Phoebe Snow and the folk album Nina Hagen says “fell from heaven”
The advent of punk music allowed some genuinely bizarre characters to rise to prominence in accordance with the movement’s staunch countercultural and deliberately shocking tendencies. However, few artists could stand up to the truly weird and wonderful character of Nina Hagen, who helped provide an endlessly unique voice to the punk scene of East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Hagen’s music carved out its own place in the punk history of Germany, although the recorded material was often eclipsed by the spectacle of her live appearances and concerts.
Referring to NIna Hagen exclusively as ‘punk’ feels somewhat reductive of her discography. After all, the East Berliner drew from an incredibly broad range of influences. Due to the nature of popular music under the authoritarian regime of the DDR, Hagen’s influences were largely limited to whatever the young performer could get her hands on, either through word-of-mouth or the extensive music black market, which saw countless bootleggers making DIY recordings of prohibited Western music. As a result, a young Hagen found solace in the tones of stars like Janis Joplin, The Beatles, and David Bowie.
Aside from bootlegged Western rock, Hagen also learned to appreciate the revolutionary power of folk music from a young age. In many ways, the landscape of politically-charged folk music inspired a lot of the anti-establishment tendencies of later punk rock, particularly in the case of Hagen’s stepfather, Wolf Biermann.
An incredibly important figure in the musical history of the DDR, Biermann penned a plethora of folk tracks denouncing the totalitarian power of the East German state, which eventually led to his exile from East Germany in 1976, which soon caused Hagen to follow, relocating to the West.
Biermann was not the only folk singer who inspired Hagen during those early days. She also held a special place in her heart for the American singer Phoebe Snow, whose genre-defying sound drew from folk, as well as jazz, roots, and even soul. Speaking to Goldmine in 2022, Hagen selected Snow’s 1974 debut as a life-changing album. “My very first Phoebe Snow vinyl treasure was her debut album,” she shared, “smuggled over from the West into the East by dear friends of mine in 1975.”
Remembered predominantly for its hit single, ‘Poetry Man’, the eponymous album firmly established Snow as a leading figure in the American folk jazz scene of the 1970s, but it also seemed to have quite an impact across the Atlantic in East Berlin. Continuing in her love of the record, Hagen said, “It [played] 24/7 at my home in East Berlin. This album came as a surprise; it fell from Heaven, so to speak. It opened up new horizons of healing and soul-stretching for me during my departing times from the East to the West.”
Although it is difficult for anybody to imagine the difficulties of relocating from East Berlin to West, especially in connection to an enemy of the state like Wolf Biermann, it is easy to see how Phoebe Snow’s debut would provide a fitting soundtrack. After all, its trailblazing and diverse sound, coupled with the deeply affecting voice of Snow, makes it a perfect album for virtually any occasion. “This and all the other Phoebe Snow albums were (and still are) a super treasure for my heart and soul,” Hagen concluded.
Upon listening to Hagen’s early work, it is certainly a difficult task to hear a definite influence of folk music, but the revolutionary spirit of the genre was never lost on the German punk icon. Throughout her extensive discography, Hagen has dedicated herself to challenging authority and pioneering a variety of previously unexplored sounds.
