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

Stephe Lindas lindas1 at ADELPHIA.NET
Sat Nov 13 06:52:57 EST 2004


How about Sauer rock? Funny it needs a label. Cheers Stephe
>
> From: Eric Siegerman <erics at TELEPRES.COM>
> Date: 2004/11/12 Fri PM 11:46:48 EST
> To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET
> Subject: 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
> |  |  /
> The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; that's why so
> many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because it's hard to
> represent the return of the sun by the coiling of a hippopotamus.
>         - Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"
>



More information about the boc-l mailing list