AW: What's the German for "Krautrock"?

[Wilfried Schuesler]

Eric,

it is true.

We use the term "Deutschrock" here instead of "Krautrock".

Also you are right it should read "Kosmische Musik". This term was used for
electronic bands only. The reason was a record company run by Rolf-Ulrich
Kaiser with labels like "Ohr" and "Pilz". Bands on it were Ash-Ra Tempel,
Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh to name the well known ones.

Kräuter (Kraeuter if the Umlaut isn't shown) is a German word for herbs in
general with Kraut = 1 of them if you don't know the exact name.

Here is some information in French (if that helps?):

http://neospheres.free.fr/kraut/kosmische.htm

Wilfried

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: BOC/Hawkwind Discussion List [mailto:BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET] Im
Auftrag von Eric Siegerman
Gesendet: Samstag, 13. November 2004 05:47
An: BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET
Betreff: OFF: What's the German for "Krautrock"?

Some questions for the German speakers on the list.

So, I'm looking at the Wikipedia article on Krautrock (actually
it's a section of the article on German Rock,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_rock).  It raises a couple of
questions in my mind.

First, the article says, "In Germany, the term 'Krautrock' is not
used."  Is this true?  The German Wikipedia has an article called
"Krautrock" (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krautrock).

It seems to me that the word might well be considered insulting,
given its origins.  Is that the case?

Later, the article says that T. Dream and Faust called what they
were doing "komische musik", and someone on the discussion page
suggests that that's "a translation of 'krautrock'", but that a
particular German speaker disagreed.  A few questions here:

  - Should that be "kosmische"?  "Cosmic" seems rather more
    appropriate than "comic", for the music in question :-) But
    "komische musik" gets over 500 Google hits -- far less than
    "kosmische", but the first bunch are all on German-language
    pages, so I hesitate to edit the article without
    confirmation.

  - Does that term (whichever is the correct spelling) now refer
    to Krautrock in general, or was it limited to those two
    bands' usage of it "back in the day"?

  - Shouldn't "Musik" be capitalized?  (That's about the only
    rule of German grammar that I think I know, so again I'm
    skating on pretty thin ice...)

Speaking of the German-language article, it looks as though that
has quite a detailed etymology of the term, including references
to John Peel (RIP) and Amon Düül.  Too bad I can't read it.

Thanks much.

P.S.: If you point Google at the German article, it translates
Krautrock *into* English as "herb skirt".  Too funny!

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics at telepres.com
|  |  /
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