>> Stephen Winick: Welcome. I'm Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. For many years, we've presented the Homegrown Concert series featuring the best in folk music and dance from around the world at the Library of Congress in Washington. The challenges of the 2020 global pandemic taught us that online video concerts allow us to present a wider range of artists than presenting all our concerts in Washington. So now, in 2023, we're presenting a mix of live concerts in Washington and pre-recorded video concerts from artists around the world. And we are very excited to be able to present one of my favorite groups, Deitsch, who play traditional folk music from Germany with modern arrangements. When we can, we like to do interviews with our homegrown artists. So am here with Gundrun Walther and Jurgen Treyz of Deitsch. So welcome and thank you both for this interview. >> Gundrun Walther: Hi. >> Jrgen Treyz: Hello. >> Stephen Winick: So could you begin by saying your own names for us so that people will know how they're really pronounced and not how I pronounce them? >> Jrgen Treyz: It was not that bad. So my name is Jurgen Treyz, and my name is Gundrun Walther. >> Stephen Winick: Excellent. Now I'm going to ask you some questions about your own background. So beginning with Gundrun. I understand that you come from a family of folk musicians. That's international in scope. So can you tell us a little bit about that background? >> Gundrun Walther: So as far as I know, my great grandfather started it. He was a fiddle player. He played for dances. So he would have played a lot of the repertoire that we are playing or similar tunes for dancing in the village or the surrounding villages. He walked to his gigs and played and he was paid in wine and potatoes, I hear. [Laughing] And then I guess the following generations just took it from there. So both my parents also played fiddle. My great granddad on the other side of the family played the diatonic accordion, so nothing is new. And my brother started to play Irish music when he was 17 and he is 12 years older than me, so I was immersed in Celtic music from a very young age. But also I got all the German folk songs from my mom's side. She was singing to me in the evening, so that's how I grew up. >> Stephen Winick: Excellent. And... And Jurgen, how about you? What was your background like? Was there music there as well? >> Jrgen Treyz: Yes, there was, not so much in the family, but I started with the recorder. That's an instrument everybody has to learn in Germany. Or at least it was 30, 40 years back. Then I moved on to the piano, got classical lessons for seven years. But then when I grew 14, classical piano did not seem to be that cool anymore. So I picked up the guitar, electric in the first place and played a lot of rock n roll, blues, soul, stuff like that. But also love for the acoustic guitar came up immediately, and that was kind of fueled by a very young teacher that I had. He was not a music teacher. He was in our school and taught our class German and politics and stuff. But he was a big folk lover and he kind of introduced me. Before that, I had known, like American folk, Bob Dylan and British folk and stuff like that, but not so much the traditional folk music. And that guy, Uli is his name, he introduced me to traditional dance music from several regions in Germany, from France, also from Germany. And he also made me aware of instruments like bagpipes or hurdy gurdies and that-- So for most of the time it was two sides of the coin. I did electric music, rock music, but I also was very much interested in those acoustic sound shapes and bits. >> Stephen Winick: Right. Well, you mentioned that everyone must learn recorder as part of normal education in Germany. So could you tell us a little bit about music education, as you know, how kids are taught music at first. >> Jrgen Treyz: I mean, the recorder that was actually in school in the first two years of school. You got some basic musical education and that was-- the instrument of choice was recorded because it's cheap, I guess. But then taking it from there, all the kids were encouraged to pick up. Now, may I say a proper instrument? I don't want to say something-- >> Gundrun Walther: Dangerous. Dangerous. >> Jrgen Treyz: Our music teacher would show us different instruments and that's where I went for the piano. Probably because we had a piano at home. My mom also played classical piano when she was younger, so that was the obvious choice. >> Gundrun Walther: But to answer your question in the general way, I think you wanted to know, like how music is taught generally in German schools. And I think starting with the recorder is still done in some schools, but not as much probably as it was when we were young. I think nowadays teachers also use like digital, like recordings to sing along to or to dance along to. And actually Jurgen and his studio, where we're sitting right now, is producing a lot of music for schools to like, you know, sound examples. This is how Latin music sounds and all that. So it's quite interesting. I think a lot of music teaching in schools has changed from the time when we knew it to how it's done these days. And I think a lot of interesting things have developed in the last few years. Sadly, we have to say, and probably the same over your way during the pandemic because of the digital lessons or the remote teaching, lots of things couldn't be done like they were supposed to be done. And now lots of teachers are missing. So I think from what I hear from lots of my pals who have young children is lots of the music lessons are actually not taking place at the moment. But we hope that there's a way forward because it's so important to have like music in your life when you're very young. Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Yes, absolutely. And I wonder in Germany whether traditional German folk songs and music are part of that education when kids are in school. >> Jrgen Treyz: Not so much. I mean, when I was young, it was strictly classical. You were taught the art folks lead, which is our word for a traditional folk song. You would learn some of them in school, in primary school. But then it was all concentrated on classical music. And nowadays contemporary music like pop, rock, Latin, blues, jazz, that gets more and more incorporated, but not so much traditional music in Germany. >> Gundrun Walther: Sadly not. But, you know, some kindergartens actually use folk songs to sing along to. And I think it should be widely encouraged to do it because that's how I grew up. And they're brilliant. You know, they're everything. Great stories, lovely songs, catchy tunes. Why not? I mean, you know. >> Stephen Winick: Very much. Yeah. Wonderful. So, you know, you mentioned, Gundrun, that when you were young, your older brother was involved in Irish music. And so I've been a music journalist for a long time, and I used to interview a lot of groups from Europe, like in the '90s. And I would talk to, you know, Varttina from Helsinki, and they would say, well, you know, it was Helsinki in the 1970s, so everyone was playing Irish music. And then I would talk to La Moscona from Spain and they would say, you know, it was Madrid in the 1970s, so everyone was playing Irish music. So was that also true in Germany? Was the Celtic music wave a big part of people getting involved in traditional music? >> Gundrun Walther: Absolutely. I mean, the reason why I'm sitting here now in this profession is because I saw touring bands from Ireland and Scotland, not the 70s because that's when I was born. >> Gundrun Walther: But like late 80s, beginning of the 90s, that was the time when I saw like the Battlefield Band and, you know, Planxty and you know, other bands that from that era who were touring in Germany as part of the big folk festivals, the Irish folk festivals, Scottish Folk Festival, and I was completely blown away and everybody tried to play those tunes, you know, and everybody was really into that music. So I think they did a lot of groundbreaking work, for me, as I can only speak for me, but that attracted me to that kind of music. And then I wanted to know what the music of my own home country sounds like if you treat it in a modern way. >> Stephen Winick: Right. And as I said, I've seen that trajectory in people from a lot of other countries. Was that true of you as well, Jurgen, or were you more really involved in rock n roll in that period? >> Jrgen Treyz: No, it's absolutely true. You could hardly avoid to come across Irish bands because they, yeah, there was a lot of gigs going on, tours going on, concerts going on. So. Yeah, and it was good. >> Stephen Winick: All right. So one other influence that I think is very interesting in Germany that may be more prevalent there than in some other countries that I know of in Europe. And this is how I first came to know about you guys, was that I got interested in a group that Jurgen was in called Adaro, which was a medieval rock band, right? So medieval music. So there's a sort of connection between the folk scene and the medieval music scene in Germany. Can you talk a little bit about that? >> Jrgen Treyz: There's a lot of interest from medieval music in Germany. I think it started in the '90s probably, there are a lot of like medieval fairs all over the country and certainly there would be music, there would be bands playing. And I mean, strictly speaking, in the original, it was just traditional music, just older traditional music with its roots in the Middle Ages, not like the-- Most of the repertoire that we are playing with, which is maybe only 200 or 250 years old. >> Gundrun Walther: The instrumental. >> Jurgen Treyz: The instrumentals, yeah. Songs are a bit older. So there is a big market for that archaic sounding medieval music. And then in the 90s there was a big wave of bands kind of putting together this medieval... The medieval instruments and the medieval tunes mixed with rock and roll or even metal hard rock band contexts. And there are bands that got really famous. They are really big stars over here, and that wave is still going. I think it's over-- Might be over the peak, but there's still a lot of that music around. >> Gundrun Walther: And for some people that would be the first time they would see a hurdy gurdy or some bagpipes, you know, on a stage in one of those concert halls. They're playing halls like big halls these days, those bands, but also on medieval fairs, some people would. That's the first time they see an instrument like that. And then maybe some people get attracted to folk music where they like see that used in a different context, but the same kind of instruments. So I think that's a link there as well, like not only the repertoire but also the instruments. