German popular music
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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German popular music is a subcategory of European popular music and German music.
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Early popular music
Between World War I and World War II, German music branched out to form new, more liberal and independent styles.
Kabarett
The first form of German pop music is said to be cabaret, which arose during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s as the sensual music of late-night clubs. Marlene Dietrich and Margo Lion were among the most famous performers of the period, and became associated with both humorous satire and liberal ideas. "Wenn die beste Freundin" (1928) was an early lesbian-themed song.
Swing Movement
The strict regimentation of youth culture in Nazi Germany through the Hitler Youth led to the emergence of several underground protest movements, through which adolescents were able better to exert their independence.
One of these consisted mainly of upper middle class youths, who based their protest on their musical preferences, rejecting the völkisch music propagated by the Party in place of American jazz forms, especially Swing. While musical preferences are often a feature of youthful rebellion - as the history of rock and roll shows - jazz and especially Swing were particularly offensive to the Nazi hierarchy: not only did they promote sexual permissiveness, but they were also associated with the American enemy and worse, with the African race they considered inferior. To the Nazis, jazz was "Negro music".
On the other hand, Joseph Goebbels assembled some of the now jobless musicians from Germany and conquered countries into a big band called Charlie and His Orchestra to perform Nazified versions of popular swing hits to be played in propaganda broadcasts.
Post-War popular music
After World War II, German pop music was much influenced by music from USA and Great Britain. Apart from Schlager and Liedermacher, it is necessary to distinguish between pop music in West Germany and pop music in East Germany which developed in different directions. Pop music from West Germany was often heard in East Germany, had more variety and is still present today, while East German music had only little influence.
In West Germany, English-language pop music became more and more important, and today most songs on the radio are English. Nevertheless there is a big diversity of German language pop music. There is also English-language pop music from Germany, some having international success (for instance the Scorpions), but little with enduring broad success in Germany itself. There was hardly any English pop music from East Germany.
Germany has also had a thriving English-language pop scene since the end of the war, with several European and American acts topping the charts. However, Germans and German-oriented musicians have been successful as well. In the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century such European pop acts were popular as well as artists like Sarah Connor, Marc Terenzi, No Angels, Monrose, and US5 all who performed various types of mainstream pop in English. Many of these acts have had success all over Europe and Asia as well, although few have cracked the American market.
Schlager and Volksmusik
Schlager is a kind of vocal pop music, frequently in the form of sentimental ballads sung in German, popularized by singers such as Gitte Hænning and Rex Gildo in the 1960s, though not without a wide range within the style (Modern Schlager, Schlager-Gold, Volksmusik resp. "volkstümlicher Schlager"). Schlager/Volksmusik is strictly separated from international pop music and is only played on special format radio stations (sometimes mixed with international Oldies).
An important part of Schlager is volkstümliche Musik, a Schlager-like interpretation of traditional German folk themes that is very popular in German speaking countries, especially among the older generation.
Schlager has a wide variety, and the artists with many different styles for example Heino, Lou Hoffner (Eurovision Entrant 2003), Wolfgang Petry, Guildo Horn and many others.
Liedermacher
Liedermacher (Songwriter) has sophisticated lyrics and is sung with minimal instrumentation, for instance only with acoustic guitar. Some songs are very political in nature. This is related to American Folk/Americana and French Chanson styles.
Famous West German Liedermacher are Reinhard Mey, Klaus Hoffmann, Hannes Wader and Konstantin Wecker. Famous East German Liedermacher are Gerhard Schöne, Bettina Wegner and Barbara Thalheim.
Very popular in Germany also is Herman van Veen from the Netherlands.
Most Liedermacher artists also record special albums for children.
Popular music from West Germany
Rock
The US military radio station American Forces Network (AFN) had a great impact on German postwar culture, starting with AFN Munich in July 1945, which was formative for the further development of German rock and jazz culture. Bill Ramsey, a senior producer at AFN Frankfurt in 1953 who came from Ohio, later became famous as a jazz and Schlager singer in Germany (while remaining almost unknown in the US).
Prior to the late 1960s however, rock music in Germany was a negligible part of the schlager genre covered by interpreters such as Peter Kraus and Ted Herold, who played rock 'n' roll standards by Little Richard or Bill Haley, sometimes translated into German.
Genuine German rock first appeared around 1968, just as the hippie countercultural explosion was peaking in the US and UK. At the time, the German musical avant-garde had been experimenting with electronic music for more than a decade, and the first German rock bands fused psychedelic rock from abroad with electronic sounds. The next few years saw the formation of a group of bands that came to be known as Krautrock or Kosmische Musik groups; these included Amon Düül, Embryo, Embryo's Dissidenten, who later became the world music pioneers Dissidenten, Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, Can, Neu! and Faust.
Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW)
Neue Deutsche Welle is an outgrowth of British punk rock and New Wave which appeared in the mid-to late 1970s. It was the first successful unique German music but was limited in its stylistic devices (funny lyrics and surreal composition and production). Though it was a huge success in Germany itself in the 1980s, this was not long-lasting mostly due to over-commercialization. Some artists became famous internationally:
- Nena
- Falco (from Austria)
- Joachim Witt
Popular solo artists
In the 1980s most German-language popular music was sung by male solo artists. Here are few very popular singers:
Grönemeyer has managed best to maintain his success up to today. Maffay developed from Schlager to rock and has a large but delimited fan base - he is seldom played on the radio.
