Voices of the Street

It is not easy to write a halfway positive introduction at this time, every day the horror reports of the decline of our civilization – whatever that may be – a fascist party – the AFD – is once again moving into the federal German parliaments, houses are burning almost every day in which refugees are or are to be accommodated. The brown mob is raging in the streets and the bourgeois parties from green to black are running after it instead of postulating a consistent “defend the beginnings”.

I come from the Scholl family, which paid a heavy toll in resistance to the Nazis. Not only Sophie and Hans, but also two of my grandfather’s brothers became victims of Nazi barbarism. Last year he himself hid an escaped Russian prisoner of war in the basement and told me a lot about that time. And when I think back to these stories, I am reminded of 1929/30. Back then too, the poorest were pitted against the poor, parts of the bourgeois parties helped the Nazis to power and even then the SPD only became active when it was too late and most of its members were already in concentration camps…

Well, of course we can do something, the overwhelming majority of musicians are progressive, humanistic and left-wing, so let’s sing and play against the madness. Last year there were a lot of encouraging examples, such as theAngelcy from Israel or SAFI from Germany, both of which you can currently find online – that’s how it can happen, that’s how it will continue.

And it’s about time we concentrate on the Musikmesse, which is coming up in April. Equipment manufacturers and their dealers meet here again with their customers and musicians and, like every year, this event sees companies that are exhibiting again or are exhibiting again and other companies that are not coming this time – business as usual – it will happen again Interesting. We are also planning a festival tour of 12 events across all genres in collaboration with a few companies – dates will be available from April. And we discovered interesting new technology, ingenious instruments and new bands – more about that in the relevant sections.

Of course we rely on support/advertising because we want to offer you this forum free of charge. But just like with “musician” and “sound & vision”, whose history this portal is based on, both areas – advertising and editorial – are strictly separated.

And if you are attentive and react quickly, you can also win nice things in this issue. You can always find this under current or the corresponding articles – we would like to thank the companies concerned for their support.

Strausberg, March 20, 2018

Klaus Linke