No Fixed Address, but currently in East Berlin
The Australian bicentennial, Indigenous protest and the Festival of Political Song in 1988
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v15i2.26718Keywords:
Music and politics, Cold War, Indigenous Rock, East Germany, Socialism, Australian BicentennialAbstract
In his work on multidirectional memory, Michael Rothberg makes the point that “[a]lthough it is difficult to grasp today […] communism provided one of the discursive spheres […] in which the articulation of genocide and colonialism could first be attempted.” In this article, I explore the Indigenous reggae-rock band No Fixed Address’s performance, just after Australia Day 1988, at the East German Festival of Political Song, one of the surprisingly many venues where the East German State granted space for the articulation of genocide and colonialism and their legacies in the Australian context. On its face, this site offered a signal transnational location for Indigenous protest during the Bicentennial year. But I will demonstrate how the articulation of protest was undermined and skewed by partly competing, partly symbiotic intentions on the part of the East German and the Australian States. In this ambiguous context, musical protest unfolded in complex and sometimes unintended ways.
References
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Dunbar-Hall, Peter, and Chris Gibson. 2004. Deadly Sounds, Deadly Places: Contemporary Aboriginal Music in Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Ege, Moritz. 2007. Schwarz werden. ‘Afroamerikanophilie’ in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. 1998. Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628139
Flanagan, Martin. 2011. ‘Saturday Reflection’. The Age, May 21. http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/saturday-reflection-20110520-1ewpu.html
Foley, Gary. 2012. Interview with the author. Sydney. March 30.
—2015. Email to the author. April 25.
Gerund, Katharina. 2013. Transatlantic Cultural Exchange: African American Women’s Art and Activism in West Germany. Bielefeld: transcript.
Grossman, Victor. 2010. ‘Prologue. African Americans in the German Democratic Republic’. In Germans and African Americans: Two Centuries of Exchange, ed. Larry A. Greene and Anke Ortlepp, 3–16. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
Healy, Chris. 2008. Forgetting Aborigines. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Höhn, Maria, and Martin Klimke. 2010. ‘Heroes of the Other America: East German Solidarity with the African American Freedom Struggle’. In A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany, ed. Maria Höhn and Martin Klimke, 123–42. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Janik, Elizabeth. 2005. Recomposing German Music: Politics and Tradition in Cold War Berlin. Leiden: Brill.
Kirchenwitz, Lutz, ed. 2011. Festival des politischen Liedes: Daten + Dokumente. Berlin: Lied und soziale Bewegungen.
Koch, Ullrich. 1986. ‘Aroona: Musik der Aborigines’. Festival des politischen Liedes Tageszeitung 3: 12.
Kofsky, Frank. 1998 [1970]. John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s. New York: Pathfinder.
König, Wolfgang. 1988. ‘No Fixed Address’. Festival des politischen Liedes Tageszeitung 1: 8–9.
Lake, Marilyn. 2002. Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist. Crow’s Nest: Allen & Unwin.
Lawe Davies, Chris. 1993. ‘Aboriginal Rock Music: Space and Place’. In Rock and Popular Music: Politics, Policies, Institutions, ed. T. Bennett, S. Frith, L. Shepherd and G. Turner, 249–62. London: Routledge.
Monteath, Peter. 2008. ‘The German Democratic Republic and Australia’. Debatte 16/2: 213–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09651560802318762
Morrissey, Phillip. 1988. ‘The View from the Authority’. In Aboriginal Perspectives of the Bicentenary: A Collection of Papers, 23–26. Canberra: ACT Schools Authority.
Munt, Valerie. 2011. ‘Australian Anthropology, Ideology and Political Repression: The Cold War Experience of Frederick G. G. Rose’. Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology 21/1: 109–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2011.582832
No Fixed Address on Tour. 1990. Media World Production for Network 0-28, Special Broadcasting Service.
Noglik, Bert. 1996. ‘Hürdenlauf zum freien Spiel. Ein Rückblick auf den Jazz der DDR’. In Jazz in Deutschland. Darmstädter Beiträge zur Jazzforschung, ed. Wolfram Knauer, 205–21. Hofheim: Wolke.
Ottosson, Ase. 2009. ‘Playing with Others and Selves: Australian Aboriginal Desert Musicians on Tour’. Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 10/2: 98–114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442210902842154
—2010. ‘Aboriginal Music and Passion: Interculturality and Difference in Australian Desert Towns’. Ethnos 75/3 (September): 275–300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2010.503899
Poiger, Uta. 2000. Jazz, Rock and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rauhut, Michael. 1993. Beat in der Grauzone: DDR-Rock 1964 bis 1972, Politik und Alltag. Berlin: BasisDruck.
