Mobilising of the German 1848 Protest Song Tradition in the Context of International Twentieth Century Folk Revivals

The rediscovery of democratic traditions of folk song in Germany after the Second World War was not just the counter-reaction of singers and academics to the misuse of German folk song by the Nazis. Such a shift to a more ‘progressive’ interpretation and promotion of folk tradition at that time was not distinct to Germany and had already taken place in other parts of the Western world. After firstly examining the relationship between folk song and national ideologies in the nineteenth century, this article will focus on the democratic ideological basis on which the 1848 revolutionary song tradition was reconstructed after the Third Reich. It will look at how the New Social Movements of West Germany and the folk scene of the GDR functioned in providing channels of transmission for this, and how in this process a collective cultural memory was created whereby lost songs – such as those of the 1848 Revolution – could be awakened from extinction. These processes will be illustrated by textual and musical adaptations of key 1848 songs such as ‘Badisches Wiegenlied’ (Baden Lullaby), ‘Das Blutgericht’ (The Blood Court) and ‘Trotz alledem’ (For all that) within the context of the West German folk movement and its counterpart in the GDR.

Early birds are sexy: male age, dawn song and extrapair paternity in blue tits, Cyanistes (formerly Parus) caeruleus

Sexual selection theory predicts that signals reflecting the relative quality of individuals should be used in mate choice. Females could base their choice of copulation partners on male secondary sexual traits that honestly signal male age, as predicted by the age-based indicator mechanism. Studies have shown that female blue tits prefer older males and that aspects of dawn song reflect male quality, but it remains unknown whether dawn song characteristics correlate with male age. We compared dawn song characteristics of second-year (SY) and older (ASY) male blue tits (cross-sectional analysis), and tested for age-related changes within individuals (longitudinal analysis) and differential overwinter survival of SY males. We further investigated the relation between dawn song and paternity gain and loss. We found that ASY male blue tits began to sing earlier relative to sunrise than did SY males. This difference in the onset of dawn singing was due to age-related changes in individual performance rather than differential survival of individuals with varying expression of the trait. Males that began to sing earlier at dawn had more mating partners, and were more likely to gain extrapair paternity. Our findings suggest that the onset of dawn song can provide a simple mechanism for females to assess the relative quality of their mate and of neighbouring males. We propose that females use the onset of singing as a cue for their choice of extrapair partners. (c) 2006 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Seasonal variation in dawn song characteristics in the common nightingale

Many male temperate zone passerines show a marked peak of singing activity before sunrise. The two main functions of this so-called dawn chorus are mate attraction and territory defence. We examined how seasonal patterns of different dawn song characteristics were related to mating status and to the breeding cycle of females in the common nightingale, Luscinia megarhynchos. We investigated two measures of song output: song rate and percentage performance time. We also calculated the proportion of 'whistle songs', a song category that is thought to be important in female choice. We predicted that if the main function of dawn singing in nightingales is to attract a social mate, then mated males should change their dawn singing behaviour after pair formation. In contrast, if dawn singing is mainly used in territory defence, we expected no difference in song traits between mated and unmated males throughout the season. We found that song rate and the proportion of whistle songs were low at the beginning of the season and did not predict future mating status. After arrival of females, all measures of dawn song performance remained largely constant throughout the breeding season, and we did not find significant differences in the seasonal variation between mated and unmated males. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that song at dawn is important to defend a territory throughout the breeding season. (c) 2005 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.