Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Holy crap, or holy Schlager?

Another holy week special.

Stateside the only widely known "schlager" is Goldschlager, the schnapps with gold flakes and an 'ä' in the name.

Yes, by George, the correct name is Goldschläger, but what is Schlager all by itself?

If your German is as good as ours, meaning just good enough to be either dangerous or provide hours of fun to our German surroundings, you may know that the verb "schlagen" is "to beat, beat up, defeat, whip", making the corresponding noun a Schlager, right?

Okay, we won't go down that Schlagloch and make it more complicated than needed.

Schlager is the German word for a hit, as in music, or sales, or music sales.

Before the encroachment of yet another English word, Schlager was used for any hit in any genre. That changed somewhere around the 1950s, Schlager beat a retreat and became a synonym of cheesy German language songs, no matter if they were hits or duds. Mostly duds, with some very notable great exceptions. 

Check out the English language Wikipedia page of Geier Sturzflug, for instance. Or Felix Meyer of recent fame.

What is holy about Schlager you may ask. Well for one, a sizable segment of the population is as devoted to their Schlager as to spiritual entities.

Secondly, Schlager has become a symbol of and a potential weapon in the culture clashes that flare up every few years.

Conservative politicians, language lovers*, starving artists, and folks who want a piece of the pie despite a glaring lack of talent hit the media to ask for more German language music on the radio. Followed a few days later by calls for more German movies, German kids, and German cars.

They point at the French legally mandated quotas for original French language content and claim it has created a boom in the French music industry.

Some of the proponents of such a quota for Germany seem to be aware that they can not call for a law mandating this quota while they oppose a law on the number of women in executive jobs. So, the more cautious folks call for an "industry pledge" and leave the call for a law to their brasher brethren.
The numbers are in their favor: according to widely accepted statistics, around 90% of the songs played on German pop radio are in English.

There are Germans who opine that teaching English at an all too early age makes youngsters more susceptible to English language music later. While this may play a role, though not a big one, just look at Japan, we at the K-Landnews have a different take on this.

The acknowledged economic dominance of "English centric" record labels is a big factor.

Another is, K-Landnews insight drum roll, that English language songs can get away with being more edgy, more provocative in Germany than a German original composition.
Black listing an English language song that is played in all of the rest of Europe does not make for good "freedom of <whatever>" PR. 

Just look outside of the Schlager uber genre and you can find heated debates about the German language songs of bands like Böhse Onkelz or Frei.Wild. To us, they illustrate what we called the "South Park phenomenon" in the TV show arena.
At least up until now, South Park could simply not have been made in Germany -- the creators would have been sued into oblivion, or into prison, preferably both.

* [This definition was written by a native German] Loving the German language may not be easy but can be worthwhile. Only on a bad day, when someone tells me I have no right to do or say x, I think ugly pets deserve a loving home, too.


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