Torch (rapper)

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Torch
Torch
Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Blue velvet
  DE 33 10/09/2000 (8 weeks)
Singles
We were stars once (feat. Toni-L )
  DE 92 01/15/2001 (4 weeks)
Return of Hip Hop (Ooh, ooh) ( DJ Tomekk feat. KRS One , Torch & MC Rene )
  DE 13 02/05/2001 (9 weeks)
  AT 64 03/04/2001 (5 weeks)
  CH 22nd 02/11/2001 (7 weeks)
Please ... who? (Heiss wie Feuer 2) ( DJ Stylewarz feat. D-Style & Torch)
  DE 82 09/02/2002 (4 weeks)
Torch in the studio for the album "Blauer Samt" (2000)
Torch (right) playing poker with Toni-L (center) and Boulevard Bou (left), 2002

Torch (English: Fackel ; also Torchmann , MC Torch , Hero or DJ Haitian Star ; born September 29, 1971 in Heidelberg ; real name Frederik Hahn ) is a German musician. He began his career as an MC in Heidelberg in the mid-1980s.

biography

Family and private

His father comes from Tilsit an der Memel ( East Prussia ), his mother from Pétionville , Haiti . Frederik Hahn has German and Haitian citizenship.

Advanced Chemistry

After a few years as a dancer and graffiti sprayer, Torch founded the music group Advanced Chemistry in 1987 with befriended hip-hop artists Toni-L , Linguist, Gee-One and DJ Mike MD . With his group Advanced Chemistry, he took part in the political discourse on citizenship , asylum regulations and fundamental rights that dominated the first half of the 1990s in Germany as a result of arson attacks and acts of terrorism against immigrants after reunification . In 1992, the advanced chemistry song Fremd in their own country was released and became the group's first hit. The piece, which contains a sample of the Spiegel TV title melody, attracted widespread media attention with its political statements and, thanks to the frequent broadcast of the video clip on MTV, it also received a lot of attention outside of the still small German hip-hop scene.

As a homage, the beginners named their fourth studio album in 2016 after Advanced Chemistry .

VIVA Freestyle

Shortly thereafter, Torch was portrayed for the music documentary Lost In Music on MTV and caught the station's attention for his talent in front of the camera. On the then still young channel VIVA , he then presented Freestyle, the first program on German television that dealt with hip-hop. Torch worked on the show for a total of a year - both within the editorial team and as host of the show.

360 ° records

Also in 1992, Torch co-founded the hip-hop network MZEE , which saw itself as a music label , fanzine and, more generally, as a rap platform.

After separating from MZEE, Torch founded his own label, 360 ° Records, in 1994 . This was followed by other records from Advanced Chemistry , first features from Curse , solo rap parts from D-Flame and records from Blumentopf and Grandmaster Caz .

Brothers Keepers and Collaborations

2001 Torch participated with Xavier Naidoo in the anti-racism project Brothers Keepers .

Throughout his career, Torch has worked with artists such as Afrika Bambaataa , Freestyle (Arsonists), Grandmaster Caz (Cold Crush Bros), Jurassic 5 , KRS One , Melle Mel , Missing Linx, and Whipper Whip & Virtuoso.

DJ Haitian Star

As a DJ Haitian Star, he played at events such as the Battle of the Year , Jazz Festival Montreux , Hip Hop Kemp and the Zulu Anniversary in New York City . He shared the desk with DJ colleagues such as Z-Trip, David Rodigan , Grandmaster Flash , Kool Herc , DJ Stylewarz and Marc Hype .

Significance to the hip hop movement

In the context of the emergence of the German and European hip-hop movement in the 1980s, Frederik Hahn is seen as a key figure in the networking of individual activists and the development of an organized underground scene. As one of the first MCs, he established German as the rap language and introduced improvisation (“freestyle”) in German. Until well into the 1990s he was the mouthpiece of the German-speaking hip-hop movement and demarcated the achievements of the scene from mainstream and commercialization. This indirectly made him one of the first chroniclers of European hip-hop history.

Blue velvet

In cooperation with V2 Records , the first and so far only Torch solo album was released on 360 ° Records in 2000: Blauer Samt . After Blauer Velvet was not available for a long time, the album was re-released on the occasion of Torch's 40th birthday in September 2011 in a cooperation between 360 ° Records and Columbia Four Music .

Several hip-hop publications refer to blue velvet by name , such as green velvet by Marsimoto , purple velvet by Sookee or normal velvet by Audio88 & Yassin .

