At a time when America's democracy can seem like its teetering on the brink, its worth remembering that West German Democracy was a shining success story in its democracy and the cultural attraction to its freedoms. This was a singular case, where after World War Two the occupying army was not seen as a threat or a terror but rather as a glimpse of a better life. The reactions to rock were by no means universally positive, with some, especially ex-storm troopers even dreaming of "rock n roll" concentration camps.

Before we start our conversation with trained sociologist and chef Ronald Herrmann, we listen to Peter Kraus's "Du Gehörst Mir" and Ted Herold's "Küss Mich," two stellar yet overlooked examples of early West German Rock from the late 1950s.

In this episode we cover:

• What was unique about post-war Germany's Rock Culture

• How did both Elvis and the Beatles play a distinct role in German rock development?

• How did Rock trigger rioting in post-war Germany?

• What role and impact did Nazism still have in post-war Germany especially in the attempt to police the new Rock culture?

• What role did racism play in the reception of rock?

• How did fashion play a role in cultural provocation?

• Who was the "German Elvis"? (Answer: Peter Kraus)

• How did Germany's Colonial Empire in Africa still influence the reception of rock?

Dear Friends, please like, rate and comment, any input is most highly valued.

A great thanks to our conversation partner today, Ronald Hermann and do stop by Ronald's restaurant in the Wedding District of Berlin, the "ExRotaprint Kantine," for delightful continental cuisine. Unbeatable prices and it has 4.8 star rating on google!

In this episode we speak with a representative from Estonia's quinquennial Song and Dance Festival one of the largest of its kind in the world. Maris shares personal memories of how students in the late 1980s stood up to Soviet uniformed authorities and refused to stop singing. We address:

• what differentiates this festival from others of its kind?
• what place this festival has in the collective memory and identity of Estonians?
• How has recent global instability and the conflict over Ukraine impacted the festival?
• where does mass singing come from and what effect does it have on the body and mind?

The Estonian Song and Dance Festival, the largest of its kind in Europe, with over ten thousand dancers and thirty thousand choral singers, is an astonishing presentation of mass from one of the smallest ethnostates in the world, with just over one million in size. An incredible display of minority nationalism and cultural perseverance, this festival has its roots in the Lutheran choral traditions imprinted here by Baltic German settlers, the descendants of the Teutonic Knights of the medieval crusades. Dating back far before the more familiar mass demonstrations of totalitarian states, these jaw dropping exercises in coordination and harmonizing are an index of how communal singing is a key mark of personal uplift and social bonding especially in days of the scarring and even erasure of the civic by so-called social media. (Maybe it should be called unsocial or even antisocial media.) Whether digital dislocation or anxieties due to the poked Russian bear next door knocking closely on the door, this year's affair sold out in record time.

Please enjoy and don't forget to comment, like and subscribe. We value each and every one of you dear friends. :

In this episode, we continue to examine the toxic brew that is Wagnerism with Dr Larry Mass. In this concluding discussion of his musical life, we cover his growing awareness of the dark underbelly of the musical phenomenon once still often brushed under the rug. Dr Mass helps us to both understand musical listening under the framework of addiction but also the complex processes of psychological dissimulation and denial that take place in the mind of the addict and the musical listener. Finally, given his historically significant role as an early observer of the AIDS epidemic, Dr Mass reveals how a changing political landscape can actually effect the way even much older music sounds and is understood. Thanks for joining us again and please like, rate and subscribe. Fare thee all well.

Welcome dear listeners as we confront what some refer to as the defining issue of our times: Palestine. We welcome as our guest arts communicator and educator, Marianna Ellenberg who has consistently integrated avant-garde and experimental music into her stage productions. She offers a personal perspective onto the blowback of the latest, devastating round of bloody conflict onto the arts world, onto periodicals, residences, galleries and more. Along the way we discuss the motivations and intricacies behind identifications with this conflict and attempt to parse out the perennially difficult distinction between antizionism and antisemitism. We also explore the "theater" of protest," and the gaps that often emerge between the making of effective statements and serving the actual interests of those suffering on the ground. Thank you for your time and attention and please do like, review, rate, and subscribe .

Welcome dear listeners to the first episode of a recurring segment on Hip-Hop and Politics. Today we welcome MC MasD from Dujeous to dive into Afrocentricity and XClan. Dujeous was a leading live instrumental Hip-Hop band of the 90s and 00s in NYC, reminiscent of the Roots. They had a great selling single entitled "Spilt Milk" and a critically acclaimed album "City Limits." We touch on the roots of Pan-African thought in the early 20th Century with DuBois and then discuss the Afrocentric renaissance in 1990s Hip-Hop. Variations on a theme are also analyzed such as distinctions between an orientation to Egypt and an orientation toward Ethiopia. We find references to the ancient Egyptian Gods, the Bible and then a move toward Islam. We hope to lay the groundwork for future episodes to come so please do rate, subscribe and support. Fare thee well.

