Songs tell long stories, swaggering and bloviating as they go. Stories are also told with a great deal of passion in the Salzkammergut region. With Gstanzl, Austrian folk songs, the words are twisted up to the point of incomprehensibility. This evening is about storytelling and illuminates the exciting connections between the griots, the troubadours of West Africa and the secret messages of the joiks, an old singing tradition of the Finnish Sámi, whose language was forbidden for a long time, to the sumptuous songs in Baroque music to the secret language of the Viennese lied singers. The ideas and threads of this evening are pulled together by someone who knows very well how to tell a story: Michael Köhlmeier.