Relation to German literature

His uncle was the Haitian poet Georges Castera and he is related to the British author Nick Stone . Torch describes German literature as the most important source of inspiration. Many of his songs contain references to German poets and authors such as Kurt Tucholsky , Hilde Domin , Clemens Brentano or Hermann Hesse . Wolf Biermann personally invited him to an NDR matinee on the occasion of his 70th birthday. There he musically interpreted two of Wolf Biermann's texts.

For the German version of the Far Eastern classic “ Hagakure : The Way of the Samurai” by Tsunetomo Yamamoto , Torch was hired as the speaker.

In 2010 Torch was a guest at the “Festival of German Spoken Song on the Wartburg”, which dealt with the subjects of Minnesang and poetry in Germany.

On the occasion of his 40th birthday, Torch organized a festival week in his home town of Heidelberg from September 26th to October 2nd, 2011 with film screenings, workshops, hip-hop city tours and a graffiti jam. The highlight of the celebrations was his concert on September 30th, when he welcomed the guests MC Rene , Absolute Beginner , Max Herre , Marteria and Curse on stage.

Social projects

The aid network Marasa.org for the 2010 Haiti earthquake was set up by Torch.

Hip hop research

In 2011, Torch began to negotiate with the city of Heidelberg and the city archive about archiving his estate. The plans for their own hip-hop archive took shape at the end of 2019 with the signing of an official contract. On January 30th, 2020 Toni-L handed over 5000 archives from the holdings of Advanced Chemistry to the Heidelberg City Archives in the presence of the press .

In December 2018 he curated the first German Hip-Hop Symposium at the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim.

Discography

Solo releases

  • 2000: Violence or Sex (12 "& MCD)
  • 2000: Blue Velvet (2xLP & CD)
  • 2001: The world is on fire / We used to be stars (2x12 ")
  • 2001: Die Weltbrennt / We were stars once (remixes) (12 ")
  • 2001: In Your Arms (2x12 "& CD)
  • 2001: Blue Velvet (InstruMentals) (2xLP, 360rec)
  • 2005: Move the Crowd (12 "), limited to 360 pieces (as DJ Haitian Star with Grandmaster Caz )
  • 2008: Heidelberg (Mixtape)
  • 2008: Mixtape 01 (EP) (as DJ Haitian Star )
  • 2009: Mixtape 01 EP (10 ") (as DJ Haitian Star )
  • 2011: Blauer Velvet (Re-Edition) (CD & Vinyl LP)
  • 2015: Boomshell Bounce EP (Vinyl, 7 ") (as DJ Haitian Star )

Literature readings

Radio plays and features

Web links

Further content in the
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Wikiquote-logo.svg Wikiquote - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Chart sources: DE AT CH
  2. ^ A b Simone Jakob: Hip-Hop Archive for Heidelberg. In: Mannheimer Morgen. December 20, 2011, archived from the original ; accessed on December 29, 2018 ( beginning of article , paid access).
  3. ↑ New album by the beginners "Homage to great music" Deutschlandfunk , August 27, 2016 (accessed on April 23, 2019)
  4. ↑ Loh, Hannes / Verlan, Sascha (2015): 35 years of HipHop in Germany. Höfen: Koch International / Hannibal
  5. ^ News from culture and literature. November 2006. 20.11. Songwriter Wolf Biermann honored as successor to Heinrich Heine. In: House of Literature. The free portal for authors. Archived from the original on March 5, 2011 ; accessed on December 29, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Modern Form of Minnesang Thüringische Landeszeitung , July 4, 2010 (accessed April 23, 2019)
  7. ↑ "Torch" gave the city its archive materials for the planned Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung archive , November 30, 2019 (accessed on March 5, 2020)
  8. ↑ "Rapper Torch donates items to the Heidelberg Hip-Hop Archive" . Deutschlandfunk Kultur , March 4, 2020 (accessed March 5, 2020)
  9. ↑ Is Heidelberg a “Mecca for rappers”? Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung , November 28, 2018 (accessed April 23, 2019)
  10. ↑ HipHop Symposium at the Popakademie SWR Aktuell, December 1, 2018 (accessed April 23, 2019)
personal data
SURNAME Torch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hahn, Frederik (real name); Torchkinsky; Torchman; MC Torch; DJ Haitian Star
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German rapper
DATE OF BIRTH 29th September 1971
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg