Krautrock: German Music in the Seventies

by Ulrich Adelt

Krautrock is a catch-all term for the music of various white German rock groups of the 1970s that blended influences of African American and Anglo-American music with the experimental and electronic music of European composers. Groups such as Can, Popol Vuh, Faust, and Tangerine Dream arose out of the German student movement of 1968 and connected leftist political activism with experimental rock music and, later, electronic sounds. Since the 1970s, American and British popular genres such as indie, post-rock, techno, and hip-hop have drawn heavily on krautrock, ironically reversing a flow of influence krautrock originally set out to disrupt.
 
Among other topics, individual chapters of the book focus on the redefinition of German identity in the music of Kraftwerk, Can, and Neu!; on community and conflict in the music of Amon Düül, Faust, and Ton Steine Scherben; on “cosmic music” and New Age; and on Donna Summer’s and David Bowie’s connections to Germany. Rather than providing a purely musicological or historical account, Krautrock discusses the music as being constructed through performance and articulated through various forms of expressive culture, including communal living, spirituality, and sound.
 

Genres: Music

246 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2016

About the author

Dr. Ulrich Adelt is Associate Professor for American Studies and African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of Wyoming (U.S.A.). His publications include the book Blues Music in the Sixties: A Story in Black and White (Rutgers University Press 2010) as well as articles in the American Quarterly, the Journal of Popular Music Studies and Popular Music and Society. He is currently working on a book-length manuscript on Krautrock.

Reviews

[David Ball · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second Krautrock inspired book I’ve read in recent times. Not a classic, it reads like a university thesis with repeated references to ‘deterritorialization’, ‘reterritorialization’ and ‘performativity’ - terms even my spellcheck struggles with. But like a good research paper it was - surprise, surprise - well researched. It helped round out my knowledge of core groups like Kraftwerk, CAN, Faust, Neu! and Tangerine Dream; introduced me to new groups like Ton Steine Scherben; and challenged my thinking by linking Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, David Bowie, and film director Werner Herzog to the scene. The 50 Most Important Krautrock Albums list in the Appendix will also come in useful as I continue my hunt for obscure vinyl, although disappointingly a number of the bands referred to on the list were not discussed in the book.

[Jay Gabler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very substantive, if not the most accessible introduction to the genre. I reviewed Krautrock for The Current.