—2008. ‘Schwarz-weiße Netze. Afroamerikanische Musik als politisches Medium in der DDR’. In Globaler Gesang vom Garten der Freiheit. Anglo-amerikanische Populärmusik und ihre Bedeutung für die US-Außenpolitik, ed. Werner Kremp and David Sirakov, 231–49. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
—n.d. ‘Blues in der DDR: Kulturelle Symbolik und politische Interpretation’. PopScriptum 8—Afroamerikanische Musik in Deutschland. http://www2.hu-berlin.de/fpm/popscrip/themen/pst08/pst08_rauhut.htm (accessed May 3, 2013).
Robb, David. 2000. ‘The GDR Singebewegung: Metamorphosis and Legacy’. Monatshefte 2: 199–216.
—2010. ‘Playing with the “Erbe”: Songs of the 1848 Revolution in the GDR’. German Life and Letters 63/3: 295–310. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0483.2010.01500.x
Robb, David, ed. 2007. Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s. Rochester, NJ: Camden House.
Rose, Frederick G. G. 1986. ‘Aborigines: Die Ureinwohner Australiens’. Trans. Wolfgang König. Festival des politischen Liedes Tageszeitung 4: 12–13.
Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Schmieding, Leonard. 2014. ‘Das ist unsere Party’: Hip-hop in der DDR. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Shuker, Roy. 1998. Key Concepts in Popular Music. New York: Routledge.
Von Eschen, Peggy. 2004. Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Walker, Clinton. 2014. Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music. 2nd ed. Portland, OR: Verse Chorus Press.
Wicke, Peter. 1998. ‘Rock around Socialism. Jugend und ihre Musik in einer gescheiterten Gesellschaft’. In Handbuch Jugend und Musik, ed. D. Baacke, 293–304. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Willoughby, Bart. 2012. Telephone interview with the author. Sydney. April 4.
—2013. Telephone interview with the author. Sydney. August 27.
Bennett, Tony. 1992. ‘Introduction: National Times’. In Celebrating the Nation: A Critical Study of Australia’s Bicentenary, ed. Tony Bennett, Pat Buckridge, David Carter and Colin Mercer, xiii–xviii. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
Breen, Marcus, ed. 1989. Our Place Our Music. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Castles, Stephen. 1998. ‘Tjungaringanyi: Aboriginal Rock (1971–91)’. In Sound Alliances: Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Politics and Popular Music in the Pacific, ed. Philip Hayward, 11–25. London and New York: Cassell.
Cochrane, Peter, and David Goodman. 1992. ‘The Great Australian Journey: Cultural Logic and Nationalism in the Postmodern Era’. In Celebrating the Nation: A Critical Study of Australia’s Bicentenary, ed. Tony Bennett, Pat Buckridge, David Carter and Colin Mercer, 175–90. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
Cohen, Hart. 2006. ‘Repertoire, Landscape and Memory: Williams’s and Schultz’s Journey to Horseshoe Bend Cantata’. In Intercultural Music: Creation and Interpretations, ed. Sally Macarthur, Bruce Crossman and Ronaldo Moreles, 116–23. Sydney: University of Western Sydney.
Dunbar-Hall, Peter, and Chris Gibson. 2004. Deadly Sounds, Deadly Places: Contemporary Aboriginal Music in Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Ege, Moritz. 2007. Schwarz werden. ‘Afroamerikanophilie’ in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. 1998. Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628139
Flanagan, Martin. 2011. ‘Saturday Reflection’. The Age, May 21. http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/saturday-reflection-20110520-1ewpu.html
Foley, Gary. 2012. Interview with the author. Sydney. March 30.
—2015. Email to the author. April 25.
Gerund, Katharina. 2013. Transatlantic Cultural Exchange: African American Women’s Art and Activism in West Germany. Bielefeld: transcript.
Grossman, Victor. 2010. ‘Prologue. African Americans in the German Democratic Republic’. In Germans and African Americans: Two Centuries of Exchange, ed. Larry A. Greene and Anke Ortlepp, 3–16. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.
Healy, Chris. 2008. Forgetting Aborigines. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Höhn, Maria, and Martin Klimke. 2010. ‘Heroes of the Other America: East German Solidarity with the African American Freedom Struggle’. In A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany, ed. Maria Höhn and Martin Klimke, 123–42. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hurley, Andrew W. 2010. ‘From Aboriginal Australia to German Autumn: On the German Reception of Thirteen “Films from Black Australia”’. Studies in Australasian Cinema 3/3: 251–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/sac.3.3.251_1
Hurley, Andrew W., and Anja Schwarz. 2013. ‘Leichhardts Erbe: Der Australienforscher im deutsch-australischen Gedächtnis’. In Der Australienforscher Ludwig Leichhardt: Spuren eines Verschollenen, ed. Heike Hartmann, 144–59. Berlin: be.bra wissenschaft verlag.
