“DuDa”, a song from happy times when, around the beginning of 1929, Leo met my grandmother Edith, married her shortly thereafter and had a child with her in 1930, my mother.
The golden “1920s” in Berlin lasted only 8 years and were “golden” only for very few of the citizens, most of them suffered in the hunger winter after WW1 and most of the young and middle aged men, partners were gone forever. It took 20 years to grow up new childs who became soldiers and victims again in WW2. This song takes some fragmented snipplets of lightfeeted songs from the 1920s and let them appear in granular waves where the drama shines through the superficial and momentary joy.
This song is about “HASAG”, a mighty Ammunition Manufacturer in the Third Reich. This song is specially about the factory Pelcery (Peltzer) in Czestochowa (Tschenstochau). HASAG was destiny for 10 thousands of forced labour workers, mostly young jewish men and women. Many of them died within weeks because of exhaustion or were poisened by the chemicals, died in factory accidents, were murdered by the SS after only 3 days of illness or just by fun. My grandfather LEO was forced labor worker in several camps after living in the closed ghetto of Krakow. He survived the concentration camp of Plaszow under the evil SS officer Amon Göth and in Czestochowa until the latter was liberated by the Russians in January 1945. Hard stuff….uff….had to do this song therefore.
Another Song for “The Leo Chronicles”. This one is dedicated to “Edith”, Leos wife 1929-1935, my grandmother. Edith was born in a christian family, then converted to jewish religion, then reconverted to christian again, when being divorced from Leo. In my childhood, I know her singing with a sopranic voice in church on rare occasions. She led a pleasant, but lonely short life, perhaps she was superficial, but more likely there was a lot pain underneath the well kept surface. This song is kind of unusual for me, but had to be done. I did use several software synths for this project, no hardware synth was used.
I have no words left for this, that why it is music. A song about pain in difficult times. Dedicated to my grandfather who survived all concentration camps. Then he was denounced, thrown into prison and died there shortly after.
No Comments