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Thread: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

  1. #1

    Default Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    This may have been hit on in past.... With Oktoberfest just around the bend, does anyone here have any recommendations for Traditional Bavarian Music? I generally cant find any collection of tunes to learn from.
    Jeremy

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  2. #2
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    The problem with these songs is that they are never written down - you learn them there while imbibing your 10 beers or so, but the next morning they have inexplicably vanished from your memory *

    *) they vanish also if you have not been drinking - it's an essential body function to maintain mental sanity.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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    Registered User Mike Anderson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    My personal favourite - and I am NOT being sarcastic here:



    I mean, how can you not be happy such innocence still exists? Besides, one of my favourite bodhran makers is Bavarian.
    "But wasn't it all stupid nonsense, rot, gibberish, and criminally fraudulent nincompoopery?"
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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Anderson View Post
    My personal favourite - and I am NOT being sarcastic here...

    I mean, how can you not be happy such innocence still exists?
    That's not Oktoberfest, it's Musikantenstadl (a regular event staged solely for TV like a Late Night show - and they are not really singing, it's a recording being played). The creepy part to me has always been those people clapping their hands - it resembles the sound of marching feet from a darker German era.
    This is Oktoberfest.

    It's all business, after all. Business is never innocent.

    There still is real Bavarian music, of course, but you don't hear it at massed events:

    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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    Registered User Mike Anderson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    I guess the absence of any litres of beer should have clued me in, thanks Bertram. It is a cute act but good to know it's not associated with Oktoberfest. The genuine Bavarian music is lovely - definitely not suited to mass drinking events though.
    "But wasn't it all stupid nonsense, rot, gibberish, and criminally fraudulent nincompoopery?"
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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    "mass drinking" and "litres of beer" has a funny phonetic connection, b.t.w. The Bavarians call the litre of beer "Maß", which is also German for "measure". So it's mass Maß drinking
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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    Registered User Flad's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Modern lick to some traditions is for sure best found in Rock Mi: https://youtu.be/sok1r8P-svo

    And I like from time where I learned German this one: Im Radio ist ein Küken: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CxiqMNUzz54

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    Registered User Mike Anderson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    ...and if they're good Catholic Bavarians, can they drink mass Maß while attending Mass?
    "But wasn't it all stupid nonsense, rot, gibberish, and criminally fraudulent nincompoopery?"
    - Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

  11. #9

    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    The Twinnies have more than 13 million Youtube-Clicks...and I didn't even know them...
    Speaking of German Volksmusik: one of my favorites is Swiss Alphorn-player Lisa Stoll's video with the song "Muss I denn".
    Such a fat tone...And all played without any keys or holes, just natural overtones...

    I discovered the video, when I had bought a used Torella bowlback from Stuttgart and decided to use this song to try it out and put together a little slight show about the Torella's journey from Stuttgart to my hometown.

    Compared to Lisa's Alphorn, my Torella bowlback sounds pretty thin, but it seems, I'm a little too old to start playing Alphorn, so I guess I'm gonna stick with my mando...

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    Registered User Martin Jonas's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    There is a lot of good Bavarian folk music out there, songs as well as tunes, but it takes some searching as well as a familiarity with German. I have several German song and tune books (my mother used to collect them, and I have photocopies of a number of them, as well as bound copies of the Zupfgeigenhansl and a few others), but would have to rummage around for some weblinks.

    In the meantime, a good place to start is at volksmusik.cc :

    Main index:
    http://www.volksmusik.cc/volkstanz/i...nis/inhalt.htm

    This is a deceptively large site on folk dance music from the Alps (mainly Austrian, but a fair few Bavarian and Swiss pieces too), with sheet music, dance descriptions, MIDI files and lots of videos showing the dances going with the tunes. Unfortunately, the site index is in German only, which may not be so bad if it were well-organised -- which it isn't. It's a bit of a mess with several separate collections and the actual sheet music well buried in other links. However, it's all there if you keep digging. The below direct links to the separate tune archives at volkmusik.cc may help with that:

    Dance tune archive 1:
    http://www.volksmusik.cc/volkstanz/i...chnis/main.htm

    Folk song archive:
    http://www.volksmusik.cc/lieder/inha...chnis/main.htm

    Tune archive 2:
    http://www.stammtischmusik.at/noten/...chnis/main.htm

    Online tutorial for Alpine folk music (mainly in German, some in English):
    http://www.volksmusikschule.at/inhal...chnis/main.htm

    Finally, here are some Bavarian tunes I've recorded in the past on mandolin:









    Martin
    Last edited by Martin Jonas; Aug-19-2017 at 4:37pm.

