As early as Sunday afternoon, when a good ten bands were still preparing for their performance, the “Project office of the cultural department of the mayor of Nuremberg” (responsibilities can be regulated that easily) sent out a euphoric message of success for this year’s three-day bards’ meeting: ” The wildest expectations were exceeded,” was the first sentence. In fact, it was not foreseeable beforehand how much of the 45-year festival tradition was still left after two canceled editions, i.e. after a three-year break. But what Andreas Radlmaier, head of the project office and, together with the artistic director Rainer Pirzkall, mastermind and motor of this event, quickly confirmed, put it this way: “The Bardentreffen is firmly rooted in the Nuremberg cultural calendar. Fortunately, crises and cancellations cannot do this either change.”
In fact, even the rain didn’t stop music lovers from visiting the eight stages spread across the old town from the start on Friday evening. The two largest venues are on the main market and on the island of Schütt, others on smaller squares and in the ruins of St. Catherine’s Church – for many the most atmospheric venue. With the wonderful singer/songwriter Hanna Sikasa, for example, the Lorenzer Platz was well filled with rainproof spectators and the atmosphere was great. On Saturday, when the weather was glorious, it was sometimes impossible to get through the streets of the old town, and people had to queue patiently at most of the stages due to overcrowding.
You can still do it: After a three-year Corona break, the people of Nuremberg and their visitors celebrated the bards’ meeting again.
(Photo: Moritz Schlenk/Imago)
All in all, far more than 200,000 people flocked to the bards’ meeting, certainly no less than in previous years. Remarkable in times when the organizers of classical music, rock and cabaret are complaining about massive slumps in audience popularity. And there were street musicians of all kinds and levels on every corner, felt more than ever – along with the professionals, they too have long been part of the endeavor to immerse Nuremberg in a cloud of sound for three days. The bards’ meeting was originally invented to revitalize the inner city, which was deserted in the evenings of the 1970s.
Now the festival is first and foremost a cultural event, so it’s not just about numbers. In any case, they are only the proof and the result of a successful artistic concept. It is true that the name “Bardentreffen” dates back to the early 1970s, when the manageable guild of politically motivated – and sometimes quite limited in terms of music – singer-songwriters gathered in a single small square. Since then, a lot of water has flowed down the Pegnitz, parallel to the upheavals in the music landscape, the festival has skinned several times.
The motto this year: “Strong Voices”
It became Germany’s, probably even Europe’s, largest world music festival a good 20 years ago and is currently changing again according to Rainer Pirzkall’s will: towards a genre-open focus platform. It was understood here earlier than anywhere else that a festival in a time of globalized musical “anything goes” needs an overarching theme instead of just any random selection of musicians. The Bardentreffen has had a new motto every year for years.
“Strong voices” it said this time: After the end of the pandemic-related singing ban, the intention was to present the dazzling variety of human sound production. From the blues-tinged pop songs of Ami Warning to Sebastian Horn’s gnarly Bavarian by Dreiviertelblut (Radlmeier also had highly interesting artist talks with both of them) and the reggae-punk rap of Mal Èlève to the beatboxing of The Razones – or all bundled together in the jazz of Kid Be Kid. From the overtone art of the Mongolian group Huun-Huur-Tu and the rhythmically heavy tarantella multi-voiced hypnosis of Kalascima from the southern Italian Salento on the polyphonic pastoral song of the Corsican ensemble L’Albathe Scandinavian joiken of Okra Playground or the Sofiatown soul of the South African Nomfusi, who rocks the city, to the son of the six-piece a cappella group vocal samplinga sort of Cuban variant of Naturally 7with which the festival came to a relaxed close.
As relaxed as the entire festival was, where voices from more than 20 countries could be heard not only on the stages. According to surveys, ten percent of the visitors come from abroad, and another 20 from within the national area outside the metropolitan region. To join the open-minded, always relaxed attitude of the people of Nuremberg. As always, the police concluded that the event was “absolutely peaceful and trouble-free.”
Maybe also because everyone will find their own thing here: the music freak who wants to hear as much as possible for three days; the flâneur who simply lets himself be surprised; the families who can go on a culinary and cultural trip that can hardly be increased; Fans of cult bands like Earth furniture, clay stones shards or Son del Nene. Even experts can still make discoveries like the French-Algerian singer Djazia Satour or, above all, among the local youngsters: the Franconian scene had its own stage with Lorenzer Platz.
If you haven’t been to Nuremberg but want to get an impression: Bayerischer Rundfunk and Arte concerts have booked the performances of KalascimaNomfusi, Djazia Satour, Paulo Flores, Huun-Huur-Tu and L’Alba recorded, they can also be accessed on the Bardentreffen website. And excerpts can be heard on Bayern2 on August 6th, 13th and 20th. But the same applies to the bards’ meeting in particular as it does to the pyramids of Gizeh, for example: only those who have stood in front of them know what it feels like.