[Dixielandjazz] Ruth Hohmann interviewed - London Guardian, December 3, 2011

[Robert Ringwald]

'Ella of the East' Still Jazzing Things Up at 80
Singer who beat communist disapproval and fall of wall marks 50 years in showbiz
by Helen Pidd
London Guardian, December 3, 2011
BERLIN -- They called her the Ella Fitzgerald of the East, the first lady of East
German jazz, a pocket rocket with a voice so versatile it could make an audience
laugh, cry and punch the air before the chorus.
But Ruth Hohmann, born in Bach's birthplace of Eisenach in 1931, was not only the
No 1 female jazz singer in the early days of East Germany.
She was also, for quite some time, the only one of any note, making regular scene-stealing
appearances with her band, the Jazz Optimisten Berlin, on East German TV and radio
after the Berlin Wall went up in 1961.
Now 80, and having shrunk to under 5ft (1.52 metres) and gained six grandchildren
and six great-grandchildren, Hohmann is back in demand. "I have never been so busy,"
she said happily, having juggled her hectic schedule to squeeze in an interview with
the Guardian. "I'm always on the road."
In the summer she gave a series of concerts to mark her 50 years in the jazz world
and her birthday.
Over strong black tea she proudly leafed through her 2012 diary and reeled off engagements
up to next Christmas.
Hohmann is famous around her home in east Berlin. She lives on the 8th floor of a
pristine tower block just off Karl-Marx-Allee, the monumental socialist boulevard
formerly known as Stalin-Allee -- a showcase of Soviet wedding cake-style design.
"She scat-sings in the supermarket," said one neighbour. "'Scoobie doobie doo-wop
dee-doo' she goes as she trundles through the aisles."
The octogenarian was not always so busy. Her public career came to an abrupt end
in the mid-1960s after she fell foul of the ruling politburo's cultural policies.
"They didn't like me singing in English," said Hohmann. "I remember someone in radio
telling me that they couldn't broadcast one of our concerts because I sang in 'the
language of McCarthy'."
US senator Joseph McCarthy had been an enemy of the east after making it his mission
to root out communists in the west. Jazz was never officially banned in East Germany,
said Hohmann. "But we stopped getting bookings. Concerts would be cancelled at the
last minute, with promoters giving excuses like 'we haven't got a sound technician
available'." It was Hirnverbrannt, she said -- daft.
Jazz music's public enemy No 1 was Walter Ulbricht, the hardline communist who ran
East Germany from its separation from the West in 1949 until 1971. A fierce anti-American,
he once referred to rock'n'roll as American atonal noise, according to Mark Fenemore,
an academic from Manchester Metropolitan University.
In his book, Sex Thugs and Rock'n'Roll: Teenage Rebels in Cold War Germany, Fenemore
describes the cultural conservatism and inherent racism which prevailed in postwar
East Germany.
In 1954, he writes, one local newspaper argued that "the decadent contortions of
the jazz dancer are like those of an African witchdoctor... any girl who gives in
to such revolting forms of dancing need not wonder when she is called a Veronika."
Veronika, Fenemore explains, was a pejorative name for a woman who slept with an
American GI during the allied occupation.
But, said Fenemore, from 1965 the East German authorities were more concerned with
the pernicious influence of beat groups and intellectuals. "Compared to the Rolling
Stones, jazz by then appeared tame and safe," he said, adding that Louis Armstrong
played in East Berlin to great acclaim that year.
Hohmann has the allies' presence to thank for her love of jazz. It was listening
to American Forces Network radio in postwar Germany that she first heard Duke Ellington.
"I remember thinking, my goodness, this is glorious, I can't believe such music exists.
Then I heard Ella [Fitzgerald -- to whom she hates to be compared, "because Ella's
the greatest, it's embarrassing"] and Louis Armstrong," she said. Unable to buy any
of the records she heard, she sat down at her piano and worked out the melodies herself.
"Very good practice, it turns out, for jazz improvisation," she said.
After Ulbricht clamped down on any culture with links to what he saw as American
imperialism, some of Hohmann's bandmates switched to other, officially sanctioned
forms of music -- such as Schlager, a folksy, soppy German form of country music.
But not Hohmann. "I was only interested in jazz," she said. Unable to perform in
public, sang to her two daughters at home and "worried about how I was going to be
able to pay the bills". It was not until 1971, when Erich Honecker took over as head
of the East German government, that Hohmann was able to take to the stage again.
Honecker, who clung on to power until just before the Wall fell in November 1989,
is not viewed kindly by many East Germans, having presided over an enormous expansion
of the Stasi secret service which resulted in the mass jailing and expulsion of opposition
figures.
But to Hohmann, he is something of a hero. "I always like to say that Ulbricht silenced
me, but Honecker let me ring out again," she said.
The end of the cold war may have brought joy to the isolated east, but it also ended
Hohmann's stage career for the second time. "For a few years after the wall fell,
no one was interested. We couldn't get gigs," she said. Now, though, 21 years after
the two Germanys were reunified, Hohmann is on the up again. But only, she concedes,
in the former East. "When the Wall fell, the westerners were all, 'Oh, our brothers
and sisters from the East!'
"But these days I don't have one gig booked in West Berlin. I haven't for six or
maybe eight years now. The West Berliners play over here [the former east of the
city]," she said. "But we get nothing."
She insists she is not bothered. "Es ist mir Wurst (it's all sausages to me)," she
said, using a great Bavarian phrase. As long as someone wants her to sing, she is
happy.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
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