Berlin In Lights

They are all Berliners
Friday, November 2, 2007

By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER

Paris may be the City of Light, but starting tonight, Berlin will be illuminating in the performing arts scene of New York. "Berlin in Lights," Carnegie Hall's festival in honor of that city's cultural riches, features lectures, film, photography and, above all, music.

After all, when you speak a universal language, who's afraid of a big, bad wall? Especially one that's been down for almost two decades?

The unifying characteristic of the current cultural scene in Berlin, in fact, is its permeability. Electric fusion music group Nomad Soundsystem, performing Monday at Carnegie Hall, contains a good cross section of the creative population of Berlin within one performing entity.

"All of us live in Berlin, and the city surrounds us every day," said DJ Shazam, one of the band's two Germans. "Actually, only one person in the band was born in Berlin, and that also reflects about the very nature of the city -- people coming and going, a constant change. ... That makes us a Berlin band, I guess."

FAST FACTS
WHAT: Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester.
WHERE: Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, Manhattan; 212-247-7800.
WHEN: 8 tonight.
HOW MUCH: $21 to $70.

WHAT: Nomad Soundsystem.
WHERE: Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, Manhattan; 212-247-7800.
WHEN: 9 p.m. Monday.
HOW MUCH: $22, $30.

FOR MORE INFO: carnegiehall.org/ berlininlights. For information on New York Public Radio (WNYC) simulcasts and other programming, see wnyc.org/music/berlin.html.

Other members hail from Japan, Tunisia and Algeria. The band's sound comes from rai, a vocal Algerian music style, and from what is sometimes called "culture jamming."

"I believe culture jamming is also what urban and migrant people do in the 21st century while searching for their cultural identities," said DJ Shazam. "We do it with music: combining heavy club breakbeats with Arabic string samples or rock guitars with dub, gnawa trance with scratching, live percussion with filter effects or Tuvan throat singing samples with deep bass hip-hop grooves.

"This is within us, naturally," he added. "It's not, like, made up."

Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester didn't make up their music either. The group, which kicks off the festival tonight, specializes in German cabaret music from the '20s and '30s. But even this seemingly quintessential Berlin music seemed foreign when they first began performing it in the mid-'80s.

"There was no one playing this music in the dance halls," said Raabe. "The city was slower, emptier than it is now. ... Berlin was an island in a Red ocean."

The orchestra began when Raabe and his musician friends were students. They stumbled upon music scores from more than half a century ago and fell instantly in love.

"I think this is the most elegant form of pop music, just full of humor and irony," said Raabe.

Soon the Berlin audience began agreeing with him. "In the '90s, everyone was remembering the Roaring '20s," he said. "They had the idea that Berlin could be the open-minded, cultural city it was in the past."

German cabaret, he explained, is a specific style of music that combines American dance hall jazz with a clever wink-wink flair in the lyrics. It was also the music of a "wired and curious time" when culture was in flux. That was the era of Bauhaus architecture, expressionist art and film and innovations in theater.

"You can feel it in the music," said Raabe.

Although the Orchester is popularly known in America for doing a cabaret version of Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again" with cheeky irony, its bread and butter is the 500-plus vintage cabaret songs in its repertoire, said Raabe.

Some songs may be surprisingly familiar to Americans. "Singin' in the Rain," popularized by the Gene Kelly movie in 1952, came from a bandstand piece written in 1929. "Dream a Little Dream," famously rendered by the Mamas and the Papas, was written in 1931.

The cultural Berlin of the '20s and the '30s spread across the globe -- and the contemporary world is meeting in Berlin.

"You can dive into many different genres here," said DJ Shazam. "We draw quite a bit of inspiration from the Berlin electronic club scene, just as much as we can get excited about some Africans gathering with Latins in the park for a jam session. Or a Chinese knee fiddler busking in the subway. Or a reggae sound system by the beach. Or some Turkish music in a food stop. Or an experimental underground sound research lab."

E-mail: shih@northjersey.com

Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.