country' - we are now asking ourslves: Is there no Deutschfolk band prophet for the German Dudelsack in our own country around? If you know bands - please contact us!

We are also still looking for recommendable German folk bands as we do notknow that many that we could recommend. Still, we would like to take this opportunity to list you some German bands. Actually we hope that we can regularly feature short introductions to top German folk bands - but it seems to become difficult. So here's our list (plus those mentioned above!):

Drawing by German artist Annegret Haensel; for more info on the artist, look at the editorial page At the moment we cannot think of other acts that we know and like to recommend (although it might be that we have forgotten somebody - if you feel forgotten, sorry; please contact us!). It is really not that much...

The German Dudelsack is also virtually unknown in Germany - it seems that the Dudelsack itself is a prophet in its own country as it is better known in foreign countries than here!
As said, we hope to be able to feature more often German music and bands, but we cannot promise that it will be possible for us. This time, we have - sorry, just in German language - two articles on the differences of the folk music scenes in former Eastern and Western Germany, at that time and today - the one author Christian Rath belives that there is at the moment a kind of revival in the German folk music scene...

OK, that is enough for now - enjoy reading the rest of this issue!

Your Editors.

Drawing by German artist Annegret Haensel; for more info on the artist, look at the editorial page


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© The Mollis - Editors of FolkWorld; Published 7/98

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