Summary 👇 

Editorial

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Talk with Christian Pliekfe, from Nordic Notes and CPL-Music

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Brief news from the media, charts and sister projects 

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Open calls: Fira Mediterrània de Manresa, A to Jazz, Mercat de Música Viva de Vic, MUM Meeting Music Market Extremadura, BIME Bogotá

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An update from Beirut with Nabil Canaan

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Professional events 💼 

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Remember: if you have any news of interest for our community, let me know. Thank you very much for your attention. Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música | +34 676 30 28 82

 

AND NOW THE FLOOR IS FOR:

CHRISTIAN PLIEFKE, from Nordic Notes and CPL-Music

I stole this picture from his Facebook profile. Christian is the founder of the record label Nordic Notes and CPL-Music. He’s also behind CPL-Music Shop. He also launched FolkGalore, a magazine that led to the production of compilation CDs.

What else? There’s even more. He explains it himself in this extensive interview. I’ve divided the conversation into sections in case you want to jump to a specific part, although in reality, it was very fluid and has both entertaining and potentially useful moments. Without further ado, I’ll let you dive into Christian’s story.

The beginning of his record labels 

Mapamundi Música: When did you begin with the record label or labels?

Christian Pliefke: It was when I was very very young. It was 1992. I had long hair and a lot of piercings everywhere and I was in the punk rock mood.  I worked before in a radio station and then in a youth club and then it became in my mind to start a record label. A friend of mine, a half Finish half German guy,  had always a record company but he was doing it alone and it was very small. It’s called TUG Records, that means transformed underground. And then I joined in 1992 this small record company and then we built it up with some punk rock stuff from Germany and also from Finland.

And all the time till 2005 we formed two more labels for dance music: 9:PM for electronic dance music and also Humppa Records for Finish weird stuff. This was a time that I’m starting to work with folk and world music but with weird… It must be crazi and weird stuff, like a screaming choir of men, their shouting choir was fantastic.
But in 2005 I decide to go my own way because my partner he was more into this punk rock guy, alternative… I was a little bit more conservative so I wanted to focus and spread my mind much more. Then in 2005 I started with Nordic Notes and at the moment I have 180 releases, with different styles of music, mostly from Finland because… I don’t know why but it is how it is.

And in 2008 I started with another label called Beste! Unterhaltung, that means “best entertainment” and it was done for music from my area, from Americana stuff, singer songwriters… and it was with German artists. This is why I decided for a German name. The decision for the name must be very fast but it didn’t catch me totally. Then I started with CPL-Music in 2010, my third label, for all the artists which are not from Germany or from the Nordic area.

About FolkGalore magazine and the shop 

MM: So you have three record labels now.

CP: With Folkgalore I have four but this started as a magazine and then I made compilations for festivals like Rudolstadt or Bardentreffen.

MM: So Folkgalore was first a magazine and later you made a record label for making these compilations. So have four different record labels. And you also have an online shop. Was the shop after or before you started the record labels?

CP: I started with the shop in 2007 with an online shop because, before I started my own record company, I had also a record store with my half Finish partner. It called Kioski. We opened only Friday and Saturday and sold only Finnish music or something like that.

MM: And was it sustainable to open a shop only two days in the week and only for Finnish music in Germany?

CP: In Germany, Fürth, it is near Nuremberg. If you only count the sales of the stuff, of course it makes no sense, but we had our office there as well. This was a small shop, and we had our office behind and our warehouse there. So it was the same price as we had as we rent a normal office. Then we thought it was cool to have small shop and make some special event, like show some Finish movies and out of this shop we make also DJ stuff, we called Soundi-kone, in Finnish, in English it means the sound machine. And we made a Finnish disco. We played this kind of schlager music.. and, yeah, some kind of that.

About the connection with the Nordic music 

MM: So your relationship with the Nordic music is because you had this partner who was half Finnish or is it also because you like especially the Finnish music or is just by chance.

CP: I like this Finnish music and I like the people and also the culture. The Finnish people are so similar to the Franconian. I’m living in the Bavaria area in Germany but in Bavaria we have also split it in Franconian. And Franconians are like the Finnish people. Normally we do not talk that much. We are introverted people and we like to drink some beer and not talk that. And we are happy to sit alone or two people on a table and not 10.  We don’t like too many people around and Finnish people are the same.

MM: But that is curious in you, because I always meet you in a social context with many people. So you have to surpass this tendance of you.  I have been with you with many many people and you do it well. 

