“Dschinghis Khan” by Dschinghis Khan (1979)
“Dschinghis Khan” performed by the group of the same name (Dschinghis Khan) was Germany’s entry for the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest, which took place in Jerusalem, Israel on March 31, 1979. It came in fourth place. This may seem like an usual choice for Jpop 101 unless you’ve been at, say, an elementary school festival or participated in a prefecture-wide dance challenge. Inexplicably the camp classic of German disco has become part of the soundtrack of Japanese life to the point that a CD composed entirely of covers of this song was released in 2008.
My best guess for how this happened (and please drop a comment if you have the anecdote squirreled away somewhere) is that in the wake of Saijo Hideki’s 1978 smash hit cover of “Y.M.C.A.” the industry went hunting for western disco songs and this one was like a big juicy apple ripe for the plucking, with its infectious combination of exotic Mongolian steppes imagery (still used today in pop songs), the meme-worthy dance moves of Dschinghis Khan member Louis Potgieter, and the unique musical mix of smaltzy German schlager with Eurobeat disco. The original German language version was actually a modest hit in Japan. But it’s all about the covers.
The first cover to appear in Japan was the from the group the 5 Carats (５カラット) who were regulars on the Sunday evening television music show Young O! O! (5:30 pm start time) which overlapped with the other popular music television show Let’s Go Young! (6:00 pm start time) by half an hour. But it’s on Let’s Go Young! where you could find former Johnny’s & Associates talent Kawasaki Mayo who covered this song a few months later and his version is considered the definitive 70s cover. However the song was also covered by Hara Takashi and Batmans and the memeworthy song was picked up by acts like Kome Kome Club and (quite memorably) Johnny’s & Associates group SMAP.
The last big cover of the song was by Hello Project girl group Berryz Koubou in 2008, who give the song a much more cheerful and perky feel than any of the men who had covered it before. The song has since entered the Hello Project canon and is now covered by other groups like Morning Musume.
“Dschinghis Khan” also reached Korea (enjoy this classy 1979 cover by Nami and Franco Romano Band) and was covered by Chinese disco queen Zhang Die.
Seemingly the only market that wasn’t dominated by Dschinghis Khan was the English speaking one.
The original, eponymous Dschinghis Khan was put together for the Eurovision Song Contest by the German Eurovision King, Ralph Siegel. He threw together some people who had striking features, rehearsed them for a few weeks, won fourth place at Eurovision, and bingo! A gold record was born!
The music by Ralph Siegel is the same across all versions but the Japanese lyrics written by Yamamoto Iori lend the song a different feel to the German ones by Bernd Meinunger. A little less… Mongolian kitsch and a little more disco kitsch.
Dsching, Dsching, Dschingis Khan
He Reiter, Ho Leute,
He Reiter, Immer weiter!
Dsching Dsching Dschingis Khan
Hey Horseman, Ho Brothers
Hey Horseman, Keep on going
ジン ジン ジンギスカン
ヘイ ブラザー ホー ブラザー
ナイス ブラザー ゴー ブラザー
Jin Jin Jingis Khan
Hey Brother, Ho Brother
Nice Brother Go Brother
But whatever lyrics you chose, you can’t go wrong cueing up one of the dozens of versions of “Dschinghis Khan” in any language you want (except English presumably) ho ho ho ho! and start dancing! Ha ha ha ha!