Standing on the streets of Berlin, Zosch looks like any dive bar — from the outside.
Peeling paint. Walls sprayed with graffiti.
But enter its doors on a Wednesday night and walk down a tight, narrow staircase and you’ll hear a familiar sound.
New Orleans-style jazz warms every nook of the small, brick basement. The lights are low — and it's packed. People of every nationality sit shoulder to shoulder on wooden benches, watching a band of German men channel their inner Louis Armstrong.
Over the past 20 years, La Foote Creole has played to a full house weekly at Zosch, led by musicians who are now in their 70s and 80s. Raimer Lösch, the band’s leader, said they were inspired by recordings of New Orleans musicians released after the Great Depression.
“We listened to this music, and got very excited about it,” he said in a thick accent, his eyes bright. “It's different to all other music — it's very emotional.”
Lösch said he was amazed by the genre’s use of improvisation and vibrato in particular.
His love for jazz brought the Frankfurt native to Berlin, where he joined his first band, the White Eagle Jazz Band, a nod to the famed Black Eagle Jazz Band of the 1920s.
Then, in 1965, when Lösch was in his 30s, he and his band traveled to the source of their inspiration — the Crescent City. He spent the year in New Orleans, picking up gigs where he could, including at historic venues like Maison Bourbon and Preservation Hall.
But Lösch said he didn’t come to the city just to play; he came to learn. He took lessons from the unsung masters of jazz — poor, Black New Orleanians. Self-made musicians from the same background as the great Louis Armstrong, but who hadn’t risen to the same fame.
“They never left New Orleans like Louis Armstrong and all that. They stayed there, very poor. And they loved their music,” he said.
He said his teachers’ style of jazz had more emotion than white jazz musicians. To him, it sounded less stiff and more authentic.
“A little bit of music and then their feeling came out and they created original tones on their instruments,” Lösch said. “We copied all that.”
By 1973, Lösch had moved back to Germany. He hasn’t lived in New Orleans since, but he’s been back to visit several times.
He said he still plays the same style he learned in New Orleans so many years ago and teaches the craft to new — and younger — members of La Foote Creole. In a way, he’s helping spread New Orleans jazz, across an ocean and more than 5,000 miles.
Lösch said that’s not why he does it, though.
“We know that people don't know anything about the music. They wonder what we're doing,” he said. “We have a chance to show people that this music has something different to it.”
