Who was/is Frank Baier ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Frank Baier
"He's one of the most distinguished German songwriters of the second generation." ('Westfälische Rundschau')
Frank Baier, who was born in 1943, is a singer-songwriter and collector who is often referred to as the 'Ruhrgebiet Barde'. For more than 30 years now, he has been engaged in historical and contemporary songs from the Ruhrgebiet. Almost always they are literary as well as political texts, often enough with highly topical explosiveness. Frank Baier made his first encounter with music when he visited Waldeck Castle with the Christian Scout Association at the beginning of the 60s. His first musical love belonged to Skiffle. His first group - with Rolf Hucklenbruch and Harald Goldbach - was called Kattong "...with critical lyrics and a pleasing sound. That sounds like a mixture of John Lennon and the City Preachers, all in German, of course." ('Sing In', 5/1972). 1973 followed the duo Baier & Westrupp, partly parallel Baier was with the group Walter h.c. Meier Pumpe. Since 1976 he has been performing solo, with the exception of individual joint projects such as with the group Grenzgänger, with whom he released the award-winning album 'March 1920' in 2005. The musicians then recall the bloody German workers uprising against the right-wing reactionary Kapp Putsch.
The fact that the Ruhr area as a theme runs like a red thread through the lyrics of Frank Baier Baier (grandpa at Krupp - father at Krupp) can be explained by his life: "I came to the Ruhr area at the age of six, grew up in Essen-Frohnhausen, played almost exclusively with miners' children - so the references are given by my youth," the musician explained in 1979 in an interview with the 'Folk Magazine'. Before Baier made music his main profession, he worked as an engineer for a long time. In doing so, he noted "what it means when someone is standing at the workbench, how it has repercussions on their family life. [...] And such an experience has an effect on my texts as well, there's no intellectual gibberish left in it, that had to be concrete."
In the six-week steel strike of 1978/79, Frank Baier was at the forefront, as musicians not only from the region, but from all over Germany and even from abroad - the butterflies arrived from Austria - practiced solidarity with the metalworkers. During the last big, unlimited hunger strike of the inhabitants of the Rheinpreußensiedlung in front of the town hall in Duisburg, which was about the long-term preservation of the houses and the termination of the ongoing privatization, a medium cultural spectacle took place on the town hall stairs on February 12, 1979. Frank Baier had his birthday and invited friends of singers and musicians, his acquaintances as well as steel and strike colleagues with a flyer for solidarity with the hunger strikers. "They came from everywhere, over 300 people with folding chairs, teacups and above all their musical instruments - Fasia and Kuro, Ernst Born from Basel, jazz musicians and the 'Teewurzellöwen' and many more - and the Koktonne glowed! Well, the steel strikers had brought a ton of coke from the factory gate and poured a truckload of coke right in front of the town hall entrance at noon. Richard Limpert, the worker poet from Gelsenkirchen, brought a brand new text with him as a gift. I wrote it yesterday. Now be quiet back there, I'll read it to you now!' Suddenly Fasia starts to hum. Fasia always hums. 'Ey, notice what, Frank? 'Nö!' 'Don't notice the text fits? He's watching "A bomb fell. "Yeah, right!" "Come on, let's sing! The song was born. On the same evening the new song 'Rheinpreußen ruft Alarm' was sung to the melody of Hannes Stütz's Easter march song on Duisburg's town hall stairs for the hunger strikers with everyone." The hunger strike ended after 18 days and nights. The settlement was saved, the demolition and privatization were stopped.
Small supplement: The song is also available in Malagasy, the Malagasy language. The group Rossy sings it with a text about a Malagasy rice farmer collective not far from Madagascar's capital Antananarivo. Together with Baier they even sing bilingually, and since his tour in Madagascar (1983) the ukulele there on the island is called 'Frank Baier'.
Frank Baier's songs were not only heard during the steel strike. Kalkar, the peace movement, professional bans and censorship were also topics on which he had something to say. As for example in the radio library song represented here. The radio programme 'Radiothek' has existed since 1974: "With the conflict-oriented, critical youth programme 'Radiothek', the WDR is creating lasting memories for the youth generation of that time". ('50 years of WDR', WDR website). The last show was broadcast in December 1980. There is no entry on the WDR homepage about its inglorious ending.
"Die 'Radiothek' im WDR Köln, that was our show. Ours? Yes, ours, because we were involved, we could influence the topics of the broadcasts, here was a 'free word' possible, so live broadcast, that went straight out. So, to say we could talk, not just listen. We knew the moderators and the editors by now. They came along to the youth centres, the prisons, talked to the welfare retards and Trebegängern, the knackis and the unemployed. In the 'Radiothek' our songs were broadcast or recorded at live events, e.g. in the Pappschachtel (Gelsenkirchen) or the Eschhaus (Duisburg). If they should be closed or torn off, then 'Tacheles' was announced on the transmitter, there the problems came directly from the microphone on the street into the ether. Suddenly, I drive home by car from work in the evening and I'm just standing in a traffic jam and listening to 'Radiothek', and they say that the word contribution will soon be dropped because a 'radio structure reform' is planned. Opposite on the other side of the street a guy is stuck with a VW van and has the window down, and we hear the same transmitter. He says, 'Ker, ey, do you hate that? They're crazy. Didn't I? They're gonna get us into a lot of trouble, the directors. They're just gonna burn our ass, just ruin our show... right? Yeah, and the song was done. The guy in the car was the source. It's that simple. The best songs are born on the street, I told you. I sang the song shortly after on the first protest in Cologne from the truck trailer down to the Opera Square, and there it was out of the pipe."
The Radiothek song was deleted from the last live broadcast on 30.12.1980 in the Stadthalle Köln-Mülheim as unwanted. Frank Baier wasn't allowed to sing his song. "Yes, and then I just didn't sing it, but put the guitar away again and told the lyrics and of course, why I'm not allowed to sing the song here in the show during the 'live recording'. The ones down in the hall thought it was bear-strong, of course, and they were rejoicing. Only the WDR people don't. I had already been censored in a film before, when they had cut out verses from 'On the Black List'. And now I was on the index and was not broadcast on WDR for almost ten years. Oh yes, and Uli Lux, the editor in charge, was fired from the WDR without notice, because of this thing and because of Walter Moßmann and the 3 Tornados. And the others have become program directors or something, because they ducked when the Brocken flew."
www.frank-baier.de
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.2, For whom we sing (3-CD)
/various-songwriter-in-Germany-vol.2-for-who-who-we-sing-3-cd.html
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