Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk is German for power station, and that tells you a little bit about this famous band's focus, namely industry and technology. With vocoder singing, an electronic, catchy sound, and huge projected images and words behind them, Kraftwerk had an entirely new aesthetic for their time. The extensive use of technology in their music and performances suggests an appreciation for modern electronics, an appreciation which contrasts with sometimes pessimistic lyrics ("Stop radioactivity") about the modern age.

This quote from this article I think really encapsulates what Kraftwerk, and other German bands, were about:"They were not the first band to make music with electronic keyboards, but they were probably the first musicians to fuse those innovations with pop melody (for better and for worse). When they pursued that fusion, they...replaced conventional drumming with electronic rhythms, or, better, the essence of Afro-American civilization with the essence of European civilization." The German music scene in the 1960s and '70s was all about finding a European and distinctly German musical culture amid the influx and prevalence of Ango-American rhythms and melodies. Kraftwerk, for one, refused to allow American rhythmic influences from jazz and rock to be the defining trademark of German music; instead, they used it as a jumping-off point to incorporate more of a European, electronic sensibility.



Also, check out their website. It can provide hours of entertainment.

Krautrock, Faust, and the new German identity

Krautrock was the name given by British followers to German experimental music that emerged in the postwar era. It was not a name widely embraced by German musicians. It encompassed a large trend in popular music, where German musicians were combining what they knew of American rock and roll with their own classical musical history (Stockhausen's experiments with electronica, for instance) to create something new. As one Faust member put it, "We were trying to put aside everything we had heard in rock 'n' roll, the three-chord pattern, the lyrics. We had the urge of saying something completely different." Various bands, including Tangerine Dream, Faust, and Kraftwerk, incorporated the avant-garde styles of the classical music world, which were playing with electronic sounds to create music that interacted directly with space, into a new approach to music that both utilized rock and roll and eschewed it.
A quote about Faust: "These teutonic vampires injected angst, like burning lava, into a sound that was deliberately fastidious, repulsive, incoherent." I'm not sure how accurate this is, but Faust is a remarkable band. They really exemplified the mish-mash experimental style of West German music at the time, combining rock and electronica into a unique German sound and perspective on music's effects. With a surrealist bent, they were not afraid to push the envelope with 14 minute long songs that were mainly drumming (Schempal) or that used guitars, tambourines, and electric drills in a looped, pulsating beat that is oddly fascinating (Krautrock). The song Krautrock starts out simply and just builds and builds on itself with new instrumentation and rhythms. Faust is one example of a band that took Western music and made a German movement out of it, coming as they did at the confluence of new developments in German classical music and in the German political sphere.
History of Rock Music: Faust
Krautrock

The Banana Bunker

The ability of Germany to transform itself is evident through the history of some of its cultural landmarks. The history of techno is interwoven with the rest of German cultural history and identity as the political, musical, and artistic scenes changed dramatically in the postwar and then the post-Wall era. The Banana Bunker of Berlin displays the varied history of Berlin and its dominant trends through its own use during the twentieth century. Built during the Second World War, it was originally intended as an air raid shelter and built by the infamous Albert Speer. When it ended up on the east side of the Berlin Wall, the Soviets used it as a prison for German soldiers. As the presence of the Soviet army diminished, the bunker came to be used as a storehouse for fruit imported from Cuba- hence the name "Banana Bunker". After the fall of the Wall, it became the city center for crazy techno raves until 1996. It stood unused until 2008, when Christian Boros decided to house his contemporary art collection, including works by Damien Hirst and Olafur Eliasson, there in a sort of museum. This transformation from utilitarian bunker to Soviet prison to fruit warehouse to techno party center to contemporary art museum reflects Germany's similar transformation in the latter half of the 20th century. The techno rave culture was an integral part of Berlin culture as Germans experienced the freedom of their own united state for the first time and felt free to experiment further with their music and the boundaries of their society. Techno was an important expression of cultural freedom to experiment.
Public Radio International piece on the Banana Bunker
Spiegel Online International article

