Ode to joy goes hip hop for Europe

Roll over Beethoven: a sexed-up version of your Ode to Joy went on sale to the public today.

Europe’s official anthem for more than 30 years was given the hip hop treatment on a recording earlier this year.

It was never intended to be anything more than an up-to-the-minute interpretation available as a backing track on promotional material for the 43-nation Council of Europe.

A CD, also containing jazz, techno and trance versions, was offered to journalists to liven up their radio and television broadcasts about the Strasbourg-based institution.

But the clamour from the public has been so great that the disc is now going on general sale, at just 12.90 euros.

The Council of Europe, separate from the European Union, was set up in 1949 and adopted Ode to Joy, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, as its theme music in 1972.

Ode to Joy also became the anthem of the European Union in 1986, both organisations using the 1971 arrangement by the conductor Herbert von Karajan.

But it is the hip hop version, greeting telephone callers waiting to be connected to staff in the Council of Europe headquarters, which attracted such attention.

“The CD was conceived as a working tool to help radio and TV reporters covering European issues, but so many requests for it were received from non-journalists that the decision was taken to put it on sale to the public,” said a Council of Europe spokesman.

But it will not be in all the usual record shops – apart from being on sale at a tiny kiosk in the lobby of the Council’s Strasbourg building, the CD will have to be ordered over the Internet from Waterpipe Records, based in Freiburg, Germany.

For traditionalists, the CD includes new classical interpretations of Ode to Joy for piano, church organ and symphony orchestra.

And it is priced not to make a profit: “We don’t expect to make any money“, explained the spokesman, “but if there is a small profit after the recording company has been paid, it will ploughed back into the Council of Europe.”

The CD can be ordered at http://europeananthem.waterpiperecords.de