D>Elektro   |1.2.1|  |>NEWland
      |> History/ies + Sounds
of modern electronic / experimental music in Germany |<
 
D>Elektro 1.2 - |> extended concept <|
|1.2.1| Development + History/ies

|>NEWland
|> Raised from the Ruins | Sounds out of the void |

"After the war, German culture, particularly the entertainment, the popular culture was destroyed. Germans were robbed of their culture. I think we were the first post-war generation who set up something against this void ...
We can't and won't deny that we're from Germany. This is reflected in all our music.
Ralf Huetter [Kraftwerk]

The urge to fight against - and fill this cultural void surely explains (in parts) the groundbreaking and far more radical results - compared to what a lot of the contemporary anglo-american band of that time achieved.

To merely emphasize -musically- a seemingly omnipresent "Power-through-Flowers" mentality was simply not the issue. It was about (re)building one's own cultural identity - finding the means to one's OWN expression - through music.

Out of the void, as there were no roots in one's cultural environment, a whole new, individual language - including the grammar - had to be invented and realized. This huge task, was at the same time a huge challenge, a once-in-a-lifetime chance. And it also explains why in such a relatively small cultural space and in such a short time, so many new new musical territories were discovered.
behind the wallpaper...
And that's what is was: New Ground - a new country, as, in cultural terms, there wasn't and old country where one's roots could have been found easily. The time in which a modern music could have flourished in Germany, had been simply deleted by Nazism. Culturally, it was -and still is- a black hole.
"Their feeling was that their lives had just started from scratch - there was no history that they wanted to acknowledge as theirs."
Peter Blegvad
There was no German form of Rock'n'Roll, no germanic Beatles, no teutonic Elvis. Links to one's own history and cultural identity could only be found in the more distant past.
Raised in the stuffy, inhibiting cold-war paranoia of the 50's, the longing for something new and original, something that would help to break out of this comatic climate, became ever more strong.

born in the 50's     "We awoke in the late 60's and realized, that Germany had become an American colony.

There was no German culture, no German music, nothing.
You were living in a vacuum.

The boys totally oriented themselves along the American lifestyle: Cars, hamburgers and Rock'n'Roll."

Ralf Huetter [Kraftwerk]

[poster: "NO EXPERIMENTS!" - an election campaign of the conservative party
- (minus the couple, of course.)]
The void, into which all those musical ideas were about to pour, combined with the greed, an existential hunger for something original, something "native", certainy helped this vast variety of experiments and styles - which would pop up in just a couple of years - into being.
In this "new land" there existed no rules and boundaries.
Everything could - and HAD to be invented by oneself. Forward in all directions! As far as your ideas and instruments will take you.
D>Elektro  |1.2.1|  |>NEWland<|
      |> Raised from the Ruins | Sounds out of Nowhere <|


|>..Newland..|>
|> Fwd: | Excursion: Impulse + Influence: Stockhausen |
||> Ffwd: | Expanding the music > Everything is sound |