IWASIG TOUR 2003
He is still "a bit of a Styrian boy" at heart
Lauchheim - "Whoever doesn't know where he came from, doesn't know where they are going", the vernacular advised people searching for a way and sense. Hubert von Goisern probably received this maxim at birth. The unspoiled nature of his Styrian roots in the native Austrian Goisern, which are multi-culturally shaped from time immemorial, have been personified in him. At the open air concert on Wednesday evening on Kapfenberg, they cast 2000 visitors under their spell.
At 6pm, hundreds are streaming into the courtyard of the Kapfenburg, a good many worried looks go to the sky, where dark clouds are gathering, you take the umbrella with you to be on the safe side, but it should remain closed. The concert with "Hubert von Goisern and band" is sold out. As a beaming academy director Erich Hacker steps up to the podium at 9pm, an audience of "14 to 74" are waiting for the star of the evening. Then the spots turn towards the pavilion, Hubert von Goisern appears in the footlights and immediately characteristic alpine sounds from the "Styrian", the button accordion, the artist's trademark, fill the castle.
Hacker had previously welcomed the many Bavarians in the audience as guests from the "neighbouring foreign country". The artist digs deeper: "Hand a oa van Soizkammaguat do?" ("Is anyone from the Salzkammergut here?"). Barely a reaction in the audience and so Hubert von Goisern briefly holds forth about this species, which he evidently does not think very highly of. He takes hold of the electric guitar, the band is activated and the global mix of jazz, reggae and soul takes its course. No, it is no show that pervades the courtyard for about two and a half hours, it is music. Hubert von Goisern, well versed in many instruments, was brilliant on the flute and played a soft blues on the trumpet. But again and again it is his "highest instrument" with which he reaches hearts - his voice. Many probably only understand the earthy dialect of the Styrian with difficulty, but that does not matter, everything goes down well. The true fans who want to experience Hubert at close quarters throng in front of the crowd.
Hubert von Goisern himself is what distinguishes Hubert von Goisern from the stars of the current music charts: he is not a showman. His transitions seem almost stiff, earthy even. At one point he asks a rhetorical question: "Are you probably mostly Catholic here anyway?" And following, he sarcastically questions the celibacy and confessions.
A highpoint announces itself as bush drums booms out. The African inspiration is audible and the fans celebrate the maestro, who serves the drum work of the Black Continent in phenomenal ways. So the band also draws attention to itself. In the finale Hubert von Goisern remains true to himself against all audience wishes. He does not want to be reminded of his earlier works any more: "I do not play Koa Hiatamadl". Instead, he starts playing "Heast as nit, wie die Zeit vergeht" ("Can't you hear how the time flies"). And the audience really hadn't heard it.
Africa in the alpine saga
Festival Schloss Kapfenburg - Two thousand want to hear Hubert von Goisern
Kohler got his yodel, the (Catholic) church got their come-uppance - and the "Stadltür" (barn door) for the Fruchtkasten could stay shut at Schloss Kapfenburg. The thick rain clouds gave the festival castle a wide berth. Was good that way. Because the two thousand plus Hubert von Goisern fans would have barely have been able to fit in the barn. So everything worked out. "Schön wars" ("It was beautiful"), the alpine minstrel has the appropriate title for such occasions.
Yes, Hubert understands. He pulls on the leather and then lets rip. The latter well dispensed even if then as vehemently in his harsh Katholisch from the CD Fön. And otherwise he has also packed some social criticism into the lyrics of his songs. The Swabians do not always understand them as such in the Goisern dialect form. But what the hell. The language of his music is universal. Clear and understandable, even where it comes along in complicated sentences (complexly constructed arrangements) now and again.
At least two people in the crowd will have understood everything. They namely courageously raised their arms in foreign parts when their compatriot wanted to know if Austrians had also found their way to him.
As on stops on his Iwasig tour before, Hubert von Goisern first of all conjured up the Volxjammer on his accordion alone and very carefully, before things really happened. Across country through alpine songs and the wide world. The troupe brings the blues back from Africa, raps and rocks, mixes Caribbean steel-feeling into polka, sings in many tongues and plays on many instruments in a cleanly controlled sound that is a joy. Keyman Burkhard Frauenlob, guitarist Gerhard Überbacher, the Brazilian Antonio Porto on bass, Bernhard Wimmer on drums, the percussionist Bernd Bechtloff and the singing violinist Marlene Schuen from South Tyrol who's really got the hang of it, are Hubert von Goisern's true vassals. He can rely on them one hundred per cent when he tells his alpine saga on the harmonica in wide screen sound that it is said that the stone blocks of the castle had to open their ears and shouted and cheered deep in their minds with flatteringly husky voices and crystal clear horn sounds.
The blues of the mountains. Hiatamadl can really retire. But Hubert von Goisern remains young and fresh and cheeky and as wide as the world. Hollajadaridüh (or similar).
