The band Dschinghis Khan, formed in West Germany less than two months before the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest held in Jerusalem, had just a few weeks to learn their feature song’s lyrics and choreography. The song Dschinghis Khan (giving the group’s impromptu name) finished in fourth place but became an international hit, mainly across Europe and in Asia.
The band had few German members and had the South African Louis Hendrik Potgeiter as its frontman, the Hungarian Leslie Mandoki as its drummer, and Edina Pop (born Marika Késmárky) also leaving behind communist Hungary of the 70’s, as one of its female vocalists.
The group was to perform the song Moscau/Moscow for the 1980 Moscow Olympics but came across some hurdles as West Germany - along with Britain and the United States - did not participate in the Eastern Bloc’s games. The group were also seen as anti-communists and as reactionaries by the Soviet authorities and were subsequently barred from entering.
The group was a typical representative of the 70’s europop style: costumed choreographies, singing to backing tracks, staged television appearances before the video era.
English lyrics often available in German and Italian too, sung with an accent not detected in most of Europe, in the Eastern Bloc or in East Asia. Many of the themes dealt with well-known historical characters, places or events mainly from Europe: Waterloo, Rasputin, Ivanhoe, James Bond, Moscow, Robinson Crusoe. The melodic choruses resonated with radio and festival audiences across Greece, Spain, Poland, Germany, and Japan.
While one of the earliest formations, ABBA showed a lot of songwriting talent and musicianship, many others scraped hardly beneath melodic phrases and instant radio hits. ABBA were possibly the best musical example of the so-called Wall of Sound, which used mainly famale vocals - imported from America’s Motown-style. The Wall of Sound created a solid vocal panorama with ample overdubbing and reverb (ABBA’s Take a Chance on me is a good example:
As many other europop bands, Dschinghis Khan hit the stage and the record shops in Japan and elsewhere in East Asia.
With the main highlights of their success mostly extinguished by the mid-80’s, they disbanded, leaving behind cheap masterpieces such as Pistolero, Hadschi Halif Omar, Lereley, etc. Europop was by then taken over by British-influenced synth pop formations such as A-ha, Alphaville, Kajagoogoo, Modern Talking, and the actually British Pet Shop Boys, Kim Wilde and the like.
Since the roaring 80’s, Dschinghis Khan has seen some fortune and misfortune.
One of the members, Leslie Mandoki has been putting together highly successful musical projects as a producer and a drummer (Mandoki’s Soulmates, inviting top-performing artists from jazz and progressive rock: Al Di Meola, Mike Stern, Richard Bona, Randy Brecker, etc., and regularly performing across Germany and Hungary). Edina Pop was able to launch a very mainstream German career, surprisingly, as a pop singer, and rejoining the re-formed Dschinghis Khan after 2000. The group’s original German couple Henriette Strobel and Wolfgang Heichel broke up back in the 80’s, while its frontman Potgieter died of AIDS in 1994. Since then, the band has seen some reincarnations, appearing before excited fans in Russia and elsewhere in the last two decades. The most recent The Legacy of Dschinghis Khan has no original members and features younger performers.
Moskau from 1980:
Photo: https://www.schlagerplanet.com/news/fan-und-club-news/dschinghis-khan