FÖN

"I'm a denigrator of my own country"

Hubert von Goisern in interview

After your ethno albums Gombe and Inexil, you have devoted yourself to native sounds again on your new record Fön. What was your motivation for your journey into world music?

It was actually always meetings with people, which were so great and intensive, that I thought I need a creative outlet for that. But it also fits in quite well with me. Because through the fact that I work with Austrian folk music, I have the image of someone for whom tradition is important. That's right too. But I just don't like that it is reinterpreted: just because tradition is important to me, Austria is important to me. And when I think about it today, then it doesn't matter to me. Proving: Hubert is not one of us. But I feel just as connected to the people in Tibet and Tanzania as the people in Goisern. No more and no less.

You once defined the term "homeland" so: "Homeland is where you dare to criticise." Can you not easily become a denigrator of your own country?

Yes, but that is nothing new for me. Ever since I played an open air concert in Goisern in 1990, I have been a denigrator there. It is connected with the fact that the most patron important in my youth - a very good musician and arranger - was gay. He perished because of it, because he was gay and lived in Goisern. He had to hide so much that he died at the age of 50. From the huge stress, that someone could find out. And as I spoke about it, that I thought it was a shame that you can only show a part of your personality, suddenly all hell broke loose. Because I claimed that there had been a gay man in Goisern! Then you are a denigrator. The husband of the man's sister even called to me in the street: "that would mean that I am married to the sister of a gay!"

There are encoded quotations from another son of Goisern, Jörg Haider, in the booklet for your new album. Why encoded?

Because I did not want to give him the forum, that the stupidity he expresses is there to be read in my booklet. But it is actually a story that first arose in retrospect. I wrote the song Kålt, where I wanted to generally express the ingratiating and hypnotic rhetoric of politicians. You do such a thing at best without words. Because the political rhetoric is always such a statement-less jabbering that it really just sounds great. As I then wrote the rest of the lyrics in the booklet, I thought: What shall I write for Kålt? I don't sing any lyrics. First of all, I typed in some symbols. But then I thought: Some super bright spark will certainly get the idea that it could be an encoded story. And try to break the code, but not find anything. So I decided: whoever really wants to take the trouble should also get something out of it at the end. So I took Haider quotations at random and encoded them.

Folksy music is loved in Austria as never before. What do you say to a phenomenon like DJ Ötzi and his Anton aus Tirol.

Well. There is a saying from Karl Kraus: When the cultural sun is very low, then dwarves throw long shadows too. You cannot reproach the dwarves for being dwarves. It is astounding and for me actually symptomatic and quite logical, that something like that has great success. There is very little to nothing in regional-ident music. So that when something comes along - even if it is as shallow as Anton aus Tirol - that people rush towards it. Not because it is unbelievably great. But simply because of the lack of an alternative.

But Hubert von Goisern wants to be famous too, doesn't he?

Since my earliest childhood, I wanted to be a musician. But for a long time I did not risk following this aim, or rather was not able to because the family were basically against it. When I was 27, I said to myself: Now I am at an age where I don't need to let others interfere. And in the moment I decided that, it was clear to me that I did not want to be an anonymous musician. But I want people to hear it too. I once had a vision. Quite funny because at that time I was a long way from Salzburg. In the vision I am going through the Getreidegasse and the people are turning to look at me. I never knew how I should manage to achieve that.

Folk music, global beats and loans from jazz on the new record. What can be expected from you next? Is there perhaps an electro-album?

The next album is finished. It's coming out in March and comprises only folk songs. The next but one I have in my head. And I want to play with the computer again for that. Twelve years ago, I worked with the Atari and that is tempting me again.

Musically open-minded thinker

With the album Fön, Hubert von Goisern returns, despite funky guitar, reggae rhythms and jazzy ambience, to his folksy roots and to the stage. Nevertheless, there is no second Hiatamadl.

Heast as nit? Wia die Zeit vergeht? It is unbelievably eight years since Hiatamadl was played in the ski huts of Austria and Switzerland. And it is six years since Hubert von Goisern left the stage at the high point of his success with the Alpinkatzen. Six years in which he travelled to Africa, Tibet and India, in which the film music to Schlafes Bruder, for the TV two-parter Fernsehsaga as well as for the kids' film Ein Sack voller Lügen arose and in which the two hard to digest CDs InExil and Gombe made the estrangement from the Alpinkatzen's music more than clear. Hours, days, weeks and months which Hubert von Goisern enjoyed because finally he also had "time for the family", as he said.