Electric guitar and button accordion
Spewing fire like a volcano, but also introverted like a Tibetan monk - so his fans know him: Hubert von Goisern, multi-instrumentalist and world musician, who gave his all again on Monday at the Kulturufer in the sold out big tent, as if it was about the yodelling power in the world.
From the beginning, Hubert von Goisern stood under heavy current. Barely had he the button accordion in his hands, he let loose like a sprinter. Introverted and with closed eyes, he tears the bellows apart, driving his fingers over the keys. While sweat streams down von Goisern's back, the audience is as if paralysed. Not a sound is to be heard in the first minutes. The fans seem to soak up the sounds which the 50 year old elicits from the button accordion. Seconds later, the Austrian hangs the electric guitar around himself, hits the strings, lets them howl.
Only a little reminds you of the time of the Alpinkatzen, as Hubert Achleitner - his civil name - pairs traditional folk music with modern rock. After the dissolution of his band and six years absence from the stage, von Goisern returned two years ago with the album Fön: less straight alpine rock, much more the mix of a world musicians, who also wants to inspire with jazz, funk and blues. Soul and reggae followed in the current album Iwasig.
Von Goisern's musical roots do not lie only in the Salzkammergut, as this modern world musician, so called in many publications because of his extensive musical travels, quickly makes clear on his Grenzenlos tour. But the artist born in Bad Goisern is impressive not only because of his cosmopolitan attitudes and music full of contrasts, which go for a ride through the style directions of the world. It is his direct and unvarnished way in which he looks for contact with the audience. With partly opened eyes, the electric guitar shouldered, he races across the stage, letting the thronging people feel right up close what ecstatic music is.
Again and again, von Goisern dries his face dripping with sweat, while he changes instruments at the same time. A ballad on the acoustic guitar follows a harmonica solo, then a style mix on the button accordion - of course accompanied by his trademark, yodelling, which belongs like salt to von Goisern's musical soup and which he can pull like an elastic band. After two and a half hours of pure lust for music and freestyle, the atmosphere is at boiling point. Encores follow - and Hubert von Goisern is certain of the thanks of the audience - wild applause.
Goisern simply makes you happy
"Griaßt's
aich!" ("Hello!") Nine years after the dissolution of
the Alpinkatzen, Hubert von Goisern gave
an almost three hour long concert with his companions, without anyone
weakening. If not yet another miracle occurs, this might have been the
best concert of the Kulturufer.
"Griaßt's aich!" Hubert von Goisern calls into the tent like a farmer who is sitting at the regulars' table in the pub. As if he had never really been away. A few years ago, he chucked in music and nobody knew if there would be anything again with his wild electric guitar folk music.
He disbanded the Alpinkatzen in 1994, he travelled about in the world. "Es san die glaichn Stroßn, die haimfiarn oder fort" ("It's the same road that leads you home or away"), Hubert von Goisern sings today. It sounds epic and experienced, because in the meantime he has travelled through Africa and Tibet. Home and away, Hubert von Goisern is both at the same time after his experiences with the folklore of foreign countries. He sits in a ravine between all stools and gives a deep yodel. His singing crosses the boundaries of the alpine republic, he rises and finally as far as a look into the deep blue sky. Folklore without frontiers, that is Goisern, after he newly invented himself without leaving his origins behind him.
1,300 people crowd into the sold-out tent. People of barely 18 are the youngest, and then it goes up to more than 70. Hubert von Goisern reaches an audience of all age groups because he does something that is not in Germany: a folk music without kitsch and homely lies. Music, which begins with "volk" in this country, always ends with "Tümlichkeit" ("Volkstümlichkeit" is folksiness). Hubert von Goisern on the other hand, rejects all clichés. He wildly and rebelliously combines folk with rock music until it is resistant against the demands. Folk music as alternative culture? An invention of Hubert von Goisern. The "folk soul" has already been badly spoken of with pleasure. But when you understand direct and immediate feelings by that, then Hubert von Goisern and his band make a music in which the impulsive folk soul is expressed and gets everyone at the root. Everything that takes place in this three hour concert marathon is deeply felt. It's hellishly painful when Hubert sings about the Fön and headaches and a powerful electric guitar implants itself in your head like a hammer drill. It becomes totally silent in a moment, no breeze stirs in your heart when Goisern sends his yodel over the heads. "It is music which simply makes you happy," says one concert visitor to another. Distance, emptiness, freedom - that is what appears in Goisern's yodels, far from the half stocking conservatism of folk groups.
But Goisern can just be different. He can rock his traditional alpine person in three-four time, so that you do not know where the tradition ends and the punk rock begins. Then reggae rhythms bob up and down again, to which Goisern takes the mickey out of Catholicism, as Hans Söllner does: "When you are a man and you like a woman and you can't start a family, then you will be a Catholic priest." Because they have to praise celibacy, but not chastity.
But basically they are the only pithy antics in passing. In the middle of the black, Hubert von Goisern meets there where he his expedition through world music combines with his own roots: African rhythms place themselves next to stoic speech song, possessed Irish violin sounds meet trumpet lines in which despair lives. Goisern puts parallel worlds next to one another and lets the air in between them: trusting in their common ground, the traditions can speak for themselves and freely combine with each other. Hubert von Goisern's music puts forward no new dogmas, so it remains free and open on all sides. Perhaps that is the deeper reason for the effect of this music: the feeling of a distance which simply makes you happy.