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Anderson View Post
    ...and if they're good Catholic Bavarians, can they drink mass Maß while attending Mass?
    ...one thing at a time, but the bar has always been within walking distance from the church in Bavarian communities. So if you drink too much, the cemetery is not far away either

    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Quote Originally Posted by Flad View Post
    Modern lick to some traditions is for sure best found in Rock Mi: https://youtu.be/sok1r8P-svo
    Looks like lots of versions of it, here's another fun one, fast-forward to 1:27:


    (or direct link)

    FWIW, oktoberfest-songs.com has an English translation and info about this song, "Nothing too hardcore here, just good clean fun." Fair enough.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bertram Henze View Post
    ... the bar has always been within walking distance from the church in Bavarian communities. So if you drink too much, the cemetery is not far away either
    That's very practical!

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    I think I come from equal parts Catholic and Lutheran Bavarian.
    Jeremy

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  20. #15

    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Anderson View Post
    ...and if they're good Catholic Bavarians, can they drink mass Maß while attending Mass?
    Jah Jah JAH!!

    My home state is Wisconsin, what some call--affectionately--"the land of cow sh*t and beer f*rts". There are Catholic parish houses that have their beer tap built into the wall.

    When I hear that kind of music, it brings me back home! Especially polkas. Where I'm from, it ain't no wedding reception if you don't dance no polka!

    And the vid of the traditional Bavarian music is really nice. The girl on guitar is playing honest-to-goodness alternate-bass fingerstyle!

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    mandolin slinger Steve Ostrander's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    My uncle played in a polka band around Detroit for many years. Man, that is one aerobic dance. I could never get the hang of it, but I have two left feet.
    Living’ in the Mitten

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    Registered User Mike Anderson's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Quote Originally Posted by BluesPreacher View Post
    Jah Jah JAH!!

    My home state is Wisconsin, what some call--affectionately--"the land of cow sh*t and beer f*rts". There are Catholic parish houses that have their beer tap built into the wall.

    When I hear that kind of music, it brings me back home! Especially polkas. Where I'm from, it ain't no wedding reception if you don't dance no polka!

    And the vid of the traditional Bavarian music is really nice. The girl on guitar is playing honest-to-goodness alternate-bass fingerstyle!
    Ha, awesome! This is definitely turning out to be one of the most fun threads I've seen in a while.
    "But wasn't it all stupid nonsense, rot, gibberish, and criminally fraudulent nincompoopery?"
    - Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

  23. #18

    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Is mandolin commonly encountered in Bavarian music?
    Jeremy

    My Instruments:
    Weber Custom Bitterroot
    Martin D-28
    Burns Dobson Openback Banjo

  24. #19

    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    I've a somewhat complex relationship to Bavarian. As a youth I strenuously avoided all things oom-pa and anything remotely resembling its culture. Fast-forward 40 years and I'm a player of club-style accordian (predominantly simply because clubs are good boxes and widely available for cheap since the style of music - trad accordian oom-pa - is now widely etre a la mode) - preeminent oom-pa machine. Although I play some polka and derivatives (polka and derivatives being a pervasive form of music around the world - I especially like what south America does with it), mostly I play trad french and ISTM.

    *I also love the piano accordian - though for blues, brazilian and boogie-woogie.

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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    By the way, there are more kinds of German trad dance music than just Bavarian music. Much less popular but very interesting.
    It's hard to find transcriptions because most of those musical traditions were more or less forgotten after Word War II.

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYD...7muo-o0HrzwSig

    Nice examples :-)

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    Registered User Manfred Hacker's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Quote Originally Posted by Mandolinespieler View Post
    This may have been hit on in past.... With Oktoberfest just around the bend, does anyone here have any recommendations for Traditional Bavarian Music? I generally cant find any collection of tunes to learn from.

    Well, I think it's high time that a Bavarian weighs in here...
    1. When we talk about Oktoberfest, we mean THE Oktoberfest in Munich. Other fests are just beer fests. Here in the US any concrete surface with a few tables pretends to be Oktoberfest.
    2. Bands at THE Oktoberfest play everything from oompah to pop hits, but hardly any Bavarian folk music. When I was younger, there was a lot of Dixieland Jazz in beer tents. Perversely, we sang along with "John Brown's body lies amouldring in the grave, but his soul goes marching on". Now that I have lived an hour from Harper's Ferry for some time, I finally understand what that song is really about.
    There is a lot of beautiful brass music out there, but it is hardly ever played at THE Oktoberfest where the international crowd wants to get hammered and go crazy.
    3. Thank you Martin Jonas for your links and your posts, and for not perverting my culture. The examples posted here, don't have anything to do with Bavarian folk music, except for Bertram's post showing the trio playing Bavarian parlor music with harp, hammered dulcimer and guitar.
    Another typical instrument used in such parlor music is the Zither, not to be confused with cittern.
    4. I will try to record and post a typical "Ländler" soon.
    I have never let my schooling interfere with my education - Mark Twain

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  29. #22

    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    I can appreciate that a person who grew up in a certain tradition is not likely to welcome a bunch of changes that make everything sound all different.

    Me, I grew up with fiddle dance music, I thought that was normal at the time. I had difficulty getting past my early programming - for instance I was later horrified to hear those tunes get changed around by the "contest style" fiddlers who presented the tunes in ways that I barely recognized. Although now, I can appreciate the modern styles on their own merits, but it took me a *long* time to get there.

