4 - Die Toten Hosen, Rammstein, Azad, and Massiv: German Rock and Rap Go Global for Social Justice

Summary

ALTHOUGH ROCK AND RAP represent divergent branches in the popular music family tree, both genres possess a global appeal and musicians from both have acquired a reputation as provocateurs and outspoken advocates in local or worldwide battles for social justice. Both descriptors apply to the top-selling German rock and rap groups whose twentyfirst- century releases we discuss here: Die Toten Hosen, Rammstein, Azad, and Massiv. In the 1980s, the inveterate punk-rock band Die Toten Hosen was feared and even banned from playing in some German locations because of their and their fans’ reputation for alcohol and drug use and accompanying destructive behavior (Skai 20, 28–29). In 2003, however, their lead singer Andreas Frege, best known by his pseudonym “Campino,” placed 65th out of the 100 “greatest Germans” of all time in a ZDF television station viewer poll (Arens; Eckardt). This reversal in reputation from margins to mainstream, while specific to Campino, as we argue, also represents an increasingly visible trend in both rock and rap: an evolution from expressing social criticism to promoting social justice.

In this chapter we examine the aesthetic devices and identities developed primarily in the early 2000s by the aforementioned rock and rap artists to promote an image of themselves as advocates of social change, in the service of expanded notions of German and European citizenship, but also strongly influenced by US popular culture. Though an unlikely foursome with a wide range of musical styles, ages, and cultural backgrounds—Die Toten Hosen is a western German punk band, Rammstein is an eastern German heavy metal/industrial music group, and Azad and Massiv are rappers with different migrant backgrounds (Kurdish-Iranian and Palestinian) housed in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, respectively—we selected them for the overlapping messages of their lyrics. All enact social protest in their songs and envision a world free of racism and violence, as well as economic and other injustices. We use theories of space and spatial identity to interpret their lyrics, music, and video images, in which stylized urban and other public spaces with stereotypical associations like the ocean, the beach, and even the moon have become the preferred sites of resistance.