GRENZENLOS TOUR 2002

Everything I need

Jena. (tlz) To be honest: whoever hasn't yet sung a Hubert von Goisern song before going to sleep or at least has a Bavarian-Austrian idiom within them can't have understood much of the Austrian musician's lyrics at the Kulturarena concert on Thursday evening. And yet the Middle German Goisern-ignorants noticed once more: whether Swahili or Chinese backwards, it doesn't matter as long as the musical spirit reaches us. And the way in which Goisern danced across the stage in a gently bent stance, - like lumbago, just much more relaxed -, the way he easily passed all genre boundaries, that was breathtaking. People like to say "crossover" nowadays when music can't be pigeonholed. And since the attribute "world music" still belongs to the Kulturarena, von Goisern presented a kind of turnstile of the 11th [Kulturarena] with his excellent accompanying musicians (excellent: bassist Toni Porto) in order to show what is possible: the rocky folk dances, the folky ballads, funk and soul.

He doesn't like boundaries

And naturally experimental ethno rock, which von Goisern has drawn from life in all its colour (lived in South Africa and Canada, stays in Tibet, Tanzania, most recently a tour through Egypt and West Africa). It's no chance that von Goisern see an alternative to the "war against terrorism" in the international cultural collaboration. Between two songs, the multi-instrumentalist told the Jena audience of his aspirations with anecdotes from everyday life: he told of the stress with the customs officers when visiting Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and that's why the EU eastward enlargement is the best solution. "I don't like boundaries."

Von Goisern then kindly gave the people of Jena a helping hand with understanding the refrain to sing along to: "Video! Video!" - what does he mean?, some still asked themselves. Plain talk from the master: "I bi oooa!" - I bin an. That means something like: I have everything I need. - Thank you, Hubert!

Hubert von Goisern - E-Werk, Cologne

I wasn't quite with it when the concert started because I was thrown out of the photographers' pit and led away to the ticket office like a criminal, but that's another story. Hubert and his six member band play a wonderful concert in the E-Werk with an atmosphere on both sides - band and audience - which rose from song to song. First I must confess, I was somewhat irritated about the audience, who were predominantly senior students and so spread rather a bowling club atmosphere, rather serious and somehow narrow-minded "listen, you can't stay standing, I can't see anything any more...", but that is just my personal impression. To get in the mood came Volxjammer, exactly right and it calmed my mind, turned up by the photographers' pit episode. Hubert and band obviously had fun with the jamming and inevitably infected the audience. Apart from at times the friends who had not yet heard the shot and waited the whole dear concert for Koa Hiatamadl. Whoever was ready for it could let themselves be kidnapped on a musical journey around the world, with excursions to Austria, India, Africa, Latin America. At the latest after Hubert told of - certainly first in retrospect - funny experiences in Ouagadougou, was one ready for Afrika and could let oneself float. A jungle atmosphere spread out through driven tones and sounds from Hubert's throat, which only the chimpanzees in Gombe National Park could have muttered to him. The tropical temperatures and the humid air in the E-Werk made this jungle fever even more authentic.

Perhaps not only the result of experiences and impressions which Hubert has collected on journeys to West Africa, India, Egypt etc, but also his isolated study of experimental music manifests itself in his gift of mixing foreign sounds with familiar and creating compositions in which the listener feels both safe and in a turmoil at the same time.

Hubert and band succeed in stylishly mixing and combining together diverse directions of style like funk, jazz, blues, rock, reggae, soul and folk music. The music is without frontiers and it lives, giving a feeling of homeland and wanderlust, security and curiosity, joy and melancholy.

To elicit a strange scratchy blues from the accordion in Fön is really great and bold somehow! I also think the trembling knees in Katholisch, which are convincingly imitated by Marlene's violin, are really cool, Bernd Bechtloff scurries around like a Fraggle on Ecstasy and nearly makes you go wild with his exotic percussion rhythm. Toni Porto's bass gets right into your blood - that is the scraping sounds drift straight into the pit of your stomach, where that drink lands after a good meal and stimulates the surrounding organs to jump for joy. Keyboarder Burkhard Frauenlob takes the key position in every sense of the word and carries the band superiorly through the compositions. The listeners expected a mixture of new and old songs, so that the Alpinkatzen fans were compensated for the missing Koa Hiatamadl. Traditional songs such as Hubert's trad interpretation of Stadltür thus fetched back us again into more domestic realms. If the sound was also not optimally mixed, it harmed neither the atmosphere nor the musical intoxication. Massive encores followed and you had to simply believe Goisern, that he feels somehow connected with the people of Cologne, even if he cannot explain it exactly.

