THE MOVE FROM Berlin to Hamburg has brought with it a new work soundtrack. I’ve largely ditched my old playlists and found new sources of music. The only criterion is that any piece I do work to must be long and lack words.
That leaves a lot of wiggle room, permitting EDM, jazz, ambient, chamber and orchestral music. And there have been some nice finds.
The fully improvised album Conversations in Ritual, from the London string duo Balladeste, has become some of my favorite background music while working. It’s brought me to a renewed appreciation of all things improvised.
It’s amazing to hear two people with a couple repeater pedals manage to sound like an entire string septet playing Shaker Loops. It’s fabulous that Balladeste, composed of the violinist Preetha Narayanan and the cellist Tara Franks, managed to improvise the whole production.
As I leave Berlin, starting the new year in Germany’s second-largest city, it’s worth again taking a moment to appreciate how immigrant communities in the German capital improvise on a regular basis, taking the resources they have and making new things from them. The Döner Kebab is perhaps the best example of this.
I am, to be transparent, ecstatic about the growth of the Döner Kebab.
Virtually anywhere you go in mainland Europe, there is a Döner shop. And there is good reason for this.
Far from just being “the perfect fast food to save you from blackout drunkenness,” as VICE puts it (of course), a good kebab can be genuinely nourishing, with tons of delicious vegetables piled high, even as the meat and sauce get most of the attention. And those sauces are tasty. For this reason, there are more than 1,000 kebab shops in Berlin alone, according to its tourism bureau.
(Vegetarian versions of the kebab are also usually available.)
As one of the two main fast foods invented along the Spree, it’s completely understandable that the kebab ends up on a pedestal, partially because the other candidate, currywurst, is so incredibly bland.
While a good Döner Kebab combines a half-dozen ingredients or more, currywurst comprises virtually flavor-free sausage, weirdly saccharine ketchup and the tiniest amount of token curry.
And that’s it.
Both dishes were improvised, and to currywurst’s credit, it at least has a good postwar story involving overcoming scarcity by using the limited ingredients available.
But currywurst’s story is so strongly undercut by the lack of flavor in the resulting dish that it’s difficult not to root for the other improvised creation, the Döner Kebab.
The kebab, which was the result of Turkish guest workers putting down roots, involved transforming a plated delicacy into a portable food that spread rapidly -- first around Berlin, and then through all of Europe.
It’s been said that every time a wave of immigrants come to Berlin, people wring their hands about how Germany is about to lose its culture, and about how every time up until this point, the German culture has just emerged stronger, more vibrant, still uniquely German, and having as part of it a new form of food.
That hasn’t stopped EU countries’ far-right parties, with narrative assistance from the U.S. president, from yet again trying to push the continent toward a “fortress Europe” mentality, despite the disastrous effects that such policies would be likely to have on population levels. Donald Trump’s administration can hand-wring about “civilizational erasure” all it wants — the fact is that brown people have always been here, and our continent would be boring and stunted without them and their innovations.
So as the calendar gets swapped out, take a moment to enjoy Conversations in Ritual. Maybe with a kebab, if you feel like it.
It’s great to remember and enjoy the highlights of an area’s historical culture and -- selectively -- protect them.
But without the creations of immigrants, life in Germany would be an utterly monotonous, incredibly bland meal of sausage and boiled potatoes.
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