German folk

While wannabe rock stars post their amateur music videos on YouTube in hopes of fame, all German musician Tim Linde had to do was play his song at his daughter's baptism. It was supposed to be a personal gesture at a small gathering last year, but turned out to be a life-changing event for the 38-year-old - some two decades after giving up his childhood dream of becoming a professional musician.

"There were so many coincidences that came together. If just one little piece hadn't fallen into place, none of it would have happened," Linde told DW.

Linde, who runs his own film production company, decided to record "Wasser unterm Kiel" (Water under the keel) in a professional studio as a gift for the guests at the baptism. The recording, however, found its way via mutual acquaintances into the hands of René Münzer, who has produced acts like German pop group OrangeBlue ("She's Got That Light") and worked with well-known entertainer Stefan Raab on the Bundevision Song Contest television show.

Münzer signed Linde, and his first album, "Menschenverstand" (Common Sense), was released in the fall of 2014. Linde had meanwhile become something of a media sensation across Germany. He was written up in scores of publications, and his single landed at number two on the German iTunes chart behind Schlager folk megastar Helene Fischer.

While Linde's coastal, singer-songwriter sound differs from Fischer's polished, region-unspecific pop-folk genre, they both represent a growing number of successful under-40 artists in Germany who draw on a traditional sound. Others include Andreas Gabalier, a 30-year-old Austrian singer who performs in Lederhosen with a heavy Austrian accent, and De Fofftig Pens, a young electro-pop-folk band that sings in Plattdeutsch, a dialect spoken along the German-Dutch border.

Secret to success: Just do it

For Münzer, signing Linde wasn't a strategic move to follow a fad, but a gut feeling. "When you hear something good, you just have to do it without thinking about whether it's trendy or stylistically interesting."

As it turned out, however, Linde's music was both. It was the text that impressed Münzer the most. "German-language music relies on the text," he explained. From German rap pioneers Die Fantastischen Vier to R&B crooner Xavier Naidoo, the most influential German-language musicians across the board have tended to be wordsmiths. Less of an expectation is placed on English-language pop, where German listeners may not understand every word.

The lyrics in "Wasser unterm Kiel" take a secular look at the Ten Commandments from the Bible and are jam-packed with fatherly words of encouragement. "Do to others as you would have them do to you, and always be friendly to other people," sings Linde, for example.

With dense German texts, hints of harmonica, references to the coastal northern German landscape and catchy, singable melodies, Linde's music embodies the Liedermacher genre - a lyrics-based traditional style of regional folk music - but is tinged with contemporary flair. (Liedermacher literally means "song maker.")

"Liedermacher doesn't even really exist anymore, even though there's a huge audience for it," explained Münzer.

After he teamed up with Linde, after "Wasser unterm Kiel" garnered nearly 250,000 YouTube hits and the German press starting comparing him to now 72-year-old Liedermacher pioneer Reinhard May, they realized just how big the niche was that was waiting to be filled. Linde said that, surprisingly, the biggest interest in his music was registered not only in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's seabound state in the North, but also in North Rhine-Westphalia in the West and Bavaria in the South - neither of which has the nautical feeling that turns up in the ballads on Linde's recent album.

Exotic music - within one country

Münzer explained why Germans are drawn to folk music that may not be from their own region: "When a Bavarian listens to something from northern Germany, it's exotic." It's the same reason why hip-swinging bossa nova sung in Portuguese - or even Andreas Gabalier's Austrian twang - are also beloved in Germany.

For Jakob Köhler, a member of the band De Fofftig Penns, the regional connection has a lot to do with irony. "The Bavarian wears Lederhosen and drinks beer, the Hesse drinks apple wine, the northern German imbibes tee while looking forlornly from the dike into the water. Of course none of that's true, but when you take a bit of an ironic look at your origins, great things happen. And people everywhere like great things." De Fofftig Penns take a more comic approach than Linde, but one point seems to apply to both: Good art simply goes over well - wherever you're from.

While globalization over the past decades has led to an onslaught of packaged pop from the US and UK, and a wave of German-language pop, rock and rap in response, it has also awakened an interest in "the other," agreed Münzer. At least in Germany's case, that "other" can practically be found next door.

Music in general, and perhaps folk music in particular, has a way of making the exotic more accessible. In Tim Linde's case, his music is so relatable that everyone wanted to claim him: "The Schleswig-Holsteiners celebrate me as a Schleswig-Holsteiner. At the same time, I was named 'Hamburg resident of the week' and the regional media in the Lower Rhine region say I come from their local city of Krefeld." (Linde did grow up in Krefeld but now lives near Hamburg.)

Don't quit your day job

In an era when users expect limitless tunes on cheap streaming services and artists scrape by on live gigs and - if they're lucky - YouTube ads, music has become something people take for granted and are less willing to spend money on. "Music has lost its status and become incidental," lamented Münzer. "If you make it as a musician, it's like winning the lotto."

And perhaps that's precisely why songs with folksy elements - which get in touch with regional landscapes and are more grounded in life experience than mainstream pop music - are finding listeners.

Linde isn't letting his surprise success go to his head - nor is he quitting his day job as a cameraman. "Since I have a family, I can't just say I'm going to put on my leather jacket and become a rock star. I have to see that everything stays serious and well planned." He has several live concerts planned in the next few months, as well as a new single to be released later this year.

The multi-tasking musician also hasn't forgotten why he wrote his initial single in the first place. "It's not for show; my kids fall asleep to it every night. And 'Wasser unterm Kiel' is still one of the smash hits. The kids love it."