ALPINE ROCK MUSIC

AFTER FLEEING HIS HOMELAND, HUBERT VON GOISERN FOUND HIS ROOTS WHILE ON FOREIGN SOIL — AND INVENTED “ALPENROCK.”

The small town of Bad Goisern, population 8,000, occupies an idyllic valley setting at the head of the Goiserer Tal in Upper Austria. A single road leads to the town, and ends there. To go further means climbing over the Dachstein massif. For young people here there is no avoiding the question: Should they stay within the confines of the valley? Or should they leave? What would happen to their identity? Bad Goisern has produced two famous inhabitants who gave two contrasting answers — both have become leading figures of vastly different movements and attitudes to life in Austria.

One was Jörg Haider who died two years ago in a fatal accident. As leader of the right populist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), he had a predilection for being photographed in lederhosen. He gave speeches in which he lumped “foreigners, asylum seekers and social security spongers” together in a single breath. Identity through separatism was the answer that Haider publicly represented.

The town’s other famous son is a former neighbor of Jörg Haider who was two classes below him at the local school: Austrian rock star Hubert von Goisern. Von Goisern is regarded as the inventor of “Alpenrock,” a style of music that combines rock’n’roll with yodeling, accordions and fiddles.

It would be a bit of a cliché to say that Hubert von Goisern, 58, is the Austrian Bob Dylan, but the comparison is at least fitting in terms of the status he enjoys in his home country. He sings in a language they understand, but also manages to play music that appeals to young people. Goisern’s deeply dialectical “Hiatamadl” (Shepherd girl) spent three months in the top ten. The lyrics are a linguistic challenge even to German speakers, but the song has since become a sort unofficial anthem of the Republic of Austria. However, Hubert von Goisern has also written many thoughtful songs, such as this reflection on life entitled “Leben” (Life): “Nothing belongs to us and nothing is free / that’s why life itself is the greatest art.”

The invention of Alpenrock began at the music society in Bad Goisern, where an adolescent Hubert Achleitner, as he was then called, played junior trumpet. His fellow musicians balked at the long hair with which Hubert demonstrated his inclination toward the then emerging world of rock. They were afraid people would think there was “a girl playing in the band.” But Hubert refused to cut his hair and complained at the absence of rock numbers from the program instead, until eventually he had to relinquish his trumpet. Hubert felt an urge to leave the valley. “Headed for freedom, for blues and rock’n’roll.”

Austrian-style music was too folksy for him, seeming to “seek an identity in separatism,” as he says today. It was only after he had spent a long time traveling that he rediscovered its true worth. He lived for half a year in the Philippines among players of nose flutes and was fascinated by their open-heartedness towards strangers. “They didn’t mind me singing along in my own way. I thought, once upon a time it must have been that way with us too.” Hubert Achleitner, the man who felt compelled to leave, now felt compelled to return, to “dig out the roots of musical tradition.” He learned to play the accordion and to yodel, combining folk music with rock and blues. He also took the name “von Goisern.” Partly as a selfdeprecating joke, but partly also as an acknowledgement of his rediscovered home. His songs spoke to a yearning hidden deep in the souls of many Austrians who sought to reconcile their twin identities as men of the mountains and citizens of the world. Critics placed Hubert von Goisern in the right-wing camp. In fact some of his fans are of that ilk. But for most Austrians his Alpenrock style has simply rehabilitated folk music and made it worth listening to.

On his travels through Africa and Tibet, Hubert von Goisern also sought inspiration in other cultures. Five years ago he accompanied the Egyptian singer Mohamed Mounir. Shortly after the tour he released his album “Trad II” which proved to be not so much an Afro-Austrian amalgam as a reinterpretation of Austrian folk songs. Recently he has attracted attention with his shipboard tours on the Rhine and Danube. At dozens of wharfs he moored up, invited local bands onto his floating stage and played jam sessions. He chose his guests with care, wanting to play with musicians who were also searching for their cultural roots in their own homelands. The Ukrainians played polka rock with trumpet and harp, the Romanians fired up their violins and blew the sounds of the Carpathians. “We aim to extend this cultural partnership between regions along the 2,889 kilometers of this river all the way to the east,” Hubert von Goisern described his ambitious project. “It would be a great achievement if we could get more people to accept this musical diversity.”

Hubert von Goisern’s first musical echo from this journey to the east was a CD titled “s’Nix” (The Nothing). It combines rock and pop with a little yodeling, but no Carpathian horns or harps, nothing multicultural, just the Goisern sound.

Von Goisern is still von Goisern, with one foot firmly planted in his valley and the other forever tramping. But the further he goes, the closer the bond with his own origins.

Text: Tilman Wörtz, Photos: Rainer Kwiotek
Bilfinger Berger Magazine 1/2010