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. So similar to what you mentioned with Irish music that people see those fiddles and Irish bagpipes and they say, Hey, there's a German equivalent. And with the medieval stuff, there's a more modern equivalent to all of that. So yeah, thank you for explaining that for us. So your instruments in the group, Gundrun primarily, you mentioned fiddle and diatonic accordion. So those are pretty common on the German folk scene? >> Gundrun Walther: Yes, I would say so. Yeah. Nothing special. >> Stephen Winick: Right? Well, right, but... >> Gundrun Walther: The only thing maybe that's special is the tuning of my box because it's a diatonic instrument, but it's a hybrid between two systems. So there's the Irish system, which is like semitones. So you have C sharp D or the B, C tuning, and then the French system would be in force. So you have D, T or C, F or, you know, one of those and mine is C sharp D, D. So that's a combination of two systems which comes in very handy. So I can play both Irish music and more continental European music, and I can also do song backing with the left hand. So it's quite good I think. >> Stephen Winick: That actually is really interesting. And it's not something that you would necessarily notice just seeing you play a couple of tunes on it, but that makes a lot of sense. So just to mention for the audience, so the advantage of the Irish system, the semitone half step system is that you end up with a chromatic run. You can play all the half tones and that's important for some of those Irish tunes and you can't really do that on the boxes that are tuned in fourths. So you have one set that's a half step apart from another set, and then your third row is a fourth away. That's really interesting. So thanks for explaining that. That's great. And then Jurgen, you're the guitarist and, you know, guitar, of course, is a fairly recent introduction to a lot of the European folk musics. So explain how, you know, the methods of playing the guitar which were developed for other music, you know, are so helpful in German folk music as well. >> Jrgen Treyz: Yeah. I mean what I'm playing is kind of a mixed bag. Things that I've picked up from different genres of music, first again, the Irish tradition of, you call that backing a tune. So the accompaniment of a tune and also in Irish music, the open tunings are quite common. Most of all, that gut tuning, that's just the notes of the strings DADGAD. And that's the tuning I play most of the time at least. So that gives you a kind of a fuller sound. And you can leave lots of open strings ringing through which colors all the chords so that they are not just standard major or minor chords, but they would also always be some extensions coming through the open strings. So that's a sound I always loved and which I tried to incorporate into the German tunes as well. So that would be one thing. And on the other hand, after school I studied jazz guitar, electric. So that also-- Yeah, made me aware of lots of advanced cards, I'd say, which are not traditional in our type of music. I can squeeze the odd one of those cards or alterations in. >> Stephen Winick: Right. >> Gundrun Walther: And the rest of us. What? Excuse me? What? [Laughing] >> Stephen Winick: So, yeah. You went to the Munich Guitar Institute, is that right? Because that's quite a well known school for guitar in Germany, so. Yeah. >> Jrgen Treyz: It was made up after the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles. I think two students who studied there in the U.S. just copied the concept and brought it over to Germany in the end of '70s, I think, and it's been very successful ever since. At that time in the '70s there were only two universities all over Germany, where you could study jazz music, was only Hamburg and Cologne I think. >> Gundrun Walther: Cologne, yeah. >> Jrgen Treyz: All the rest was only classical. That has changed a lot. Now you can study not only jazz, but also pop music and everything. Not traditional music though. But back then, this Munchener Gitarren Institute was just one of the few possibilities where you could study other than classical guitar. Other styles than classical guitar. >> Stephen Winick: So you just mentioned that you can't study traditional music at university, which is now becoming fairly common in countries like England and Ireland. They have programs in universities. Do you think that might be on the horizon in Germany for someone to introduce that? >> Gundrun Walther: We are certainly working towards it. So one of our projects that we're just launching is for next year. There's a really big world music and folk festival in Germany called Rudolstadt Festival in the former east of Germany. And they, together with us, are working on a youth orchestra project that we will lead next year. But we will work with about 40 young people between 12 and 23, and we want to present that on a like a big stage and with television broadcasting