Music & Homeland
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
The question of home comes up again and again for my wife and me, because Eda is from Estonia. Germany is where we live – it is our home. But Estonia will always remain her homeland. And yet, our life here – in what was once a foreign country to her – is gradually becoming a second homeland as well.
My homeland is here. In the small, rural region of eastern Hesse, known locally as Waldhessen. I was born in Bad Hersfeld, moved eleven times, lived in the Netherlands, in Bochum, in the Marburg countryside – and eventually returned.
Today, Eda and I live in the municipality of Hauneck.
If you’re curious what this area looks like, feel free to watch this rather unspectacular video. You might imagine how beautiful it is when everything turns green in summer.
But what I am really getting at is this: the idea of homeland is being framed more narrowly again today. As something to defend. As a border. As a line of separation.
Music tells a different story
Jazz was born out of movement: West African rhythmic traditions, Creole dance forms from the Caribbean, and European harmonic language converged in nineteenth-century New Orleans. Trade, migration, forced displacement — all of this brought people and their sound worlds to the same place. None of these traditions remained unchanged. And that was precisely where its strength lay.
A sense of homeland did not emerge in spite of this blending, but through it. The people who today consider the United States their homeland originally came from vastly different corners of the world — and grew together as Americans.
When I travel today between Louisiana and the Baltic North, I experience this again and again. Different languages, different perspectives, different histories — and yet a shared resonance. Music connects where political debates often divide.
Improvisation only works if we give one another space, if we listen, and if we accept that our own voice is part of something larger.
Culture has never been static. It has always been in motion.And homeland does not become smaller when it is shared.
That is exactly what my current programs are about: sounds that travel, that transform, that open new spaces. Between the Mississippi and the Baltic Sea, between past and present.
Homeland is not a place where we stand still.
It is a path we walk together.