Journey to the East

It’s with great sadness that I may be telling some of you who don’t know yet that Peter Uhlmann has passed away. For those of you who never had the pleasure of meeting him  let me tell you about this man and how he relates to my life.

There were basically two British folk bands who went into East Germany before the wall came down, Blowzabella and The Oyster Band. It’s remarkable, if you think about it, that they knew about us at all and that there was an audience for us. It wasn’t just an audience either it was a very very excited and enthusiastic audience. We were invited to go and do some workshops and a dance in Leipzig.

I have a very clear image of the hall. A sort of modern 1970’s prefabricated building. Very inauspicious and yet it became something. There are photographs somewhere of Dave Shepherd and I teaching Bourrées and on meeting another friend from that time recently I was told, “I dance my bourrées like this because of you’…we’re talking a long time ago as that first visit was in the second half of the 1980’s. Anyway, I digress.

At that time all travels felt exciting. Just as well really as we were in and out of the country like a yoyo, travelling many hundreds of miles round the continent, coming home and then doing it all again. We’d done a west german tour, I think that was organised by a man called Jurgan Smit and then this East German thing happened. On a practical note we knew we wouldn’t make money because they couldn’t pay in western currency and you couldn’t take East Marks out of the country. Can you imagine turning down an opportunity like that for the simple reason of money..no well we couldn’t. Also, I seem to remember that, all westerners had to change a minimum amount of western currency as part of the rules for being allowed in. We were helped with some travel costs and documentation by the British Council.

The border itself impressed me greatly. It must have been about a mile wide. It felt quite nerve wracking too as there was always the chance something might go wrong with the documentation and they’d turn you away. We’d have to drive up to one office thing, hand over papers, wait, eventually they would be stamped and then you went on to another office a bit further into the border…same thing. It seemed to take a long time but eventually we were through. Hoorah and on the road to Leipzig. The road was a phenomenon in it’s own right. A motorway yes but cobbled. It caused so much vibration that the little screws on the saxophones had started working their way out by the time we arrived. Lucky we spotted that really.

I can’t remember if we went to the hotel first or the gig but I remember both. The Hotel was a huge thing opposite the Haut Bahn Hoff. I have a clear memory of making a phone call back home which you could only do from the Hotel lobby and it had to be booked for a specific time .There was an echo and delay on the line that gave you the distinct impression you were being listened to.

We played this amazing gig and others played too. I have no details in my head but I do know we met the family Ulhmann. This was Peter, Christine and their two young sons Johannes and Andreas. We were invited to their apartment for tea. This in itself was extraordinary as it wasn’t strictly speaking allowed and each block of flats had someone resident responsible for reporting misdemeanours to the authorities . This didn’t stop Peter and Christine. They were determined. I fell in love with the family. The boys, Johannes and Andreas played violin and melodeon at the time and at the dance, right at the end, they wanted to play for Dave Shepherd. It was very late and they had school work to do the next day. They played the most perfect rendition of his beautiful tune ‘The Rose Of Raby’ and it was gob smacking. Two part harmony that they had picked out from listening to the track. Language was a barrier to a large degree because, as I mentioned in a previous blog, the East Germans tended to learn Russian rather than English but Christine worked as a translator. She specialised, I think, in business English. This meant that we could talk to everyone but mostly through Christine.

They lived in a block on an estate. All the blocks looked the same and what was more alarming was most of the cars looked the same. They were all Trabant or the very occasional Lada and there was little variation on colour. Powder blue or fawn. Apparently it took years to get one too. We laughed as we couldn’t imagine finding your car in these large car parks where all the cars looked the same. the apartment was upstairs and nice. Not huge by any means and absolutely crammed full of instruments and books. We visited them another time we were there too. It was because of those visits I was told that we all, that is all of Blowzabella, ended up with a Stasi file each. Obviously checking if we were a threat to security. Apparently this became known once the wall came down.

Those early visits were incredibly precious and they had an intensity about them that still means many of those people we met feel like firm and good friends and have a special place in my heart. I would go so far as to say I love many of them and it thrills me whenever I get to see them again. Special people in a very special time.

I can’t remember if I mentioned before but I’ll say it again anyway. Because we couldn’t spend the marks we took a whole load of people out to dinner and it still didn’t dint the money. We worked out that it had cost us the equivalent of about 45p each. Some people bought Pentax cameras, most of us bought kites and I bought a saxophone mouth price for my tenor sax which is still in a box that says GDR.

I’m going to stop there for this week as it’s already late but I’ll continue with this next week.

I do want to say that this story is as far as I remember and all humans have the ability to re-write their own history so I apologise for any inaccuracies they are not deliberate. More next week.