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| Outside This Area |
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| Bauer - Bauer - Kropinski - Sachse. Doppelmoppel |
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C + P Intakt CD 136, 2007 |
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Music is an art of the moment, improvised music in particular, nonetheless it can make history as is the case with Doppelmoppel. The first record of this highly unusual quartet consisting of two guitars and two trombones is 25 years old. Who would have thought, upon its release in 1982, that this weird line-up would last for so long? That the ad hoc band, that gets together whenever it feels like it, would even outlive the state from which it originated.
Conrad Bauer Quartet/DDR was the band name on the debut Round About Mittweida: As to why the West-Berlin record label FMP didn't put Doppelmoppel on the cover, producer Jost Gebers cannot recall: "Maybe we thought it sounded too German?" Quartet obviously sounded better at the time, and Conny Bauer had to bare it since he was the least internationally "unknown" of the four members from the German Democratic Republic: As the first freelance jazz musician of his socialist home country he was able to travel the West as early as in the late seventies, while others still had to play behind the Wall.
Doppelmoppel, that didn't just sound German: as a wonderful coincidence the line-up reflected the divided country. The quartet broke down into two twin-like trombone-guitar-duos, strictly divided across the stereo channels like hemi-
spheres. Bauer/Kropinski here, Bauer/Sachse there. The tracks bore meaningful titles: Südlich, Östlich, Nördlich, Westlich. It is quite possible that a jazz "guard" in the GDR ministry of culture bowed his head over the LP produced in West
Berlin and noted with suspicion that the improvisation Westlich was 2 min 38 sec longer than the improvisation Östlich. Perhaps it even sounded better?
Doppelmoppel stayed relatively untouched by the political totalitarianism. Even though a brother of Conny and Johannes Bauer, likewise a musician, had swapped Germanys, the quartet was free to play here as well as there. Their idea of freedom didn't require words on stage, this helped them escape the censor. Their audience understood them anyway.
They filled big halls in the East, and even someone who had only come because there were hardly any cultural events to go to, could, through listening, be both amazed and enraptured. It was different in the West. Here they had to withstand the worldwide competition. Their Un-Americanness added zest to their music. Soon they were regarded as poetic virtuosos of the East, lauded in the jazz clubs.
But because Doppelmoppel was so quintessentially German, the political geography struck hard and tore the quartet apart in December of 1986, when Uwe Kropinski committed the crime of "Republikflucht" (fleeing the Republic) after a performance in Munich and took refuge in the West. In so doing, any return of his to the GDR was refused by law and the other three would never have got permission to do concerts with him in Nuremberg or Cologne. Even just asking would have got them into a lot of trouble.
Then, in 1989 came the fall of the Wall. The socialist GDR collapsed under the pressure of continuous demonstrations and with it, initially, all of its established culture.
People in the East were no longer interested in listening to East-German Jazz. Those relocated had to learn the rules of the Capitalist System first and travel to Italy, Spain or France with the little money they had. Make up for past needs. It took some years for the band to get back together, also with its audience.
Uwe Kropinski moved back to the East, which is now part of the West, and so all four once again live in their original and in the meantime completely remodelled territory. The fact that they called their new album with eleven walks outdoors Outside This Area is a nice comment on the band's moving history.
In the year 2007, Berlin presents itself as a vibrant centre of the innovative jazz scene, and for some time now the interest in free music has reawakened in the area of the former GDR; the Joe Sachse, Uwe Kropinski, Johannes and Conny Bauer of today are asking for a past that wants to be accurately portrayed not just thrown together. Playing Round About Mittweida (named after Joe Sachses Saxon hometown) and Outside This Area back-to-back, encourages the listener to make subtle comparisons: Which album sounds more fresh, more adventurous, more diverse, more modern?
The clichés fail with the analysis, since not even the circumstances of the record-ings fit with the present assumptions. The debut was recorded in West Berlin in GDR times, the latest recording in a historic studio of the GDR broadcasting building in East Berlin.
With Doppelmoppel so much has happened and continues to happen against all expectations, that the listener can rely only on the music as dependable factor. And how nice that is! When Art transcends the Moment, reminding the future of its existence, beyond any questions of system or territory, now just as then.
Translation: Paul Lytton and Isabel Seeberg |
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