Laibach: A New Incarnation of VOLKSWAGNER

A characteristic Laibach exploration of the relationship between art, ideology and power, and a critical re-examination of the political mythologies of the twentieth century. Without nostalgia. Without distance.

VOLKSWAGNER REVISITED (2026)
Seventeen years after its premiere, VOLKSWAGNER returns in a radically reimagined form. While the 2009 version deconstructed and transformed Wagner's musical material into expansive jazz suites inspired by the spirit of Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, the new incarnation places Laibach firmly at its centre as the principal protagonist.

As the driving force behind this sonic Gesamtkunstwerk, Laibach functions simultaneously as performer, interpreter and guide through a monumental musical landscape. Wagner's motifs are transformed through the raw energy of electronics, industrial rhythms and orchestral power into an uncompromising contemporary experience. Together with the orchestra, the ensemble follows the complex score with rigorous precision, while at the same time taking ownership of individual sections of the composition as a powerful and unmistakably distinctive musical entity.

Unlike the 2009 version, which was largely built around jazz orchestrations, the new interpretation places considerably greater emphasis on Laibach's own sonic language. Industrial electronics, orchestral textures and rhythmic intensity become the primary means of expression, while improvisation is no longer rooted in jazz tradition but emerges from the ensemble's exceptional creative flexibility, broad musical vocabulary and the performers' ability to reshape the work spontaneously beyond conventional stylistic boundaries.
If VOLKSWAGNER (2009) was a musical-philosophical reflection on European cultural history - where Wagner, totalitarianism, jazz, modernism and popular culture converged - then VOLKSWAGNER RE-VISITED (2026) is a ritual of sonic transformation, in which history appears not as memory but as material. Wagner remains Wagner. Laibach remains Laibach. Everything else is open to reinterpretation.

VOLKSWAGNER 2009
Laibach premiered VOLKSWAGNER in April 2009 at Gallus Hall in Ljubljana, performing with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra under the direction of composer and conductor Izidor Leitinger. At the heart of the project lies not simply Wagner's music, but the question of its historical and ideological perception.
Richard Wagner became one of the central cultural symbols appropriated by the Nazi regime as an emblem of German national identity, and his works formed an integral part of the cultural arsenal of the Third Reich. At the same time, Nazi ideology condemned so-called "degenerate art", among which jazz occupied a prominent place.

Laibach placed this historical paradox at the very centre of the work. Motifs from Tannhäuser, Siegfried Idyll and The Ride of the Valkyries were reimagined through the languages of jazz, symphonic music, electronics and industrial sound. In doing so, the project confronts two worlds that Nazi ideology regarded as fundamentally incompatible: Wagner as the embodiment of German high culture, and jazz as a symbol of modernity, freedom and cultural plurality.