Please join us dear listeners as we embark on a multipart musical biography with Dr Lawrence Mass. An addiction medicine specialist, gay rights activist (co-founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis) and longtime Wagnerite, Dr. Mass is completing his trilogy of books on the perils and pleasures of Wagnerism. We listen and discuss the works that have shaped his life as an enraptured and conflicted listener, all the while weaving in tales of the destinies and challenges of Gay life and Jewish life in the shadow of Nazism after World War Two. Throughout Dr Mass brings to bear his insightful and singular lens of addiction medicine to understanding patterns and habits of listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe and to join us for future episodes completing our journey with Dr. Mass.

Dear Listeners, Thank you for joining us as we embark on season 3. We begin with a journey into Chinese Jazz, into the delightful and turbulent demimonde of interwar Shanghai, where Russian marching bands clashed with American swing bands, helping to kick start Jazz in China. Composers like Li Jinhui and Chen Gexin crafted a Chinese songbook, part and parcel of China's national renaissance after WWI. With a strong infusion of chinese folk traditions, this new popular idiom, known as Shidaiqui, helped lay the foundation for contemporary mandopop and cantopop. Along with our interlocutor, Jazz Lecturer Henry Chung we discuss the complex relationship of Jazz in Chinese history with the global politics and diaspora of Jazz today. We hope you enjoy and don't forget to like and subscribe!

In this episode of "Music & Politics" we explore music in the age of dictators, in the 1930s and 1940s: Stalinism, Nazism and the Popular Front. Though "totalitarianism" is a contested term of the Cold War era, it well applies to the musical aesthetic of the great works of art-music of the 1930s. As we suggest at the outset, even the output of Hollywood's Golden Age like Max Steiner's soundtrack to "Gone with the Wind," or Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" can be understood as examples of totalitarian democracy in music. This is a music of monumental scale that overwhelms the listener by setting its work on the scale of giants. Sergei Prokofiev's soundtrack to the 1938 war/action propaganda film "Alexander Nevsky" conjures a mythical medieval Russia prince who leads his people into battle against the terrifying foe of the Teutonic Knights. Foreshadowing the coming conflict with Nazi Germany, Prokofiev deftly adapts Soviet-style marching music onto medieval times. Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," perhaps the most popular work of the classic repertoire is not usually associated with the Nazi era, yet its latent links to that ideology are strong. Conceived and premiered in the Nazi era, this too is a work of medieval grandeur, archaic monastic latin drinking songs about fortune dwarf the listener in their sheer power, much like the Nazi rally architecture of Albert Speer. We conclude the episode by examining the musical response to this crisis of liberalism and democracy, namely the Popular Front. A grand political alliance of anti-fascism, Paul Robeson and Woody Guthrie are two prominent examples of musical artists that rose to the challenge presented by totalitarianism. Both committed to antifascism and the art of the folk song, Robeson, a Renaissance polymath, sang songs of struggle in many languages, and forged a crucial link between the African-American freedom struggle and global decolonisation. A bard of Great Depression era dispossession Guthrie chronicled the ravaging of the Dust Bowl, fusing poetry, philosophy and politics into a revitalized musical form soon to be imitated by Bob Dylans, and many others the world over. Please do not forget to like and subscribe and support us on Patreon at musicandpoliticspod.

The music listening public has come back full circle to that point over a century back when music existed only in the ether, evanescent and fleeting, or in the "cloud." Despite any resurgence of vinyl, most music is accessed in a streaming format without any tangible, physical, consumable object. The shift is catastrophic for working musicians, who must return to performance for any sustainable livelihood. For much of the last century, performance existed to emulate a recording, even our musical memories and imaginations are conditioned and limited by the recordings we have heard. In this episode, we converse with collector and musical archeologist John McFadden and go on a listening tour of the oldest available records for mass consumption .Tuning, timbre and vibrato all differ from what became the norm after recording triumphed over performance. These records are our last link to the days when the composing giants walked the earth. Please join us and do not forget to like and subscribe, any note of support is meaningful and cherished.

In this episode of "Music and Politics" we shine a light on Charleston, SC, a city in the Deep South once the largest and richest in Colonial America. Seen from this perspective, the history of America and its musics looks very different: at once dominated by the tyranny of slavery and also much more African. As a centre of Gullah culture, Charleston saw efforts to preserve the spiritual song of slavery and to construct stage art, from a play to an opera, based on the Black Experience. Gullah refers to, an American Creole, a language and a culture that preserved West African traditions, from music to cuisine to handicrafts like nowhere else in the country. In the first half of this episode we examine the meaning and form of the "Spiritual," a text of resistance and communication, denied the use of percussion. We interrogate the particularly perverse project of the descendants of slave owners to preserve and even perform spirituals themselves. In the second half of this episode we share a medley from this past summer's Gospel Gullah Fest and reflect on Gospel as a retrenchment of the sacred, as a response to secular and often erotic popular music. Both speak a similar language of love and ecstasy reflecting the complex layers and multidimensional tradition of America's most propounding and rich musical heritage.