A German duo is enjoying incredible success on social networks, and particularly on TikTok, with a song full of humor that plays with pronunciation and viral choreography.
Who would have thought that a German rap about rhubarb would be a global success? Not its creator, Bodo Wartke, amazed by the millions of views of his catchy catchphrase which celebrates words and sounds.
Posted on YouTube in mid-December 2023, “Barbara’s rhubarb bar” turned into a global hit thanks to the choreographic adaptation in April by two Australian students.
In May, the song was briefly at 12th place on the TikTok music charts, ahead of American superstar Beyoncé.
Not bad for a “tongue twister”, these speech challenges made up of sentences to be pronounced very quickly without scratching them.
Debit the Rhabarberbarbarabar by Bodo Wartke returns to singing “are the archduchess’s socks dry” to a hip hop beat.
And yet the 47-year-old fanatic admits to AFP that he “moderately likes this vegetable, which is too fibrous and too acidic, except when it is prepared as a crumble or jam with strawberries.” But he has long delighted in the sound of the word.
Bodo Wartke therefore decided, with his content creator partner Marti Fischer, to adapt this story of Barbara’s rhubarb bar and its customers, barbarians drinking beer while having their beards shaved, into music.
Underwater and on wheels
“Even in our wildest dreams, we would never have imagined such success,” admits Bodo Wartke, who has been performing in cabarets in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for 27 years.
Barbara’s rhubarb bar has received over 47 million views on TikTok and been translated into numerous languages. The song and its choreography have been covered in recent months by Internet users all over the world, including underwater, on ice skates or on rollers.
Also the author of two plays, the man who in his youth wanted to become a music and German teacher specializes in performing comic songs on the piano.
Bodo Wartke has already performed numerous Germanic tongue twisters in the past, such as “Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische” (the fisherman Fritz catches fresh fish, editor’s note).
“Until now, I always thought that I was addressing a German audience. I believed that you had to understand the meaning to appreciate it,” he says.
Putting an end to the clichés of the austere German
“But obviously, the joy we experience, the sound of the words assembled in alliteration combined with hip hop, all of this is transmitted beyond meaning,” adds this adopted Berliner, behind round glasses which give him an air of mischievous student.
According to him, “many people think that Germans are humorless, don’t know how to have fun and that German is an aggressive language.”
“Now they are reviewing their prejudices and that is precisely what pleases me,” he explains. “People write to me that our song made them want to learn our language.”
To complete the twisting of the clichés of the austere German, he also took up on TikTok, in a duet with Marti Fischer, the choreography of Barbara’s rhubarb bar which panicked the web.
He performs it in a light pink suit, while happily swaying his hips. “Choreography was not at all our specialty and we had to practice a lot,” he admits.
Among the covers on TikTok that particularly pleased him were those of a group of children in Uganda. “It shows how ultimately we are all united across the world,” he comments.
Building on its success, the duo Wartke and Fischer are considering presenting their show in non-German-speaking countries. “The songs would remain in German but we would present them in English.”
And he is considering a bid for the Eurovision Song Contest, convinced that there is room for improvement for Germany, which finished in last place in 2022 and 2023.
