Festival of Political Songs
The Festival of Political Songs was one of the largest music events in East Germany, held between 1970 and 1990. It was hosted by the Free German Youth and featured international artists.
History
The Festival of Political Songs was founded by the group Oktoberklub and took place in East Berlin every February from 1970-1990 as an official event of the Free German Youth. The event was first organized by the Berlin division, but from 1975 on was directed by the Central Committee of the Free German Youth.Artists from 60 countries participated in the event during its duration, and the event usually featured between 50 and 80 artists across around 30 countries. Prominent artists who have performed at the festival include Mikis Theodorakis, Miriam Makeba, Quilapayún, Inti-Illimani, Silvio Rodríguez, Mercedes Sosa, Gabino Palomares,, and Pete Seeger accompanied by Chilean-exile and Berkeley based folk group Grupo Raiz. The mascot of the festival was a red sparrow named Oki.
After the collapse of East Germany, the festival lost financial support and infrastructure. In order to continue the tradition, a new festival called the ZwischenWelt Festival was held between 1991 and 1995. Its supporting organization dissolved in 1995 because of financial difficulties.
Experiences and issues
Though people were brought together by the festival, there was the issue of a language barrier. With many different performers singing in so many different languages, understanding the lyrics was one of the issues the audience faced. According to "Memories of the GDR Political Song Festival" by Clara Bohner, "although the broad mass of listeners didn’t understand many lyrics, they enjoyed the music and the rhythm", which still served to enable the sense of fraternity among audience members despite the language barriers in the music.Another issue was that even though the festival was intended to be a socialist event that was held in factories and designed to appeal to the working class, most of the people who attended were intellectuals among the high school and college ages. Even though the concerts were held in factories so that more workers could attend, the working class people did not have the same amount of time to devote to culture as the students.