"Manche Menschen werden Brüder": Contemporary Music and New Fraternities
in German Politics and SocietyAll currencies in US Dollar
In this article, I analyze the social and cultural trends from within the music scene that counter challenges the moderate and extreme right. This music centers on the issue of ethnic exclusivity and aggressively insists on accepting Germany as a diverse society, however uncomfortable a fit that may still be for many. Certain bands and musicians move from politics to identity politics, in an attempt to generate a discourse about racism and national identity. By foregrounding the contingent relationship between citizen and nation, bands like Advanced Chemistry destabilize any naturalized or motivated link between self and state. Songs like "Fremd im eigenen Land" dismantle any proprietary relationship between German ethnicity and entitlement to the rights of citizenship. An image of a new Germany emerges that insists on the political acceptance of diversity. Nevertheless, this vision is subject to the pressures of reality: Germany is not by any stretch of the imagination a hate-free zone. Structured in part by responses to alienation within Germany, as well as by imported musical forms of male affinity, some bands, rappers, and musicians are organizing themselves into new fraternities. While criticizing or rejecting certain Americanized clichés of masculinity, the bands I discuss look beyond the caricatures of yuppies and cowboys to different models.