Folk music in Berlin

Deutsche Welle's new culture column, "Scene in Berlin," appears every Friday.

It isn't easy following the footsteps of Townes van Zandt in the land of techno.

Midnight on Wednesday in Cafe Eschloraque, one of the few remaining examples of grungy cool in the renovated-to-death center of formerly communist East Berlin. The DJ has just finished her first set, and my band - acoustic guitars, stand-up bass, Latin American percussion - are waging a sonic battle with a gaggle of what look to be hyped-up secretaries out for a loud night on the town.

Eventually, some of the crowd settles down for a listen. It's an incongruous scene, a fairly quiet, independent folk group playing in a place with welded-metal aliens on the walls. Nor does the audience fit the cliché of politically correct beret-wearers stroking their greying goatees. This crowd is in their 20s and 30s, drinks beer and wants to have fun.

In the end, a fair few of them applaud - I nod heavenward, thanking the patron saint of melancholy folk songs for his imagined moral support. Berlin, I think, would be Townes' kind of town.

Soup's on

American bands like Iron&Wine and the Fleet Foxes have scored independent hits with a decidedly folky sound, and the German capital has not been deaf to their influence. But, as always, Berlin has put its own weird stamp on an international trend.

The center - if there is one - of the acoustic-music scene is Intersoup, a cellar space beneath a bar-cafe that, as the name implies, specializes in soup. The walls are decorated with 1970s-era photo-paper of an orange tinged forest, giving the place the musty-comfy atmosphere of a lost-in-time recreation room.

There are live concerts almost every day, with acts drawn from throughout Europe. But the emphasis is on Berlin-based musicians - and in particular the capital's exploding English-speaking expatriate community.

One regular is The Great Park. That's the nom de plume of singer-songwriter Stephen Burch, a bearded Anglo-Irishman with an adroit finger-picking style, a warbly voice and a penchant for tales of loves and lives gone horribly wrong.

Burch's music is fine, original, meaningful stuff and comes across very powerfully at low volumes. And that's important given the fragile equilibrium cafe and club owners have to maintain with their arch enemies: the neighbors.

Cultural cosmonauts

In the southern half of the city, in a working-class Turkish neighborhood full of hole-in-the-wall shops selling used mobile phones of dubious origin and queasily grey kebabs, four university students have established an outpost as unlikely as anything in "Star Wars."

Cafe Laika is named after the first dog to be sent into space, and the non-profit association behind it is called Cultural Cosmonauts. The mission is to boldly present acoustic music in an underdeveloped area while keeping the peace with the powers that be.

"What's special about Berlin is that there are lots of music fans and a ton of good bands that want to play live," said so-founder Anna Schreiber. "We're located in a residential building so we're restricted to quieter concerts. So we're very glad that Berlin has such a lively folk scene."

And Cafe Laika is a hit. Concerts are regularly filled to 50+ capacity, and when the band or performer is playing, audience attention is undivided.

With this sort of infrastructure, Berlin has become like Greenwich Village in the early 1960s - an excellent place for songwriters to quietly strut their stuff.

So don't be surprised if some of the next Townes van Zandts come not from Austin, Texas or Chapel Hill, North Carolina but the wilds of what used to be techno-only Prussia.

Jefferson Chase has been frequenting Berlin clubs and playing in bands for a decade - his current group is called Jordanaries.

Editor: Kate Bowen