EARLIER this month, relations between Germany and Turkey plunged to sub-zero when legislators in Berlin approved the word "genocide" to describe the mass killing of Armenians in 1915. Diplomatic ties were downgraded, flags burned and death threats reported. But some enjoyable transactions between ordinary Germans and some ordinary Turks continued unimpeded.
With impressive courage, a hip-hop band called Einshoch6 left their native Munich to keep a longstanding date on June 4th and, as one of them modestly put it, “set Ankara on fire” with a concert and teach-in. Young Turkish German-learners took lessons in how to turn tongue-twisting Teutonic sounds into the verbal pyrotechnics of rap. Their trademark is combining rap vocals with classical instruments (or electronic versions of those instruments) and strong percussion. As with most of their travels, the band was hosted by the local Goethe-Institut, Germany’s cultural agency.
The group has travelled about 200,000 kilometres since 2013—from West Africa to Siberia, Cape Town to Jakarta. Appearances are looming in the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion and the Russian Urals. The young men of Einshoch6, in their 20s and 30s, have drawn admiring screams from hijab-wearing ladies in Indonesia, and seen the stage invaded by dancers of both sexes in Burkina Faso. They have tasted life in provincial Ukraine both before and after the onset of war, and persuaded Serbs and Kosovo Albanians alike that learning to communicate in Europe’s economic power-house might be a blast as well as a professional necessity.
None of this makes them enough money to live on. But they love what they do, and take risks for it. Connecting artistically with poor people in Djibouti was a “deep spiritual experience”, says Tobias Baum, one of the two main vocalists, whose day jobs in Munich include using his persuasive, smoky voice for commercial voiceovers. Tall, brooding and occasionally dark in his choice of lyrics and images, his Mediterranean style forms a natural rapping duo with Kurt Achatz, a successful graphic artist whose chubby, school-boy Bavarian grin infects crowds from Abidjan to Ankara.
Going ahead with the Turkish gig (beset by security worries even before the parliamentary vote) wasn’t their first brave deed. Touring Africa, they faced warnings about Ebola fever and violence; a woman who hosted them in Cote d’Ivoire later died in a terrorist attack. But as Kurt Achatz puts it, “we could just as easily have an accident back home.” Going to Turkey, a society he finds "fascinatingly diverse and open-minded", convinced him that "dancing, singing and having a good time" are a valid form of dialogue, especially when other kinds fail.
The common theme in all these adventures is an eagerness to mix high and popular culture in ways that poke joyful fun at both. And that mixture has an obvious application to the dissemination of a language and culture which struggle with the perception of being too serious.
That suggests a broader point. Until recently, the advanced study of any language involved large, often indigestible helpings of classical fodder. Whether or not they enjoyed Shakespeare or Milton, Anglophone learners of French had to mull Molière and Racine; students of Spanish struggled through Cervantes. Einshoch6 offers an intriguing variation on that theme. Along with their own exuberant, random ravings they have experimented with rap versions of the poetry of Goethe, and their whole output is an unlikely by-product of the intense classical-music culture of south Germany. But they send out a message that mastering compound verbs and case-endings needn’t be done with a long, studious face.
One band member, Jakob Haas, plays the cello for the Munich Symphony Orchestra and an electronic cello for Einshoch6; percussionist and manager Carl Amadeus Hiller was named after two composers (Mozart and Karl Amadeus Hartmann) by a family that breathed chamber music. Both enjoy performing with a spontaneity which their old-fashioned teachers would abhor. Amazingly, so did the tail-coated, white-tie-wearing entirety of Mr Haas's orchestra, who were inveigled into jiving on stage as they performed a Teutonic variation on that edgy American rap number, "Shake Ya Ass".
How did the boys of Einshoch6 go global? Thanks to a metaphorical big sister and impresario. Born in Iran, her name is Shirin Kasraeian-Moghaddam and she oversees German-language teaching at Deutsche Welle, the global German broadcaster. About five years ago, she had a couple of brainwaves. After hearing the rappers at a Beethoven festival, she hired them as roving linguistic ambassadors whose “video diary” (whether they were on tour or just fooling around in the Vaterland) became a feature of DW’s electronic German lessons.
As another teaching tool, she conceived a tele-soap opera, “Jojo sucht das Gluck”, about the romantic adventures of a young, endearingly naive Brazilian woman in Germany. These interlocking projects gained hundreds of thousands of internet followers (including your correspondent) and were a boon to German teachers. Einshoch6 recorded songs for the serial and makes periodic appearances. Mr Baum plays one of the heroine’s suitors; in one scene, he serenades a giggling Jojo with a hip-hop ode to the amazing effects that her appearance has on people: "Soldiers throw away their rifles | Vegans order up roast pork | Insomniacs start dreaming sweetly | The Pope quaffs champagne and gets high…”
Watching that, many of the world’s 15m German-learners must have concluded that the land of earnest dichter und denker (poets and thinkers) can, after all, let its hair down. But it takes an Iranian to make that happen.
