Who was/is Elster Silberflug ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Elster Silberflug
"Longing for language and tradition from own countries" ('Folk encyclopedia')
Elster Silberflug, which was founded in 1971 after a trip to India, is regarded as the oldest German folk group. Besides Ougenweide they were formative for today's successful medieval rock bands like In Extremo, Qntal or Subway To Sally.
Tom Kannmacher wrote in 1978 in a contribution to the 'Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung' about German folk songs in the folksong and songwriter scene: "Around 1971 a few ensembles from the melting pot of pop culture began to work with German folk songs: in Heidelberg the Elster Silberflug group ... and all members of the Heidelberg 'scene' between drugs, meditation, alternative life forms and pop artists. Ulrich Freise, then a music student from Giessen, found the starting point for the repertoire of Elster Silberflug in the Middle Ages and his early forms of song and music. The old minnesongs and ballads, early baroque songs and romantic creations were mixed with a dash of Celtic rhythms and a little hippie groove. Thus the group - as Kaarel Siniveer wrote in the 'Folk-Lexikon' - became the "insider tip of the first half of the seventies [and] as the first German group reached a musical standard that became trend-setting ....". The musicians honed their style at countless performances on streets and squares all over Germany. "After the uprisings of 1968 had more or less come to a standstill, we began to sift through songs from the German tradition and put together a programme of songs that are 'singable' today," recalls Ulrich Freise. "What was important to us were good melodies and lyrics that had not been abused by Nazis. The dilemma of the time was that when people were already singing in German, only political texts were accepted and everything else under 'Latsch, latsch die Heide blüht' and 'Deutschtümelei' was dismissed. If you listened to folk music, it was from Ireland, America or anywhere else." Like many other musicians, Elster Silberflug - in her case it was the Irishman Finbar Furey - was asked "why the hell we wouldn't play our own songs. When we then began with it, first the shouting was large and we had to put up with all kinds of bad sayings from colleagues. The young audience agreed with our music, and suddenly there were a dozen and more German-speaking groups engaged in traditional songs."
The two titles of Elster Silberflug represented here are taken from their 1974 debut album 'Ich fahr dahin'. Young girl sat on the beach comes from Latvia and was freely translated into German. Ulrich Freise found it in the songbook 'Der Spielmann' by Klemens Neumann. The story is about an Aquarius who robs a human girl and takes her with him into his realm - a subject that is often found in German folklore.
Today I have the musicians from the collection 'Deutsche Volklieder' by Joseph Müller-Blattau. This song - with a new verse by Elster Silberflug - tells of the farewell of a young man who has to go to war. At a performance in England Ulrich Freise was asked if it was really German folklore, they had not expected anything like that.
In spite of changes of line-up and interludes - after the provisional dissolution in 1978 some members of the group Zeitenwende struck more rocky notes, others played with Bernies Autobahn Band - the "'Elstern' began to fly again in silence in 1988", as it says on their website, and today they are no less active as a quartet than before. Best Of Elster' was released at the end of 2006 and a new studio CD is planned for spring 2007.
www.elster-silberflug.de
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.1, For whom we sing (3-CD)
/various-songwriter-in-Germany-vol.1-for-who-who-we-sing-3-cd.html
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