A street in Altenburg resonates with the rich tones of a tuba playing to the rhythm of a drum. A trumpet and a trombone join in as the protest slowly moves through the old town to the south of Leipzig. It is Sunday, January 28. About two weeks earlier, the research network Correctiv broke the news of a secret meeting of AfD representatives with right-wing extremists in Potsdam. Their common agenda: deport as many people as possible. In response, more than one million people across Germany protested against these right-wing remigration fantasies.
In many small towns in East Germany, the brass band Banda Comunale is part of the crowd. Their approximately 20 members grew up in Brazil, Scotland, Syria, Poland, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Russia, Palestine, Dresden, and Bavaria. Today, they all live in Germany. For years, they have been touring rural areas of Saxony to support anti-right-wing protests. In addition to the protest in Altenburg, their busy schedule for the first part of the year included gigs in Meißen, Dippoldiswalde, Waldheim, Bautzen, Rochlitz, Freiberg, Flöha, Zittau, and Dresden. Can this actually help boost the commitment for democracy?
Michał Tomaszewski plays the clarinet. He laughs a lot. A sticker on his instrument reads: «Good Night White Pride» His family fled from Poland to Lower Saxony in 1989. Nine years later, he moved to Dresden. He has been with the band from the beginning and is in charge of online bookings. When the band was founded in 2001, he says, its members wanted to take a stand against Neo-Nazis. Back then, thousands of Nazis would come to the city for a «mourning march» to mark the anniversary of the Alllied bombing of Dresden. «Mobile music is simply a different animal than playing on a stage with amplifiers,» Tomaszewski says. In Dippoldiswalde, we get to observe what he means by that.
It's raining on this first Sunday in February in the small town in Saxony. Braving the weather, Banda Comunale is playing on the market square by the Lion’s Fountain in front of about 800 protesters. They have colorful umbrellas and hoodies pulled down over their foreheads. A rain-soaked banner reads «SOE (Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge) against right-wing agitation». The crowd claps and jumps to the beat of the big drum. Michał Tomaszewski smiles as he tucks his clarinet under his left arm. He starts gesturing with both hands, inviting everyone to dance. He resumes playing his instrument, spinning around to the music in his yellow jacket.
Banda Comunale has become more than a mere street band. On a Friday in early July, they have a gig at the Chancellery in Berlin to mark the 26th anniversary of the office of Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media. Banda is the final act on the program.
As they wait for their turn, meeting room SL 1.41 in the Chancellery serves as their backstage area. There’s lemonade and snacks on a conference table. Four musicians are sitting at the rear end of the table: Gregor Littke – trombone, Germi Riess – trumpet, Arne Müller – drums, and Ronaldo Santos da Silva – Guitar.
Their instruments are sitting on the dark stone floor by the north staircase of the Chancellery. It will be another seven hours until their performance. The four of them are here early for the soundcheck; the rest of the crew will join them later. They are wearing baggy T-shirts, dress shirts, jeans, and sneakers. They are joking and chatting about past gigs. They have been with the band for varying periods of time. Arne Müller has been a member since 2008, Ronaldo Santos da Silva joined only this year.
Playing music right in the middle of a crowd is an instant mood lifter
They have time to tell us a little about their band. As with any ensemble, long-standing members sometimes leave as new people join. When they find themselves short of a certain instrument, they ask around to find a replacement. For instance, when their former guitarist dropped out because of time constraints, they approached Ronaldo Santos da Silva. Germi Riess joined nine years ago. Every band member is also involved in other projects or works a day job. But seriously: Does music really work as a remedy against the AfD?
Of course, Banda Comunale has no empirical data to explain why and how exactly they have such a strong effect on people, but they all know from their own experience, all the recent crises, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and inflation, have had a debilitating effect on many people. When more than a million protesters took to the streets across Germany at the beginning of the year, it sparked a sense of community. In January, a study published by the Cologne-based rheingold Institute suggested that most of the protesters felt that they can make a difference. Other studies show, both playing and listening to music creates a sense of community. A live performance evokes even stronger emotional reactions – and that is precisely what Banda Comunale does at the protests.
Germi Riess has observed the effects of these emotional reactions. For years, AfD supporters dominated the market squares simply because «they were the loudest,» waving flags and engaging in hate speech from oversized stages. «But now people organize to take back their market squares.» And when Banda Comunale is there, in the middle of the crowd, making loud, cheerful music, «something changes».
Trombonist Gregor Littke also reminisces. He speaks slowly, reliving past performances, such as a gig in Waldheim. In late May, when the band played at the Obermarkt, politically active residents in this small town in Central Saxony set up a few beer tables with ceramic plates, potato salad, apple juice, and rainbow flags on the cobblestone market square. There was the historical Wettinbrunnen, surrounded by five young trees, «it was simply a beautiful place.»
Meanwhile, a right-wing counter protest was brewing on the other side of the Obermarkt. People were brandishing blue AfD flags as well as several green-white flags, the banners of the «Free Saxons». Even today, Littke can still sense their miserable mood, in stark contrast to the cheerful spirit of those who had come to listen to the band. «It’s obvious that music injects energy into the situation.» Afterwards, several people sent messages to the band, thanking them for their performance. «Please keep doing what you’re doing,» one of them read. Another said: «You all are veeeeeery important!»
Will the hostility and threats stop them? Never.
And how does the other side react to the band? Germi Riess takes an imaginary phone out of his pocket. One common occurrence at almost every performance, he says, is that people wave their cell phone cameras in their faces, taking pictures of them. His bandmates nod in confirmation. One time, he directly confronted one of these avid photographers: «Well, did you take a nice photo?» And the response was: «The time will come when we pull out the lists, and then you’re toast.»
