Machines with a Heart: German Identity in the Music of Can and Kraftwerk

Abstract

Abstract This essay compares Can and Kraftwerk, two bands associated with Krautrock, a branch of West German rock and electronic music from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Both bands created a new, postwar German identity that engaged with and set itself apart from the Nazi past and the influx of Anglo-American music into West Germany. This new German identity was connected to technological inventions and blending "man-made" and "machine-made" music, as well as diverting from rock music's phallocentric and guitar-heavy approach. While Can were still a traditional rock formation and looked beyond Germany's borders for musical influences, Kraftwerk gradually became an all-electronic outfit and deliberately emphasized their distinct German heritage in a semi-ironic fashion. Notes [1] In departing from a blues-based approach, Krautrock bands and fans differed significantly from the rock music scene in Germany at large. For instance, the American Folk Blues Festival brought many African-American blues performers to both West and East Germany in the 1960s and was hugely successful. See Adelt Adelt, Ulrich. 2010. Blues Music in the Sixties: A Story in Black and White, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP. Print [Google Scholar]. [2] Through their connections to the avant-garde art world, through their more intellectual approach and through abandoning traditional song structures, Krautrock bands in many ways presented themselves as more daring and radical than comparative groups in Great Britain and the US like Pink Floyd, the Beatles, or the Beach Boys. [3] Arguably, some Krautrock-related songs like Kraftwerk's "Das Model" and La Düsseldorf's "Düsseldorf" were early examples of the Neue Deutsche Welle. [4] The quotations by Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay are from the TV documentary Kraut und Rüben Kraut und Rüben. TV documentary. WDR, 2006 [Google Scholar]. [5] As Jaki Liebezeit noted, "Malcolm was very American. That's why the first album was still fairly American. Later that disappeared" (Schmidt and Kampman 306). [6] An example for this is when Can used the same bass line for different songs in their live performances, in which they radically revised their recorded repertoire. [7] Ralf Hütter emphasized the humorous side of Kraftwerk in an interview with the Hot Press in 1981: "We have a special type of black humour. We always wear black. It has to do with truth and certain aspects of the truth. Funny and serious at the same time. Revolutionary and funny" (Barr 137 Barr, Tim. 1998. Kraftwerk: From Düsseldorf to the Future (with Love), London: Ebury Press. Print [Google Scholar]).