Hubert von Goisern & Band

After the huge success of Hiatamadl, Hubert von Goisern applied the brakes and withdrew from the music business. The results of his extensive journeys were the two ethno CDs Gombe and Inexil. With Fön he mixed his yodelling with jazz, blues and rock, only with with Trad to subsequently entertain with his interpretations of traditional songs.

With his recently released CD Iwasig, he rather takes up Fön again and mixes pop, rock, funk and world music with his style of folk music. For the first time in a long while, he also released a single again with Poika. After the radio broadcasters until now always had the excuse of not being able to listen to and play all songs of a CD, this time Hubert von Goisern presented them with a single. But he is convinced that he will also not be played on radio time - you can be curious about the new excuse from the radio broadcasters.

Hubert von Goisern does not care about boundaries, goes his own way undeterred and does not exactly make it easy for his fans. But this shouldn't be a reason for his unbroken success. Many music lovers no longer let themselves be fobbed off with musical fast food and are very happily prepared to occupy themselves with the presented music. And so it was no wonder that also the Hafen is quite full when Hubert von Goisern and band step onto the stage shortly before 8 o'clock.

After a few songs, a visibly happy Goisern has tempted the audience out of their reserve and he takes the enthused crowd with him on his musical journey around the world. He also entertains between two songs with anecdotes about his trip to Burkina Faso. He is musically concentrated first and foremost on the last three CDs, in which songs from the current CD Iwasig like Heilige, Poika, Afrika and I bi an are naturally not missing.

The fans dance and sing along, only to listen just as intensively the next moment with a quiet or unwieldy number. Despite the very long set time of almost three hours, a great evening goes by much too quickly. It would be nice if you could experience such concerts more often, but that would necessitate a fervent homeland dialect scene and more support through the media.

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Salzburg - 6th December 2002

Goisern: home game with broken voice

About half way through the concert in the Republic, Hubert von Goisern told us that a journey to Africa allows no expectations whatsoever. And yet he could not help having them again and again, which were admittedly then constantly chucked out. The visitors to a Goisern concert have a better time. They know what they are getting (and meanwhile nobody comes to hear Hiatamadl either). Correspondingly, last Friday enthusiasm ruled from the first minute, even with the legendarily reserved Salzburg audience. All the same, a Goisern concert is indeed a home a game for the at present most successful (pop) culture export of the city.

The fact that the Goiserer had to fight with a voice badly shattered with winter temperatures after exhausting weeks on tour did not dampen the euphoria. On the contrary: the new huskiness bestowed a good many of the songs splashing in the broad sea of alpine world music an especially bluesy character. Apart from that, the band first brought together this year just before a tour to Egypt and West Africa lasting several weeks sounds like a sworn unit. It is no longer only the charisma of the frontman that is applauded by a predominantly female audience, but also the pure understanding his companions have for each other. The Brazilian bassist Antonio Porto, the Graz Gerhard Überbacher (guitar) and Bernhard Wimmer (drums), percussionist Bernd Bechtloff and the violinist and singer engaged after the Africa trip, Marlene Schuen, grew to a close unit under the musical direction of keyboarder Burkhard Frauenlob.

They solve the problem of the combination of alpine tradition, western pop folk music and impressions gathered from all over the world with style. The appearance at the end of their three week club tour through Germany, Switzerland and Austria was a rightly wildly celebrated finale to an intensive Goisern year.

Hubert von Goisern: Live in Innsbruck - 3rd December 2002

Let's go to Africa

Hubert von Goisern shows a new musical side of himself with his Grenzenlos tour.
His sound is groovier than ever.

