Herbert Gronemeyer,
Amadou & Mariam

Herbert Arthur Wigley Clamor Gronemeyer was born on April 12, 1956 in Gottingen and grew up in Bochum.  He founded his first band at the age of 12. In 1974 he composed the music for a Beatles musical in Bochum Schauspielhaus.

Director Peter Zank snapped him up right after high school for the position of Musical Director for the same theatre while he was still studying Law and Musiology. With the films, “Uns reicht das nicht,” (It’s not enough for us) and “Daheim unter Fremden,” (At home with strangers) he began his career as an actor.  His biggest success was his role in the Oscar-nominated film “Das Boot” (The Boot). After his breakthrough album, “4630 Bochum” (1984) Gronemeyer concentrated on his music. The results: 10 million albums sold, with 13 Platinum records in Germany alone. At the end of the 1980s he released his hit album, “What’s All This?” in English. After the title song from that album made it onto the Canadian singles charts, he toured Canadian. MTV invited “Herbie” as the first to German to an unplugged concert in 1995. 1998 was a tough year for Gronemeyer: he postponed a tour to donate bone marrow for his brother who died at the end of the year of leukemia, followed a few days later by the death of his wife Anna from breast cancer. Gronemeyer moved to London and didn’t go back to work until 2002 when he transformed private sorrow into lyrics and released the album, “Mensch.”  The success was incredible: The tour quickly sold out and the album had topped 1.5 million sales by October, the single sold a half million.

Musicians Amadou & Mariam are a discovery from the French music scene. The blind musicians come from the West African country of Mali. They met in a school for the blind in the 1970s. Both had a deep love of music. Their first releases in the 1980s were on cassettes and they quickly became stars of the local music scene. Their first international album, “Sou ni tile,” fell into the hands of Manu Chao. He immediately wanted to produce an album with the pair: “Dimanche a Bamako” made it to the French Top 20 and was awarded a “Victoire de la Musique” – the French Grammy. The song, “La realite” climbed to the Top 50 in the Airplay Charts.

May 2006 brought the single “Zeit, dass sich was dreht,” written and composed by Gronemeyer. It is the official anthem of the 2006 Football World Cup. The English title is “Celebrate the Day,” in French, “Fetez cette journee”.  Gronemeyer performed the song live with Amadou & Mariam at the opening ceremonies of the FIFA-World Cup in Munich on June 9, 2006. A few days later the single was at the top of the charts.

The song won the German preliminaries of the OGAE Song Contest with 214 points. Michelle placed second with 198 points for “Wenn es falsch ist dich zu lieben” (If it’s wrong to love you), and “Stuck vom Himmel” (A Piece of Heaven) from Gronemeyer’s current album placed third with 167 points.