Peter Maiwald (1946-2008)
[by Ken Hunt, London] The German writer Peter Maiwald died on 1 December in Düsseldorf. Born in Grötzingen in the West German state of Baden-Württemberg on 8 November 1946, he gravitated to the left. He moved to Munich in 1968 before moving to Neuss in 1970. During this period he was establishing himself as a freelance writer before going on to co-found the magazine Düsseldorfer Debatte. Parenthetically, one has only to think of the Putney Debates during the English Revolution for a sense of the meaning of debate.
5. 12. 2008 | read more...
[by Ken Hunt, London] On 27 February the best-disguised Russian superhero Ivan Rebroff, a singer and star of stage, film, musical and television died too. Rebroff kept his origins a closely guarded secret but he had been born Hans-Rolf Rippert in the Spandau district of Berlin on 31 July 193. He created, to go faux-designer, a huge peasant chic and Cossack bravado that became his trademark for the friendly face of Russia during the Cold War era. It is impossible to estimate what he did for rapprochement during the period. “I brought Russian soul to Germany,” he said once. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] Szilvia Bognár, Ágnes Herczku and Ági Szalóki’s album Szájról szájra – first released in Hungary in 2007 but invisible to the outside world until early in 2008 – ranks as one of the benchmark albums to emerge from the pan-European folk scene this decade. It is a master-class in the subtlety and power of interwoven voices as well as being a torrent of lessons on how to draw on traditional folk music and make it both now and timeless. But the wondrousness of Szájról szájra only really comes across in live performance when you match lips to sound. 
[by Ken Hunt, London] To declare an interest, Tom Constanten and I are addicts of bilingual punning and are old friends. Indeed we started our correspondence when I lived in Sutton, a town that I have no reason to return to in many years. As opener for Jefferson Starship, the audience got a magic show of multivalenced allusion, illusion and wordplay from the former keyboardist of the Grateful Dead during their wonderful experimental period as a septet in the late 1960s that produced Anthem of the Sun, Aoxomoxoa and Live Dead.
[by Ken Hunt, London] It’s one of those magnificently manipulative daughter-father lines. She is bending her father round her little finger. And both of them know it. Cyndi Lauper sings, “Oh daddy dear you know you’re still number one/But girls they want to have fun.” Girls Just Want To Have Fun became one of the most popular and most joyful English-language songs of 1983 and 1984. It appeared on Lauper’s She’s So Unusual (1983) and MTV picked up on its video to such an extent that it became their Video of the Year in 1984. The following year the song lent its title to a film staring Helen Hunt and Sarah Jessica Parker, though for some reason Girls Just Want To Have Fun the film didn’t use the Cyndi Lauper version of the song, plumping instead for a version sung by Deborah Galli with Tami Holbrook and Meredith Marshall. Nevertheless it still stuck close to the arrangement that Lauper had delivered. After all, Lauper put her stamp on the song in spectacular fashion.
[by Ken Hunt, London] Peggy Seeger has sent a newsflash that she is happy for people to pass on. She and Jon Andrews have made a short video of her song Obama Is The One For Me. Grammy-winners Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer have donated the instrumentation, backing vocals and recording expertise. And just to make things clear, she sent a caution: