Location Lippepark: The musician Toni Tuklan filmed his scenes in the song “Make your mind up” in Lippepark, among other places.
© Robert Szkudlarek
Toni Tuklan recorded a song with none other than Tito Jackson, brother of the “King of Pop” Michael Jackson,
Herringen – Toni Tuklan feels almost at home here in Lippepark: At SVF Herringen, he played football and trained the A-youth. “But I’m also a cultural person,” says the now 50-year-old musician, who has also chosen the Lippepark as the location for his latest project – a project that brought him together with “Tito” Jackson, among others. Their song “Make your mind up”, which they recorded together with the German-Brazilian duo EEDB and the Brazilian rappers Kaos MC and Duendy Primeiro, has been available on YouTube and for downloading for ten days.
The idea of recording something with Tito Jackson was born almost seven years ago. Tuklan and Edu Casanova were on the road in Brazil with “Illuminati”, the official stadium song for the soccer World Cup. That was what Tito Jackson and his management learned. “And obviously they liked my sound.” There were several reasons why it would take until 2020 before the project could be tackled. “We were all out and about a lot,” reports Tuklan, who now lives in Werne but still maintains close connections to Herringen. It was only through the pandemic that everyone involved finally found the time to record the song.
That should actually happen in the USA. But this was not possible due to the travel restrictions. According to Tuklan, his colleagues shot in Salvador de Bahia, one of the largest cities in Brazil, and he in Werne, Dortmund and Hamm.
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No personal meeting with Tito Jackson
But it wasn’t that easy at all. Because while it is currently summer in the southern hemisphere and the shooting took place in beautiful beach weather, Tuklan had to shoot with a T-shirt and jacket in Germany just before Christmas when the temperatures were quite cool. Why did he choose the Lippepark, among other places? As he says, it is an important part of the culture of his old hometown of Hamm. He shot on the stairs to the mountain bike course and on the balcony on the north face of Schacht Franz. Later all the scenes were cut and the song mixed.
The curious thing about the whole project: With the exception of Peter Herbert Bielig from EEDB, Toni Tuklan has not yet met any of the other artists personally – not even Tito Jackson. But he hopes that they will soon catch up and go on a promotion tour together to present “Make your mind up” – translated into German it means “decide yourself”. It is a kind of love song in which someone tries to win the heart of another, but he cannot really make up his mind.
In the first video, which has been online since January 8th, you can see the sequences that Tuklan shot between Werne and Stockum. In about ten days, however, a second video will be released, then with lyrics to sing along to. “There will also be scenes from Herringen to be seen.”
Greatest success so far with Sean Paul
Tuklan hopes to build on his biggest commercial success to date with the single. In 2015 he released the hit “Ebony Eyes” with the Jamaican reggae star Sean Paul, which reached number 28 in the music charts in Germany. In Italy, Sweden, Australia and the Netherlands it landed in the top 10, in Poland even in first place. “Worldwide there were around 20 million downloads and the videos were clicked more than ten million times.”
What if it doesn’t work out with success? Then Tuklan has his next iron in the fire: He is currently producing an integration song on the subject of football, with which Werner wants to make it big at the European Football Championship in 2021 – if it takes place. “Next week we will go to the Arise studios in Hamm”, says Tuklan, who is not only a musician but also an ambassador for peace and spokesman for the king of his Nigerian homeland.
The project “Happy is easy” is also close to his heart. Together with the idea generator and initiator Dietmar Wurst, chairman of SuS Rünthe, the soccer fan collects shoes, jerseys and other sporting goods for his African homeland. Even Borussia Dortmund has already donated for it.
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