Corvus Corax: medieval rock, the minstrel, and cosmopolitanism as anti-nationalism

Abstract

This article explores the German band Corvus Corax and their reinterpretion of the Middle Ages as a creative answer to Germany's problematic history of nationalism. Invoking the community ideals and ideological values of the 1960s and 1970s, which, in the context of the GDR took on even more significance, Corvus Corax borrowed ‘authentic’ medieval texts and melodies, rendering them in acoustic arrangements inspired by medieval performance practices. In short, German ‘folk’ bands invented ‘medieval’ rock to sidestep Nazi connotations with the word ‘folk’. Besides invoking the semantic shift from ‘folk’ to ‘medieval’, I argue that the band adopts the figure of the medieval minstrel and asserts that his multilingual texts, ‘foreign’ instruments and colourful performance practices speak to an inclusive, diverse and cosmopolitan community. Paradoxically, they do so by first positioning the medieval minstrel as a punked-up, marginalised ‘outcast’. The cultural capital of this outcast status helps medieval rock bands like Corvus Corax carve out a space for marginalised voices who, in their new privileged positions, offer a form of retribution for politics of exclusion, racism and authoritarianism.

‘The Rains of Castamere’: medievalism, popular culture, and the music ofGame of Thrones

“…Minstrels and troubadours do not appear in the television series Game of Thrones as often as they do in Martin's novels, although the performance of another song, the folk tune ‘Jenny of Oldstones’, which was also composed by Djawadi, invoked the minstrel as a visual trope of medievalism. The images of minstrels, who represent the music-makers of ‘everyday life’, promote a medievalism rooted in an understanding that folk traditions were, at once, particular to a people but also popular and mainstream in medieval music culture (Yri 2019, p. 371). This type of medievalism was memorably shown in the final season of Game of Thrones when Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman), a young squire, sits around a fire with his companions-in-arms the night before a momentous battle and belts out the melancholy ‘Jenny’ song a capella (‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’, aired 21 April 2019).…”