“THE BABYLON BERLIN RAGAMUFFIN BAND”
The Tech Folk Orchestra in Concert
Wednesday October 23 8pm
Hemmle Recital Hall
About this Program
Listening tunes and songs from England, France, Ireland, Northumberland, New England, and Bassanda, with original choreographies and social dances. Featuring special guests the TTU Historical Performance Ensemble and Caprock English Bagpipe Consort, and the design and costume assistance of TCVPA Theatre & Dance students (Professor Mallory Prucha)
The Tech Folk Orchestra
websites: www.ttucelticensemble.com a/k/a http://www.eternalstalwartsorchestra.org
with special guests
The TTU Historical Performance Ensemble
The Caprock English Bagpipe Consort
This concert also inaugurates a NEW collaboration with students from the School of Theatre & Dance’s new Cosplay Minor (Professor Mallory Prucha). SOM and SOT&D students work together to create unique designs and personae that situate the players, singers, and dancers within the Mysterious Multiverse of Bassanda!
About Bassanda and the Eternal Stalwarts Orchestra: Symphonic Folk from a Lost World
Major inspiration for the Eternal Stalwarts Orchestra, the alter ego of the Tech Folk Orchestra, comes from the fictional country of “Bassanda”; a creation of VMC partners Chipper Thompson (chipperthompson.com) and Roger Landes (rogerlandes.com). We imagined the fictional “Eternal Stalwarts Orchestra”; in which, as part of an “alternate-history” frame, it’s alleged that a Soviet satellite’s official state folkloric ensemble (the “Bassanda National Radio Orchestra”) mutates, after the fall of Communism, into a free-lance ensemble engaged in a Never-Ending Tour. Performing “Symphonic Folk from a Lost World,” the BNRO/ESO has thus been heard in many permutations, including the “Classic 1952 Band”; the “1962 ‘Beatnik’ Band”; the “1965 Newport Folk Festival Band”; the “1885 Victorian “Steampunk” Band”; the post-apocalyptic “Great Southwestern ‘Sand Pirates’ Band”; the “1912 New Orleans Creole “Voodoo” Band”; the “1928 ‘Carnivale Incognito’ Band”; the “1934 Intergalactic Pandemic Popular Front Band”; the “1936 International Brigade Libertarias Band,” the “1942 ‘Casablanca’ Band,” the “1948 Berlin Airlift Band”—and, now, the c1950 “Babylon Ragamuffin Band.”
In Europe and the Americas, the post-World War II period of the late 1940s was a period of social, economic, and geopolitical upheaval. Although the Allies had “won” the conflict and defeated the Axis, Europe itself and much of East Asia were still reeling from the destruction of infrastructure, government, and—most tragically—millions of lives. Even beyond the military losses, the horrors of the Holocaust and of nuclear warfare triggered a massive reconsideration of much of what had passed for “normal” in the pre-War era. There were strikes and food shortages in France and England, extensive poverty in Germany and Eastern Europe, and a mood of only very uneasy “victory” in the USA. In the States, that unease—regarding shifts in class, gender, race, and economic expectations—played out in both material prosperity, with new suburbs and factories going up seemingly overnight, and also psychological distress, with the surface optimism of radio and live-TV “situation comedies” concealing darker undercurrents of sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism. In Hollywood, where the members of the BNRO had been crucial backstage and soundstage contributors to wartime classic films (the so-called “1942 Casablanca Band”), and in Berlin, where a nucleus of players later (1947) relocated on board the electromagnetic, oscillating screw-retrofitted C-47 plane called Le Oiseaux Vert (The Big Green Bird), disappearing into the city of the “Berlin Air Lift” as nightclub musicians and denazification operatives, a literally darker aesthetic prevailed, especially in the cinematic genre fittingly called “film noir.” In these movies, men and women were tormented by traumatic memories, driven by anger and greed, and subject to the shadowy whims of unknown societal forces. To the Bassandans, who had experienced similar social dynamics during the long twilight of first Tsarist and then Soviet dictatorships, such dark-tinged pessimism was to be recognized and resisted. Parody, disguise, and dark humor thus formed part of the arsenal of the “Babylon Berlin Ragamuffin Band,” whose clownish or nightmarish presentation obscured but did not deter their fierce commitment to human rights.
Related correspondence, personal biographies, timelines, galleries & archival commentary can be found at: http://www.eternalstalwartsorchestra.org; likewise search Facebook for “Eternal Stalwarts Orchestra.”
Yes! If you are interested to participate in one of the VMC’s community-facing ensembles or partners (Historical Performance Music Ensemble, Balkan Ensemble, Eternal Stalwarts, and/or Caprock English Bagpipe Consort), feel free to contact their respective directors. Auditions typically occur in the first weeks of each academic semester.
Coming in Fall 2025:
The VMC-hosted Night Watch Project: Re-Sounding the Early Modern from Brugel to Rembrandt
VMC Staff
Dr Christopher J Smith, Dr Roger Landes, Dr Angela Mariani
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