Sesamstraße (Sesame Street in English, Sesamstrasse phonetically) is the German-language version of Sesame Street, a children's television program. It airs primarily in Germany and the surrounding German-speaking countries. The show premièred on 8 January 1973, Sesamstraße has been running on Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) since 1973; it's now in its 40th season. Sesamstraße is also broadcast on Das Erste and KiKa.
After a short test run of a few original, undubbed Sesame Street episodes from August 1972 onward, the German version of the show premiered on January 8, 1973. The first three seasons, or 250 episodes of Sesamstrasse consisted of the original American episodes dubbed to German in Hamburg. Merely the opening and closing songs and sequences were changed, featuring new lyrics written by Volker Ludwig and tunes by Ingfried Hoffmann. The title of the German theme song is Der, die, das (wer, wie, was – wieso, weshalb, warum – wer nicht fragt, bleibt dumm!), literally translating to This, this and that (who, how, what - why, why and why - those who don't ask stay dumb!).
Xavier Kurt Naidoo (born October 2, 1971) is a German singer-songwriter, record producer and occasional actor. Born and raised in Mannheim, Naidoo worked in several jobs in the gastronomy and the musical industry before relocating to the United States in the early 1990s, where he released his first full-length English language-album Seeing Is Believing under his stage name Kobra in 1994. He currently resides in his native Germany.
After working as a backing vocalist for the Rödelheim Hartreim Projekt and 3P label mates Sabrina Setlur and Illmat!c, Naidoo released his first German language album Nicht von dieser Welt in 1998, for which he won an ECHO Award and an MTV Europe Music Award. Selling more than one million copies in total, it produced six singles, including "Seine Straßen." and "Sie sieht mich nicht," the latter of which served as the theme song for Astérix & Obélix Take on Caesar (1999). After his highly publicized departure from 3P, his third studio album Zwischenspiel – Alles für den Herrn was released in 2002. It spawned the top five hit singles "Wo willst du hin?" and "Abschied nehmen" and led to a collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan member and producer RZA, with whom he released his first number-one single "Ich kenne nichts (das so schön ist wie du)" in 2003.
Max Raabe (born Matthias Otto, December 12, 1962, Lünen, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German singer. He is particularly noted as the founder and leader of the Palast Orchester.
Raabe developed an interest in the sound of German dance and film music of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the songs of the Comedian Harmonists, from seeing old films on television and from his parents' record collection. He formally studied music at the Berlin University of the Arts, intending originally to become a baritone opera singer. He and 11 other students formed the Palast Orchester in 1985. The ensemble initially used music arrangements that Raabe found whilst shopping at various flea markets. The orchestra worked for one year on learning these arrangements without any public engagements or performances. The orchestra gave its first public performance at the 1987 Berlin Theaterball, in the lobby as a secondary act, but with such success that the audience left the ballroom to hear the orchestra's performance in the lobby. Raabe and the Palast Orchester had a hit with his 1992 original, Schlager-styled song "Kein Schwein ruft mich an" ("No One Ever Calls, No One Has a Care for Me"; literal translation "No pig calls me"), a pop song in 1920s' style.