Sunday, April 15, 2018

A Looming Cultural Battle

I essayed a piece a couple of days ago about the German music awards (ECHO), and the bit of 'mud-slinging' that took place that night.

The center of this ECHO evening and 'crap' that occurs....centers on two rappers....Kollegah and Farid Bang.  They won a ECHO award on Thursday evening for their record "Young, Brutal, Good-Looking 3".  One of the pieces on this record have the lyrics "My body defined as by Auschwitzinsassen" and "Make again a Holocaust, come on with the Molotov".  A number of German 'moralists' stood up with criticism over the rap and the use of the Holocaust wording.

All of this lead to a weird sort of rapper versus rock type of confrontation.

Well....as the weekend has passed, various individuals associated with the music industry, have commented that the award rules for ECHO....need to be changed, so that rappers with anything to do with anti-Semitism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia and glorification of violence.  I read the piece from Deutsche Welle talking over the article

Basically, it'll start some trend with two distinctive goals in mind.  First, an effort by the industry to refuse air-play and play-time with a number of rap-songs...if they have anything to do with violence, homophobia, misogyny, anti-semitism, or xenophobia.  Second, the ECHO awards slated for April of 2019.....will not feature a number of rappers, and my humble guess is that if they do get invited.....they probably won't show up.

What comes out of the 2019 ECHO deal?  I suspect that a small number of Germans....the counter-culture crowd....will walk away and just laugh over the fake nature of the new ECHO situation. 

This is where you will see underground movements of rappers, and people talking about the fake nature of German rock....whether it's true or not.

Whether the ECHO deal survives the next five years or not.....I'm not sure about this.  But politically, this odd cultural battle is about to brew up a bit of frustrations among the German youth. 

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