and all that. And it will be a rehearsal camp before the festival and then a presentation concert and we got funding for that. So that's one of the projects where I hope like it will generate some, you know, exposure for our kind of music and for it to be taken more seriously. And we're working with the institutions that also run the national youth classical orchestras. And so they're putting it out. They put it in their newsletter, they advertising for the youth folk orchestra. So we're trying to like slowly but surely work towards recognition of the music and an appreciation of the music. And then hopefully when it's taken more seriously, then maybe you will be able to study it in the future. Who knows? >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, I certainly hope so because it's done wonders in other countries. Of course, Finland and Ireland, as I mentioned, these programs have helped a lot and really gotten a whole new generations involved in the music. So let's talk about the formation of Deitch. I mean, I have the earliest recording, I think. So it was just a duo at that point. So how did you come together and start performing the kinds of music that you do in Deitch? >> Gundrun Walther: The first thing we founded together was Cara. That's our Irish band, toured also in the US, I think eight times or something. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Gundrun Walther: With Scottish and Irish members at the moment and we founded Cara and then while we were playing Celtic music, we also talked loads about like heritage and folk music in general. And then I think the two of us just got that notion of like, Hey, why don't we try to make a record with just traditional German music? And then we did. I think Kunigskinder is the one you're referring to, right? That was the first one in 2005, and that was a record where we mainly recorded songs. There's a few select tunes on it, but it's mainly songs that I knew from growing up, and we found some in old books, but that was the first record. And then with the second one in 2009, I think. >> Jrgen Treyz: But I just wanted to add that those were not duo albums. We had loads of guest musicians, all kinds of instruments on both of the first albums. But it was never like a fixed band. It was more like a project we did with copies. We even did gigs with drumming and drums and electric bass on Big Festival, but it was not a constant lineup. But it kept changing. And now with the actual release Kunigskinder, I think we have finally-- Midsommer sessions. Sorry. And the lineup that you see in the video, that's now a proper band I would say. >> Stephen Winick: And how did that happen? How did you expand in that way? >> Gundrun Walther: Well, Stefan and Bob are really good friends and have been for years. So what we do, like, they also both play Irish music, but also versatile and like different European traditions. And they are just two people in a circle of friends that we regularly meet for sessions and just informal tunes and sing alongs. And they are also two of the people that we always spend New Year's Eve with every year. So it's like we're here in the house and we're having a party and we're playing tunes through the early morning hours. So that's what we do. And so from playing sessions, really, we knew the two of them and we knew that we played really well together. And then we worked with both of them in different contexts with other bands. And then when we were thinking about recording the new album, we thought, These two are actually the dream team for us to play with. And we tried it, and the first rehearsal was just, we didn't talk about music at all. We just played it and it was brilliant. And basically even in the first rehearsal, it pretty much sounded like what you hear on the album. So that was amazing. Just amazing. >> Stephen Winick: That is amazing. That's always great when things click like that. Yeah. >> Jrgen Treyz: And I remember us, before that we were thinking because we had released two Deitsh albums, we have been thinking what would be good possibilities line up wise? What would be good instruments that make us? Yeah, make it interesting. Should we maybe work with drums and electric bass or maybe with brass instruments? But in the end, nothing was so convincing. And then we kind of thought, why are we not just playing this music with our people and favorite musicians? And that was a good choice I think. >> Stephen Winick: Well, it certainly sounds, you know, it sounds like you've been playing together forever. You know, it sounds like a very polished and worked out band. But also, as you say, they're just great musicians individually. So tell us a little about them individually, about their, you know, their music, if you could. >> Gundrun Walther: Do you want to talk about Stephan and talk about Barbara? >> Jrgen Treyz: So Stephan, who plays the flutes and the bagpipes, he plays a German variation of the bagpipes, which is called Shafer Pipe, which would translate into Shepherd's pipe. I think there are similar instruments in France, in Belgium, even in England. But that's one of the types of bagpipes that's original in Germany that has been played a lot two, three, 400 years back. But his first instrument is actually the