CP: You have to be alive sometimes or survive… But normally the Franconians are this kind of people, introverted and a little bit more this “What’s kind of people are these? From Spain? Arg, I don’t like Spanish people”. – Both laughing –

I’m going to take advantage of the Finnish theme to bring here something that Christian produces at Nordic Notes. One of my favorite albums of recent times is ‘Vainaan perua: Satavuotinen sakka’ by Emilia Lajunen. You can listen to this amazing 9-minute track while you keep reading.

 

About how he selects the music to work with 

MM: Thank you for being strong enough to surpass all these tendencies of the Franconians in your person… Then the next question is how you select the albums and artists you work with. We see you have this Finnish connection and also, I feel that, with the time, you are making more diverse things. How do you select the albums or the artists? 

CP: First, it must catch me totally. If I listen to an artist I must produce this special feeling, like these goosebumps. It must catch me somehow and I must be willing to buy by my own an album of this artis. If I see an artist and or I listen to an artist and I think “it’s just okay”, then I don’t want release it. Like these Galician artists (Caamaño and Ameixeiras), these do what I told you. Some kind of this might catch me. It must give me a special feeling and then I say “I will do it”.

MM: And if an artist wants to approach you, if they’re interested to release an album with you, what should they do to call your attention? How is the way that they should communicate with you? Shall they send you an email or a postal letter…?

CP: Email is nowadays enough and few words and a link to some music. It doesn’t need to be music totally ready to be released. It can be a demo tape or something like that and few sentences about what they are doing. This is really enough for me.

MM: And do you need anything else? I mean, when you decide to release an album, do you consider other criteria about the bands? For instance, if they have good pictures, what is their lineup, are these other things relevant for you to decide?

CP: What is really fantastic is if there is a very good picture of the artist, of course, to see how they will present themselves. That’s also very important. And instrumentally wise, I am not a big fan of this saxophone. But, yeah, of course, if they have a good picture and then the music is fantastic and the artists know what they want to present, this is important. And a few good words can catch me very quickly, of course.

About the crisis of the recorded music 

MM: So you have been working in the record music industry since 1992. You have seen all the evolution of the market with the CDs and after that, the crisis and the digital releases and all those things… How have you surpassed all these crises of the industry of recorded music?

CP: Only straightforward, only going straightforward, yeah. Of course, look left and right but not too much behind. The crisis, I think it is for the major labels, as if they are going worser and worser. For me, I’m getting better and better. In 2023, I have had the best year ever. I don’t know why. I have sold so many albums. And, of course, the digital sales are getting higher and higher. But I do not lose any from the physical. And if an artist is also playing a lot of live and he’s working super in the social media, thing um I’m sure that they can sell much.

MM: Do you sell CDs and also vinyls?

CP: Also vinyls and there are some buts there… Every artists are asking for vinyl but mostly, when I focus in the German market, when you have a festival or in the shops, of this folk and world music, if you can sell 200 or 300 copies of CDs, then you maybe sell 20 or 30 vinyls. The CD, in the German area is a must. Also I have distribution partners in the Netherlands, Finland, the UK or in Japan and they are ordering a lot of CDs. What I often say the people who are telling me “no one is buying CDs” and I’m  wondering so… I don’t not see it.

On the other side, what we and what the artist and all this scene must be have in mind is that we have more releases nowadays than in the ’90s. In the ’90s, we had less releases but a lot of CD sales or a lot of physical sales. And now we have many more releases. Why are we thinking we are selling that less of physical?

About the greater ease of recording music in recent decades 

MM: Now if you want to produce an album, I think, if you have the purpose, you do it. In 1992 it was not so easy as now. 

CP: Yes. For the studio, to do a 16-track recording, you paid 2000, 3000, 4000 marks, 2000 euros, something like that. And now you have an EP… And now you can make everything alone at home. We have all this on the computer and so on. And this is makes things easier. Then we have a lot of releases coming out.

MM: And don’t you think that it also drives to a lot of frustration for many artists? Because, let’s say, it seems that the first steps are very much easier than in 1992, but to grow after that… Okay, you have an album and, after that, your competence is thousands of other albums. Do you think the situation is better or worse for the music itself? Has it a driven to a better quality or to have the chance to have more quality works in the market? Or maybe it just makes a lot of noise and the average quality has gone down? How do you feel about this?

