ABSTRACT
If asked on the street about what “folk music” and “folk song” meant to them, most Germans today would be hard pressed to answer. Many would respond to the question with a question: “Is there any folk music in Germany today?” Implicit, of course, is that the respondents themselves have no personal connection to folk music. Some others would make the connection between the ambiguous notion of folk music in the question and a series of popular Saturday-evening television programs called “Musikantenstadel,” literally, “the Musicians' Shed.” “Musikantenstadel” is filmed on an auditorium stage made to look rustic, filled with a fairly elderly group from the local region in which the program is being filmed, who look on, often with beer in hand, as diverse ensembles from around Central Europe perform pieces from repertories ranging from traditional to folklike to popular. There would be still other Germans on the street who would answer almost repugnantly to the query about folk music. For them, folk music conjures up the conservative side of German history, the conscious cultivation of Heimat, the imaginary, even dangerous “homeland” toward which countless heroes and heroines in German folk songs have striven.
