Black Europe

It all began with a question. "How could it be that American music - that is, the blues and jazz, phenomenally conquered the world in the early 20th century?" Wondered the jazz historian and passionate music fan, Rainer Lotz.

Lotz then went on to search for early sound recordings of American and African musicians in Europe and he came across many old treasures, which he has now published under the title "Black Europe".

The collection contains not only sounds from American entertainers with African roots but also many African voices. It was meant to paint a complete picture, Lotz told DW in an interview, he rejected any criticism of egalitarianism. "People with black skin got to know each other in Europe and also played together sometimes."

Need for documentation

In the "Black Europe" collection, one can find African spirituals such as the Nigerian, Josiah Ransome-Kuti. In 1922, he composed a song in Yoruba for his London based church.

Another rich source goes back to the documentation of different sciences. During the Second World War, Africanists did recordings of prisoners of war mainly to retain the African languages. The new subject of comparative musicology also produced many recordings.

"Behind it was the desire to document musical cultures before they disappear, because they die out or mix with other cultures," says archivist Ricarda Kopal. She is in charge of the treasures of the Berlin Phonogram Archive.

The researchers use the phonograph, probably the first sound recording device ever made. It was invented by the American Thomas Edison. To record, one had to sing or speak into a funnel-shaped cylinder, a needle picked up the sound waves inside the cylinder which was coated with wax.

Decades of storage have destroyed many of these time-sensitive products. Not only were the wax cylinders intolerable to temperatures exceeding 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) but the fleece padded cardboard containers in which the rolls were stored, were also very susceptible to mold, said Kopal. "Therefore, they had to be stored in a dry place."

The Paris exhibition

Some of the oldest recordings in the collection are from the Paris Exhibition of 1900. The host country France did all it could to put its best foot forward, as it opened the underground rail network of Paris. "More importantly, this exhibition also served to show French compatriots and the world, how France was a big colonial power," Rainer Lotz said.

France brought in people from its African colonies and placed them in the so called, "Negro villages". People from as far as Madagascar were taken to France to present their music and dances. Four years earlier, France had deposed Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar and took her country under its colony.

Similar "human zoos" were also trending in Germany at the turn of the century. They were meant to give the public a taste of how life was in the colonies. They were also supposed to portray the superiority of the colonizers and in so doing, justify European domination over Africa.

The audience wanted to see how Africans clad only in loincloth lived in huts. "There was huge interest in seeing what was considered exotic," says Cologne-based anthropologist, Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst. "The aspect of eroticism brought the organizers even more money."

However, the actors and artists also benefited from such dealings, says Bechhaus-Gerst. Not only did they get the opportunity to travel around Europe, but they too earned money. "There were contracts that said what they had to do and what they should get for it," said the anthropologist. "That gave them a certain power. If the organizers did not fulfill their contracts, the performer went on strike."

Years of work

Rainer Lotz and his co-authors took several years to put together the "Black Europe" project. The result of their thorough research astounded Richard Weize, the renowned German vintage music collector and founder of "Bear Family Records", a music label dedicated to the re-releasing of historic recordings.

Weize told DW he had expected only three to four CDs. In the end there were 44 CDs. And two companion volumes in the gramophone records format plus over 700 richly illustrated pages with plenty of space for anecdotes.

One example of how diverse African-European contacts were even 100 years ago is the folk song by a Tanzanian missionary student in Berlin in 1911. It turned out to be an adaptation from a German folk song about the separation from his lover.

Another one is the story of South African civil rights activist Sol Plaatje. While on a trip to Britain in 1923, he released some folk songs amongst them was "Nkosi Sikelel'i Africa" or God Bless Africa. This hymn would later become the symbol of African independence movements and is now the national anthem of three African countries: Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa.