Bert Noglik
(1993)
On the significance of Free Music Production in the process of cultural
development between eastern and western Germany
Since the beginning
of the 70's, Free Music Production from West Berlin acted as a cultural
factor within the German Democratic Republic. FMP encouraged independent
developments in the East and brought them in connection with international
musical currents. Numerous intellectuals in the GDR saw FMP's
activities as an alternative to commerce and as a compromise with the
expectations of the East German cultural bureaucracy. Under the omen of
a general insulation enforced by GDR rulers, the sign of cultural engagement
from the West became extraordinarily significant.
The consistency and quality of FMP productions and events met with great
interest within the cultural scene of the GDR - even when they could only
be perceived there through mediation. In many different ways, Free Music
Production opened up contact between East German musicians and their West
German or West European colleagues. Through its determined orientation
towards highly authentic improvised music, FMP set bearings for both jazz
musicians as well as for several composers of new music in the GDR.
In a long lasting process within the GDR, the freedoms won since the 70's
and their differentiated arrangements were significantly influenced through
FMP's activities. FMP successfully encouraged a circle of
musicians, those who were not regulated in the same measure as literary
and artistic productions in the GDR, to find a connection to international
developments, and at the same time it helped them develop an anchored
identity within their own circle.
Already at the beginning of the 70's, FMP made meetings possible and initiated
the travel of Western German and Western European musicians to East Berlin.
Within the scope of the possibilities - often only in the span of a one-day
visa - communication progressed, but also informal musical meetings resulted,
from which grew numerous stimulations in the course of the years, as well
as group constellations later.
Also constantly endeavouring to document
musical developments, Jost Gebers
paved the way, already in 1972, for contact to the radio network of the
GDR. Under difficult conditions he succeeded obtaining the license rights
to recordings of the GDR radio, and in this way, produced a
music on record in the West that was still mistrusted by the Eastern
German cultural authorities. For the musicians in the GDR this meant an
enormous recognition and encouragement, and, even with small production
runs, remarkable feedback reached the East.
Later, as well under the initiative of Jost
Gebers, a series of coproductions
occurred between FMP and the VEB record company in East Berlin. Through persistent efforts of FMP,
musicians from the GDR were able to perform live on Western stages and
to realize in-house FMP productions. At the end of the 70's, travel limitations
for several jazz musicians began to loosen, substantially due to FMP's unremitting engagement. Again and again exemplary
signs were set, ones that caused a sensation in the West and that were
precisely noticed in the East.
Put on by FMP in Berlin in 1979, the concert series “Jazz
Now” presented for the first time a program representative of certain
innovative developments in the GDR with numerous musicians for the West.
From that time on jazz musicians from the GDR were integrated in the mostly
internationally conceived concert and event series of FMP.
Without the activities of FMP, substantial phases of the musical development
in the GDR would have remained without documentation. Particularly those
currents of improvised music that were at first able to gain acceptance
against the reservations of GDR's cultural politics have been captured
on records by FMP and distributed according to ability and possibility.
In the FMP catalogue one finds evidence of practically all the exceptional
musicians of the GDR in the circle of contemporary jazz/improvised music:
Conrad Bauer, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky, Ulrich
Gumpert, Günter Sommer,
Johannes Bauer, Helmut “Joe” Sachse,
Manfred Schulze and many others.
In contrast to the cultural influence of Western institutions that are
directed at short term effects or concrete political goals, FMP constantly
pursued a long term encouragement of East German musicians as well as
their surrounding public. It supported a network of personal contacts
that rested on a basis of musical quality and authenticity, and that have
proven themselves in the present as solid, productive and inspiring. In
contrast to superficial campaigns, FMP has been setting processes in gear
that will shape the European cultural landscape for many years to come.
Translation:
Bruce A. Carnevale
From a leaflet by
FREE MUSIC PRODUCTION (FMP) 1993/94
©
The copyrights remain with the aforesaid sources and/or with the authors.
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