    Generally speaking now... (longwinded book-mode follows, skip if in TLDR mode) and only tangentially related I suppose...
    For the casual bystander, those who didn't grow up in any particular specialized genre or subdivision of music, I guess to some extent one's viewpoint depends on how one defines the word "folk" or "traditional" etc.

    I used to go round & round with this with one of my oldest friends, he still insists that "folk" music (anywhere in the world) must meet certain strict requirements of instrumentation and style and such. His 'rules' are usually *not* set by the people who actually *live* there, but rather by people from afar who want to pickle & 'preserve' something that the locals perhaps would rather change up & modernize a little.

    IMO, FWIW, the modern-day "folk" are the common regular people, you and me. That includes everyone we see in the grocery stores (and even Walmart!) who listen to the radio a lot and, if they play instruments at all, they often tend to gravitate towards electric instruments (electric instruments are a poor-person's friend, you can get better sound for fewer $$$ on an electric, compared to acoustic) or play with a drumset or other musical "no-no's" that disqualify them from being truly "folk" by various different definitions, depending on who one talks to.

    The 'folk' have changed, grown, adapted. They (we, the people) aren't stuck in a 1930s time-warp or something.

    Not everything has to sound like a 1930s Library of Congress recording or something. (Yeah I know, that's US-centric, but it's what I know.) There's no harm in exploring new sounds to complement (add to) the older sounds.

    That said, I do realize the importance of not entirely losing the older styles by "watering them down" with sounds/instruments/etc derived from more-recent styles.

    But I would like to believe that the older styles can coexist peacefully with the modern derivative styles, and that we can have examples of both, and that we can enjoy all the different types of music without worrying so much about its musical 'purity' or whether or not it's traditional enough.

    Personally, because I grew up playing dance tunes and that was all I knew for a long time, I'm most favorably impressed by music that gets me tapping my feet, "happy music" I guess one could call it.

    But there is a time and a place for all kinds of music, of course.

    Just my opinion and experiences. Two cents' worth and all that.

    I don't know if the following video (below) is Bavarian or not, and it probably has nothing to do with Oktoberfest either, (perhaps a little somber for a festival atmosphere?) but as far as I can tell it is a fine beautiful German folk song and I really like it a lot. I found the audio recording amongst my dad's tapes after he passed away, it was something he'd recorded off the radio (I think the first part of the song is missing, he presumably didn't hit the "Record" button until a few bars into the song). I made a little video animation for it, to help me figure out the odd timing of the song. When I posted it to YouTube a couple years ago, I didn't know what the song was called or who the artists were, but the YouTube copyright system kindly identified it for me (and allowed me to post it anyway), so I didn't have to go find someone who spoke German (my grandma had long since passed) to help me ID the song. Turns out it's called "Und in dem Schneegebirge", I guess it's a 'traditional' song that goes back quite a ways, performed by the group Zupfgeigenhansel:


    (or direct link)

    Back to Bavaria, I've always wondered about the accordion thing, aren't accordions a (historically) recent invention, 1800s or so? Yet they apparently became popular and widely accepted, despite being a new thing at one point in time. I wonder if there were detractors though... probably?

    Off to my corner now...
    Last edited by Jess L.; Aug-28-2017 at 10:41pm.

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  31. #23

    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Quote Originally Posted by Manfred Hacker View Post
    ... I will try to record and post a typical "Ländler" soon.
    That would be great, thanks! I had to look up Ländler to see what it is, some fascinating historical info there.

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    Registered User Manfred Hacker's Avatar
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    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    As promised:
    The bands usually speed this up towards the end so the dancers can swirl faster and faster.
    Unfortunately, I messed up the faster part and cut it out.

    I have never let my schooling interfere with my education - Mark Twain

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  34. #25

    Default Re: Oktoberfest/Bavarian folk music

    Quote Originally Posted by JL277z View Post

    Back to Bavaria, I've always wondered about the accordion thing, aren't accordions a (historically) recent invention, 1800s or so? Yet they apparently became popular and widely accepted, despite being a new thing at one point in time. I wonder if there were detractors though... probably?
    Good question. Bear in mind that the diatonic button accordian (DBA) was invented (or at least mass produced) by the German Hohner company (mid 1800s), and was designed for a particular type of music. I imagine you're correct in that this "modern" machine represented an approach averse to traditionalists playing the music on trad instruments such as hackbrett, strings, various horns, etc. The DBA is however an incredibly efficient/effective machine and was amazingly popular - seemingly symbolizing a cultural form as vividly as the Irish harp. Accordian clubs were organized and the music was pervasive. After the war, this music fell into disfavor - accordian clubs were no longer popular, and the instruments produced for the purpose - particularly "club" model accordians - fell into disuse.

    Fwiw, club accordians are great for French, Belgian and other European forms, and has become the preferred instrument for South American dance forms like chamame, polka, schottisch, to say nothing of all the varieties of DBAs (and CBA, PA, et al) used in folk music around the world.

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