Innsbruck (lipi). Hubert von Goisern and band are travelling with light luggage this time: instruments and amplifiers are their equipment, the rest will be hired on the spot from the respective organisers: "It is exciting, because you have to constantly get involved with something new," said Hubert von Goisern in the TT interview before the concert. The concert is also open and spontaneous. In total, it produces the blues, which coolly blows your mind. Jazz, which continuously swings between pain and desire. Foreign and familiar things sound from the diatonic accordion. The unrestrained style mixture of funk, jazz, blues, rock and folk music is shaped above all through the rhythm ecstasies of his band, the violin, accordion, bongos and exotic drum work mixed with guitar. HvG and his violinist Marlene let out juchitzers and yodels, murmur and sigh.

HvG shows himself to be talkative and tells of his Africa journeys, before he lets loose "Gemma, gemma, gemma nach Afrika" ("Let's go, let's go, let's go to Africa). Like the song Afrika, most of the songs are from the new album Iwasig (Poika, Heilige, Aus is). HvG brings Africa and Europe together without working a pattern. He seems to be concerned with avoiding uniformity. Only later does he let loose other songs, for example Katholisch and Fön. The audience is happy, but is completely satisfied with the new material. It is shown by the bodies, sweaty from dancing.

Hubert's beautiful new world

Von Goisern shows himself to be impressively versatile in the Modernes

Fans of the Austrian Hubert von Goisern had to be content with his albums for years, but at the moment, the alpine rocker is delighting his audience with a flood of tours and new CDs. In the jam-packed Modernes, von Goisern now presented himself with a world music which was as convincing as it was exciting. The seven member band allowed their Bremen fans about three hours - and not one minute was missing musical excitement.

With his youngest CD Iwasig the multi-instrumentalist (vocals, accordion, harmonica, guitars, percussion, flugelhorn, flute), yodeller and singing acrobat has carried out the transformation from alpine rocker to musical cosmopolitan - and how! Von Goisern's concert is a collection of curios of cultures and style, which unite under the Austrian's ordered songwriting to an organic culture clash, in which the boundaries everywhere are smoothly lost. Alpine folk music mutates under a skilful shift of emphasis to hard blues rock, the band, who powerfully appear with drums and additional percussionist, even travels from Africa into the Orient and back or changes into a Celtic dance under a salsa-like circling keyboard figure in an extensive - well yes - ambient drum & bass groove number, in order to find itself again in the next life as a dreamlike rumba. It is not an obsequious demonstration of musical holiday slides, but an atmospherically arranged and homogeneous mixture in which genres like blues and jazz, R&B and funk, pop, expressive ballads, folk songs, reggae, polka and a high-spirited samba trumpet fire mutually develop.

The music is so diverse, von Goisern's band so versatile, who vary the permanent instrumentation and with it tone colours, know all the stylistic tricks. Like Marlene Schuen, who as singer at times even combines yodel with soul. Bernd Bechtloff who brings an entire Armada of traditional percussion instruments into the sound, and keyboarder Burkhard Frauenlob, who grooves so beautifully on the electric organ as he discreetly operates its string sounds.

Africa with Styrian accordion

Hubert von Goisern in the E-Werk

Cologne - It was a firework of sound worlds, what Hubert von Goisern had in the E-Werk. The balcony shook from the stamping of the excited audience. What the globetrotter from the province of Salzburg delivered was magnificent.

To whoever only thinks of Hiatamadl with von Goisern will be flabbergasted. In a red shirt, red trousers with black stripes down the sides, hair tied back in a ponytail, Hubert von Goisern rocked around the sage at times á la salsa and merengue, at times in reggae rhythm (Katholisch), at time as Mother Africa, at time with Arabian sounds and also as a rock musician.

What began with a peaceful country dance on the accordion, electric guitar and drums, developed into a variety of sound worlds, which are audibly inspired by the countless journeys of the unconventional bard. "Boundless" even, like the name of the tour.

Whether thoughtful ballads, like Über's Wasser, reflective things like Volxjammer or hand-made rock at its finest, Goisern is much more alert still, live with his band, than you already knew in any case. When he sings the blues, you imagine yourself to be in Harlem, he tap dances over the front of the stage with Marlene Schuen (violin and vocals), you feel as if you have been directly transferred to Africa or the Caribbean.

