Petersfehn Ii
At the age of 20, Christian Jakober decided to become a musician. It wasn’t always easy, but now it’s going so well that sometimes he can’t believe it.
“The decision to become a musician was liberating and gave me strength. On the other hand, I had no training in that direction. That’s why I tensed up when I made music with other people. I was totally self-conscious,” the 55-year-old recalls. “Of course that wasn’t a condition.”
Street music helped him: “I saw incredibly good accordionists playing in the street. Nobody was interested. A few corners away someone could barely play three chords on the guitar – and a whole circle of listeners stood around him. He achieved that just by being there.” So why be tense?
“Community service was gold”
After school in Ammerland, Christian Jakober actually wanted to go in the direction of social education. But there was a long waiting list. So he did a commercial apprenticeship because “my parents didn’t want me to hang around for half a year.” Then came community service. “That was gold. I finally had time to think about it for myself without external pressure,” Jakober describes the 20 months in a youth center and workshop for people with disabilities.
Then the musical career: “In the first ten years I dedicated myself to the noble art. Had a lot of ideas in my head, set up a recording studio and learned as many instruments as possible myself.” Which ones? “Well, I would only perform with guitar, bass and vocals. But once you’ve mastered one stringed instrument, others aren’t that difficult either. It’s the same with keyboard instruments if you know a little bit of electric piano. You can also add a few things to the computer, play them faster or remove wrong notes,” says Jakober with a wink.
music for theatre
Since “sublime art and finance simply collide”, he also opened up to related fields in 1998/99. He turned the music into a multivision project for a friend who had studied at the Bremen University of the Arts. This resulted in follow-up projects. “Oldenburg is a small city, but has a very diverse cultural scene.” So everyone knows each other. In 2001 he joined the folk rock band “Lack of Limits” and the association for youth cultural work asked if he would write the music for a play with young people. With that, Christian Jakober had reached a milestone: he was able to make a living from his music – without part-time jobs. It was also the beginning of the pedagogical work. “It felt like a bad compromise at first. But that has changed. Working with others is more fun and enriching.”
intercultural projects
At the Blauschimmel-Theater, for example, people with disabilities let him jump over his shadow: “Schlager is not my world at all. But the choir members are into hits. They enjoy it so much and then I enjoy it too.”
Christian Jakober immersed himself in the musical world of Africa when he put together a musical with refugees in 2010 – in just six weeks. It was such a huge success that it was requested over and over again for two more years. From this, the association “Global Music Player” developed, which Christian Jakober co-founded and in which intercultural music-making is the central point.
The musician can live out his penchant for handicrafts in Petersfehn II. There he and his wife bought a former tree nursery 18 years ago and turned it into a pony farm with a recording studio, where they live with their two daughters. “Sometimes I sit here and think: That can’t be! Why is it all so awesome?” says Christian Jakober with a laugh.
–