Open Air: Hubert von Goisern despite cloudburst
Rain began punctually with concert on Sunday evening - More than 4000 visitors in the town square
Burghausen. "Überall is sche, grad ned da bei mia" ("everywhere it's beautiful, just not here with me") - it says in the song Fön by Hubert von Goisern. He entertained on Sunday evening at the open air in the town square in the framework of BR Radltour, and the lines could not have been more appropriate: just as the singer and multi-instrumentalist stepped onto the stage with his men and women, abundant cloudburst began.
That, he said, he had only had at one of his concerts until now - in a town square next to a church then too.
But - as you would expect with confirmed HvG fans and hard boiled cyclists - barely anyone let themselves be upset by the wet, lightning and thunder. Those who came with umbrellas subjected themselves to the rhythm of opening them up and shutting them, those who didn't have any had searching for shelter and running to the stage again.
To the latter, the visitors, who came to thousands, also had every reason. Because Hubert Achleitner, as he is really called, offered Goisern at his finest with his team - among them Burkhard Frauenlob on the keyboards, bassist Antonio Porto and percussionist Bernd Bechtloff; through all the style directions the Austrian from the Salzkammergut has served over the years in such different ways: rock, blues, soul, jazz and first and foremost folk music from the mountainous country and from Africa too - and naturally, everything combined, lots of experimental things.
"I bi on" ("I'm on") begins one of Hubert von Goisern's power numbers. You could almost conceive this phrase as an advertising slogan for the business E.on, main sponsor of the BR Radltour. Actually, the info mobile of the energy provider, one of the stops of the supporting programme, was the most visited. Which is not surprising, considering the fact that it was matter of one of the few roofed retreat possibilities.
Goisern was full power on stage. Even if the founder of alpine rock's interjections still do not have real class: he proved that once again his music does at the open air concert. The audience, avidly searching for a view to the stage on piled up beer tables in the back rows, thanked Hubert vociferously.
By the way: "Kellnerin, schenk ein!" ("Waitress, give me a beer!") is another lyric phrase from a traditional number arranged by Hubert von Goisern. The waiters and waitresses did that at all food places because there was drinking at the town square in any case, so it appeared. Otherwise the caterers were left with one pork side or the other. For Hubert von Goisern wanted to still go flat out and play against the rain: it was uncomfortable. Nevertheless many still endured after the end of the concert: until midnight the DJs from Bayerischer Rundfunk provided the listeners with old and new hits.
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Photo: © Peter Ernszt
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Photo: © Peter Ernszt
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Photo: © Peter Ernszt
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Photo: © Peter Ernszt
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Photo: © Peter Ernszt
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Photo: © Peter Ernszt
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Photo: © Peter Ernszt
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th July 2003
Photo: © Peter ErnsztHubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kaltenberg - 25th & 26th July 2003
Photo: © Elli ChristlCourse against the folksy front
Hubert von Goisern and Haindling inspire at the summit meeting in Kaltenberg
Kaltenberg. "Ihr versteht's des oane genauso wenig wia des andere," ("You understand one as little as the other,") mocks Achleitner alias Hubert von Goisern into his microphone. "Is wuascht, ob's as versteht's. Was eich einfallt, des gült." ("It doesn't matter if you understand it. What occurs to you is what counts.") Does he have a communication problem with his audience or not? Gauged on the enthusiasm of his 12,000 supporters in the Kaltenberg Arena, he does not. Just as little as Haindling. The two met in solidarity at the weekend for a summit meeting of the progressive folk music scene. A crossover of Bavarian dialect, down-to-earth alpine sound and world music was the quality constant for a pleasurable alternative to the folksy front.
German drinking songs and samba
Certainly: nothing is forbidden. There can be German drinking songs when Hubert von Goisern works his accordion, in the background the electric bass booms and hips are vivaciously swung to samba-salsa-reggae-mix. "I wollt, i wär' a wengerl mehr katholisch," ("I wish I was a bit more Catholic,") the Austrian raves ironically over the loudspeakers, in order to release one yodel after the other from his world traveller rucksack into the evening sky over Kaltenberg. The time with Alpinkatzen lies far off. His musical message has become more comprehensive. The Hiatamadl-rock-rebellion has led into a type of alpine-ethno-pop. Hubert von Goisern radiates casual Caribbean flair in the old "long song tradition" with Akipenda, funk and country dance embrace, Africa and the diatonic background combine into the music of the global instrumental marvel. Without a doubt a highpoint of his appearance: Wia die Zeit Vergeht, with which the sound tourist glides into Central Europe again from his transcontinental tour - romantic, melancholy and simply thrilling. The audience thanks him for the fascinating style mixture with enthusiastic applause.
[...]
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Kempten - 18th July 2003
Photo: © Elli Christl