At a rifle fair in a small town in Sauerland, a pop and hit medley is played on an organ. A video goes online. Days later, half of Germany is discussing sexism and artistic freedom – and the organist becomes a Tiktok star.
Kirchhundem (dpa / lnw) – Jürgen Poggel is 55 years old, a teacher, was until recently the top marksman in the village of Heinsberg (Olpe district) with almost 900 inhabitants and plays in a dance music band. “People know me a bit here in the Sauerland,” he says. The fact that the whole hall now says “Jürgen! Jürgen!” chants and he has to take selfies with fans, but it’s new. He owes his sudden and unexpected fame to an acoustic cover version of the controversial Ballermann song “Layla”, which he played on the organ in a church. A video of it went viral. It has now been viewed nearly two million times.
Poggel didn’t want to set an example in the sexism and ban debate about the hit – he didn’t even know that he was being filmed, let alone that the song was posted on the short video platform Tiktok.
On July 10, Poggel will play the organ at a rifle fair in the municipality of Kirchhundem. At a mass like this, it’s quite common for hits to be played alongside hymns, he says. So he thought of a medley with “Scandal in the restricted area”, “Gangsta’s Paradise”, the James Bond melody and of course: “Layla”. Because when he performed with his dance music band, he noticed that the song was going down particularly well.
The song by DJ Robin
“I wanted to make people happy,” says Poggel. “And certainly show a little what the organ can do.” He has been playing the instrument since he was fourteen. He didn’t want to cite a church scandal, nor did he want to conjure up anything that would upset people. In fact, there were only positive reactions. “There was spontaneous applause,” says Poggel. Meanwhile, nobody clapped along, nobody sang along, but “listened devoutly”. He himself only played the organ – so the controversial text could not be heard in the church.
In the days that followed, it became known that the song was not wanted by the organizers at folk festivals in Würzburg and Düsseldorf because of the sexist lyrics – and suddenly half of Germany was discussing artistic freedom, alleged censorship and whether the song was just for fun or had deep-seated misogyny begets
What Poggel didn’t even notice while playing the organ: a colleague filmed the medley, which lasted more than three minutes. The video then went around in some chat groups. The following weekend, children would have spoken to him: The excerpt with “Layla” was on Tiktok, posted by Malle hit star Ikke Hipgold. “A reason to go back to church,” he wrote. Where did the pop singer get it from? – “I don’t know. He didn’t ask me,” says Poggel. A few hours later, the video had more than 400,000 clicks, and the million was cracked that evening. “It made me queasy,” he says.
But he only got positive reactions. He’s now a star when his dance music band performs: “There’s a lot of smiles and pats on the back,” says Poggel. There are “Jürgen! Jürgen!” calls, selfie requests and calls for “Layla”. At a concert, she played several times alone on the keyboard – that’s how the audience wanted it.
On the one hand, he finds the debate about the text understandable, says Poggel. But you also have to show a bit of humor, which is part of Ballermann songs. And because of the lyrics you can denounce many songs. “You would have to go around with a much bigger scythe and ban it,” he says. “From my educational experience, I think what happened was extremely clumsy,” says Poggel, who is a music and geography teacher at a secondary school. “Everything I forbid at school is done even more,” he says.
