Excerpt from Keine Angst (No Fear) – final verse
by Danger Dan & Igor Levit
[rough translation from the German]
“Don’t be afraid, take matters into your own hands
They look dangerous, but we’ll take them down
Coordinate with each other, start training
If you fight together, it can work
Even on the very first day, when you’re throwing the party,
There’s a chance things will get heated right outside the door.
So always plan for a confrontation.
Have some surprises ready when they show up.
Legally, the gray area has been scrapped yet again.
I’ll just leave the elephant in the room for now.
It’s clear what needs to be done anyway;
I won’t say anything more about it.“
Rapper Danger Dan and renowned pianist Igor Levit were scheduled to perform their anti-fascism song collaboration on the ZDF satirical program Die Anstalt for it’s celebratory 100th episode last night (July 21). ZDF pulled the segment, and the artists hastily organized an event called Die keine Angstalt (a pun on the TV show’s name) to present the performance anyway. The censorship attracted so much public attention that the concert (at Berlin’s Columbia Theatre) sold out in 43 minutes.
ZDF statements admitted that they censored and cancelled the segment (broadcasting instead a live feed image of an un-attended piano on the show’s stage, at the insistence of the program’s hosts). They gave reasons: “… that several lines could be understood as recommending clandestine organization, illegal action, vigilantism or violence against right-wing extremists.”
Anyone who cares about freedom of expression and speech must be incensed by such querulous capitulation by the state-funded public service broadcaster. I am too, so let me respond by shining the light on some of Igor Levit’s other performances of music shaped by social and political commitment.
Igor Levit, from Bach, Beethoven, Rzewski (Sony Classical, 2015). In The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Levit performs it frequently), Fred Rzewski transforms Sergio Ortega’s Chilean resistance song into a monumental set of variations in which individual voices, styles and struggles accumulate into an uncompromising affirmation of collective solidarity.
That’s the conluding track from Igor Levit’s album Life (Sony Classical, 2018). He presents jazz pianist Bill Evans’s improvisatory meditation as a fragile reflection of consolation, with an unmistakable pacifist message. Better not let the kids hear that, they might get radicalized.
Levit also assisted Danger Dan with several other of the rap artist’s politicized screeds. And he performed a movement of Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata. So we end today’s playlist there.