flute. He plays an Irish flute, so a wooden flute. And he not only plays them, he's also an instrument maker and he builds them. And I can say that he has quite a good reputation for his flute and he's selling them all over the globe. So he's kind of part time musician, instrument maker. >> Gundrun Walther: He's annoyingly talented. >> Jrgen Treyz: In many, in many fields. [Laughing] >> Jrgen Treyz: So that's about Stephen. >> Gundrun Walther: And he's from the northwest of Germany. I don't know if you ever like, geography or like. Yeah, Northwest, close to the Netherlands from an outsider's point of view. And Barbara is from the very south of Germany, from Bavaria, and she has a very traditional Bavarian background, which is in a way a little bit similar to my upbringing, but even more traditional, if you want, because her parents were playing with all the siblings in a family band. Her dad is building traditional Bavarian bagpipes and hurdy gurdies not professionally, but like with a passion, and they're really good instruments. And so Barbara's first gig, I think, was played when she was eight. That's when the family decided she was old enough to be on stage with the family band and they were playing for dances and traditional Bavarian music. So that was her upbringing. And so she played fiddle and bagpipes as well. And then she took part in a workshop for Irish fiddle playing when she was, I think 18 or 19. And guess who the teacher was. [Laughing] And that's how we met, because I thought like, you know, it was a good workshop. I had like 15 students and they were all quite good, but she was outstanding, you know. She was like not really played Irish music before, but she was laughing it up like I would say something and the next minute she would say, like that. And I was like, Oh, that Barbara. She's talented. And she was like, Oh, I like her. She's nice. So we took to each other instantly and have been friends ever since. And then, yeah, and she like got on the fast lane because she learned about, like all the Irish tunes that exist in the world in about a year and a half or something like to the stage where sometimes she knows tunes that I don't know. I don't know how she did that, but she's also annoyingly talented. >> Stephen Winick: Well, I will say from the perspective of our audience, I think all four of you are annoyingly talented. But but the music is not annoying. It's just beautiful. So we want to thank you for being here and for the concert. Could you talk a little about your repertoire? Because I know-- So, Gundrun, you mentioned that some of the songs come from your childhood, that you learned them from your mother or your family, but also you mentioned manuscripts a lot for the tunes. So could you tell us where some of your repertoire comes from? >> Gundrun Walther: I'll start with the songs and then I'll hand over to you for the tunes, because the songs, like you say, partially I learned them just from the family tradition, but others are also from like a lot of-- we collect old songbooks, you know. So some of them are even out of print and you can only get them in archives or, you know, bookstores for rare old books. And we have a tome. It's like three volumes. And they're like this thick. You could like kill someone with one of these books and they're a musicologists collection or trying to be the complete collection of German folk songs. And it starts like in the 13th, 14th century, and then it goes all the way to romanticism and, you know, 19th century. And that's like something where I got a lot of songs from or versions of songs from. And it's great because you can compare different versions of like you have a story about something and then you're going to this book and you're looking up like ten different versions with ten different endings. And, you know, it's really exciting. So some of the big ballads that we sing, we made up of different like bits and pieces of different versions that we glued together to a narrative that we really liked. So that's how we work with the songs. >> Stephen Winick: Excellent. >> Jrgen Treyz: And for the traditional dance music, for the tunes, there has been a very interesting development over the last 15 years because loads of those old manuscripts have shown up only recently. 20 years ago, it was really hard to find traditional tunes that were, may I say, that were any good. >> Jrgen Treyz: There were a couple and everybody knew them, but there was not much around, even if you looked for them. But that has absolutely changed completely. And there have been some big collections that have showed up. The most important, I think, is the Sammlung Dalhoff, the Dalhoff music collection that goes back to a family over three generations by the name of Dalhoff, and they were all employed by the church as organists and also as Cousteau. Do you know that-- >> Gundrun Walther: No, but-- >> Jrgen Treyz: The janitor of a church. I don't know the word. >> Jrgen Treyz: So they played the organs in the church. So they were educated musicians. They had studied music, classical music. But they also had over three generations, like a little wedding band, a dance band going on. And since they were studied musicians, they could write down their repertoire which is