Hutchinson, John. 1992. ‘State Festivals, Foundation Myths and Cultural Politics in Immigrant Nations’. In Celebrating the Nation: A Critical Study of Australia’s Bicentenary, ed. Tony Bennett, Pat Buckridge, David Carter and Colin Mercer, 3–25. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
Janik, Elizabeth. 2005. Recomposing German Music: Politics and Tradition in Cold War Berlin. Leiden: Brill.
Kirchenwitz, Lutz, ed. 2011. Festival des politischen Liedes: Daten + Dokumente. Berlin: Lied und soziale Bewegungen.
Koch, Ullrich. 1986. ‘Aroona: Musik der Aborigines’. Festival des politischen Liedes Tageszeitung 3: 12.
Kofsky, Frank. 1998 [1970]. John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s. New York: Pathfinder.
König, Wolfgang. 1988. ‘No Fixed Address’. Festival des politischen Liedes Tageszeitung 1: 8–9.
Lake, Marilyn. 2002. Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist. Crow’s Nest: Allen & Unwin.
Lawe Davies, Chris. 1993. ‘Aboriginal Rock Music: Space and Place’. In Rock and Popular Music: Politics, Policies, Institutions, ed. T. Bennett, S. Frith, L. Shepherd and G. Turner, 249–62. London: Routledge.
Monteath, Peter. 2008. ‘The German Democratic Republic and Australia’. Debatte 16/2: 213–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09651560802318762
Morrissey, Phillip. 1988. ‘The View from the Authority’. In Aboriginal Perspectives of the Bicentenary: A Collection of Papers, 23–26. Canberra: ACT Schools Authority.
Munt, Valerie. 2011. ‘Australian Anthropology, Ideology and Political Repression: The Cold War Experience of Frederick G. G. Rose’. Anthropological Forum: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology 21/1: 109–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2011.582832
No Fixed Address on Tour. 1990. Media World Production for Network 0-28, Special Broadcasting Service.
Noglik, Bert. 1996. ‘Hürdenlauf zum freien Spiel. Ein Rückblick auf den Jazz der DDR’. In Jazz in Deutschland. Darmstädter Beiträge zur Jazzforschung, ed. Wolfram Knauer, 205–21. Hofheim: Wolke.
Ottosson, Ase. 2009. ‘Playing with Others and Selves: Australian Aboriginal Desert Musicians on Tour’. Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 10/2: 98–114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442210902842154
—2010. ‘Aboriginal Music and Passion: Interculturality and Difference in Australian Desert Towns’. Ethnos 75/3 (September): 275–300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2010.503899
Poiger, Uta. 2000. Jazz, Rock and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rauhut, Michael. 1993. Beat in der Grauzone: DDR-Rock 1964 bis 1972, Politik und Alltag. Berlin: BasisDruck.
—2008. ‘Schwarz-weiße Netze. Afroamerikanische Musik als politisches Medium in der DDR’. In Globaler Gesang vom Garten der Freiheit. Anglo-amerikanische Populärmusik und ihre Bedeutung für die US-Außenpolitik, ed. Werner Kremp and David Sirakov, 231–49. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
—n.d. ‘Blues in der DDR: Kulturelle Symbolik und politische Interpretation’. PopScriptum 8—Afroamerikanische Musik in Deutschland. http://www2.hu-berlin.de/fpm/popscrip/themen/pst08/pst08_rauhut.htm (accessed May 3, 2013).
Robb, David. 2000. ‘The GDR Singebewegung: Metamorphosis and Legacy’. Monatshefte 2: 199–216.
—2010. ‘Playing with the “Erbe”: Songs of the 1848 Revolution in the GDR’. German Life and Letters 63/3: 295–310. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0483.2010.01500.x
Robb, David, ed. 2007. Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s. Rochester, NJ: Camden House.
Rose, Frederick G. G. 1986. ‘Aborigines: Die Ureinwohner Australiens’. Trans. Wolfgang König. Festival des politischen Liedes Tageszeitung 4: 12–13.
Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Schmieding, Leonard. 2014. ‘Das ist unsere Party’: Hip-hop in der DDR. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Shuker, Roy. 1998. Key Concepts in Popular Music. New York: Routledge.
Von Eschen, Peggy. 2004. Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Walker, Clinton. 2014. Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music. 2nd ed. Portland, OR: Verse Chorus Press.
Wicke, Peter. 1998. ‘Rock around Socialism. Jugend und ihre Musik in einer gescheiterten Gesellschaft’. In Handbuch Jugend und Musik, ed. D. Baacke, 293–304. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Willoughby, Bart. 2012. Telephone interview with the author. Sydney. April 4.
—2013. Telephone interview with the author. Sydney. August 27.
Published
2015-09-07
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Hurley, A. (2015). No Fixed Address, but currently in East Berlin: The Australian bicentennial, Indigenous protest and the Festival of Political Song in 1988. Perfect Beat, 15(2), 129-148. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v15i2.26718
