It is a haunting but stirring song of protest, written 90 years ago by political prisoners held in a Nazi concentration camp.
Now Die Moorsoldaten (The Peat Bog Soldiers) will be the first EP, in the original German and English, by The Tenementals, a band of academics and musicians who came together to delve into the history of Glasgow through the power of music.
While the 90-year-old German protest song is well-known inside Germany, it is much less known outside of it, despite it being covered by a range of artists including Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson.
The Tenementals version of Die Moorsoldaten/Peat Bog Soldiers seeks to reimagine the song and to “blast it into the future”.
Professor David Archibald at the University of Glasgow who is both founding member and frontman for The Tenementals, said the band are exploring what the history of a city might sound, look and feel like if developed in song, rather than relying on conventional historical textbooks.
READ MORE: Academics form band to recount radical history of Glasgow through song
Professor Archibald, who is Professor of Political Cinemas based at the University’s School of Culture and Creative Studies, said: “We are keen to introduce our version of Die Moorsoldaten, in German and English. Our song is a new translation which we hope will bring it to a wider audience and to present it in a new way. Somewhat less mach, and less militaristic that some previous versions.
"Although we are interested in Glasgow’s history, we are not parochial, far from it. We are alive to the international connections that the city and its inhabitants have made, be they slave traders or anti-fascist fighters in Spain.
"Peat Bog Soldiers was a major song during the Spanish Civil war and no doubt many of the Glaswegians who fought in Spain would have been familiar with it.
"We take a tiger’s leap into the past; but our aim is to blast the song into the future at a time when its spirit of resilience in the face of oppression has great resonance.”
Last year, the Tenementals' first gig at the historic Trades Hall in Glasgow city centre for the 2022 Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival saw the award secure the prestigious for ‘Outstanding Event’ for their performance of ‘A History of Glasgow in Song’.
Since their debut performance, they have performed at events such as the Glasgow Hidden Lane Festival and a show at Queen's Park bandstand for May Day Glasgow 2023.
The band has begun to create a catalogue of songs which explore the radical side of Glasgow’s past, from militant Suffragettes of the early twentieth century to the Sighthill Martyrs of 1820, celebrates the city’s culture of pleasure and excess, interrogates its ongoing entanglements with Empire and slavery, and speculates on where one might find hope in the city.
The songs include Universal Alienation (We're Not Rats), which takes Jimmy Reid’s celebrated 1972 University of Glasgow rectoral address about alienation and updates its spirit for contemporary times, and Machines for Living, which reflects on the state of Glasgow’s high-rise flats and the city’s shifting architectural landscape.
Peat Bog Soldiers EP is available now via Strength In Numbers Records
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