You’re a young electronic band in Germany. Your tunes make people
dance, you’ve written a bunch of material, and labels want you.
But everyone tells you that to break out and succeed, you’re going
to have to give up your native language and sing in English. What do
you do?
Industrial music (and its related genres of Electro-Industrial, Industrial
Synthpop, and Electronic Body Music) has fed off German musicians since
it began in the late 70s and early 80s. Some of the earliest Industrial
bands put out initial work exclusively in the German language, for example
Einstürzende Neubauten. Something about the German language and
musical aesthetic appealed greatly to the Industrial movement. Bands
in Germany sprung up and blossomed. It became popular to incorporate
German words and symbols into one’s music and aesthetic. But as
select bits of German culture became co-opted by bands in America, England,
and Canada, German bands themselves felt increasing pressure to tone
down their germanness and write songs digestible by an English-speaking
audience.
This pressure creates a struggle that German Industrial bands still
wrestle with: give in, sacrifice part of their heritage, and get a chance
at an international audience . . . or stand strong against the trend
and remain a virtual unknown outside Germany.
Have you ever heard of Fehlfarben? How about Extrabreit? Yet any 80s
music fan has heard Nena’s “99 Red Balloons” and Falco’s
“Der Kommissar,” both songs that were translated into English
before achieving popularity outside of Deutschland. Their New Wave contemporaries
Fehlfarben and Extrabreit chose not to take this route, and have since
disappeared into obscurity.
To illustrate how this pressure can change a band’s focus from
celebrating their own linguistic heritage to attempting to assimilate
that of English-speaking countries, I will present two brief case studies,
that of Slovenian band Laibach and German band Kraftwerk.
Laibach began as a multi-media performance art and experimental music
act in Trbovlje, Slovenia in 1980. What makes them unique to this discussion
is that they actually went through three different languages on their
audience-expanding quest: Slovene, German, and finally English. The
band’s output until 1985 was almost exclusively in their native
Slovene, with occasional German phrases and song titles. In 1985 their
interest in German picked up and they began writing a few songs entirely
in German, including “Vier Personen” (4 Persons) and “Die
Liebe” (Love). The nearness of German-speaking Austria and further
North, Germany, is most likely the cause of this change. Performance
art and Industrial music were developing strong scenes in these countries,
and in order for Laibach to attract more fans, they began to adjust
to their language. To Laibach in 1985, recording vocals in German was
a method to attract more fans than they could have in their less-widely-spoken
Slovene.
Their growing popularity caused them to reevaluate their language usage
once again, as they realized that tapping English and American audiences
meant a push for English lyrics. In 1987 Laibach saw two important releases,
Slovenska Akropola (Slovenian Acropolis), an album in both Slovene and
German, and Opus Dei, and album in both German and now English, with
no songs recorded in Slovene. Culturally morphing like never before,
in 1988 Laibach made their largest leap to please English-speaking audiences
by covering the entire Beatles album Let It Be, completely in English.
By the time Laibach charged into the 1990s, all traces of their native
Slovene were gone, and one finds only the occasional German track amidst
albums recorded almost entirely in English. An example would be their
1996 release, Jesus Christ Superstars, including a very industrial rendition
of the original Lloyd Webber musical track among other songs, both covers
and originals, entirely in English. Laibach, uniquely, linguistically
reoriented themselves twice in order to gain popularity, eventually
leaving all traces of their original language in the cultural dust.
(Except for re-releases.) If you were to ask a Rivethead (Industrial
music fan) today where Laibach comes from, many would tell you Germany.
To make an example of a more familiar band, I will also bring to the
table a discussion of Kraftwerk (Powerplant), though they developed
pre-Industrial (so to speak). Kraftwerk is widely known and respected
for being one of the first bands, and certainly the most well-known,
to successfully combine electronic music with enough of a pop flavor
to draw international distribution as well as radio and club play. Kraftwerk
began making music in 1970 in Düsseldorf, Germany and until 1975
produced albums entirely in German, including Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk 2,
and Autobahn. Then, as they watched their renown grow and desired to
popularize themselves to English-speaking audiences, they came up with
an English/German compromise in Radioactivity. On singles, some of the
songs would even be recorded in both languages. Feeling the same pressure
that caused Laibach to go English, in 1977 Kraftwerk released Trans-Europe
Express, featuring no German songs. From that time on all major Kraftwerk
releases were completely in English, and German tracks could only be
found on singles. This band, so strongly associated with German music
and so proudly claimed by German music aficionados, gave up their native
language in order to achieve greater popularity.
