Laibach’s Volkswagner

If you are between 30 and 40 years old, and sniffed around the post-new-wave alternative-music scene in your high school and college years, you may have heard, or heard of, Laibach, the Slovenian high-art agit-prop band perhaps best known in this country for its series of covers (Opus’ Life is Life got the most attention, but Queen’s One Vision, The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil, Edwin Starr’s War, and Europe’s Final Countdown all got the Laibach treatment). Generally, Laibach is steeped in irony and bombast in equal measure, sung in a voice that makes the guy from Rammstein sound Klaus Nomi, and saddle a symbolic weight upon the chosen songs that the writers never intended. The style varies, veering back and forth between orchestral and techno as befits their needs. Laibach, it’s safe to say, is not something you’ll hear played at the local car show.

Could this change? Maybe, maybe not: Their latest work, Volkswagner, will debut in Ljubljana on 18 April; their backing band is the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, conducted (and composed) by Izidor Leitinger. Volkswagner is a 70-minute sonic suite in three acts based on Richard Wagner’s toe-tapper “Overture To The Tannhäuser And The Singers’ Contest At The Wartburg, Siegfried-Idyll” and his legendary “The Ride Of The Valkyries”. With Volkswagner, Laibach and Leitinger will re-interpret Wagner using the jazz form as a starting point (surely a challenge for a symphony orchestra?), and combine them into a unified symphonic electronic suite.

From the announcement:

There has probably never been a conductor who has had a greater influence on the world’s political history than Richard Wagner through Hitler. They had many things in common: Wagner wanted to become a politician, and Hitler wanted to become an artist. It was due to Wagner that in his younger years Hitler endeavored to write a Wagnerian opera, Wieland the Smith, an opera that Wagner had started but never finished.

In the 1930s, Hitler’s obsession with Wagner inspired him to initiate a formal prohibition and destruction of all degenerate art (Entartete Kunst), which was not in accordance with the Wagnerian aesthetics and canon, as Hitler understood it. In addition to Jewish authors and others who were not in favor of the regime, the prohibition affected the whole of avant-garde and modernism, and in music (Entartete Musik) all of jazz, primarily due to its “primitive” African-American roots.

In 1932, while in one of his ‘Wagnerian’ meditations on power, pleasure, work, and the economy, Hitler also sketched the first outline of the automobile that later came to be known as the ‘people’s car’. In his efforts to modernize Germany he was inspired by the American automobile producer Henry Ford. In order to reduce unemployment in the Reich and build modern infrastructure, he developed a public works program by constructing the worlds first super roads – the German Autobahn. With the objective of halting the recession and stimulating German industry, he wanted to develop a car which the average German could afford. The work order for the prototype was awarded to Ferdinand Porsche in 1934. Soon after that, the Porsche 60, which was launched publicly under the official name the KdF–Wagen (Kraft durch Freude – ‘power through pleasure’). Subsequently it gained the name Volks–Wagen, or Käfer (Beetle). In this manner a new, modern German automobile brand began to develop, and the construction of the first Volkswagen plant was entrusted to the German Labour Front (DAF). After the Second World War, the Beetle actually became the most popular people’s car in the world. In the 1960s it became a cult object, a pop icon, a symbol of freedom and modernity, and the Volkswagen brand became the basis and model for the rest of the automobile industry.

After the war, ‘degenerate’ jazz music became another symbol of freedom and modernity. Jazz creators and improvisers, such as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and others broadened the definition of the freedom and interpretation of expression to unprecedented dimensions. One of the more important jazz modernists and innovators was Stan Kenton, with his large orchestras (Progressive Jazz Orchestra, Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra, Artistry in Rhythm Orchestra, Mellophonium Orchestra, and Creative World Orchestra). In 1964 he recorded and issued an album entitled Kenton/Wagner, in which he gave a jazz treatment to eight great Wagnerian themes, including The Ride of the Valkyries. Thus he freed Wagner from his own shadow, and showed jazz musicians the possibilities of new formal and content-based interpretations of this musical giant.

On a number of occasions Laibach has been encouraged to address Wagner in their repertoire, but the right moment had never truly arisen. But then KD Group, on the occasion of its 15th anniversary, proposed a common project with the RTV Slovenia Symphonic Orchestra. Wagner was immediately our first choice. When two years ago we heard Kenton’s interpretation of Wagner’s music, we realized the influence Wagner has had on contemporary jazz. At approximately the same time, in Ljubljana we listened to an orchestral concert conducted by Izidor Leitinger (and he also came to our concert in Paris), and very soon the idea arose to pursue some form of collaboration at the earliest opportunity. Thus, we have now drafted the VOLKSWAGNER project, as a 70-minute sonic suite, comprising interpretations of Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture, Siegfried Idyll, and The Ride of the Valkyries. As our starting point, we chose the jazz form – which will also be a challenge for the symphonic orchestra – enhanced with an experimental electronic and industrial ambient.

With this project we will attempt to prove that understanding and interpretation are important components of the aesthetic and content- based definitions of the world and that Hitler was greatly mistaken regarding Wagner (except with regard to the conception of the beetle automobile, which, with its Beatnik soul and humorous form, actually became his largest art work and indirectly also his greatest economic achievement).

We’re assuming that most of you aren’t going to be in Ljublana this coming weekend, and so we’re hoping that this particular work (which, at 70 minutes, is conveniently CD-length) will be released on CD or DVD sometime in the near future. Surely, jazz lovers, experimental-music fans and even VW lovers will need to secure a copy when and if it’s released.