quite uncommon in traditional music because it's usually an oral tradition where tunes are passed on just from-- you learn it from the playing of somebody else. But this family Dalhoff, their music was found under the roof in a little village, in a house, in a little village in the Munsterland. And it contained, I think, seven thick books with 900 melodies or something. So quite a vast like the O'Neill's book for German traditional and those books there were found and then they were digitalized and made available on the internet by the German Staatsbibliothek. So that's also a-- >> Stephen Winick: A National library. Yeah like us, right. >> Jrgen Treyz: And that's just one example. There were loads and loads of smaller tune collections that have been found, have been made available. So it's a completely different story. If you look into traditional German dance music from-- there's hardly any 20 years ago. So now there's a huge world to explore and all this very, very new because they have just recently turned up so. >> Gundrun Walther: And it's getting more so like there's still collection center. Look, I've just-- >> Stephen Winick: Oh, that's great. >> Gundrun Walther: This is three volumes of my song Bible. >> Stephen Winick: Excellent. >> Gundrun Walther: It's great. And it's like, I don't know if you can see it, but it's like really old writing and some of the songs of melodies and some of the songs just have the lyrics and you can see like, I bookmark stuff that I want to investigate further. So like, this is work for long winter nights. >> Stephen Winick: I definitely recognize that. I have the same sort of system at home. It's in my basement, right? And I have all these songbooks and I, you know, put little post-its in it for ones that I might want to learn someday. So that's I think most singers would recognize that as a great fun. Yeah. So much fun. So yeah, so that's great to see. And so now you've mentioned libraries and archives as an important source. And of course we love that because we are the Library of Congress. And so that's one thing that your National Library has done to help traditional music right there is to digitize those manuscripts. Are there also archives of recordings of field recordings the way we have at the Library of Congress? >> Gundrun Walther: Not in that extent, I think which is very sad. But I've come across a few field recordings in smaller archives where, for example, people travel to Pennsylvania, where lots of people from my region in Germany went to, one was it in the 1840s, 1850s. I think when like we had a couple of like really bad harvests and people were starving and really poor and they emigrated from the southwest of Germany to Pennsylvania. And it's funny because when we toured America and we were driving through Pennsylvania, I really thought, it looks like home. And I guess that's why they settled there because, you know, there's a similarity. And so they took the songs with them. And some people, like Musicologists, traveled over and recorded old people singing old Palatine. That's the dialect I'm speaking. Palatine songs. And I listened to some of those recordings and it's great. Like, it's really funny. Really old songs that I didn't know, like my granny would probably have known, but I didn't. So it was great. Very interesting. >> Stephen Winick: That is wonderful. And I went to graduate school in Pennsylvania, and one of my professors was a Pennsylvania German folklorist named Don Yoder, who collected a lot of German language songs and spirituals and things like that in his community. So I'm familiar with some of those archival recordings on our side. And we have some of them in the Library of Congress, too. So you're welcome to come visit us and we will play you our recordings of Pennsylvania, Dutch and Pennsylvania German music. >> Gundrun Walther: I would totally love that. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. Excellent. So let's talk a little about your approach to arrangement of these tunes, because so you start out with a book and it has the tune in it, but that's not exactly what you end up playing. So how do you put that onto your four instruments? >> Gundrun Walther: Well, you see, that's what I meant when I said the first rehearsal with Barbara and Stefan was pretty much what you hear on the album, like give and take some notes because it's not fixed arrangements. It's just play like in the moment and all of us just listen to each other and come up with like little counter lines and chords. And of course sometimes things can go south and it doesn't really sound nice, but mostly it works well. So what we did for this album with Summer Sessions, which is the material that you hear in the online concert as well, is we really didn't arrange a lot of things. What we did arrange was the interludes of the songs. So we have a structure to a song that's important. Like you have a verse chorus interlude pattern that we follow. But for the tunes, for the instrumental music, we did really not arrange a lot. It's just spontaneous music making. >> Jrgen Treyz: And at least for me, that's quite unusual because I work as a music producer and arranger for various projects and I've arranged music for a lot of CDs and other recordings, but