FLOOD BENEFIT CONCERT 2002

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Linz - 30th August 2002

Thank you!

At the invitation of the Greens and with media support from the OÖN, Hubert von Goisern gave a benefit concert on Friday evening in the sold out Linz Posthof. From ticket sales, 50% went to the OÖN Flood Help, 50% to a different account: Rudi Anschober, Madeleine Petrovic, Hubert von Goisern and the whole band presented a cheque for the sum of 8373.71 EUR to OÖN culture editor Silvia Nagl.

Solidarity helps, not the playing dead reflex

Hubert von Goisern about flood help, the UN summit and new dreams

"Sold out!" reports the Linz Posthof for tomorrow's flood benefit concert with Hubert von Goisern and band, organised by the Greens. The OÖN, who are supporting the event for the victims of the catastrophe, spoke to the world folk musician.

Why have you put yourself at the disposal of the benefit concert at such short notice?

Everybody is affected by such a thing, if not in their substance of life, morally in any case. No matter where in the world: if you see a tragedy, you are affected. And the nearer it is, the more you have the feeling that you would like to do something. The only thing that helps is solidarity and I would not like that to only be a word.

Is that also a sign for anyone who gets annoyed when donations are made for Africa?

It does not make a difference whether it happens in Africa, Russia on the Black Sea coast, at home in the Mühlviertel or in Bangladesh. You cannot say that you do not want to do anything at all because the disaster is so big and no longer manageable. You could let yourself be overpowered by the size of the tragedy, fall into a total playing dead reflex, or just pray. You must also attack to change things.

The flood has also thrown up the question of who is to blame. The people, their dealings with the environment?

We make our contribution, but something like what has happened now has also occurred before, when we still had no industrial revolution. Catastrophes will always happen, against which you can protect through neither rational behaviour nor insurance. People can only help together in order to come out of it again.

Is the catastrophe a chance to bring the subject of the environment more forcefully into the public eye?

I don't think that you can find such a catastrophe in order to say to people, see, we must now do something there. One can only mail this kind of catastrophe to global warming.

The UN summit is meeting now in Johannesburg, where it is concerned with the battle of poverty with simultaneous conservation of the environment. What do you expect from it?

I do not expect much from such things, but it is often satisfying when the penny drops with a crucial person and he does something differently from before because he was made to think. It is always great when people come together to talk from different continents and countries and have an exchange of experiences. Since in the end nothing necessarily measurable has to come out of it.

Do you have any friends or acquaintances who were flood victims?

I know someone in Upper Austria who had everything swept away and is now trying to fix things with an excavator. And five centimetres before it flooded my studio in Salzburg, the water stopped rising.

When is your new album released?

On 16th September.

The title?

Iwasig. Which means "Oberhalb". ("Above")

Since your comeback have you ever had the thought again, as you did with the Alpinkatzen, that you say, finish, over, I don't like this any more?

Yes, certainly. That has nothing to do with liking. When you are touring and leading that kind of life, then you don't know if you are coming or going any more. That is then so isolating and I do not want my life to be like that. Last year at the time I had already said to myself, now I will do the Iwasig album, then a tour with it and then I will leave it again. Next year I am playing another few open airs and then for me a chapter is closed again.

What will you do then?

There are enough plans and dreams for which I need the time to realise, but I do not want to talk about them. For me, they are things which must mature and the energy which such thoughts have becomes less if you are always talking about them.

But you still want to bring out Trad 2, a further album with your interpretations of old folk songs?

I hope that I will have it recorded by March, finished mixing by the summer and it will be released in a year.