Remarks:
This song went to #1 on both the American R&B and pop charts in 1975. It was the first German pop song ever to go to number one in the States. American-born Donna Summer, though, came out of the same Munich music scene at the same time. Ramona Wulf, the black singer you see in the video, is German but has a black American father.
Lyrics:
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Up, up to the sky
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Up, up to the sky
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Up, up to the sky
That was always such a throw away tune for me. It was like elevator music. It was always such a big yawn for me.
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I luv how you put the lyrics in your article – just to be clear. Seriously, I was thinking when are the lyrics going to start lmao.
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Good looking women flailing around in form hugging, shiny sh*t probably helped.
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As simple as the song is, you have to give it credit for not only going to number one in a foreign market, but winning an award there: it won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance in 1976.
I think part of what helped it was that it was one of the first disco songs to hit America. The violins, the beat, etc. That sound is old hat now, but back then it was new.
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@ Bulanik
Silver Convention did start out as a studio band with session singers. Once they started getting hits they hired professional performers. Ramona Wulf, for example, was a singer in her own right before joining Silver Convention.
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@ Bulanik
Thanks for the Herbie Mann link.
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Nelson George on Eurodisco, the genre to which this song belongs:
He is mainly comparing it to the soul music of the early 1970s that came before it.
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@Abagond, Ramona’s father was likely an American GI stationed in Germany. Most of the brown babies born of German mothers and Black American GI’s were either adopted by Black American families or raised without the fathers.
I think her story maybe similar. Anyway, i’ve heard the song at least one. Not really noteworthy.
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Off topic a bit–i never hear of black women having children with German men–was this not allowed or something? Just curious….
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Tiffany Lane AKA rapper Charlie Baltimore has an African American mother and a German father. (You may remeber her best as one of Biggie’s girlfriends after he became famous.) I think it is more commonly the other way around (Black man, German woman) because there are more Black men in the military, and men seek out women, whereas women usually wait to be sought out.
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@Bulanik, wow! Thanks for the info. I had no idea that the population of blacks in Germany was so small. The way people have talked about it around me made it seem as though there was a sizeable amount.
I didn’t get any of this in world history class.
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@Bulanik,
Yes–the experience of Blacks in Germany has always been of interest to me. Lately i have only been able to find the narratives of Black men in Germany either as soldiers or immigrants, but it would be nice to get the perspective of Black women who have been raised there.
I will check out these links and let you know what i think–or have questions about 🙂
Again, thank you so much!
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@ Legion
I was not expecting this thread to get more than like four or five comments. Ramona Wulf makes the subject of Afro-Germans an acceptable tangent. Especially since I have no post on the subject (but should!).
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I tried to find the story of this one black german guy who lived trough WW2 and the nazi years. He himself saw himself first anf foremost as a german and tried to get into the Hitler Jugend, which caused a bit confusion in that organisation, and if my memory does not play tricks, he also tried to enlist into the army or the Waffen SS (the army/military wing of the SS) believing it was his duty as a german to fight for his fatherland.
His mother was white german woman and father black, and he really believed himself to be a proper german all the way at that time. Sorry I could not find the story in the Net and place a link here. If I do find it, I will put in here.
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@Bulanik, going back to what you stated earlier about the hypocrisy of white German women–i have heard on several occasions that the German women who had relationships with Black men were in fact German Nationalists or had pledged some kind of allegiance to the Third Reich prior to Germany losing the war… this is odd as i am told repeatedly that whites in ir relationships are not racists…
I guess i couldn’t imagine what it would have been like for those kids born to these couples….
I also wonder if the low number of marriages that occurred between German women and Black men was because a lot of these guys had sweethearts waiting at home for them and had no intention of marrying their German girlfriends while stationed there…
I do understand that Black GIs would have needed permission to marry from their military superiors–some were denied who actually wanted to marry German women, but so were white American GIs–i am thinking this has something to do with Germany’s rules about true German citizenship. They wanted German women to have children only with German men.
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I remember when Boris Becker, famous pro tennis star, married his black girlfriend there was some buzz about that in Germany. On the other hand, such tv-series like Der Alte etc. have had black germans playing cops, politcians, business men etc. at least since late 70’s. So the situation is not so simple, I assume. We should ask from black germans about their experiences.
As for the turks and others, the germans created a fancy way of disguising their attitude: they were not called immigrants or such, but GUEST workers. This name implied that after they would be no longer needed they were going to go back home. This name is still in use in some contexts.
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@abagond, legion:
There it is mentioned: some black germans were in Wermacht and in Hitler Jugend. But I try to locate that one guy, his story was really weird. He really wanted to get into Waffen SS. BUT he did not get in, for some reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_Nazi_Germany
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PS. They actually had some blacks serving in the Waffen SS multinational forces as part of some arab SS troops but these were not black germans. There was also an indian SS troop and even an russian SS force when the germans became desperate enough, even though the SS was supposed to be the fortress of pure germanian warriors.
And just to clarify: The Waffen SS was the army of the SS and it was directly under Hitlers command. They were not part of the SS police forces who did most of the holocaust things nor they were part of the camp services. One Waffen SS division, Totenkopf, was formed from former camp guards and was notorius even among the other Waffe SS troops.
If my memory does not fail me here, only one Waffen SS division was not accused of the crimes against humanity etc. and that was the Wiking division. All the others did something, like Das Reich, which burned all the people in one french village after somebody shot one of them from that village. Soviet officials claimed that the Wiking also participated in war crimes and at least one finnish guy who served in that division (there was a whole batallion of finns and some others serving in different regiments and units) said in an interview before he died that they had killed civilians.
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@abagond, legion:
Here is at least one black guy in German army during WW2. Looks like Wermacht, the regular army, but I am not absolutely sure.
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@bulanik:
Thanks for that video.
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@bulanik:
I think the black german in the picture is not an SS soldier but a Wermacht one, that is he propably served in regular army but never the less. Pretty weird concerning the times and the place.
The Waffen SS started to change pretty fast once the war began. At first it was meant to be the aryan army, the army of all the germanic people. Pretty soon they allowed some finns (non germanic) in and once the losses became irreplaceble, they took in anyone who was crazy enough. Or stupid enough. It became sort of the Foreign Legion of the Third Reich.
The arab legion was part of the effort of some extreme islamists and arab nationalists and because the nazis were willing to work with any one who hated the jewish as much as they did.
The Grand mufti of Jerusalem was very eager to work with the nazis in order to eliminate all the jews from the world. A poece of palestinian history which now is not that fondly remembered among the palestinians. Grand mufti’s reasoning was partly “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”, and also partly his ideology which was antisemitic and anti-jewish.
Some arabs really believed that nazi Germany would reward them somehow and nazis of course promised the moon and some. North african arabs believed that they could get rid of their colonial masters with the germans, without realising that would the germans win, they would eventually wipe out all the “wrong” ethnic groups or make them slaves. They had all the plans ready.
The irony is that during the Algerian liberation wars, many former SS men served in the French foreign legion and fought against the algerians in a very bloody and horrific war, which claimed hunderds of thousands of lives.
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Yea,
I do remember reading something about Hitler favoring the Arab/Muslim approach to religion–something about he liked that Arabs were willing to fight and die for their religion..
I have seen some videos of young black men in Germany professing a sort of allegiance to Nazism today–not many, but a few have put up videos on youtube. Their claims was that they enjoyed political freedom under the Third Reich.
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