History with Flamenco Music

We know of poetic testimonies from every concentration camp. Poetry enabled the inmates to feel human for a few moments. Their minds were occupied with finding the right words not only for their own internal states, but also for everything going on around them. They had to shape their descriptions into a poem – a form which is easy to understand and, unlike reality, clearly ordered. One of the benefits of poetry was the distraction it offered, but it also required incredible courage – the courage to call things by their true names. Survival depended in no small part on finding a balance: the need to fend off the horrors was vital, but they could not risk falling into a state of lonely apathy.

The Function of Poetry in the Camps

The combination of finding the right words and hearing their own voice gave life to the prisoners. Moreover, there was both comfort and contact in speaking their mother tongue. They literally found their way to those who spoke the same language. Rhymes lightened the burden of finding self-expression, while they helped others to remembering the contents.

Another aspect emerges from the sung texts with particular clarity: given the experience they described, and especially given the connecting element of music, the poems crossed borders and enabled understanding between nations, cultures and religions.

Our idea of events develops first through hearing the poetic texts, a kind of hearing that, crucially, occurs via the voice and sounds (of words).

The Language of Flamenco

We were struck by the correspondence between the international character of flamenco, and its creation as a means of self-assertion at a time of expulsion, and concentration camp poetry. The people who came together in the camps had been dragged by the Nazis from every nation in Europe. Moreover, they rose above the pressure exerted on them in the desire to give voice to their pain and the anguish they were enduring, and to share and confide these experiences in addressing the community. All this suggested using flamenco as a means of expression with which to support the poems and to give the listener time to let the words work on them.

The guitar sounds are an attempt to recreate the “cante jondo”. The “cante jondo” is generally handed down as a vast, deep inner song. This song can also be heard in the poetry. It conveys a deep despair and loneliness, but also longing, even joy. In flamenco there are specific terms for this. “Solea”, for example, takes loneliness as the underlying topic of its songs. “Siguiriya” too has a very melancholy character: in its guitar accompaniments, the deep bass strings are played to conjure up the dark mood at its core. An “alegria”, on the other hand, is a more joyful dance and goes along with “cante chico” (a lighter, more cheerful song). The improvisations move in a similar way to the various forms of flamenco, with their rather strict underlying rhythmical laws.

Making Poems Heard

The poems created in the concentration camps should be understood as an accusation, an outcry, as an expression of longing and grief, or as consolation, either for the author or for somebody else. The brutal suffering in their direct experience functions like the deep inner song that must be let out, not only to confide the authors’ own experience of suffering but also to share that of others. The secret poetry or song evenings, and even theatrical performances staged in the barracks had a very similar function to the gatherings at the suppressed “gitanos” in Spain. It was a familiar circle of participants who knew what was at stake, had shared experiences, gave a little of themselves in a reciprocal way, making the life of oppression a little more bearable.

Ideally, as you perform to a group of listeners, a shared experience develops; you are all directly affected. Listening to the poems today is like evaluating the participation of the “Aficionados” (“partners”, “knowing ones” in Flamenco); we are not part of the events of the past but only civilian “colleagues in arms”, who can share in the conditions of the concentration camps through their knowledge of the suffering experienced by the incarcerated, abused and murdered inmates.

The improvisations work with these elements of flamenco; they focus on the message of the words, with which the guitars enter into a dialogue, and they flow into some kind of shared experience –depending on the context of the performance because they aim to carry each particular group of listeners along with them.


Musical Readings for and with Young People

These are the thoughts behind our musical readings on various topics (see our programme at: www.tonworte.de). Both the poetic short form and music offer a range of opportunities to engage with their content in youth work. We have found that readings and interactive methods can work surprisingly well together in leading young people into a serious engagement with history.

Positive feedback from the young audience helps us develop such programmes, which aim to be more political education than a concert.

Extract from an article with the same title in: “Schwierige Jugendliche gibt es nicht ...! Historisch-politische Bildung für ALLE” Projekt zur Auseinandersetzung mit dem Nationalsozialismus für besondere Zielgruppen, [“There’s No Such Thing as Difficult Youth…! Historical and Political Education for ALL” Project for Tackling National Socialism with Specific Target Groups]. Andreas Mischok [ed.], Braunschweig 2010, pp. 125-136.