Krautrock! New music of the future (Part 1)

The music of Germany, since WWII has been something of a rare phenomenon. From a vast nation obsessed with gaining a new image, making a mark for themselves and aiming to try and get away from the ghosts of the past. Such an attitude inevitably led to a youth culture that was inquisitive and yearning for new forms of expression. This uniquely Teutonic spirit had existed on a smaller scale, decades earlier with the new generation of classical composers and also musical innovators like Oskar Sala.

As the electronic revolution gained pace in the 1950’s, a new generation of revolutionary composers, like Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen, the Germans eagerly declared themselves as the inventors of Electronic Music. More popular forms of music were being developed like Rock N Roll, Jazz, Beat & Soul. It was these combinations, along with other musical forms that were to become the building blocks of Krautrock. The new music of the future!

In the early 1960’s, Jazz was already being taken to new realms with it’s focus in the industrial Rhine Valley, Munich and in Hamburg. The Beatles had taken up residency at the Star Club. A whole new scene was about to be born. The relatively cheap new market of LP records was certainly a major factor. Out of the new rock and pop culture, German variations on Anglo-American trends began to take shape.

Then, almost without warning in late 1968, the psychedelic/progressive explosion happened. Almost like an echo of what had happened a year or two before in America & Britain. But in Germany the explosion was much more profound. Obviously having Anglo-American influences, many of the more radical innovators attempted to reject conventional music forms and do something new, different, something uniquely German. When the press latched on to this boom in creative German rock music, it was popularly named “Krautrock.”  To be continued…..