Nashville Skyline

Me and it, after the International Country Music Conference...

I'm looking exhausted after the conference, which was rich and extremely stimulating but kept us going from 8:30 a.m. through the day. The presentations covered a vast range of topics relating to country music and threads radiating from and around it. Check the conference web site for the full list of papers and presenters.

At night, I supplemented the intellectual intake by catching music -- a concert by Johnny Western and Rex Allen, Jr one night then, the next, backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, followed by sort of honky tonking at a club called the Basement. (I marvel how a place like this is smoke-free.) Thanks to Holly George-Warren, for getting us in to these places and taking me along! Holly's biography of Gene Autry was awarded ICMC's book of the year prize.

Music City USA

I'm in Nashville.... speaking tomorrow at the International Country Music Conference hosted at Belmont University. My topic: "Sturm, Twang and Sauerkraut Cowboys - Country Music and Wild Western Spaces in Europe."

It's my first time here, unless you count the brief stop during a 1969 cross-country drive, when we passed through some time late at night, a carload of hippies, making calls from a gas station. (If I remember correctly...)

The plane from Philadelphia was packed. One woman wore a spangly red-which-and-blue flag shirt, making me think of Abbie Hoffman and how times have changed. When we got to the airport, there was someone at the baggage check with ablack and yellow sign reading "Elvis Forever."

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at the Country Music Foundation/Hall of Fame. I unfortunately had to rush through the museum -- lots of good visuals, video, sounds. Impressed by the posters. Also simply by the look of country singers in old film clips. A fascinating range of faces not looking at all like any stereotype of twang: Tennessee Ernie Ford, Buck Owen, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams. Then of course Dolly Parton, in all her changes.

Later -- Ernest Tubb record store; souvenirland. Last night -- the Bluebird Cafe for acoustic music, inspiration of the Bluebird Cafe set up at the Country Music Messe in Berlin. So far, I've eaten fried okra, flat (fried) cornbread, sweet potato fries; taco salad....

Pictures from Karl May Fest Radebeul

I've posted some pictures from the Karl May Fest in Radebeul as a facebook album -- you can see them by clicking HERE.

Radebeul Karl May Fest as Wild Western Space

The Karl May Fest in Radebeul is one of the most complex of the country music/western-style festivals I've been to. Spatially, too, it literally covers the most ground. Banners mark the main entrances to the park where it takes place, and then the park itself is divided into several separate but connected areas.

There's "Little Tombstone" (pronounced "Tumstun"), a wild west town in a large, enclosed area. Lining the perimeter are shops, stalls, booths where acting troups perform skits and wild west plays, almost tableaux. There are two stage areas - one a real stage where country artists perform; the other is another, fenced enclosure opposite where, this year, actors played scenes from the Karl May show that is being performed this spring and summer at the open air theater in Rathen, not far from Dresden on the Elbe.

At the Hoher Stein, an old quarry, there is an area where the Native American performances and activities take place. This year, as every year, the sheer wall of the quarry, a flat cliff, was painted with a huge mural highlighting Native American symbolism.

There there is the encampment of the local Civil War (Confederate) Reenactor club -- a sea of tents.

Other, smaller, enclosures set off a sort of trapper-tavern area, an "oriental" section devoted to Karl May's tales set in the middle east, a food and vendors area, an area rather distant, where horses and riders hang out. In addition, vendors line the main road through the park.

All of it is, to some extent, pulled together by the figure of Karl May and the many, even tangential themes, in his books.

More later.

New Book on East German Western Scene

While I was in Radebeul for the Karl May Fest, I picked up a just published book on the Wild Western scene in the DDR -- communist East Germany.

It's called "Sozialistische Cowboys: Der Wilde Westen Ostdeutschlands" and is by Friedrich von Borries and Jens-Uwe Fischer. The publisher is Suhrkamp.

Karl May Fest in Radebeul Opens

So here I am at the Karl May Festival in Radebeul. Germany -- near Dresden, the little town where Karl May lived out the last part of his adventursome life.

May, who died in 1912, was a German popular writer who created Europe's most enduring western heroes -- the Apache chief Winnetou and his German adventurer sidekick Old Shatterhand. The series of stories and novels, published more than 100 years ago, were translated into dozens of languages and spawned movies, TV shows, comics and all sorts of pop culture stuff. May is believed to be the best-selling and most translated German author.

But I don't have to go into Karl May's history here.... there are plenty of web sites and other sources -- even various articles that I myelf have written!

Every year, there are at least a dozen open-air Karl May festivals around Germany and neighboring countries. Most of them are centered on stage presentations of plays based on May's stories and characters. (The biggest is in Bad Segeberg, north of Hamburg -- it draws upwards of 250,000 spectators each year.) I've been to five or six of these festivals in the past few years.

The Festival in Radebeul is somewhat different, in that it doesn't really highlight a stage production (though there are scenes being presented this weekend).

Instead, it focuses on the thematic elements in Karl May stories -- first and foremost his emphasis on Native American lore and legend. Much has been written about the German fascination with the American Indian, and the roots of this, in large part, can be found in the all-pervasiveness of Karl May stories, figures and themes in German (and also central European in general) pop culture. (Again, I don't want to go into this in detail here.)

The Radebeul festival takes place in a big park area outside the town center. There are several thematic areas -- a Native American section in an old quarry; a wild west in general section in a mocked up Wild West town known as Little Tombstone, and a Middle Eastern section, as May also wrote adventure tales set in the Middle East.

I was here three years ago, at the 2005 Festival -- cold, cold, cold, with rain, sleet etc.

At that time, I knew no-one, except for Slow Horses, one of the bands that was playing at the country music festival held during the Festival in Little Tombstone.

This time, I find it remarkable how many friends and acquaintances I have here, from Dana Weber, a graduate student doing her PhD on Karl May festivals, to the editor and staff of the magazine Karl May & Co., to the musicians Roland Heinrich and Pepa Malina, who are playing at Little Tombstone, to the German writer Tom Jeier, one of my heroes in the Western Scene in Germany, whom I last saw last year at the Geiselwind Trucker Festival.

Tom writes western novels and travel books about the US, he writes about country music, and in fact sort of helped shape the trucker scene with his columns in Trucker magazine and his German book about country music.



The Festival opened formally Friday afternoon, with a ceremony at the Karl May Museum. The American Consul from Leipzig gave opening remarks, as did the Museum Director and the Mayor.

(The picture shows Museum Director Rene Wagner, in western dude attire....)

Then, Indians from Canada and the US performed dances. Some of them live in Germany -- they include former US soldiers who married German women and then stayed on... the most famous of these in Nicky "Buffalo Child" who is a legend in these circles -- it was my first time to see him, though I have heard about him for years. Since his army discharge in the 1960s, he has made a career on the German Wild West circuit, performing and serving as an attraction in Karl May fests and other events. He is now about 85 -- looks much much younger with smooth, brown skin and a regal air. He is very tall and imposing, dressed in elaborate (scanty) attire....

More later....time to leave the public internet and enter the imaginary wild west...