So, should they stop? Never. So far, nothing bad has happened to them. New member Ronaldo Santos da Silva says that sometimes, he does get a bit tense. Around Mayday in Chemnitz, when Banda Comunale tried to drown out a speech by AfD politician Maximilian Krah, Littke stood directly in front of a «No Place for Nazis» banner, blowing his trombone with all his might, while Santos with his guitar kept more to the background. About 30 Neo-Nazis had gathered on the other side. Santos kept a watchful eye on them. «If they had made a run, I would have been ready.» Littke was less concerned: «The police stood in-between us the whole time.» Santos da Silva nods. «Yes, but it was my first time.»
When the band started out 20 years ago, they did two or three street gigs a year. «We really only became politicized in late 2014 because of Pegida,» founding member Tomaszewski says. A decade ago, the right-wing movement Pediga began holding weekly rallies in Dresden. That’s when they started playing at the counter-protests, opposing racism with cheerful music. But a few months later, when hatred erupted into violence against refugees in Freital, a town ten kilometers south of Dresden, they knew it was not enough. Every day, around 100 people gathered in front of a refugee asylum at Hotel Leonardo, protesting under the slogan «No to the refugees’ shelter» and throwing bottles, firecrackers, and rocks. The band packed their instruments and got on a train to Freital in order to give a warm musical welcome to the refugees at the facility. As a result, the band recruited some new members from among the refugees.
After Freital, the band visited other refugee shelters, offering the residents some reprieve from uncertainty and fear with their clarinets and trombones. Some refugees took out their own instruments, enriching the band’s brass sounds with an oud, a short-necked lute, and a riq, a single-skinned drum with jingles. Eastern European Klezmer and Arabic folk music merged into one soundscape.
Breaking stereotypes with workshops on intercultural music
For about seven years, the brass band has been taking its new repertoire to schools in Saxony. They have held over a hundred workshops on intercultural music in cooperation with local integration councils. At one of these workshops at an elementary school in Limbach-Oberfrohna at the beginning of this year, the band made a video. It shows children sitting on a wooden floor in a classroom, drumming a beat on orange plastic buckets. In another room, cellist Akram Younus Ramadhan Al-Siraj plays with a dozen children. He has them standing in a circle, jumping back and forth to a fast beat, spinning around and throwing their arms in the air. After this icebreaker activity, Al-Siraj tells the children of his escape from Iraq. The band has found this to be an effective way to dismantle clichés. The abstract notion of a refugee becomes a real-life person, future doctors, future teachers, and above all, people who love and make music.
How sustainable is the effect of music in the provinces? Don’t people fall back into their old patterns once Banda Comunale returns to Dresden? Christian Schäfer from tvBUNT, the network for democracy and diversity in the Bautzen district, has an answer to this question. He co-hosted several «Happy Monday» events that were held this year at the city’s four traditional markets, all featuring musical performances, readings, mindfulness trainings, and street dancing. About 50 clubs, institutions, and initiatives from Bautzen participated to spread the positive vibes. Banda’s music dispels fears, Schäfer says. It motivates others to step up their involvement.
On February 25, almost 2,000 people demonstrated in Bautzen under the slogan «Colorful Brass Music Against Right-Wing Extremism». Led by Banda Comunale’s upbeat tunes, people danced through the city, undaunted by the right-wingers who were gathered at Kornmarkt, trying to provoke them. The protest, scheduled for two hours, lasted for three, and the band never missed a beat. «Some people fed off these good vibes for months,» Schäfer recalls.
This is important, especially during the dark winter months, when the situation in Bautzen is «scary,» as Schäfer puts it. The weekly right-wing rallies draw several thousands each Monday. Far-right extremists take the stages, yelling their conspiracy theories, and kids as young as 13 with Nazi-style hairdos line up in the so-called ‘youth block’ behind a banner reading «We are the youth without migration background.» Many are dressed in black. Their strategy is simple, but effective: They usurp the public space.
Banda Communale counters it by taking this space back. This is how Schäfer sees it, and band members like Michał Tomaszewski have had the same experience. Instead of engaging or trying to argue with right-wing conspiracy narratives, the band members from Iraq, Brazil, Dresden, and elsewhere happily bounce along with Eastern European music. When Michał Tomaszewski talks to a punk kid after a performance, it’s not unusal that an elderly woman will join their conversation. These kinds of encounters happen a lot, a powerful testimony to the unifying power of music. Politics cannot replace that. «And even if the AfD were to become the governing party, we would all keep doing our thing.» And that is why the band is in the AfD’s crosshairs as one of their top 20 targets.
Recently, the party expressed outrage that this «ultra-leftist band» received grants worth one million euros from the Free State of Saxony. Clarinet player Tomaszewski thinks that’s funny. First off, the money was granted over a period of six years and used exclusively for school projects. And besides, «the AfD is complaining about something that could not be more quintessentially German: a brass band,» he laughs. They use donations, prize money, or occasional fees for performances to finance their trips to the countryside. Most of the time, they play for free.
But what about their future acitivties in Saxony? Arne Müller plays with his drumsticks as he considers his answer. «Depends on the young people, on how many of them will make an effort, how many will not let themselves be driven away,» he says, rhythmically clacking the sticks together.
David Muschenich reports for the daily newspaper die tageszeitung (taz) from the states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. He studied Journalism at the University of Leipzig as well as Social and Economic Sciences at the University of Erfurt.