35 Jahre Mauerfall. Songs Of Freedom
Like 2 years ago, approximately at this time of year, I was again in my car, fully loaded, driving east from home. Familiar places on A2 and A4 highways generated multiple flashbacks to that period, when I, as many of my friends and colleagues, was driving days and nights back and forth to Poland and back to Germany and France, bringing there first aid supplies and returning back with people who were hit by a tragedy no one could imagine to be happen in 21 century in Europe.
But this time, my car was loaded not with humanitarian supplies but with cables, amplifiers and guitars as I was going to attend an event, the importance and impact of which I was yet to explore, and which, to a large extent, resonated to what has started 2 years ago from now in Eastern Europe and hasn't stopped yet. Even though, the technical part and general organization of selection, logistics and studying was absolutely the same as for any Rockin'1000 show, this time it felt from the beginning that this one is special.
I was about 12 years old when the Berlin wall came down. I remember we were watching it on TV, how people were taking it down , and I couldn't really understand everything what it meant but I still can recall that feeling of something that couldn't seem to be possible at all in the world, especially for a kid who was born and lived in the USSR in late 80's.
35 years after, I was walking along the former Berlin wall line and, while exploring numerous exhibition materials, one question stuck in my head: how could it even become possible? A nation with a very complex history, divided into parts by external forces, heavily controlled for many years. What should have happened inside of many of those people from both sides of the wall? Internal forces of what origin could be so powerful and strong to made so many people to overcome fear, historical burden, internal and external control pressure and possible consequences and to put together something that was as big as the whole country and nation?
Playing for that audience and watching how many people had come to celebrate the Fall of the Wall, observing their reactions on old songs from that time, which they'd heard million times, it became crystal clear that for many of them, the emotions and memories related to the period when the country was divided are still so vivid and easy to bring up. Clearly, it wasn't easy. Absolutely, it was incredibly hard to make change of that caliber. But this event should have taught each and every one how much unstoppable power the people might have when united to protect their rights, their freedom and their future.
Immersing more and more into monumentality of the event we were celebrating, I was also thinking that several hundred kilometers east from here, other people are now similarly fighting to protect their lives, their freedom and their future. Another country is now living through the extremely painful transformation and is forging another men of steel who would be capable of building the same strong country as Germany has become as soon as they defeat the evil invaded their homes. And in this unique convergence of place and time as the 35 Jahre Mauerfall celebration, you can clearly realize that such fight for freedom may not end soon for them but can last for years, as it happened here, if they are left alone in this battle.
Several days before the concert, few people contacted me and asked if could borrow some instruments for the show. I sent some pictures to them to select. By some coincidence - or maybe hand of fate - they independently selected two basses which presence in that particular time and date has made everything even more meaningful.
The blue-and-gold P-bass was my first reaction on the invasion into Ukraine in February 2022 when I was sitting at home, completely devastated, hectically trying even to start any thought process in my head whatsoever and I couldn't invent anything else than to purchase that bass in national Ukrainian colors, printed a coat of arms and put it on top. Later, I ordered a traditional Ukrainian belt directly from Ukraine and made a strap for that bass.
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It was an impulse due to inability to quickly do something that big that it could help stop everything now. A few days later, a friend-musician posted a music sheet from "Chervona Kalyna" - a traditional patriotic song, which I recorded using that bass and posted that video everywhere including the R1000 registration form. I applied to the community at the beginning of 2022, in my attempts to not completely lose any sense of reality. Now, the same instrument with that history was used by an Ukraine-born musician to play songs of freedom in front of Bundestag!
The second one, which was used on the Brandenburg Gate stage, carries on top of it the autographs of several music bands from Russia, who left the country after the war had started, and who have been continuing spreading the voice of protest to the madman's regimen through their music over the world: similar to what East German bands were doing back in days , whose songs we were playing too.
The one of posters from the exhibition says: "Historisch für sie geprüft: Mauern sing keine Lösung" which means "It's historically proven for you: walls are not a solution".
It would be great if this message would be heard by as many people as possible: how many different walls are we building around us, in our own heads, by our will or by someone's else, walls between cultures, genders, so-called social classes, beliefs - this list can be very long. Instead of just talking to each other, debating, collaborating, sharing.
"Mauern sing keine Lösung." And Germany and it's success in the modern history have proven it.
And it was a real honor to play for the people, many of whom have started all of this!
It was nice to (bass)meet you😉 and share one stage🤘🏻
Senior Consultant
1moAs always you express your feelings so eloquently, allowing those of us that are not so close to this topic to get some perspective on what is going on. Oh, and rock on Pavel!!