Hold on to Your Genre: Krautrock
Beginning in the 1950s and through the 60s, the English-speaking world had been overtaken by pop and rock music. The British Invasion brought its rock n’ roll culture stateside and monopolized the ears of our country’s youth. At the same time, West Germany disregarded rock n’ roll as kid’s music. It was entertaining, but hardly some form of high art. The Germans had no rock n’ roll scene to call their own until 1968.
The same year when student riots broke out throughout Western Europe inspired by the Prague Spring and a disdain for authoritarian regimes. The hippies reached Germany and brought a new kind of drug-induced-free-form-rock music with them.
Some of the first groups to play in the style were Amon Duul I and Amon Duul II. They came from a multimedia artist commune known as Amon Duul and spent days playing free improvisational concerts that would eventually be released as a double LP. Around the same time a certain British musician and his wife would also leave a mark on the German music scene. The collaborations between John Lennon and Yoko Ono convinced the young Germans that rock music could be experimental, innovative and inspiring.
What separated these artists from their English-speaking counterparts that were also dabbling in psychedelia was that they didn’t see the need to recreate the effects of drugs through their music. Rather they fused free form jazz and electronic minimalist avant-garde to form their own interpretation of psychedelic rock.
Through out the 1970s pioneering groups from the movement rose up and added different elements to the mix. Two former university students started making music as Can and added jazz to the sound. Kluster focused on electronic keyboard music and the incorporation of static drones. Popol Vuh used electronic synthesizers and Tangerine Dream and Faust manipulated tapes and synthesizers in a way that would foreshadow the noise rock of the future.
The music was popularized and distributed through a small independent record label started by Dutch journalist Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser named Ohr. At its time, the idea of a small record label catering to a niche audience was virtually unheard of. The initial success of Ohr even prompted some major labels to create sub-labels to exclusively release German music.
These groups rejected the melodic patterns created by the American and British rock artists popular at the time and attempted to create a distinctly German sensibility in their music. However, these artists embraced some groups they had initially rejected when they started to create more radical and innovative music, such as Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground, The Beatles etc.
The term Krautrock was ascribed to these musicians by the British press. It comes from a humorous play on the ethnic slur for a German, “kraut.” The artists didn’t think of themselves as a movement because many of the groups actually sound vastly different from one another. Krautrock largely served as a term to describe how the British underground following of these musicians interacted with their music. Many of these so-called krautrock artists initially rejected the term because they didn’t want to be pigeonholed but would sometimes ironically embrace it.
Krautrock ultimately had a profound effect on modern music. It can be heard everywhere from pop to rock to electronic music. The most popular group to come out of the scene, Kraftwerk, arguably popularized electronic music in the Western world and introduced synthesizers to pop music. Many movements from the 1980s and beyond can claim some influence of krautrock. Minimalist rock bands such as Joy Division, electronically influenced pop such as the New Wave movement, the free-form chaos of No Wave and even art-rock like Sonic Youth and Stereolab can trace their roots back to a small group of artists in West Germany.
The biggest influence of krautrock today can be seen in the rise of independent record labels. Before Ohr, an elite few controlled most record labels. In the 1980s, however, thousands of independent record labels popped up specializing in different sounds and styles of music.
In my research, I found a great mixtape featuring most of Krautrock’s giants. It’s really amazing to think that while the rest of the world was listening to three-cord rock, the Germans were creating something so innovative and original.
http://www.fakedpotatoes.com/2011/01/krautrock/