"We could have stood another one or two years at the zenith and creamed off the best part, but for me the excitement had died down. I wanted to do something new, conclude, finish, pull myself back and take things in. If one is only an output for a year, one needs regeneration time at some point," he explains his action.

Hubert von Goisern, who was born as Hubert Achleitner in Bad Goisern, stuck to the image of a difficult person, the odd, but good people from the mountain who feel unhappy in the urban environment. No wonder that he presented his comeback CD Fön to journalists in the course of a hike in the mountains and cabin evening inclusive. Can it also go so well when one has skived this and is meeting him for an interview in his record company's Vienna office. It can, despite all warnings from colleagues. Hubert von Goisern turns out to be a pleasant interview partner who supplied a good many bon mots ready to print.

If for example DJ Ötzi and consorts have conquered the ski huts and there instead of Hiatamadl the call is loud for Anton, then Karl Kraus occurs to him: "In times where the cultural sun shines very low, dwarves also throw long shadows." Mind you he does not want to hold the success of his "colleagues" against them because here this has arisen, and especially in this case, "due to a lack of alternatives."

On the one hand, it leads him to the neglect of the native music scene, both on the part of the record companies - who "are ever more reduced to distribution centres from big multicorporate enterprises" - as well as on the part of the media ("feel free to have a go at Ö3 when you want"). On the other hand artists lack self-confidence. If you want to make music, then you can do that. I do not have the feeling that I am such a superb musician, or an exceptional singer, composer or whatever. You must have the courage to do what you are yourself. Many fail because they try to be how they believe they have to be. The people who have success are the people who do what they are themselves."

"Versteht eigentlich irgenwer, wos i da sing?" ("Does anybody actually understand what I am singing?"). With his current album Fön, Hubert von Goisern returns, despite funky guitar riffs, reggae rhythms and jazzy ambience to his folksy roots. Nevertheless there is no second Hiatamadl because as someone with a thirst for adventure he can only work in concentration when it is exciting for him. "I am always trying something new, seeing whether there is something unnoticed, blank areas in our musical landscape."

Fön arose with the ulterior motive of writing song he can go on tour with, although he would actually like to try out new material live first of all and then record it. "But it just doesn't work like that. Creativity [in a CD production] arises under the pressure of creating something that you yourself and the also other people can listen to again and again. Live is live and is over when the note is played. If it wasn't good, you simply play it better the next time."

There is a great probability that people also want to hear hits, but nevertheless first and foremost Hubert von Goisern is going on tour with Fön. "We will not waste any time studying old numbers. There will only be a few exceptions. I would like to do something from the Africa CD [Gombe] and I will certainly play Heast as net. But that is it with the old material and if people cry "Hiatamadl", then I can quite honestly say that we could not play it. That's it."

He holds warming up old success in which one arranges something differently or makes it unfamiliar as a possibility. Nevertheless: "I find my musical present time much too exciting for me to want to occupy myself with something like that ... perhaps sometime when nothing more occurs to me." He cannot estimate the reaction of the public: "We will see how the people react. If they catch me on the wrong foot, I curse and swear about those people who always want the same thing. You cannot turn the clock back and I also expect that the audience has changed in the six years too, not just me. I do not play a single song, a single note which does not suit me. When I got to a concert then I want to hear and experience what these people are saying. I also expect from my audience that they are interested in what I have to say. Otherwise they do not need to go. Then they can put on the old CD from before.

The mountain calls again

Homeland is where you are allowed to criticise: Hubert von Goisern and his new album Fön

"Es ist nicht gelogen, was nicht auch wahr ist, und nur weil es gescheit ist, ist es nicht gut. Denn es ist die selbe Straße, die dich nach Hause führt oder fort." ("There's nothing true, that's not a lie too, and everything that's right isn't any good. Because it's the same road that takes you home or takes you away.") Insight from someone who has travelled and has heard a lot, who has often travelled the road in both directions: Hubert Achleitner, better known as Hubert von Goisern.

