Fasia - Portrait (Pläne, 1976)

Fasia Jansen was a German political songwriter and peace activist, born 20 June 1929 in Hamburg.

The illegitimate daughter of the Liberian Consul General Momulu Massaquoi and the German chambermaid Elli Jansen experienced as a child discrimination due to their skin color and due to their illegitimate birth.
She grew up in a worker quarter of Hamburg and lived through the discrimination of an obviousliy "nicht-arischen" woman in the time of the fascist dictatorship. Her hope, oriented at Josephine Baker, to cover her life with music and dance  was destroyed as she was thrown out of a dance school at the age of 11 years. Three years later she was forced to work in the kitchen of the KZ Neuengamme. The fifteen-year experienced the brutality of the SS and the despair of the prisoners - experiences, which shaped her life crucially.

In the early years of West Germany after the NS dictatorship she tried to cope with the experiences from the camp and to keep the memory of the victims and their ideals alive. She once again started to make music, first as a choir member in Hamburg, with own songs. Jansen moved to the "Ruhrgebiet" and engaged herself in the political fights of the time. She performed at a lot of "Ostermärschen" (part of the peace movement), for example in 1966 together with Joan Baez. She supported the large strikes before the factory gates of Krupp, Hoesch or Thyssen and sung at the "Weltfrauenkonferenz" of the UN in Nairobi and at the "Burg Waldeck Festivals".

She died on December 29, 1997 in Oberhausen.

The album "Portrait" was recorded in September and Oktober 1975 in Hamburg and Köln and released on the Pläne label in 1976.

Fasia - Portrait (Pläne, 1976)
(320 kbps, front cover included)