Adi Braun brings the music of Weimar Republic to Hamilton
Adi Braun calls her musical muses “the original pantsuit nation.”
Braun, the renowned Torontobased jazz singer, is referring to the women of Weimar Germany who performed in the cabarets in Berlin between 1919 and 1933. These women — performers who broke barriers, pushed political boundaries and challenged traditional ideas of femininity (much like the modern-day “pantsuit nation” inspired by Hillary Clinton) — inspired Braun’s latest recording.
“The women that I mentioned were really trailblazers,” she said. “Women had just attained the right to vote in 1919, so all sorts of doors were opening for them. These were our forerunners.”
Braun will be in Hamilton Friday and Saturday night to perform songs from her new recording, “Moderne Frau” — which translates to “Modern Woman” — alongside a five-piece jazz combo at McMaster’s LIVELab. The evening will include songs by Weimar composers such as Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, as well as some of Braun’s own compositions inspired by Weimar cabaret performers.
Braun says she was drawn to this era for many reasons, but particularly because female cabaret performers were helping to redefine what the role of a woman could be in post-First World War Germany. Cabaret singers were performing songs about politics, protests, sex and other topics that are still provocative in 2018.
Braun points out that while the 1972 Oscar-wining film “Cabaret” is somewhat accurate, the music of Weimar Germany was vastly different from the tunes in the famous musical.
“It’s very Bob Fosse-esque and Hollywoodized, and the musical style is more Vaudevillian,” she said of the film. “It doesn’t have the dry, insistent undertone that German cabaret had.”
Along with tackling subversive subject matter, Braun points out that these women were also challenging traditional performance styles. Many cabaret performers came from a classical music background, though others had experiences as actors and were more accustomed to speaking onstage.
This combination led to a new performance style that combined speaking and singing and gave rise to the new term “diseuse,”
which comes from the French word, “to speak” (as opposed to the “chanteuse,” a term still used today to describe a female singer).
“It’s a human, but also an artistic emancipation that I was attracted to,” Braun said.
The music and culture of Weimar Germany came to an abrupt end when Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933. That means that instead of evolving into another form — much like hip-hop and rap arose from jazz — cabaret music simply stopped.
“When Hitler came to power in 1933, it was really the end of the art form,” she said. “It didn’t have a natural end.”
For her part, Braun is doing her best to keep the spirit and tradition of the cabaret alive. A teacher of German art song at the Royal Conservatory of Music and German diction coach for the Canadian Opera Company, Braun will be performing some of her songs in German. She also points out that the smaller-sized theatre at he LIVELab is a perfect scale for cabaret music.
“They called it ‘klein kunst’ — which means ‘small art.’ It was intimate — the rooms were, by and large, quite small. You would tell stories and connect with an audience.”
Still, Braun’s performance this weekend will benefit from the LIVELab’s state-of-the-art resources. The performance will also feature a 48-image slide show featuring images from Weimar Germany, and the Lab is also developing a soundscape that mimics the atmosphere of an authentic Berlin cabaret of the 1920s. Rather than traditional theatre seating, small tables and chairs will be set up — cabaretstyle, of course.
The evening will also feature a lecture from McMaster history professor Pamela Swett, who specializes in the history of Germany during the Weimar period and the Third Reich, about women in the Weimar Republic.
For tickets or more information, visit livelab.mcmaster.ca/series10db.