Is There Such a Thing as "Naughty Volksmusik"?

   Like Rock and Pop music which the genre of Schlager is based off on there have been times where some songs make us laugh and cringe over the naughty and inappropriate subject matter, and Volksmusik is no different. Remember the Alice Cooper song Cold Ethyl? Well it's German/Austrian cousin is a traditional song called Heut ist Mei Alte Gstorbn means in English My Old Lady Died Today and this song is meant to be a song involving Dead Body Humor since it's an upbeat song about a spouse dying and if you think Kern Baum has taken things too far then look at this cover...

Ja Tat amal die Arbeit sterb'n  in English Yes Do the Dying Work
(Maybe a Good Idea for Alice Cooper's next album...)

   In fact, there is a sub-genre of Volksmusik called Witze (Joke) or Nix which means, "nothing" in English and why is it called Nix? Well imagine you have an Opa that gives you some money to buy any record...you hide the Nix Record in your Rucksack so he won't know until...

Opa: Wat are you hiding?

You: Uhhhh.....Nix...

Opa: Don't be a Dumkoff! Show mei wat you got at de record store?

(You pull out this CD Box)

Opa: Alright where did you get these CDs! Dis is a cheap piece of krap voll of vulgar Witze und Songs!

  So buying these records, or CD's is no different than a middle school boy in the eighties buying a copy of National Lampoon and then his father catching him reading an inappropriate joke. In fact, this sub-genre is still alive and well today because of artists like Kern Baum, Hias, Beirmosl Blosn, and many others who were apart of the Volkmusik revival in the sixties. So while Laurence Welk and his buddy Myron Florian were doing their same old clean stick on television in America, people in Germany and Austria were revisiting Volksmusik and creating a new and diverse generation of singers and performers who created and combined Volkmusik with other genres of popular music including Rock which I will talk about in the next blog...