A living music archive

There are those things in life that we tend to approach with anything but a scientific outlook. For most, they include singing along to popular tunes or heading to a club for a concert. Not so for the researchers at the newly renamed Center for Popular Culture and Music in Germany. Formerly called the German Folk Song Archive, its researchers maintain scores and lyrics from the past but also examine how the content of the words to songs have changed over time, taking into account historical factors.

To understand their work, it's important to get to the bottom of what a "folk song" means. For decades, singing these songs was a matter of coercion - in schools, at church or in the military. "That, too, is part of the history of the folk song," says the archive's director, Michael Fischer.

Fischer and his colleagues don't take a narrow view when it comes to defining the object of their research. Along with traditional folk songs, German hit music and American pop songs both provide fodder for research.

Today and yesterday

Prior to 1950, folk music research viewed the songs simply as having two components: melody and words. That changed later with the evolution of pop music and its various forms of distribution.

"When you watch a casting show on TV, it's all about staging, youth culture and marketing music - and not about the lyrics or melody of a song," says Fischer. The center he manages belongs to the University of Freiburg and is located there.

Its current research examines the challenges facing the music industry due to the internet and streaming as well as how stars use their personas for success. Be it Brigitte Bardot or Conchita Wurst, singing talent alone is often not at the root of a star's success. It often comes down to stage presence and an unforgettable look.

John Meier and the mainstream

The archive's founder, a German language scholar and folklorist named John Meier, started collecting songs around 100 years ago. A focal point of his collection was battle and soldier songs, hand-written song lyrics and the first transcriptions of songs that had been passed on orally in the past. Meier worked to make sure his collection would be systematically expanded - and available to all.

He was able to articulate a clear definition for his conception of a folk song: it had to be passed on orally. But even 100 years ago, this approach was antiquated, because commercial, popular music already existed then alongside traditional music. Records with opera melodies or popular tunes, songbooks and, shortly thereafter, the advent of radio ensured that after a song was composed, everyone knew the words and could sing along. Today, we call that mainstream music.

Michael Fischer and the experts from various disciplines who work at the Center for Popular Culture and Music are often most interested in the music that everyone listens to. It's in that area that social trends can be recognized. That's why Fischer and his colleagues are pleased to have received 20,000 singles from various people's estates for their library.

"We don't have anything against rare material, but for research, mainstream products say much more. And that's where I see continuity with John Meier, who talked about the music of the masses," Fischer says.

Melodies for milions

"All aspects of life have always been set to music and presented in song. There have also always been those songs that stay with us and are passed on. But the more frequent phenomenon is certainly that each generation wants to sing its own, new songs," Fischer says. His center is sure to have enough material to keep it busy for another century.

The archives he oversees leave nothing out when it comes to popular music. There's something for every occasion, from drinking songs to political protest tunes. In 2010, the German Musical Archive became part of the library in Freiburg. Its collection expands thanks to donations from theaters and private individuals.

Music is part of a collective culture of remembrance. The library houses the "folk songs" of multiple generations in the form of albums containing groupings of hit singles. German artists such as Heino and Boney M. are represented, as are the likes of the Beatles, Madonna and Michael Jackson.

"These days, music is primarily taken in through the media," Fischer says - contrasting streaming, downloads and CDs with earlier forms of passing on music.

Understanding the social context in which music takes place is as important for many researchers as the songs themselves. As such, scholars of all stripes - including sociologists, psychologists, historians and theologians - can make interesting discoveries at Freiburg's Center for Popular Culture and Music.