Music for International Solidarity: Performances of Race and Otherness in the German Democratic Republic
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Central to the official identity of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was the state's positioning of itself as the antifascist and anti-colonial other to West Germany. This claim was supported by the GDR's extensive programme of international solidarity, which was targeted at causes such as the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. A paradox existed, however, between the vision of a universal proletariat that underpinned the discourse of solidarity and the decidedly more exclusive construct of socialist identity that was fostered in the GDR itself. In this article, I explore some of the processes of othering that were embedded in solidarity narratives by focusing on two quite contrasting musical outputs that were produced in the name of solidarity: the LPKämpfendes Vietnam, which was released on the Amiga record label in 1967, and the Deutsche Staatsoper's 1973 production of Ernst Hermann Meyer's anti-apartheid opera,Reiter der Nacht.
Source: twentieth-century music
Author: ELAINE KELLY
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Language: English
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2914975223