Hamburger Schule
Hamburger Schule (School of Hamburg) is an underground music-movement that started in the late 1980s and was still active till around the mid-1990s. It has similar traditions as Neue Deutsche Welle and mixed all that with punk, grunge and experimental pop music. Hamburger Schule has been an important part of Germany's youth and gave the term "Pop" a new definition, as now it was "ok" (or "cool") to sing in the German language. Hamburger Schule also includes intellectual lyrics with postmodern theories and social criticism. Important artists are:
Popular music from East Germany
There were some bands that were very popular in East Germany.
Ostrock
By the early 1970s, experimental West German rock styles had crossed the border into East Germany and influenced the creation of an East German rock movement referred to as Ostrock. On the other side of the Wall, these bands tended to be stylistically more conservative than in the West, to have more reserved engineering, and often to include more classical and traditional structures (such as those developed by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in their 1920s Berlin theater songs). These groups often featured poetic lyrics loaded with indirect double-meanings and deeply philosophical challenges to the status quo. As such, they were a style of Krautrock. The best-known of these bands were:
Only a few individual songs, such as "Am Fenster" by City and "Über sieben Brücken mußt Du geh'n" by Karat, found wide popularity outside the GDR.
There was also a wide diversity of underground bands. Out of this scene later grew the internationally successful band Rammstein (see Neue Deutsche Härte below).
Popular music from reunified Germany
New German popular music
[[File:Silbermond, Donauinselfest 2009f.jpg|thumb|Silbermond at the Donauinselfest 2009]] In the 1990s, German-language groups had only limited popularity, and only a few artists managed to be played on the radio, for example Rammstein, Rosenstolz or Die Prinzen.
This changed in 2002 with the success of Wir sind Helden, a German band with a new musical self-confidence. This success was followed by several other bands and a broader acceptance of existing German-language recording artists, such as:
- Beatsteaks
- Sportfreunde Stiller (already before 2002)
- Juli
- Silbermond
- Kraftklub
- Klee
- MIA.
- Annett Louisan
- Tokio Hotel
- Oomph!
International and English language music
Synthpop and Eurodance
Within the late 1980s (prior to reunification) and early 1990s, Synthpop and Eurodance became popular throughout Germany. Often, different styles were mixed in between these to attract a broad variety of audiences. Even today some bands perform (again) or new similar popular music projects are formed, following these earlier movements (R.I.O. and Cascada being examples).
Successful representatives of these styles were:
- Sarah Connor
- Culture Beat
- Modern Talking
- Milk & Sugar
- The Underdog Project
- Mousse T.
- Milli Vanilli
- Groove Coverage
- Haddaway
- Captain Hollywood Project
- E-Rotic
- No Angels
- Sash!
- Snap!
- Mr. President
- Fun Factory
- Captain Jack
- Lou Bega
Hip hop
Outside of the United States, Germany generates the most sales for recorded hip hop, and has one of the more vibrant scenes in the world. Hip hop arrived in the early 1980s, and graffiti art and breakdancing became well-known quickly, with hip hop crews appearing soon thereafter.
The huge commercial success started in 1992 with the hit "Die Da" from Die Fantastischen Vier from Stuttgart. This band makes rather funny and sophisticated hip hop. The Rödelheim Hartreim Projekt tried to establish a more USA-like "gangster" rap. An early very influential group was Advanced Chemistry including Torch.
Advanced Chemistry was very important to German hip-hop and influential to German listeners. They sparked a huge interest in speaking out for the youth of Germany, especially the immigrants. Advanced Chemistry exploded onto the German hip hop scene in November 1992 with their first mixed single entitled "Fremd in eigenem Land" (Foreign in Your Own Country). This single was the first of its kind to go beyond simply imitating US rap and addressed the current issues of the time, which was the widespread racism that non-white German citizens faced. Immigration was a big issue in Germany and prompted hip-hop artists, who were children of immigrants, to use rap and hip hop as a way to defend themselves in their country. Advanced Chemistry frequently rapped about their lives and experiences as children of immigrants exposing what was experienced by most ethnic minorities in Germany, and the feelings of frustration and resentment that being denied a German identity can cause.
Fettes Brot, a hip-hop group from Hamburg, has been very successful since their beginning in 1992. They are well versed in pop-culture and sing about funny topics, such as infidelity and boasting about their prowess with women.
Whereas hip hop had a peak of success in the early first decade of the 21st century, with bands from Hamburg dominating the scene, gangster rap became an important and controversial part of German music and youth culture just as late as 2004 with Aggro Berlin.
German hip hop was an adopted style from several different places. There is often debate as to whether or not German hip hop is authentic or just a compilation of mimicry. German hip hop "started out as a transnational and cosmopolitan youth subculture that was...predominantly English raps." Rap was also used by immigrant youth to create a type of exaggerated outsiderism as a mechanism of self-defense in German society. It could be ventured that the authenticity of German hip-hop only obtains its originality once the German language flows seemingly naturally with the music.
