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” (“Leb wohl, mein Land” or “Farväl, min hembygd”)
“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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