This precedent continues to the present day. Keeping an eye on German
bands, the pattern becomes apparent: with few exceptions, the only German
Industrial bands with distribution in the US are those that give up
German. Perusing German Industrial labels, including Ant-Zen, Megahertz,
Sonic-X, one can see that the bands who made it across the Atlantic
are those with English vocals. Metropolis Records, a record and distribution
label out of Philadelphia, imports most of the German Industrial records
that the typical American Industrial fan currently has access to, and
it’s no surprise that the bands they choose to distribute are
the ones who sing predominately in English. Funker Vogt, Neurotic Fish,
and Wumpscut are all younger Industrial Synthpop bands based in Germany
that through vocals almost exclusively in English and an American label
have gained popularity and club play in this country. Bands of equal
quality but with German vocals, such as Massiv in Mensch, though seeking
expansion into the North American market through labels such as the
Canadian ArtOfFact, haven’t seen the same success.
A notable exception to this rule is Das Ich. Das Ich is an Industrial
outfit that has been producing music since 1989, has wide American distribution
through Metropolis Records, and has managed to maintain a 100% German
lyric content. Go figure.
Ironically, though German Industrial bands often struggle unless willing
to give up a piece of their Germanness, aspects of German Industrial
are frequently co-opted by very non-German bands in a seeming attempt
to be “über-Industrial.” The German language is often
stereotypically seen as particularly suited to Industrial music and
sprinkling a few German references in your music supposedly makes you
“more” Industrial. English Rap-Industrial band Pop Will
Eat Itself is the most notable example, with their popular (in the underground)
song “Ich Bin ein Auslander” (I Am a Foreigner). Swedish
band Covenant has also done this, putting out the club track “Der
Leiermann” (Organ Grinder) when we all know very well that Sweden’s
native language is Swedish, not German.
Few bands have been as lucky as the previously mentioned Das Ich to
achieve American popularity without the lingual switch. But a small
number of bands, unable to justify turning their backs completely on
their heritage for the sake of record sales, have found a compromise.
They have released albums with tracks in both German AND English as
a conscious decision to have it both ways. These bi-lingual albums appeal
to German audiences, who often speak both languages, as well as English-speaking
audiences who are provided with lyric-translations in the cd booklet.
A few Metropolis bands fit this category. The bands Project Pitchfork
and In Strict Confidence, bands that could be described as Industrial
Synthpop or Electronic Body Music, have made a conscious effort to cultivate
this bi-linguality after initial forays into completely English releases.
In both the 2002 releases from these bands, Inferno and Mistrust the
Angels respectively, English and German tracks feature prominently.
(In fact, In Strict Confidence also includes a French track.)
The best example anyone could want of a German Industrial band who has
found widely-accepted balance between truth to German heritage and a
desire to expand audience is the iconoclastic Einstürzende Neubauten
(Collapsing New Buildings). Over time Einstürzende has achieved
a multi-lingual balance that few Industrial fans could deny as anything
other than an intelligent, deliberate, and laudable cultural choice.
Einstürzende formed in 1980 in Berlin as an experimental improvisational
music group. Vocals were almost entirely in German. (Occasional French
and Latin phrases were used.) The band is renowned for creating their
own surprisingly functional instruments out of found objects, being
involved in many aspects of art in Germany, and writing intelligent
songs incorporating knowledge of literature and history. Einstürzende
Neubauten continued to ignore the pressure to go English until their
1987 album Fünf auf der nach oben Offenen Richterskala (Five on
the Open-Ended Richter Scale). On this album appears a very ominous
rendition of 60s folk singer Bonnie Dobson’s “Morning Dew.”
This remains their only notable English album track for nearly ten years.
(A few English versions of German songs appeared on singles and EPs.)
In 1996 Einstürzende reached a decision to release multi-lingual
albums. That year Ende Neu (Ending New) was released including songs
in German, English, both English and German (in the case of NNNAAAMMM),
and Spanish (Bili Rubin). The next release in 2000, Silence is Sexy,
a truly and successfully half-and-half album, also included bits of
lyric in French and Latin.
Despite their loyalty to their native language, Einstürzende Neubauten
managed to achieve some notoriety on this side of the Atlantic due to
their amazing ingenuity and artistic reputation. Nevertheless, the move
to a prominent bi-linguality was a conscious one, though the band retained
respect both in their home country and abroad for achieving such a palatable
balance.
Few other German Industrial bands have found the success Einstürzende
has in balancing the pressures of two cultures and two languages in
their music. With few exceptions, bands have gone one way or the other:
obscurity or partial loss of heritage. Bilingual bands balance social
pressures with unique and admirable compromise. They retain their heritage,
refusing to sell it out to sell more records, while at the same time
expanding the potential audience who can appreciate their music. In
this microcosm of cultural compromise, bilingual German Industrial bands
are a very world-conscious phenomenon indeed.
References
www.algonet.se/~jonwar/kraftwerk.html
www.laibach.nsk.si
www.metropolis-records.com
www.neubauten.org
www.pitchfork.de
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