Deitsch is actually a band that does not need an arranger. It's a typical folk band. We play together, we agree on a tune, but I would never tell Stefan, play that note or Barbara, please go down here or go up there because they know what they're doing and they're-- Yeah. >> Gundrun Walther: I think it's in the combination of instruments as well, because Jurgen, as the only guitarist, has a lot of liberty. It would be really different if there was a bass player as well. >> Gundrun Walther: When I'm on the box because then we have to agree on at least like some chordal structure that we follow so it doesn't completely clash. Same goes for the two fiddles because we do lots of harmonies, so we have to be kind of in the same vibe as the guitar, which is not so hard. But then we have to agree with each other as well, like who's doing the melody, who's doing the harmony? But we would have a chat about that maybe. So we would play a tune, then we would stop. Then we would go like, I really like what you did. And she would go like, I really like what you did. And then we would go like, okay, I'm lower your top. Is that okay? Yeah, fine. And that's it. That's the arranging chat we have. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. But you're also kind of always arranging in terms of, you know, listening to what the other is doing and making sure that you're all, you know, that your harmonies are all working. And of course, Jurgen has worked to make the chords, the ones that support what's being played. So it's not arranged, but it also has to be-- you have to be very present and arrange it as you're playing it. So it's an interesting-- >> Gundrun Walther: It's very important what you said. The listening is actually more important than the playing, because if you don't listen closely to what the others do, it can be very quickly, very isolated, you know where you end up. But if you listen closely, then it's a great experience to play like that. And for me, that's what trap music is about. So that's why I really particularly love this band because it's a great thing to have to be in a room with four people and just play, you know? That's how we recorded the album as well. We sat in one room. There was no separation. There's no like tiny studio booths for each of us. We were all in one room and just play it. And we did it during a heatwave. And it was terrible because it was a small room and four people sweated a lot. [Laughing] >> Stephen Winick: Well, we're going through that now here. Well, you too, I'm sure the global heatwave is crazy. So, yeah, we understand. And the result was wonderful. At least we can say so that was a big success despite the suffering that you had to go through. So great. Tell us a little bit about the video concert itself, the video that you produced for us. Where is that beautiful setting that you found for it? >> Jrgen Treyz: It's quite, quite nearby, actually. It's maybe ten miles from where the two of us live. Farther away from the others they live. Yeah. Barbara lives around Munich still, and Stefan still lives near Munster, which is 500km from here, roughly. But when we talked about the video and you told us what you were expecting, you said something like some-- >> Gundrun Walther: A sense of place. >> Jrgen Treyz: A setting that gives a sense of place. And when you said that or when we thought about that, it was quite clear that this museum where we actually went would be an ideal place. I don't know if you have something like that in the U.S. too. It's an outdoor museum and they collect old houses that have not been standing there. The whole houses have been deconstructed and rebuilt in on the museum ground and they have, I don't know how many, 15, 20 houses are there, all different places like a carpenter's workshop, like a pub, like other-- >> Gundrun Walther: The Mayor's house and lots of things. >> Jrgen Treyz: And it's very beautiful there and it's very, very much nearby. And since the music that we are playing roughly from the same time period and also roughly from the same region. We thought it would be ideal to film there and add some landscape shots in between of the surroundings. >> Gundrun Walther: So everything you see in the video pretty much is the area where both of us live. So landscape and the houses would be traditionally built, so like that's the style of the old houses you see even like in our village with the addition of new houses. But in the museum there's like old, old, old houses. And the one we played in was from 1820 something, I think. And it used to be a carpentry and like ground level as carpentry and then top floor was where the family lived. That's where we played, in their living room. >> Stephen Winick: Wonderful. Yeah, we do-- >> Gundrun Walther: Sorry. Our sound engineer sat in the kitchen and did the mixing. >> Stephen Winick: Nice. It worked out really well. I mean, the sound in the video is great and it certainly looks like a traditional setting for folk music. So it worked great. And you did a little bit of performance outdoors as well, which was nice. So... Yeah. So tell us about that experience. Was it hard to arrange that, the outdoor part? >> Gundrun Walther: The outdoor part? No, that's actually, in both settings, both the outdoor