For his new album, the 48 year old alpine herdsman who last processed Tibetan and African music on the albums Inexil and Gombe and composed film music, musically returned to the Salzburg province: Fön takes up the folk music revolution of the Alpinkatzen with a new band, but also finds hitherto unknown ways in the Austrian homeland.

What is homeland for somebody who lived for a long time in Canada and South Africa? "There, where I feel so at home that I have the nerve to criticise," says Hubert von Goisern, and forms the words in a measured fashion. The tall bloke with the tanned face is not someone who says the first things that comes into his head, and the silence before each answer is reassuring. It is hardly to be believed that the same man acts on stage like a lively devil.

Von Goisern has never held back with criticism of Austria. His folk music versions with drums and electric guitar were an assassination attempt on the stick-in-the-mud lederhosen musicians and made him a pop star with Hiatamadl. In 1994 with Iawaramoi, he wrote a song against Austrian narrow-mindedness and Haider's insulting tirades. The international political attentiveness must have actually been just right for him.

"What took place in Austria is very probably to be criticised. But it is a problem if the criticism, which comes from outside, changes the dynamic inside the country, because suddenly a defence process takes place. Basically I was a bit doubtful about how it would go for us in this matter." One-sidedness is not his thing, even though he has demonstrated twice against the new government: "After that I swore to myself that I would never go on a public demonstration again. There is no subtly differentiated view, since just slogans are screamed out."

In his new songs, von Goisern finds just as well-formed words, even if the singing seems ranty at times, as a portrait of Da Dåsige is painted, the Catholic preacher indulges in sins or in Kålt, Jörg Haider is once again the target. In the booklet, there are encoded Haider quotations which only surface in the song as confused grumping, because "everywhere you find these people who take it upon themselves or simply set themselves up that they say to other people what's what." Although the shoemaker's son Jörg and the brass band member Hubert grew up in the same Bad Goisern there were never points of contact. "He is about two years older than me - in childhood, that is worlds apart." Today they are different homeland worlds: Bärental Haider is called the "ex-Goiserer" in Iawaramoi.

The nature magician of the mountains

Musically, Fön is atmospherically the heaviest album in von Goisern's anthology of modern folk music. The Alpinkatzen sound often lived from raw power, here it is fine jazz sounds with bass, keyboard and saxophone which entwine themselves around the diatonic accordion ("my love-hate relationship") and the rhythms go far out over the alpine country fund. After new, now the very latest folk music.

Von Goisern: "I have the feeling that I have authority to do that, because that is mine anyway. With this they have tortured me for years, so that now I must be allowed to torture too." The love songs Da Diab or Fia Di or are not brutal, but enchanting: the natural magical strength of the mountains seems soaked up in them.

Von Goisern disbanded the Alpinkatzen in order to withdraw from the fuss in favour of art. He will not be bothered should shrieking women push their way to the front of the stage during the tour planned for the spring: "It is a part of life and is also nice," says von Goisern, and a broad roguish grin knits cheeky folds in his face. Fans should be, because: "folk music is what people make their own."

He's not playing Hiatamadl

Interview with Hubert von Goisern

After his excursion into the realm of African and Tibetan music, alpine rocker Hubert von Goisern returns with the new CD Fön in long-standing style, combining accordion music and yodelling with diverse styles of pop music. In conversation with Thomas Albertsen, he tells about the background of the new production.

Why do you not play with the Alpinkatzen any more, but with a new band?

The Alpinkatzen were rockers. They were not in the position to translate the stylistic broadening I wanted. Even in 1992 with Omunduntn, I wanted to experiment with reggae, but they could not play it convincingly.

But a band - that is ideally friends. Does one simply send that packing?

I am not prepared to restrain my thirst for adventure in order to facilitate other musicians' conservatism.

In the run-up to the tour you have already made clear that you will not play your hit Koa Hiatamadl any more...

... but not because I do not stick by my past, but because I would have to leave out something new. To prevent misunderstanding: I like my old recordings, I also accept that some songs develop a life of their own and will be played by other colleagues.

So more and stranger crossover music than before?

I would not see it like that at all. Look at Ireland, where Van Morrison made modern pop music with elements of Irish folk music over decades. I am composing something like that.

So is the repertoire of a new CD enough to provide for a whole concert without any old material?

First of all, I will play songs from the Africa CD, secondly Heast as nit will be in the programme in any case - and thirdly: I will also give hitherto unavailable material, which is planned for later CDs, a live tryout.

On Fön you cover Janis Joplin's hit Mercedes Benz. Do you really want to interpret an old song in a completely new way, based on the model of Georgia on my mind, from which came Goisern?

That was a chance product eight years ago when I plonked away on the accordion and finally unconsciously played that melody. But since I did not want to put it on the CD a cappella and the Alpinkatzen did not play my idea accordingly, it is available for the first time now.

On the new record, Monika Drasch is also in the party. Will your stageshow contain elements of cabaret?

Monika is a top musician, whose creative potential will not be exhausted at all with Jodelwahnsinn. I would have really liked to have had her on the tour. But I do not do cabaret - because I prefer to laugh about my shortcomings than to make jokes at the expense of others.

Hubert conjures birdsong from household gloves

After six years away from the stage, Hubert von Goisern is back on stage:
with a new band and new songs he thrills his audience

With songs from his CDs Fön and Trad, Hubert once again put his fans into euphoria in Austria, Switzerland and the whole of Germany. A bit of blues, a little jazz, folk music from many countries - the new songs from Hubert are different from before.

A high point of the tour was the open air concert on 22nd June 2001 in the Kaiserpark Bad Ischl, where the Hohtraxlecker Sprungschanznmusi also joined the party.

Fantastic how Hubert and his band elicit bird chirruping from household gloves, let water splash from buckets. So an unusual mixture worth seeing and hearing arises from the use of the most modern stage technology and different musical instruments.

His charisma and authenticity are outstanding! Despite the high demands Hubert puts on himself, he has kept a certain ordinariness and that makes him not just a very special musician, but a very special person.

"It is certain that I will dedicate my life to music until I kick the bucket"

What training do you have, and how did you come to music?

Even as a child I wanted to be a musician, but for my father's sake I learned a "respectable" job for the time being (chemistry laboratory technician). I do not have musical training, but my music teacher taught me a lot during my time at school. I am an autodidact with a good feeling for music. My love for music takes me beyond all boundaries again and again.

What relationship do you have with the audience at your concerts or your fans?

Naturally I feel every mood, sometimes I succeed in translating the excitement into further energy. But the respective mood always shapes my concert.

Do home concerts have a special significance for you?

Although I always like to give concerts in my homeland, they are more exciting for me than appearances in front of unfamiliar faces. I see many familiar faces that are well-known to me and it is a strange feeling to stand on the stage in front of my friends and acquaintances. In Germany it is easier for me than in Austria, different in Styria from Bad Ischl. Each concert develops differently, that fascinates me and shows me how each concert becomes a unique experience through the feelings of my audience.

Where do your family stand?

My wife and my two children - Laura (7) and Niko (13) - are the most important things for me. When I am on tour, there is only my music for me, no time or strength remains for family or anything else. I would be very unhappy without music, my wife knows that and therefore supports me wholly and completely. I talk to my children via email, I can do that any time, day or night, and we all enjoy it.

You are often pulled abroad - what did you take with you from these visits?

It doesn't matter where you are, it can be great or not great everywhere, it can be good for you, or really bad, you are safe or lonely, I believe that is not dependent on a country, but on an inner attitude. The different cultures and societies and the view from outside give me a deeper feeling for my direct surroundings, giving me more understanding.

In one of your first interviews, you described yourself as ascetic, are you still that today after your magnificent success?

For two weeks in the year, I allow my body, but also my mind, a break. During this time I only drink water and tea.

A cook accompanies you on tour - how do you eat?

I really eat everything I like. Soups, lots of vegetables, salad, a little meat, my eating is balanced and healthy, my cook is super!

What plans do you have after your tour?

To go 'underground' for 14 days, then I am working on the next CD in my studio in Salzburg...

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

No idea. I don't plan my life in the long term. To develop myself further, become calmer, dreams that will hopefully be fulfilled next year. Perhaps in three years I will make another long journey.

New sounds from Bad Goisern

For six years it was quiet around him - now Hubert von Goisern returns: next week his new record comes out, Fön. "The best I have ever done," he says himself. But in any case, completely different from what was to be heard from him before.

