I f one reads the current literature on the history of the Weimar period, and in particular the history of the Weimar Berlin cabaret era (1918-1933), one is left with two seemingly opposing views on the subject. On one hand, we have the rather dry, academic approach, sans of all flavor and colorful description, and at best is only a historical outline of the established theatres, revues, cabarets, composers and performers presenting conventional en- tertainment. This view tends to leave out the sub-cultural influences, the gritty un- derworld climate of the cellars and dark pubs where many of the intelligentsia and artists gathered. In the other view of the period, we have a romanticized longing for the torrid dark cellars of Berlin, filled with opium smoke, transvestite chorus girls, hot jazz and barons with suspect incomes and perverse tastes. This ignores the wider cultural scope. I am rather inclined to believe that the climate of Weimar Berlin’s cabarets was somewhere in between -- and more. Much, much more. To even begin to understand the popular cabaret music of Weimar Berlin, you must also understand the culture it was created in as a whole. We have the film and musical Cabaret to thank for the popular view of the period, showing us deca- dent underworld patrons engulfed in a hazy cloud of sexual transgression, with some great songs thrown in for good measure. Based on the Christopher Isherwood novels published in his The Berlin Stories, it brought us Isherwood’s experience of the events from 1929 up to 1933, however filtered through Hollywood’s imagination. Also, The Threepenny Opera, having a huge success on Broadway in the late 1950’s, resulted in a revival of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s works, especially in America. Strangely enough, their names became entangled with the popular definition of Berlin cabaret, even though neither Brecht nor Weill, for example, wrote specifically for the cabaret stage. To really get at the zeitgeist (the “spirit of the times”) is perhaps impossible for those of us born too late to have experienced it, but through research and interviews we are able to obtain at best, a glimpse of the atmosphere that was Weimar Berlin between the wars. If any serious investigation of Weimar culture, especially the music, is to succeed, then one must embrace not only musicological research but the historical, the sociological, the political, and delve into the many forms of the arts: theatre, painting, architecture, film, photography, literature, poetry …and so much more. One needs to inflame the senses with the great magnitude of creativity that the Weimar Renaissance period gave us. Berlin at the turn of the century was a bustling, growing metropolis that rivaled Paris as a focal point of the arts. Evolving from the industrial evolution and into the machine age, Berlin’s inhabitants were drawn not SOUND AND SMOKE A Brief Survey of the Weimar Berlin Cabaret Era By Tom Garretson, producer