Reggae In Germany? No Problem!

Brian Montopoli Reports On Berlin's Cross-Cultural Phenoms

(CBS)  Public Eye's Brian Montopoli is writing weekly dispatches for CBSNews.com while living and working in Berlin as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship Program. He will return to Public Eye in October.

---

Mention reggae music, and it’s safe to assume those within earshot will not immediately think of Germany. Jamaica? Sure. Africa? Maybe. But Germany? The land many Americans associate with lederhosen and precision automotive engineering? Please.

So here’s a surprise for you: There’s reggae coming out of Deutschland. And here’s another: It’s not bad. Berlin’s Seeed, an 11-member collective formed in 1998, first hit big with an ode to their hometown called “Dickes B.” You can see the video, which is full of Berlin landmarks, here, and their video for “Music Monks” here. (And here’s their MySpace page.)

Seeed may not be known in America, but the band is huge here – they recently headlined a show in front of 120,000 people. I met some of Seeed’s rabid fans on Wednesday, when I attended a screening of the band’s new live DVD. It was an invitation-only event, and as I waited to enter, 18-year-old Carla Stadtmuller approached me. At her side was a friend clad in a Seeed tank-top.

Carla had an in – she’d won a contest allowing her entry to the screening, at which the band would be present – and she’d driven six and a half hours, and cut school, for the occasion. But there was a boy in the parking lot – see, he was the biggest Seeed fan around, besides her anyway, and he absolutely had to get in, and was there any way I might smuggle him in with me?

Yes, I said. Of course. And so in we went: Me, Carla, Carla’s friend, and young Steffen, the parking-lot refugee, a local in a baseball cap, white sweatshirt, and dark t-shirt with Berlin written across the front. When he isn’t listening to Seeed, Steffen told me in broken English, he listens to hip-hop. But he’s usually listening to Seeed.

The DVD came on, loud, and there it was: Seeed’s live show, the music beat-heavy, the performance a spectacle, choreographed backup dancers in tight blue outfits, band members in red suits and hats, horns gleaming, lights flashing, fans screaming lyrics.

“They’re one of the best live bands you’ll ever see,” said Jakob Kranz, a DJ with Berlin’s Radio Fritz. Kranz used to work with one of Seeed’s singers, Pierre Baigorry, in a Berlin record store. “Seeed is one of those rare groups that has a knowledge about this music, about reggae and Blue Beat and rock steady and ska. The band is real.”

After the screening, I sat outside, in the grass, with two members of Seeed: Singer Frank Delle, aka Eased, and Mo Delgado, who plays horns. There were empty bottles scattered around us, cola, water, beer.

“We want to break the cliché that Germans don’t have rhythm,” said Delle, an easygoing, dreadlocked half-German, half-Ghanaian. (“He’s our favorite,” Carla told me, staring back, when Delle walked into the screening room.) “Anyone just needs to see one Seeed show to know it’s not true.”

Seeed sometimes performs in English and Jamaican Patois, but most often they sing in German, a language that young people did not always embrace in their music.