I was clicking through the channels on the TV in my hotel room in Geilenkirchen yesterday afternoon in a fruitless search for the Heineken Cup final (3 bloody news channels but no Sky Sports) when, to my delight, I came across a German talk show in which the guests were talking about, wait for it, German folk songs! My German is too limited to understand much of what they were saying, but I was able to gather that they were talking about the attitude that Germans have to their own folk songs. Somebody talked about going to France and hearing French people singing French songs in public. Somebody else said something about a time when the singing of German folk songs was (ordered? compulsory? I may have missed something in the context). I could also pick out some references to the Nazi era. One of the guests, a tall, distinguished man with a trimmed grey beard got up to sing a folk song, accompanying himself on the guitar and my breath was taken away. He had the most beautiful voice I have ever heard from a male folk singer, barring Paul Robeson. There are perhaps one or two singers now alive that I have heard and would place in his class. Luckily for me, they put a title on screen identifying him - Hannes Wader. As soon as I get home I intend to buy every recording of his that I can find. It's safe to say that he is just about completely unknown to English speaking folk music fans - what a shame.

Edmund