Steel drums sound from the keyboard, drums and percussion seem to speak to each other. Hubert von Goisern adds the jungle feeling while he moans, cries and warbles into the microphone. All the birds of the jungle seem to have settled in the E-Werk. And always the fantastic bass playing from Antonio Porto goes through and through. His flageolet solo strengthens the mysticism of the evening even more.

The band even serve social-critical songs with an ease which is infectious. "Wer singen kann soll singen, wer tanzen will soll tanzen" ("whoever can sing should sing, whoever wants to dance should dance") - of course, the enthusiastic crowd does not have to be told twice. The majority of the pieces come from the current album Iwasig, but during almost two and a half hours without a break, older songs also come into their own.

As Goisern tells of his Africa tours, it becomes very quiet in the concert hall, mind you that is not because these stories were difficult to understand, it is because one finds it so difficult to understand the Austrian. People helped each other translate what Mr Achleitner (his civil name) had to report about the funny tours through the black continent.

For example, that he had not found Burkina Faso in the atlas - of course, it was out-of-date and there it was still called Upper Volta. Or the Ascension Day command there as they arrived in a small village with a day's delay and after twelve hours eating dust, the mayor and further officials were waiting for the band there and there were reproaches instead of cold drinks.

The reproaches were not at all so fierce and wild - as it turned out the translation simply lasted so long because the interpreter first of all had to translate the speech backwards and forwards ...

No matter which instrument Hubert von Goisern took into his hand, whether Styrian accordion, harmonica, electric or acoustic guitar, the public went with it. He even almost taught them yodelling - as it is critical on the basis of missing virtuosity, one just hums. Join in with the main thing because his music tempts you into it. After almost half an hour of encores - with Wia die Zeit Vergeht, a good many fans stand with tears of joy in their eyes - Goisern thanks his Cologne audience and remarks: "Each time I come here I free myself, but when I have been here an hour I get the blues. I don't know what it is." Perhaps it is down to the falling or rising Rhine water depth gauge, he does not know.

The audience does not know either, but that is exactly how it is with Hubert von Goisern.

In a good world

Hubert von Goisern with magnificent yodels in Darmstadt

There are enough reasons for Hubert von Goisern to be happy with himself and with the world. A few days ago, he celebrate his 50th birthday on tour, the halls are completely full and even his Austrian fellow countryman Jörg Haider has just had a large election defeat. So he stepped onto the stage of the Centralstation in Darmstadt, smiling and relaxed and let loose with his band like in the blissful days of his earlier band, the Alpinkatzen.

With his mixture of electric guitar and folk music, the man who grew up with Hendrix and Ernst Mosch coined the term alpine rock. As this music threatened to become a trademark and a tight corset, he disbanded the group, went travelling and turned towards world music.

For the time being, there is no trace of that. Instead, this pure euphoria, the accordion makes a noise and he yodels with all his might. But almost unnoticeably other elements creep in, the pieces become more varied: a brass substitute, a Latino quotation, a bit of jazz. And so it climbs until folk, salsa, Motown, jazz, rock, Tibetan sounds and the almost omnipresent yodel find a place in one and the same piece. What reads as an exhibition in free jazz manner, is a rousing mixture in concert.

That music has worldwide family roots is no new insight, but Hubert von Goisern's music is currently the most convincing of all proof. Solely in the ballads he is not quite so strong, there the singer differentiates himself from songwriters like Georg Danzer only through his yodel, which also works well as a dramatic element.

The theory that bad people have no songs was refuted a long time ago. But their songs show distinguish themselves with pleasure by calculation of musical one-dimensionality, and so Hubert von Goisern must be a good person. Recently he even yodelled under the pyramids, when he gave a joint concert together with Mohamed Mounir in the Egyptian Assiut. "Thank you for coming and thank you for going along with it," he said at the end and departed with a Tibetan greeting.

Now Jörg Haider just has to form a male group with Jürgen Möllermann and emigrate to Texas. Then the feeling of living in a good world would last longer than for the short time after this concert.