West German Pavilion

The West German Pavilion, built to Stockhausen's specifications for the 1970 Osaka World's Fair, shows how much electronic music came to be associated with West Germany and the new and innovative techniques the West German electronic music world was taking to create new types of sounds and experiences of sound in space and interacting with space. It was a spherical building with fifty loudspeakers surrounding the audience in all directions, including from beneath the floor. The sound of the performers was manipulated through these speakers, sent in any pattern to give a sense of the music encircling the audience in any direction, or spiraling upwards, or layering. As the author Michael Forsyth describes it, "In Stockhausen's spherical building, the sounds move in space around the listener seated in his chair, giving him a liberated, floating sensation as he perpetually relates to and moves with the sounds; each person is able to relate to a number of different layers of sound at one time. The listener ceases to have a single viewpoint in music- this continually changes, like the different views of a single object in a cubist painting" (Buildings for Music, by Michael Forsyth, page 320; accessed here). Experimentation on such a large scale led to new sensations and a new conception of what music could do as it interacted with space around the listener. That is was called the West German Pavilion shows the attachment between West Germany and their experimental music, that they had created an art form that was distinctly German in its technicality and beauty.
For pictures of the West German Pavilion, see page 323 of Forsyth's book)
Kontakte, part 3, by Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

One of the most influential and unique composers of the 20th century, Stockhausen not only was a large figure in the classical world, but also in the newly emerging popular electronic scene in Germany. Interested in acoustics and how the shape of the space or perspective in space could affect sound and experience of a performance, he explored serialism and chance music in addition to electronica, where he focused on the most basic aspect of music, sine waves, and their manipulation to create music. Electronic Study I (1953) was the first piece ever composed with sine-wave sounds. He was involved more directly in the electronic music scene when he served as artistic director for a number of years for the electronic music studio at West German Broadcasting (Westdeutscher Rundfunk), where he had the opportunity to choose the type of electronic music recorded and broadcast and oversee its development. His interest in "the integration of all concrete and abstract (synthetic) sound possibilities (also all noises), and the controlled projection of sound in space" (Stockhausen 1989b, 127, as quoted in the Wikipedia article), as a classical composer, no less, was greatly influential for popular bands in terms of musical choice and in terms of more widespread acceptance of electronic music. He played around with tones and waves and encouraged experimentation. Stockhausen's music is more intellectual, I think, than later bands which incorporated the Western rhythms and sounds of rock and roll, but both share an alien, other-worldly quality that conveys vast amounts of empty space stretching to infinity.

http://www.furious.com/perfect/ohm/wdr.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen
Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1989b. Towards a Cosmic Music. Texts selected and translated by Tim Nevill. Shaftsbury: Element Books. ISBN 1852300841

Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream, one of the most well-known German electronica bands, was built upon Surrealist roots: Edgar Froese, who was the founding member, met and was greatly influenced by Salvador Dali in that he turned towards more experimental styles of music. Froese was born in East Prussia during World War II, but moved to West Berlin to study traditional visual art. His background in art as well as an interest in technology led him towards a multimedia approach to music, often using custom-made instruments and synthesizers. This shows how at that time, artists of all kinds were migrating to West Berlin, and that many influences contributed to the German music scene. Tangerine Dream members also claim classical composers such as Stockhausen as influences, making German electronica more of a melting pot for all kinds of German music and other musical forms abroad. That both Dali and Stockhausen shaped a band that was influential itself illustrates the wide-range that German artists in the '60s drew upon to create their own style of music that was ethereal and dream-like to perhaps convey the absurdity they saw in their own existence.
Edgar Froese biography

DEMOGRAPHICS

Mongols brought the Black Plague to Russia, from whence it moved west
Black Plague--> killed 1/3 of European population-> people moved out of the cities
Renaissance--> population rebounded to pre-plague levels
--> time was peaceful and prosperous
--> religious wars, plague--> Italian population went down
Beginning of exponential population growth
New World--> colonized partly because of overpopulation
European marriage pattern: women married older, large percentage of women remained unmarried
French Revolution/Industrial Revolution
--> people moved from country to city (Enclosure Acts, etc.)
--> longer lifespans, but families still large
--> needed extra money- child workers, lots of babies
--> rise of the middle class
--> consumerism
population doubled between 1800-1900
Industrialization
-->cities ill-equipped for rapid pop expansion--> the Social Question
-->longer life span
-->vaccination for smallpox, sanitation, cheaper food
-->rising fertility (as opposed to falling mortality)
-->people married younger, bigger families
WWI-->loss of an entire generation of men
Great Depression-->migration, smaller families?
post-WWII-->baby boom