part and the museum, the hardest bit was to fend off people who were like really curious about the recordings. Like, so in the museum we had a sign outdoor that said Video Filming in Progress. And instead of going, Oh, there's a filming, probably go away. People were like, Oh, that's filming, I'm going to continue. You know, they opened the door and like, we had a number of takes where we had to like, okay, let's start again. Like a five year old running through the camera, you know, on the meadow where we filmed, it's called the May Meadow. And the song we're singing is about the coming of May. So that's why we filmed that outside. And it's a public spot and it's very, very popular with hikers and bikers and, you know, everybody. So it was also quite a challenge to be there in the center of it, filming and playing instruments. And people were like, you know. So yeah, but apart from that, it was easy to do it. It's a lovely spot. >> Jrgen Treyz: And that outdoor filming, that was not a recently made video that was one of the videos we've done when we recorded the last CD with our different hairs and... >> Stephen Winick: Right. [Laughing] >> Jrgen Treyz: If anybody will wonder how Stefan was able to grow his hair that much within ten minutes... >> Stephen Winick: Right. Our sharp eyed viewers would have picked up on that. Yes. So it's good to explain. But yeah, it works beautifully well within that context of the rest of the video. So it really does look nice so... So great. How did you decide which of your repertoire, which of your songs to put into this video? >> Gundrun Walther: Oh well, we thought about-- Well, first thing was like, we've done another online concert for a festival that aired also during the pandemic. So we had a similar like a one take concert film that we've done with material from the album and from our live gigs. So we wanted to play different tunes like not the same set again. We wanted to play some different tunes. And then we also thought what would appeal maybe to an audience like your audience? What is interesting? What can we play that maybe from an outside perspective, people go like, Oh, that's, you know, check out German music. So I think that was the criteria that, you know, both of that like not repeating ourselves too much and also like playing stuff that sounds interesting hopefully. >> Jrgen Treyz: A little bit more emphasis on the songs for that concert. I think on the album, it's usually half and half songs versus instrumentals. And I think in the video we have a couple of more songs. >> Gundrun Walther: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Wonderful. So, you had mentioned, you know, you might end up getting people to explore more German traditional music. So are there groups that have influenced you or groups that you are peers with now who you recommend that people go listen to as well as you? >> Jrgen Treyz: There are not too many bands who are into German music. One band would be there called [Inaudible] Koenig. So that's like in a deck of cards. King, Queen and Jack. [Inaudible] Because it's a trio. Two guys, one lady. They are playing-- Yeah, not only but mostly traditional songs. >> Gundrun Walther: Yeah, singing there-- There is almost no instrumental music. But if you're into songs, she's got a beautiful soprano voice and she-- Yeah, that's lovely. And then there's another band. They play a lot of instrumental music as well. It's a young band. Jurgen recorded their CD in his studio. They're called FIOR. F-I-O-R. They're quite good. Like, the next generation of musicians. I would think that they would say that we've influenced them. [Laughing] >> Stephen Winick: All right. Well... We will look for that and maybe, you know, talk to them someday about doing a homegrown concert for us as well. But someday we would love to get you to come to Washington also. So we'll keep talking. And as I said, you'd be welcome to look at our collections at that time as well. So are there any questions that or any things that you would like to say that I didn't give you the opportunity, that I didn't ask a question about? Anything you want to tell our audience about your music or German music or anything? >> Gundrun Walther: I can't really think of anything clever to say now, but maybe just, you know, if they want to check it out, we have a website, Deitsch.de. And if anyone has any questions like where to find the online collections of like the transcriptions of the handwritten music, or if anyone has a question about songs or anything, just email us. We will reply in time, you know? But we're usually quite quick and we love people who are interested in the music and the background. So like, if you have any questions or want to know anything, we're happy to help you find stuff. >> Stephen Winick: Well, thank you so much. I guess all that's left is to thank you once again, Gundrun Walther and Jurgen Treyz. Was I closer this time? [Laughing] Thank you so much. The band is Deitsch and this interview video will be posted on the Library of Congress website along with their concert video, which we really hope that you all enjoy. So thank you so much from the Library of Congress. >> Gundrun Walther: Thank you. >> Jrgen Treyz: Bye bye. >> Gundrun Walther: Thanks, Steve.