Dave Robb is a Reader in Music at Queen’s University Belfast. His research has focussed on the role of musical forms of protest in German history going back to the 1848 Revolution. Completing his PhD at the University of Sheffield in 1995 he was a post-doctoral tutor at the Humboldt University in Berlin before being appointed to German Studies at Queen’s in 1999. His first book Zwei Clowns im Lande des verlorenen Lachens. Das Liedertheater Wenzel and Mensching was published in Berlin in 1998. Other books include Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s (editor, 2007) and Songs for a Revolution. The 1848 Protest Song Tradition in Germany (co-author, 2020). The latter stemmed from an AHRC/DFG-funded research project with the University of Freiburg (2009-12). He has recently completed an AHRC Fellowship on ‘The Political Songs of Gerhard Gundermann in an East German and International Context’.

Dave is also a musician and songwriter. Prior to his academic career he was a member of the Scottish folk group Rua with whom he toured internationally and recorded the album Scottish Music (Celtic Music 1986). As a solo artist he toured as support for The Proclaimers in 1988. He performed at many Festivals including Reading (1990), the Edinburgh Fringe (1987-93) and Celtic Connections (1997).

Dave first became acquainted with the East German music scene in 1982-83 when, as a student of German at Edinburgh University, he spent a year abroad at the University of Rostock, GDR. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he began a PhD on East German political song and ‘Liedertheater’ (song theatre) at Sheffield. For this Dave moved to Berlin in 1992 where he lived for most of the 1990s. As well as attending concerts of Hans-Eckardt Wenzel and Steffen Mensching, the political musical clowning act on which his PhD focussed, he also experienced Gerhard Gundermann live several times at the height of his career. Dave was in Berlin in 1995 when the controversial news broke of the singer’s previous involvement with the Stasi and then later, in June 1998, when the tragic reports came of his premature death.

Twenty years later, in June 2018, Dave was invited by Dutchman Johan Meijer to take part as a musician and translator in the ‘Gundermanns Lieder in Europa’ project. This took place as part of the activities marking the twentieth anniversary of the singer’s death. Organised by the Gundermann Seilschaft association that promotes the artist’s legacy, it took the form of a symposium, followed by a week-long workshop in Großräschen culminating in a concert in Hoyerswerda. Musicians from around Europe took part, translating Gundermann songs into their own languages. As well as producing a CD, this project resulted in a strong international network for future collaborations. It also gave Dave the idea to record the current CD Filling Stations for Losers. Songs of Gundermann as well as do some long overdue research into Gundermann’s art form in his years with the ‘Liedertheater’ group Brigade Feuerstein and his subsequent solo work as a singer/songwriter.