| With
my Celtic Folk Band “Ceol na gCuach“, „Cuckoo’s
Music“, I have had the chance to perform Irish and Scottish folk
music, but also German songs. The band’s fast growing repertory
of ballads, pub-songs and instrumentals offers the possibility to
arrange the right mixture for every audience. As solo entertainer I assort folk songs of different countries and tell stories and little anecdotes about them. Irish or Swedish people like to join in singing songs also in foreign languages. And they like to hear that songs of their nation’s most famous songwriters, like Carl-Michael Bellman of Sweden, have been translated into German or English. |
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| This
is also the place to say “thank you” to songwriters all
over the world, who allowed me to use their music to write my own
lyrics to these beautiful melodies, mostly in Odenwald dialect. Thank
you, Tommy Sands, Ben Sands and Colum Sands in Northern Ireland, Bill
Staines and Allan Taylor in U.S.A., Pat McKernan in Australia or Pat
Cooksey from Ireland. “Farewell my Home” is part of my international folk activities. Every country has its own emigration history. Songs (in English, German and Swedish) and stories (in English) about German, Irish, Jewish and Swedish emigrants will accompany the audience into the hardships of 19th and 20th century living conditions, giving them an emotional insight into people’s motives to leave their country. My songs will retrace the different reasons for the emigrant’s decision to escape a steady pressure. Political or religious persecution, poverty and lack of work in a fast growing society pushed people to the harbours of Europe, where the ships with destination “New World” were waiting for them. In these desperate situations the poor peasants and craftsmen were hoping that the promises of a Garden of Eden will come true. Sometimes it did come true, more often they faced the same living conditions they were trying to get away from. |
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