Only strings and a little cloud from the synthesizer - nothing else. And over this, a voice as in the evening when each moment the strains of the day melt away to which tenderness mingles with tiredness. Probably a fire would burning in the grate, the light would be soft. And in there, this music: warm wonderful, peaceful, full of quiet energy. The song says it without words - a yodeller who would sing a lullaby if he were not already dozing off too much.

This afternoon in a flat in an old building in Munich, Hubert von Goisern looks a bit like this, as if he could do with a little nap. The sixth interview today, two more to come and in the evening a meeting with people from the record company. Two days have already gone on what marketing people call a "promotional tour". Always the same questions to answer, being nice and good humoured so that "the thing" will be bought.

The thing is called Fön and is a small sensation. After six years, Hubert von Goisern is back in the studio and has brought out a CD - Hubert von Goisern - Hiatamadl-Hubert, he of the Alpinkatzen, who as one of the first to bring Austrian folk music together with rock and pop, electrified the accordion and brought groove to the country dance. The break lasted six years, now he is back. And he must let the PR treadmill run over him. Now he sits down at a table in his socks, drinks an apple juice and looks only one thing: tired.

But then he is awake again straight away as it's about his music. "You know," he says, "there must be room between the notes for fantasy. If I were to express everything then it would be boring. I tell my stories round the outside and the centre is free for the listener." Like this mysterious sentence in Die Strass'n ... "All's was g'sheit is, is' ned guad" ("everything that's right isn't any good"). The sentence is not to be understood - but it also appears to be true. "Ah," says Hubert von Goisern. "I'm not going to explain that to you now."

He more often leaves things unexplained. Hardly anyone understood why six years ago he ended the Alpinkatzen project at the high point of its success, as people were scrambling to get CDs and concert tickets. He tried to justify it at the time as tiredness, burnt out as he was after years between the stage and the studio. Today he talks about it more openly and that he is unbelievably proud of his new CD, that in any case says something about the discontent that had crept in at that time in his life.

It fed on two sources: for one the expectation of the audience who simply always just wanted to hear Hiatamadl, who only ever saw him as a nature boy from the Alps, never what he saw actually saw himself: as a musician, an artist. "The art is never life itself," he says, "it raises reality, but I am not sure which is greater: art or life."

In any case, Hubert Achleitner - his civil name - felt that there must be a life after the last encore - and a music after the last note. Therefore, he waited six years, in the meantime made two albums with Tibetan and African musicians, wrote film music and worked as an actor, made a film about the chimpanzee research scientist Jane Goodall. And has now written music, which is miles away from the occasionally really grouchy growling of earlier years.

This yodel in Spåt, the lullaby: the melody has much more to do with love story romanticism than with alpine triad refractions, and Hubert von Goisern enthusiastically explains that with it he crossed his personal boundaries. And he has also found completely new colours on his instrument: the Styrian accordion is in any case a funny instrument because it produced different sounds when pressed together than if pulled apart. Hubert von Goisern now says he only plays "pulling". Through that he gets a mixolydian range - church sound style, but you do not have to know that to listen: something like it has never been played on the Styrian accordion.

The second reason for his earlier discontent is also now taken care of: "I now also have the musicians who understand," he says, nothing more - but that suggests that the rest of the Alpinkatzen did not want to or could not follow their frontman into new musical worlds. Worlds in which he, for example, in playing about came across a driving melody on the accordion. "That is just a country dance," he thought, but it did not occur to him what the thing was called. Only a couple of days later: it was Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin, now it is on the record with a wonderfully self-mocking dialect lyric. And in the interlude between the verses, the accordion naturally growls: a country dance.

To describe something like this pleases him, since the tiredness has almost disappeared from his face and voice. He is really looking forward to the stage again, he says - it starts at the beginning of March, the first concert is in Linz, in the Brucknersaal. That is also a clue to the new Hubert von Goisern: he is appearing in a hall for classical concerts, he is pleased about it because "the acoustics are so great and you can really hear every sound." He also expects that of his audience: they should take him and his music seriously, should listen and understand - not like the last appearance with the Alpinkatzen in Switzerland was: there the organiser had distributed ear plugs among the audience in expectation of apparently infernal noise; with the result that they had to shout if they wanted to say something. It was louder in the audience than on stage. As a couple of requests from Hubert to be quieter were fruitless, he broke off the concert. "I mustn't do that to myself again," he still says today.

