Cologne Jazzweek: Kuhn Fu

The band name is "martial arts" in the best sense of the word: Kuhn Fu is the name Berlin guitarist Christian Achim Kühn has given his multinational band, with which he has been causing a furore in the truest sense of the word on the stages of clubs and festivals since it was founded in 2012. With four woodwinds, a rhythm section and himself on the Telecaster and as a singer, Kühn plays a ludicrous puzzle game with the audience when he performs his mix of jazz and punk, Kabarett and cabaret. Kühn and Kuhn Fu don't even stop at a fairy tale like "The Fisherman and His Wife", which was popularised by the Brothers Grimm. They swiftly transfer the plot from the North Sea coast to London, the fisherman becomes the horn player Marcel De Champignon, the fish is called Bruno, the architect, and the woman's name only appears in the name of the website ilsebill.com. The whole performance seems refreshingly crude and absurd, it has a lot of the anarchy of Dadaism and Surrealism, while the music is raw and mangy, shaggy and unbrushed. But that's also what jazz has to be today: cheeky, bold, nosy.