CP: That is a very good question. I think there are a lot of great musicians, and they have good ideas but when I started, I think they had more feeling to the music. We had not this kind of good recordings with only eight tracks and something like that, that is what we can pay for. The improvisation was much better, I should I say. There were much more better ideas, the music was much stronger than today. Because today you can record at home, everything is cheaper and you can release it by your own. So I think the quality is going down step by step.

About the producing and the listening attitudes nowadays

MM: Yeah.. You listen on Spotify, for instance, the advertisements… They really suck, they say “hey, with this online software you can make a song in five minutes”. Spotify says that to the musicians who listen to it. But at the same time, you know Spotify doesn’t almost give return to most of them, so it’s like wicked, no? Yeah, they explain you can put your dog barking and make some effects and you have a song.

CP: And the main thing is the people who listened to this music they are nowadays also so low in the mind, yeah, so “oh, it’s a nice song”. And then you try to explain, “hey, this musician, for example is an “asshole”, they said bad stuff” but “the song is okay, we can clap our hands, this is super”. This is what Spotify are doing: you can release a song for in 5 minutes if you have a stupid lyric and some clap your hands, and then everything was done.

MM: Yes, this is an interesting debate. Also, how to make commercial music? Sometimes I see artist that are around me, who try to be successful and famous, sometimes they make so complicated songs with so long lyrics. And, of course, it’s wonderful music but you have like seven stanzas with complicated concepts… So I think they have to compete with what you are saying: just music with a very simple lyric and people can just clap so easily. We are very trained in listening, you and me and the people who are going to read this. 

CP: This normal clap your hands three-minute songs, I can’t listen to it. It bores me, so I like, for example… I listen a lot of pop and rock stuff so, Porcupine Tree, or the old Rush albums… I like this complicated. You can sit down in your living room, have a glass of wine or something like that and listen to a song, maybe 10, 15 minutes. This is so fantastic and this is why I can’t understand that people want to have hours of three minute songs to “clap your hands”.

MM: Yeah. I have an hypothesis about this: I think many people they just don’t like music or they are not interested. What they follow is all the other things around to feel they follow someone who is like a profile or paradigma and they really don’t listen.

CP: The  daughter of a friend of mine, she was 22 or something like that. And she’s going to this rock festival Rock in Park we have, and Rock am Ring, this is two times in a year. They’re playing Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies and also some normal rock stuff. And this girl is going there, and I ask her why do you go there, which is your favourite artist. And she said “It is the atmosphere. I don’t know who is playing.” You’re paying €200 and you don’t know which artist is on stage? Come on! While Kiss was on stage, I paid €200 to go as KISS was on stage and not for the atmosphere. I want to see the artist.

MM: I think that is not the music… I mean these musicians put the context or they create, let’s say, a world of concepts and people follow that more than the music itself. I think that’s why the image it’s so important now. 

CP: It is important that we are there and trying to catch these people to think about music, that music is not only a noise coming around, there’s more.

MM: Yes, of course, but I think you need to make an effort also sometimes. And I make this reflection, also, when… I rarely go to a pop concert but sometimes I go to a showcase and there is a band that is pop, other is jazz… whatever. And I feel the pop is so empty, let’s say, of all this content. Pop is what it is, they say what they say in the songs… but in the world music or traditional music, you have all the background, all the complications, all the social things of these people, you know. Also in the world music scene, some famous artists are from places with problems, they claim things about the social situation, the politics and all these things. So that’s complicated also. I think some people don’t want to be thinking about any complicated things. They just want to enjoy a moment only listening to a song of pop about love, about whatever.

CP: It is okay, that is okay… Sometimes I listen to stupid heavy metal songs, really short and noisy and it makes me also happy. But in total it cannot be all that. It is the same when you read the newspaper. A lot of people are reading only the headline and then they start to shout “oh, everything is blah blah”. No. You have to read the complete text, you must read it. There are some information inside. I think all this globalism make them afraid. There’s too much information for them.

MM: Yes, that’s what I mean. To listen to the music requires attention and effort sometimes.  You said about headlines of the newspaper. Also, the news newspapers now are online and, here in Spain at least, you see only the headlines and if you want to see more, you have to be a subscriptor. So you can see many different newspapers and you see the headlines and you don’t read more. 

So maybe the trend of the society is to make less effort and go to the super immediate things. And the things we do have so much content. They are in other languages that you don’t understand, different sounds of the languages and all the background of these people… And you think okay, Tuaregs, for instance. They are there, fighting, crossing borders in places where is Boko Haram or these kinds of terrible things. So maybe people try to escape of these terrible things of the world. So we have to compete with all this sometimes.

