After four and a half minutes of hand-stopping, the spook was over again. Laudator Florian Sochatzky had Dense & poignant as the winner of the Bavarian Culture Prize as “loud and critical”, “even if it does not correspond to the mainstream”, spoke of “very different world views” here in the hall and also made a little fun of the “dear culture prize enthusiasts”.
Then the award-winning trio appears, in hip-hop uniform: very colorful clothes, shorts, caps, everything tone on tone. Michael Huber reports that he wanted to give a speech that he wasn’t allowed to give, that he wanted to auction off the culture prize here in the hall, which he wasn’t allowed to do: “We are a band that has something to say. We weren’t allowed to do that here .” That’s why they don’t accept the price and can now only refer to an explanatory YouTube video. Pardauz! This has never happened before in 19 years of the Bavarian Culture Prize.
Nina Sonnenberg, the evening’s presenter, reacted with maximum confidence. Huber took the prize from his hand and said: “Then I’ll take it back.” To the audience: “You will hear the explanation.” The accompanying words “Ladies and Gentlemen: Dense & Poignant!” There was a rather thin applause – and the departure of the non-prize winners. And: The award text continued with Dieter Hanitzsch. But this is another story.
One could have expected that
Afterwards, people in the Bavarian Ministry of Art, at Bayernwerk AG and in the jury will ask themselves whether they could have foreseen the scandal at the gala. Anyone who awards a Bavarian Culture Prize to subversive hip-hop pranksters like Dicht & Grabend on behalf of an energy company and a CSU-led state government could certainly expect resistance. That’s how the winners see it: “Everyone who knows us knows that we wouldn’t just accept something like that,” says Michael Huber alias Georg Urkwell. Bayernwerke is a subsidiary of EON, which made a profit of 8.1 billion euros in the last year of the energy crisis. Now she wants to bask in the light of artists at this “promotional event” (including Rita Falk and Jakub Hrusa), who are fobbed off with 5,000 euros each. And the state government is following suit “without adding a single cent from the state’s cultural funds,” says Huber indignantly.
So he and his colleagues Fabian Frischmann alias Lef Dutti and Markus Hinkelmann (DJ Spliff) wanted to mess with the patrons rather than the fans. But the artists wanted to use the platform that was offered to them to “put the philanthropic values of those present in the ballroom to the test.” They wanted to donate their 5,000 euros in prize money in front of the cameras and also auction off the unwanted trophy for a good cause after a critical speech in the audience – in the best case after a bidding war between Art Minister Markus Blume and Bayerwerk boss Egon Leo Westphal. They explained this to the gala organizers and asked for seven minutes of “additional stage time”. Huber explains that they were forbidden to do anything other than the planned two-minute thank you. Apparently the award presenters knew who they were dealing with and that the gala’s splendor was in danger of being tarnished.
Criticism of politics and economics is part of the concept
Dense & Grabbing are not just a hip-hop combo that is successful throughout Germany and has its hometown in Lower Bavaria, which played in the sold-out Munich Olympic Hall five years after the first YouTube video “Zipfewickela” from 2014 and which “kills everything live Arms, legs and germs” (self-promotion on the homepage). The village children Urkwell and Lef Dutti, who emigrated to Berlin, are always satirists who take aim at elites and everything that stinks in their eyes. At the Munich demonstration “Mia ham’s tired” in front of 25,000 people, they spoke out against the activities of the agricultural industry. Urkwell uploaded a satirical poem critical of religion to YouTube (which was deleted) and sang for the squatter scene; In Berlin they brought together 20 rappers for a protest piece against the cultural harassment of the Corona policy, and they denounced the same thing at the start of their “Inzi Dance Tour” 2021 in Dachau: Police officers came onto the stage and canceled the concert after a scuffle. Very credible, but just a charade on the part of the band.
They have been tinkering, tinkering and rehearsing their protest performance for Munich for two weeks. In addition, Bayernwerke appealed to them when they advertised the award ceremony on social media with photos from Dicht & Ergreifend. “We expressly forbade them to do that,” says Huber. The three – dressed in suits with skull and penis motifs by the street artist Mina Mania – only briefly feigned emotion in the two minutes of speaking time given after the mocking eulogy (by their initiated companion Florian Sochatzy): “Thank you, thank you, thank you, great, great great, Smile Smile Smile …” Then they referred to a video with the long thank you speech they were forbidden, which can now be found on YouTube. Two days ago they had already recorded why they refused the prize and the prize money. Instead, they donate 5,000 euros from the band’s treasury to an orphan in Burkina Faso and auction a copy of the bronze statue called HFE5000 (“Humanism for Beginners”) on eBay to benefit the small self-help organization WAMO in West Africa – Bad Boys with Heart.