No. 4: 1-3 July 1994

Barely introduced, exposed again already: The WDR, in cooperation with the MDR for the 15th EBU Contemporary Folk Music Festival, invited 26 soloists and groups from 15 different countries to Rudolstadt and made the event "the best of all previous EBU Folk Festivals" (Karel Devijver, BRTN Belgium). In addition, there was Percussion fireworks as the magical instrument and an art exhibition by Klaus Staeck entitled "Showing our colors!". The German Folk Award was won by John & Andreas Uhlmann (before Werner Vonberg and Thalassa), the Oyster band rocked HeinePark, Santiago Jimenez played very traditional tex-mex, and Rembetiko legend Michael Jenitsaris sang through the night at his hotel. Another journalistic climax came after the festival: Christoph Dieckmann published an article in the Zeit newspaper on 07.15.1994 under the heading "The World at Home".

 

Excerpt: On every first weekend of July currents of colorful people flood the town at the foot of the Heidecksburg and meet the 30,000 locals with slightly shocked pride ... FOLK is young, folklore old. What qualities do just to the old, to the colorful processions, the village rites, in the collective Trachtentümelei? Were they never alone? Or are they children from war and flight, neighborly proof against hedonism and egomania and seeking mine not without yours? Who saw the young with the old, as they listened breathless and silent on the jam-packed market to a single Korean zither player, as the Celts hopped to trance drummers from Tangier, to the retreat and funeral marches of the Macedonian Kocani Orkestar, as they marveled at overtone chants and jubilantly threw their hooves for the Klezmer-Jidden from Brooklyn's Brave Old World - who experienced all these cheers of the world in the province, and incredibly reported: The Germans are lovely!