Finland is well, so far there’s no war, they are okay… But I think we have to understand that it increases the effort for the people and we are in a moment when the effort is not wished. I think people are trying not to make efforts. Everything is so immediate.  And it goes against music.

CP: A small wish what I have is trying to bring normal people into a festival or something like that. My formerly father-in-law asked me what I’m doing, the kind of music, “doing a normal job has much more income… and blah blah blah”. So I took him to a concert to Dresden, because he was from the Eastern part of Europe. I took him to a concert with Maija Kauhanen and Mari Kalkun, to show him how it works what I’m doing. He didn’t understand what I’m doing here. And he got it. You have to work that hard that 200 people are coming to listen to another music which he never heard before, because he’s a guy who listened to Rolling Stones or Schlager, a very easy guy. And nowadays he’s is coming with me to the Rudolstadt Festival every year or to the Bardentreffen Festival. He’s not buying a CD or listening privately that much but he likes the atmosphere, the artists and to see the different cultures.

About how approaching world music reduces prejudices 

I was thinking, maybe if we all in this world music scene have to take one person with us and to get in into these concerts… Sometimes he was also afraid of foreigners, “oh, hell, the refugees and the Syrian people there are bad because they are Islamic…” and something like that. And then he was with me and some of this kind of people and he said “they are not so angry and aggressive people”. No, they are not. Those are only the few people that we are seeing on the newspaper, who killed someone, they fight each other… But the normal Muslims are not aggressive people, they are normal like we are.

Did you enjoy Emilia Lajunen’s tune? Lakvar’s Sabotage and Tradition is one of the latest releases by Christian on CPL-Music/ CPL Musicgroup.

 

MM: Yes, of course, most of the people in the world not aggressive, they just want to make their life…

CP: Right, so this is what he understands right now. And it took maybe one or two years. But the normal newspapers give them this easy information and say “everything is bad and we are so great, and we are Christians, and we are much more than the others…” and so on. And now he understood everyone is nearly the same.

About the support, or the lack of it, in Germany for this kind of initiatives 

MM: So then, for what you are saying, I believe that you consider these kinds of music are very pedagogic also. In Germany, do you have support for these kinds of things? How is the situation now? I have like two kinds of questions in the same topic. First, how is the support for these initiatives like you, who are working with a in a record label of not commercial music. And, second, do you have or is there any specific intention from the government to support the minorities and the culture of the minorities who are there in Germany now?

CP: We have no support. We have to do it by our own. You can have support from the government if you’re doing German music, if you push German artists. But maybe you have seen that in festivals outside from Germany there are not German artists on the way. So we have not this folk and world music scene. The folk music scene died after the Second World War. A lot of these German folk musics when you play them… Suddenly some Nazis come around you if you make this German songs and you must stand there and say “Hey, I’m a German and we make German music but we are not Nazis”. This is why the Scottish and Irish music is very huge here in the market. The Germans want to listen to this Irish and Scottish music because it’s also simple. You must “clap your hands” and the language is understandable. But there’s nothing we can have from the government. For German artist we have some institutions. If you want to record an album you must fill out a lot of paper, then you get some money, as I have done this with a German artist called Gankino Circus. And they are trying so many years to go out from Germany and they are open to do it…

About the attitude of German artists regarding investing to export 

But the next hard thing is that Germans are not willing to spend that much money in their own. So, for example, go to Womex, to apply to Womex or go as a visitor, you have to pay the entry, the flights… And then, the German says “oh, it’s so expensive, if there’s not coming out one gig, then, no, I don’t want to spend that money”. That’s what they have in mind, they don’t want to push and power by themselves.

MM: Okay, maybe it is because they don’t need to export. Because we, Spanish in Womex, for instance, there is a Spanish stand but we have to rent the tables and we have to pay the expenses. We are not supported in that way. Some regions have a specific support. Not me. My company is in Castilla-La Mancha and I can apply, but so far I haven’t got support.  You know, there are many Spanish people in Womex. We are overrepresented, I think, because we have to export, because our national market is very limited for this kind of not commercial music. Maybe in Germany your artists don’t need to export because they have enough market inside.