Admittedly, one who is an artist and wants to be understood as such cannot get past politics either, especially if he comes from Austria. And naturally on Fön there is also a song that Jörg Haider would probably rather not listen to as he goes to sleep. "Mir ist kålt und mir wird kalter" ("I am cold and getting colder") the lyrics go, which says more about the atmosphere in the Alps than solidarity addresses and lists of signatures. But Hubert von Goisern does not really like to talk about it - it seems to be far away.

The apple juice is empty, three smoked Lucky Strikes lie in the ashtray. The promised thirty minutes has become more than an hour. Outside sits the next colleague and Hubert von Goisern now has a little despair around his eyes as well as tiredness. What if the audience does not like the new sound? "I would think it a shame, because it is the best thing I have ever done. On the other hand, I would have more time for other things again." Either way: Hubert von Goisern will not need a lullaby to nod off any time soon. Not even if it is yodelled as beautifully as his own.

I really don't like being so white at all

Hubert von Goisern has not performed for six years, now he is singing again - in the Passionskirche

He was away from the stage for six long years, jammed with exiled Tibetans and watched chimpanzees in Tanzania, stood in front of the camera and composed film music behind it. At home in the Salzkammergut, he spent his time at the workbench and up 3000m mountains, and sometime new melodies arose in his head. Now he is back again. Though not exactly as before: "Wos g'wesen is, des wor amol" ("Things that were will never come back").

Keyboard and cow bells

Hubert von Goisern has never done what others expect of him. Not as a youth, when he fled the town's brass band on account of his long hair. Not after his training for chemistry laboratory technician, when he decided to go on a journey around the world. And not even seven years later when he returned home to Austria to revolutionise alpine folk music.

In 1992 Hubert Achleitner from Bad Goisern released the album Aufgeigen stått Niederschiassen with his Alpinkatzen - it was musical sacrilege, an attack on his favourite enemy Karl Moik, a declaration of war on all stick-in-the-muds, who spelled folk music like "foreigners out". Hubert von Goisern dusted off and developed centuries-old songs in incredible ways: with keyboard and cow bells, with electric guitar and Styrian accordion, he crossed from alpine blues to yodel rock. New folk music was born - and on Goisern's bow wave quite a few more bands like Hundsbuam or Bairisch Diatonischer Jodelwahnsinn bounced to the top.

But none were as successful as Hubert von Goisern. The introverted Austrian filled enormous concert halls, even people from Hamburg and Berlin - though traditionally averse to the "vulgar" - eagerly learned the country dances. The combo worked through to New York with their "yodelling punk from Austria". And when five gold CDs were raked in, there was the impression that the way to superstar was not far away any more - then Goisern called it a day. "To look for the silence again."

He wanted to stay away from the stage for two years, it became more than six. Not that he would have been idle in the meantime. He released several records in between - among them the film music for Schlafes Bruder, the Africa homage Gombe and the Tibet project Inexil. But he stayed away from the limelight; he wanted to first appear when he had something "perfectly new" to offer. With the records Fön and Trad, the time has now come.

With Trad, the in the meantime 48 year old has fulfilled a dream: an album on which he interprets the traditional folk music once in their complete naturalness, music which he used in an unfamiliar way for years, as the foundation on which he developed his success. He hesitated for a long time, says Hubert von Goisern in interview - out of fear that one could think, "now it doesn't come to him any more." Therefore he waited - until Fön was ready: twelve songs in which he above all paid homage to soul.

Yodelled soul

Naturally Goisern has stayed true to himself on this record. The accordion and brass section are there again, and also yodelled not too concisely. And nevertheless Fön seems more worldly-wise, more relaxed, he uses his voice more frequently as an onomatopoeic instrument. A more melancholy minor key runs through the pieces which are linked together more strongly than before. Also the great cover version of Janis Joplin's Mercedes Benz places itself seamlessly in the overall concept. Although one looks for rocky popular melodies like Koa Hiatamadl in vain. Rock, says Goisern, is now white music - "and I really don't like being so white at all."