Who was/is Rolly Brings ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Rolly Brings
"The man is just a phenomenon!" ('Folker!', 3/1998)
Rolly Brings (born 1943) was a seaman, unskilled labourer, machine fitter, rag collector and teacher. He is a poet and songwriter. The artist has been a permanent fixture in Cologne for over 35 years now. For the 'Folker!' he is one of the "most creative and productive songwriters in Germany". He writes and sings "full of eloquence in a pictorial, poetic and highly politicized poetry. In a language which once originated from the Rhenish-Riparian idiom and which today is used to convey texts whose contents are as the name of the dialect implies: Kölsch Platt." Whereby the Cologne native brushes his texts against the "line of linguistic and content-related flattening". And his programmes with Böll, Bukowski and Appollinaire translations prove that one can also make high literature on Kölsch. Rolly Brings writes in the language in which he speaks: "In the course of time it has become clear to me that dialect speaking and expressing oneself in it means experiencing the history of one's surroundings - handed down in dialect by older people and the neighbourhood - and has an eminently political aspect, because dialect represents a manageable population or settlement unit" ('FM folk-michel', 4/1988).
The album 'Irjendwo dovöre, wo de Stroß ophöt ...' was released in 1983. For Rolly Brings, each line of the chorus in the title song shows "a positive foil, a positive alternative to the found, experienced present. No wars; peace as everyday life; children and old people are regarded as gifts; work fills the day; no possession of means of production = no power over the producers; love and leisure ... In the truest sense of the word a 'utopos', a 'non-place' as map and compass. The author was and is aware that this non-place does not exist and therefore cannot be entered: The way there, the common, solidary working out and fighting of the individual stages is meant. Not accepting what is, but questioning and changing the humane."
Why Kölsch? "What is expressed here in simple words against the background of historical, philosophical and religious appropriation has been - and is still being - dreamed of by the people of my linguistic region as a dream, as a wish, in other words: immediately understood. Nazi past, new and old racism, unemployment, immigrant misery, wars are not mentioned in this text: On the way to 'home in the non-place' we are all strangers, coming from dark past and increasingly darkening present. To be on the way; to think, speak and act in solidarity across all borders is necessary in order to locate and establish individual stages as preliminaries of a homeland still to be worked out."
For Rolly Brings, the theme addressed in the song, written on Kölsch more than 23 years ago, is more topical than ever today. In 1986 Günter Wallraff wrote in his preface to Rolly Brings' songbook 'Für ein besseres Morgen - Lieder auf Kölsch': "On this point the songs 'dream' a bit ahead, towards what Rolly Brings understands as 'home', which is unthinkable without the solidarity and the common struggle of the oppressed and disenfranchised. This is a concept of home that is far removed from the cover-up manoeuvres and sentimental tricks that are spread by turnaround politicians, but also by singers of the same mind, and which can only be consumed at a certain alcohol level. The songs in this book, on the other hand, make us wide awake to social reality and the hopes that grow out of it."
In 2004 a collection of all texts published by Rolly Brings between 1971 and 2002 was published under the title 'Och dat, mi Hätz, es kölsch' - in the original Cologne version as well as in High German versions.
www.rollybrings.de
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.3, For whom we sing (3-CD)
/various-songwriter-in-Germany-vol.3-for-who-who-we-sing-3-cd.html
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