CP: Not really anymore. Of course, the pop and rock music, they are independent, they are a huge market. But in the folk and world music it is so small… We have an institution called Deutscher Musikrat. They support classical music and jazz. And we try to tell him we have also folk music or world music but they don’t have this in mind. They just have jazz and classical music. This is a very long way and to explain them that there’s a lot of other music on the way. For example, this this Galician duo, they’re going on stage, they are acting of stage was fantastic… The Germans folk musicians are going on stage like they are, so they not change their clothing, they’re going on stage with socks and sandals… So, we are sitting in front of you, we have to see you one hour or more… Please take another clothing… They don’t understand.

About the presence of the artists on the stage 

MM: Well, in Spain it was like that some years ago. I think not Galicia. Galicia has always gone a bit more progressing but yeah the folk bands in Spain, they were a bit like that before. But with the time I have seen it in my own life. I mean, in 10 years it changed. Now they are taking care a lot about what they do on the stage but 15 years ago it was like that. They were performing as if they were making the rehearsal, the same clothes. They didn’t make any other decision of the image. So maybe it’s a matter of time. But the risky thing is that, for what you are saying, there your national scene is very limited, they are not making investment for exporting, so I think the folk music from Germany has not a lot of future… 

CP: The thing is that we have to work hard on it. I’m working with two German artists, and one is willing to do and go out and do a lot of things. And the other one is very okay in the German area but they don’t have this idea to go out. They are thinking “German language, no one is going understand this”. Yeah, right, of course but when I go to Womex, for example, I don’t understand the 90% of what they are singing. But it’s the music. And then I try to explain them that the language must be an instrument, it must fit into the music. Then, you like the music and afterward when you catch them, then you can read or translate it or something like that. But the first thing is that you catch the people with everything, not only the instruments: with the stage, with the language or something like that. But mostly the Germans they are happy to play there and they are angry and sad and say “everything is shitty outside and no one wants to have us”. But they don’t go out… And if I tell them that we have to make the booklet in two languages, in German and in English, they ask “why in English?”.

Now I’m working nearly worldwide so, of course you want to go out. I don’t want to stay only in Germany, but some of them don’t understand it.

About Christian’s future plans 

MM: Oh, my God, I hope many of them will read this interview with you me. They have to learn. And Christian, which are your plans for the near future?

CP: This is a good question. I don’t know, really. Maybe I will restart also a little this booking stuff because I have done it till 2016. I have also booked some of artists and then I stopped with them because booking is so boring stuff and I had a lot to do with my label and also make the promotion for the albums and working with publishing as well… But after the corona thing, a lot of agents stopped working and we have less and less people who like to do this job and sometimes I was thinking, maybe for two or three from my label, I can help a little bit if I restarted booking stuff. And the rest, let’s see. I’m looking forward in a positive way and I try to figure out the best for the artists. That’s all what I can do.

MM: Do you want to tell anything else for the interview?

CP: Yeah. Only love peace and harmony: this is what we need.

Thank you very much, Christian!!!

 

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BRIEF NEWS FROM THE MEDIA, CHARTS AND SISTER PROJECTS

• #1 for Transglobal World Music Chart in January 2024 is: Batsükh Dorj’s Ögbelerim: Music for My Ancestors
• Mundofonías: Favis 2024. You can discover the 21 favourite albums for Mundofonías in 2024 and listen to the two special shows about them, here.
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OPEN CALLS 

This section is open for news. It is free of charge. You can let me know if you have any open call of relevance to the community.

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AN UPDATE FROM BEIRUT WITH NABIL CANAAN

PROFESSIONAL EVENTS

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MEET ME AT

If you happen to attend these events, drop me a line. If you are not, they can be interesting for you too in any case.

• 2 February. Festival Tradicionarius. Barcelona. Concert by Ali Doğan Gönültaş.
• 3 February. Paris, France. Concert by Ali Doğan Gönültaş at Au Fil des Voix.
• 7 February. Brussels, Belgium. Meeting of the board of the EFN.
• 9 February. Granada, Spain. Concert by Vigüela 😍
• 28-30 March. Marseille, France. Babel Music XP

 

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WHO WE ARE AND SISTER PROJECTS 

Mapamundi Música is an agency of management and booking. Learn more here. Check our proposals at our website.

We also offer you our Mundofonías radio show, probably the leader about world music in Spanish language (on 50 stations in 18 countries). We produce the Transglobal World Music Chart with our partner Ángel Romero from WorldMusicCentral.com.

Feel free to request info if you wish. For further information about us, get in touch by email, telephone (+34 676 30 28 82), our website or at our Facebook. 

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