John Harrison’s opener on the day that Folk Club Bonn celebrated it’s 15th anniversary could not have been better chosen to interpret the first half of the evening: Edgar Guest’s poem stating:

“There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done… Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it!”.

And so I, along with my fellow floor-spot applicants, proceeded to tackle the ‘thing that couldn’t be done’ which in our case was to present a song in only two minutes. Where’s the problem? I hear you say. Well, I mean, check out the average song length. Even those masters of precision pop songs Lennon & McCartney could only manage ‘Yesterday’ in 2 minutes and three seconds. If we look at Folk Music, then Ralph Mctell needed a whopping four and a half minutes to take us through ‘The Streets of London’ . Don Mclean told us about VanGough’s sad life with ‘Vincent – Starry,starry night’ in 3 minutes and 55 seconds. But rules are rules, and that was the special rule, thankfully just for this evening. To be fair, we managed it five years previously when Master of Ceremonies John Harrison decided to employ a two minutes and then gonged out policy.

This evening we had no gong, instead Hans Ihnen’s tablet was stylishly counting down the seconds before our eyes. To be even fairer, Hans did himself take up the two minute challenge. My own approach was to take two old and established Blues numbers that are subject to verses being added and subtracted anyway. ”One Kind Favour’ (Blind Lemon Jefferson) and Rory Gallagher’s ‘Bankers Blues’. The latter in particular is pretty fluid lyric-wise in that Big Bill Broonzy sang it and many years later Rory Gallagher recorded it, with pretty much only the chorus in common. My version then took Broonzy’s chorus and half of Rory’s verses.

Hans Ihnen’s approach to beat the gong was to take his time-slot at a run with the aptly titled ‘Boogie -Woogie’ Express’ on piano. Mario’s approach was, instead of finding a suitable song to write one instead – hence ‘Zwei Minuten’ did exactly what it said on the can as they say. Kai Hofstetter took what seemed a counter-productive approach and actually put two songs together. Peter Bachmann even managed to sing a song reflecting the evening’s theme ‘Migration, Celebrations and Delicacies’ and squeeze it into two minutes. Edward Guest, with his celebration of doing things that couldn’t be done would likely have been suitably gobsmacked.

John Hay took a note from Mario’s book and wrote his own song. It was a ‘Dotty’s Hallelujah’ that leaned heavily (completely?) on the song of a similar name by Leonard Cohen. Interestingly, it was not the last time Mr Cohen’s wonderful compositions would be spotlighted this evening. The music was flying by so quickly by this time that I admit the only thing I can remember about Antje ten Hoevel’s (harp) and Luise Blum’s (violin) appearance is their smiles and the music title of ‘Haddock’.

There was one act though that on the night cried out for more time, and that was Saico & Mustafa Osh from Guinea-Bissau who just about shoe-horned their songs into two minutes, but who could possibly stop the fun as they had everyone singing along in Swahili to ‘Djambo, Djambo’?. Hopefully the duo will be back – but in the meantime you might be lucky enough to catch them out on the streets of Bonn bringing some much needed emotion to the otherwise dull flagstones with their cries of ‘Djambo Djambo’ (Hello! Hello!”)

Stephan Weidt looked calm as ever as he delivered his contribution, Georg Danzer’s ‘The Freiheit’ and returned in the second (and gongless) half with Ulrike Hund on flute to deliver a moving musical eulogy to Folk Club faces gone but not forgotten via ‘Euch zum Geleit’ by the folk-rock band Schandmaul. It was a stark reminder that so many of the faces in my images from past meets are gone in body (but not I’m sure in spirit). Who doesn’t miss Steve Perry’s humour, getting laughs out of even the ‘What’s Happening this month’ announcements, and Steve’s pure musical bandwidth of instrumentation (not to mention his tireless behind the scenes work to put each meet together!) Bob Marabito, master of finding seats in a room where there was no more space for them? Musicians and poets who have graced our stage and gone: Christian Schuster, Dieter Faring and GeWe Spiller.

I’ll just let the words of Schandmaul, translated here into English, sung by Stephan & Ulrike say it all (as they did on the night):

“I’ve Lived my life,
Loved and suffered,
Gained, lost,
Taken, given,
Laughed and cried,
Reconciled and argued,
I’ve reached my destination and this life has been beautiful.
I’m fine now,
I’m grateful for everything
For every step we took together”

And we folk-clubbers are grateful too for the ‘steps’ you shared together with us.

I’ve missed out on quite a few contributions here I know, so apologies for that, but such a packed evening cannout be reported on in twenty minutes, never mind two.

It was actually quite refreshing to have the evenings guests playing one entire set instead of the usual two short ones, and certainly music of the calibre delivered by Tangoyim could take up a whole evening and still be fascinating. For anyone not familiar with the duo, Tangoyim take their audience on a musical journey through Eastern Europe to the lost world of the Jewish shtetl and on to America in the 1920s. They do this with violin, viola, clarinet, accordion and vocals, interpreting traditional klezmer melodies, Yiddish songs and Yiddish tangos. Sometimes sad, sometimes cheerful, and often with a wry wink of an eye.

Daniel Marsch makes sure that the stories of both the songs that are still with us and their writers, who are for the most part of course not, get told. They are often songs for happy occasions like weddings such as the train song ‘Simdesyat Chotry’ (7.40) and the traditional ‘Kale basetzn’. Songs of love: ‘Akh,nem mikh liber’ and even songs of work ‘Arbeiterfroyen’ which sounds like a song of love for work but if my memory serves me right from Daniel’s introduction was the opposite, and is primarily from a womens working perspective. A memorable song this evening was, indirectly, from a master of the songwriting craft. Leonard Cohen wrote many a moving song, but never, as far as I know, in Yiddish. Karsten Troyke’s ‘Tants mit mir’ is a worthy translation of Cohen’s ‘Dance me to the end of love’ and a particularly poignant, moving part of the evening.

As my brief review above suggests, there is an almost fathomless depth to the klezmer jiddish music and songs that Daniel Marsch and Stefanie Hölzle present, and they dug deep once again for the hugely deserved encore. In view of the current turmoil in Europe, the cry for freedom in ‘Volt ikh gehat koyekh’ was a perfect end to the evening:

“If my voice were louder
if my body stronger
I would tear through the streets
Shouting peace, peace!”

Let us hope that the voices crying out for peace in Europe are loud and the bodies strong in the coming weeks throughout Europe and the World in general.