Cinema Tribuna: «Drum sing i grad drum» in Ilanz

Walter Lietha was one of the big names on the Swiss music scene in the 1970s. As a singer, poet with a seismographic flair, composer and sometimes sharp critic of the times, he wrote countless dialect songs and became the voice of an entire generation. But at the beginning of the 80s, at the time of the youth unrest, his songs were suddenly hardly played on Radio DRS. It became quiet around the Graubünden musician.

Parallel to his musical work, Walter Lietha developed a second passion. The world of books, which had fascinated him from an early age, became his second mainstay. For decades, he ran an antiquarian bookshop and a bookshop in Chur's old town, the "Narrenschiff". A few years ago, he moved his antiquarian bookshop, with thousands of books steeped in history, to Trin in the Surselva.

In August 2025, the music festival "Alpentöne" held a tribute concert in his honour and invited a wide variety of Swiss musicians. Corin Curschellas, Stephan Eicher, Sophie Hunger, Michael von der Heide, Max Lässer and the musicians of the specially assembled "Narrenschiff-Band" tell what Lietha's songs mean to them. Together with him, they perform in this concert, which becomes the heart of the film, around which Lietha's songs, his thoughts, memories and lifeworlds gather.