Kiwifolk.com
Folk and Acoustic Music in New Zealand
Folk and Acoustic Music in New Zealand
Sometime in 2002, Dunedin hosted a Veterans Soccer World Cup. There were teams from all around the world. I remember this because it was at this time that I played one of my more interesting solo gigs. The pub was full of boisterous players of all nationalities. The Russians and the Germans, I recall, were the most rambunctious. It was a great night, I could do no wrong as long as I stuck to well-known vintage pop. At the end of the night I had a (sort of) conversation with one of the Germans. Klaus is my age, a worker in the VolksWagon factory, and we shared an interest in a lot of the same bands and songs. We exchanged about 4 difficult emails in as many years; to give you some idea, find a German website and run it through an online translator. In the last email I told him we were coming to Germany.
Klaus and his wife Karin travelled over 300km from their village in East Germany and checked into a Munich hotel just to hear us play and spend a couple of hours with me. They brought me gifts and bought me drinks. Among the things he gave me were some CDs of his favourite music of the sixties and seventies that he would secretly listen to in those days behind the Wall, and dream about seeing live someday. There are a lot of things we take for granted since the 'wall' came down but really these are things of our lifetime and the differences still exist. The East is still very poor by comparison with the West in general and the German powers-that-be have an unenviable smoke-and-mirrors job to keep both halves functioning. It's not a wall that divides Germany anymore, it's wealth.
It is a very humbling thing to be an unknown musician in a foreign country and experience such a level of generousity, to be invited into the homes and towns of new friends where, sometimes, the only common language is the sharing of music.
The Chaps are Hyram Ballard, John Dodd, Marcus Turner and Mike Moroney (the author of these pages), an acoustic string band featuring original songs and odd material from last century. Find out more about The Chaps here and listen to some of their music on their MySpace site here
