PARTNERS IN SPIRIT: Björn Both, front man SANTIANO & ambassador UN Ocean Decade
„We are all travelling on a big ship.“
7pm, I'm sitting with Björn Both, the frontman of shanty rock band Santiano, in his dressing room at the Barclays Arena in Hamburg. The concert is about to start, the hall is already full, there are various medications and a box of Luckies on the small table in front of us. Björn has a sore throat, he had a fever yesterday, but the show must go on. Or rather: when you're at sea, you can't choose the weather. The passionate sailor and ambassador for the UN Ocean Decade knows when to get on deck. Well then, ZACK AHOI!
Kiel-Marketing: In your song "Doggerland", the dyke breaks and everything goes under. Today the sea level is rising Sea level is rising due to global warming, so no dyke will help. You campaign for marine protection and support various organisations, do Santiano concerts also help in the fight against climate change?
Björn Both: The people and organisations that we present on our beacon page are already doing so much more than we could ever do ourselves. Santiano can only create publicity. People see us as credible, that makes us transporters, and so we tell them: you have been celebrating this habitat with us for twelve years, so let's also work together to ensure that this habitat is doing well. If we play in front of around 300,000 people a year and only 20, 30, 40 per cent say they're actually right, the guys, then we can take them on this journey with us. But we always have to be careful not to overdo it at the concerts and ruin the evening for people with such topics.
Especially at this time, you have to look carefully at how you formulate things and how you take people with you instead of building up more fronts. Two years ago, I thought that with all the things we urgently need to do to protect the oceans, we now have them in our hands and can get them underway. Today I have the impression that we are further away from this than ever before.
People only follow statements from people they perceive as authentic?
We can just try to take people with us because we are credible and obviously not crazy hippies. We are somehow guys that people can identify with. We can certainly create understanding, be it for a stance against the increasing shift to the right, for marine protection, for climate protection, against species extinction, for all the things that we urgently need to tackle.
• Like Boris Herrmann, Björn Both is an ambassador for the UN Ocean Decade, a global campaign initiated by the United Nations with the aim of jointly shaping the ocean we need for the future: healthy, full of life, with protected areas, but also sustainably managed. •
You play in arenas all over Germany, do you notice differences in people? When it comes to complicated issues like climate protection and marine conservation? In the new federal states in Germany, for example, the AFD [Party from the right-wing spectrum] has several strongholds where Climate protection doesn't come first.
At the beginning, definitely. We were often misunderstood with our music and our concepts of freedom and homeland. That's why at some point we realised that we needed to explain this. We've been doing that for twelve years now. Now we've been to many big cities, including in the East of Germany, and large sections of the other 70 per cent are obviously coming to us. They start clapping and don't stop when we talk about these issues. Not all of them – but more and more.
~
“You know, socially, we’re just rubbing ourselves up the wrong way with things that cost us far too much energy and time. We don’t have that!”
~
A survey has just revealed that climate change is no longer the biggest concern of the majority of the majority, but Putin, the war in Ukraine, migration, xenophobia. Can you counter this with a music concert?
I simply have to believe that. Just yesterday in Magdeburg, for example. That really touches me a lot, and I tell them that too. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for wanting to understand what we're actually about. I want to try to take people with me, I want to create something that has a certain benevolent impact and doesn't drive a wedge even further into society. I don't want to say that I still understand every protest voter. I'm slowly getting out of it and no longer get involved in discussions. But to anyone who is undecided in this whole vote-bending thing, I immediately reach out my hand to bring them back into the centre. You know, socially we're getting worked up about things that cost us far too much time and energy. We don't have that! We have other things to do, damn it! We should finally tackle the right things. It's all really annoying me right now. And yes – maybe concerts are a good way to get close to people.
You love being on the sea, sailing yourself. The sailor Rosalin Kuiper [Skipper Holcim-PRB in the Ocean Race Europe 2025] has said that she is always drawn to the sea. The sea, the seamanship, the Teamwork. And when you sail into a harbour, it's something completely different, than when you come in from the land side. You meet lots of like-minded people, a kind of Community of fate. Do you create like-minded people at a concert?
Yes, absolutely. That's what it's all about. And as for the harbour, it's not for nothing that the harbour is called port [lat. porta, gate] in English. It's the main entrance to the city. I love that. It almost overwhelms you! You just can't approach a city from land in such an impressive way. You drive through hills, suddenly you're in some suburb – and boom! right in the centre. Oops, we're already there? It's much more spectacular coming from the water.
~
“All this seamanship can serve very, very well as a kind of railing, which you can also hang on to quite well on land.”
~
Do you have the feeling at your concerts that you and the people grow together, that you are a crew at the end of the concert?
That's exactly what we try to convey. That's what we've built up and that's what we've tried to describe in our book. In the beginning, I had this vision of this world sailer that takes everyone along and on which everyone finds their place. I had no idea how to build it. But at some point I sensed that that's exactly what was there. And that's what we try to do again and again, that runs through our entire fanbase. You know, if you like maritime music that gets down to business a bit and also has a message or two in it, and that gets everyone a bit caught up in their longing to stick together, that one person stands up for the other, then there's no other address than us.
Can you learn a lot from seamanship?
Absolutely! All this seamanship can serve very, very well as a kind of railing that you can also use to hang on to on land.
What can you learn from seamanship, from the fact that you can only achieve something together? can be learnt for the fight to protect the oceans?
Give me a few hours to answer! First of all, respect. Respect for what you are in, for nature, for the sea. If you see this as a parable, then we are all travelling on a big ship. A good skipper always sees his ship as an extension of himself. If he doesn't do this, he is making a very crucial mistake. We humans must also see this world as an extension of ourselves. As a sailor, you nestle into nature, into the wind, into the waves. Everything else is bullshit. But what we are currently doing as humanity is the opposite. It's a rigid existence. Like a concrete pillar in the middle of the ocean that will crumble at some point. As humans, we should learn to nestle into the world again, to find our place, to remain flexible and to go with the flow.
Anjoscha from the Kiel marketing team recently said a very nice sentence: The sea puts you in your place here and there, but it's good ..
... another sailor's saying is, If you trust the sea, you don't know it (laughs). Mindfulness and reading nature, that's sailing for me. Finding my place in this roar and then dancing it out. A permanent balancing act. I love that, it's great. It sounds so cheap, but as humans we also have to find our place in nature again, but we're a long way away from that right now. Our lives no longer have anything to do with being close to nature. And that's what you see from the water. On land, you're fully in the hamster wheel, a few nautical miles from land you can see the hamster wheel in which you'll be raging again when you get back.
Do you like sailing with others or mainly on your own?
When we sail regattas, there are four of us, and then we can beat the Capella around the race course for a few days. You have to have a good knack for choosing who you bring together. I love sailing with my mates. It's like being in the crew here in the band that I've worked with for decades. I like that kind of thing. I'm a pretty loyal soul. I'm really into factors like reliability. And trust. I'm a total confidant. I'm far too lazy to be suspicious. That would mean I'd have to check everything all the time. Moreover, mistrust has a fundamentally bad energy.
And if you sail alone?
The word alone says it all: being one with everything. Then nothing distracts me. That really is a good prerequisite for what I've just tried to describe. And when I get to the harbours, I'm much more open to others when I'm alone. Alone, I can just let myself drift, chat to people I've just met. I'm rarely lonely on my own.
~
The interview was conducted by Ralf Löwe, Communication & Commercial The Ocean Race Europe/Kiel
©Kiel-Marketing GmbH
Do you have any questions or suggestions? Please feel free to contact me.