Die Welt in song

It may have been an era of elegant decadence, that period in Germany when the Weimar Republic was enjoying its last years of glorious fun before the Nazis took control in 1933. At least that's the feeling you get listening to Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester. If you view any of the short promotional videos for the group online, you'll see that they capture the feel and flavor of early-1930s movie musicals, right down to the black-and-white cinematography and title cards and the sense that everything would be OK as long as people sang and danced.

Raabe sings in a style that may best be described as deadpan crooner, warbling such American and German pop hits of the period as "Cheek to Cheek," "Singin' in the Rain," "Dream a Little Dream,""Du bist meine Greta Garbo," "Mein Gorilla hat 'ne Villa Im Zoo," and, perhaps inexplicably, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" The ensemble's repertoire of some 500 songs also includes tunes from Marx Brothers films and a number of works that recall the influence of long-gone German musicians such as orchestra leader Paul Godwin, the song-writing team of Jacob Jacobs and Sholom Secunda, and the vocal ensemble the Comedian Harmonists.

With their tuxes, black ties, and slicked-back hairstyles, Raabe and company certainly suggest the look of 1932, more or less. Pasatiempo spoke with Raabe — who said the orchestra plays "old songs but newly discovered" — by phone from somewhere in Germany.

Pasatiempo: Why are you drawn to that particular period of time in pop music, from roughly 1928 to 1934?

Max Raabe: The way the bands played and the style the performers sang. I love this period at the end of the Weimar Republic, with [its] special kind of humor and specific way to handle an orchestra. I have no idea why; it's the period of pop music that I like. They had another style before [that time], and another style came in the late '30s and '40s.

Pasa: Do you ever wish you were actually playing in that time period?

Raabe: I know what came after '33, and I'm very glad that I don't have to live in that time. In the time before the Nazis came to power, it was so rich to live in Berlin — the culture, the theater, the architecture. It was all so colorful and tolerant, and then suddenly everything was gone. That was a horrible time between '33 and '45; so no, I don't want to live in that period. It's a gift for me that I can play this music now for an open-minded audience. We have a very young audience; sometimes you see little children 5 or 6 years old sitting in the first row, listening. On the other end, we got a telephone call this year from a woman, "Can I bring my armchair? I'm 102." That is what this music can do in our days, so I'm happy to play the music I love now.

Pasa: There's a video clip of you introducing a number and saying music has always been identified with destiny and personal tragedy and political angst. Then you get a laugh by saying, "Who cares, as long as you are not directly involved?" Is there anything political about this music?

Raabe: I don't think that music or art can change the world. This is music written to entertain an audience, to bring you out into another reality, a reality that never was, not even in the '20s and '30s, not in the operettas or the early talkie pictures. That was a dream world, and this music was written for that dream world. There are politics behind it now, because we know how hard it was after '33 for so many of the composers and songwriters who gave us this music. That is the only political part of our show. But the songs were written for an audience who wanted to get out from real life for a while.

Pasa: It seems to me you have your own way to present this music; you're not emulating anyone specific from that period.

Raabe: We have a young audience. We need a young audience. And you can't go onstage as a copy. That is not enough. There must be something original. The music is timeless — the black humor, the elegance, the subtext under every line.

Pasa: Are most of the orchestras who played this music back then, whether German or American, forgotten today? We may know who Glenn Miller is, but what about Paul Whiteman or Paul Godwin?

Raabe: Paul Whiteman created his own style. He said he was the king of jazz. It wasn't jazz but a very sophisticated kind of dance music. But he's nearly forgotten. I speak about these composers and musicians. I say, "Now we'll play this and that song in the same arrangement that Paul Godwin recorded in '31." But they are nearly forgotten in Germany as well.

The only group in everybody's mind are the Comedian Harmonists, a vocal quartet. They were created in '27. When the Nazis came to power, half the group was Jewish and left for the United States, and the rest stayed in Germany, but everyone knows this group. And the movie by Eberhard Fechner [1998's The Harmonists] was a gift.

Pasa: Besides the traditional music, how do you choose your songs? You've done covers of Britney Spears and Tom Jones songs, for instance.

Raabe: Have you heard "Oops, I Did It Again"? As musicians we travel around, and sometimes we have crazy ideas, and sometimes we do what we are talking about and sometimes not, and this was just a joke for us — to take a popular song of the year and make a record a bit in our style of the '20s and '30s but with a bit of a modern rhythm section. There's nothing more to explain. It was just a joke. Ms. Spears lost a chance to figure out the sarcasm of it — there's a very dark humor behind it — but she lost it. For me to be onstage singing "Sex Bomb" [the Jones tune] is funny for our audiences; it just doesn't go together, me and that song. "Sex Bomb" is not something I would say normally onstage.

Pasa: Has the reaction to your music been the same no matter where you play?

Raabe: No. We've been to China, and they have no idea what the Weimar Republic means or what this dance music means. Only in Shanghai did they have this music in the '20s and '30s, but not in the rest of the country. We entered the stage, we played our repertoire, and they had fun. And they didn't understand a word of what I was saying. But they have wonderful critics in the newspaper writing about what we're doing, writing, "They're playing instruments we never played before" and that my voice was flying like the smell of this or that flower in the moonlight. In the rest of the world, the reaction is the same. It depends only on whether it's Monday through Friday. On Monday they [the audience] are always very upset and lazy, but it gets better and better from Tuesday through Friday.

Pasa: You better find out what night you're playing here.

Raabe: I hope it's not a Monday.

Pasa: It's a Tuesday.

Raabe: Tuesday. That's much, much better.

Pasa: You have 12 orchestra members but only one — violinist Cecilia Crisafulli — is a woman. Is it tough to travel with 11 men and one woman?

Raabe: Not for us. Maybe for her. The poor lady has to travel with this horrible group of guys, but she is their princess, and I think she knows it. Maybe it would be much more difficult to travel in an orchestra with 12 ladies and be the only man.

By: Robert Nott