Deep End» (1970) | Norient.Com 7 Oct 2021 05:54:58
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Can's «Mother Sky» in Skolimowsky's «Deep End» (1970) | norient.com 7 Oct 2021 05:54:58 Can's «Mother Sky» in Skolimowsky's «Deep End» (1970) by Benjamin Court Psychedelic Echoes of German New Left Negative Utopianism. In tracing the historical context of German psychedelic music (also known as «Krautrock» or «Kosmische Musik»), a convenient musical/political narrative arises as a result of the events of 1968.1 In this year, the Zodiak Free Arts Lab (founded by Conrad Schnitzler and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) began its earliest concerts, exposing West Berlin to new forms of experimental and electronic music. The Internationale Essener Songtage brought some of the stranger sounds of British and American rock music to Germany (e.g. Frank Zappa, the Fugs, Family) as well as early concerts by German psychedelic bands Amon Düül, Guru Guru, Xhol Caravan, and Tangerine Dream. In Cologne, two former students of Karlheinz Stockhausen founded a new rock group named Can. 1968 was also the year of intense leftist revolutionary political action amongst students in Germany and across continental Europe. The student protests during May of 1968 were particularly violent in Germany, primarily as a result of the death of Benno Ohnesorg during student protests the previous year and the assassination attempt of Rudi Dutschke in April of 1968.2 https://norient.com/index.php/academic/deep-end Page 1 of 15 Can's «Mother Sky» in Skolimowsky's «Deep End» (1970) | norient.com 7 Oct 2021 05:54:58 However, this narrative that aligns West German music post-’68 and West German politics post-’68 presents a serious historical problem. Namely, how directly engaged with politics was West German rock music? In addressing this general question, this essay contains two specific purposes. First, I will attempt a broad understanding of the impact of utopianism on German psychedelia. Second, by analyzing Can’s song «Mother Sky», and how it fits within the Jerzy Skolimowski film Deep End, I hope to exemplify some specific ways that these political and theoretical influences materialized within the formal aesthetic features of German psychedelia. In particular, Deep End demonstrates a dialectic between material (or «realist») themes and the psychedelic aesthetic of imagination that reflects the negative utopianism of Ernst Bloch and Herbert Marcuse. One thing I do not argue is that Can and their music have a direct link to the radical politics of ’68. Instead, I argue that if there is a political element to their music, it is in an indirect reflection of social changes in West Germany at the time. Can keyboardist Irmin Schmidt described this relationship as «symptomatic» of the events of ’68: We’re musicians. To make that clear: our music had no political implications and there was no political message in its content – nothing like the ‘68ers. But something of the feeling of the times shows in that each of us at some point left what we were doing to join the band Can. If I talk about myself now: someone who had a career as a conductor before him, but then suddenly formed a rock band – well, that doesn’t happen every day and is therefore symptomatic for the sixties…We agreed to change something, to start something new. (Schmidt and Kampmann 1999, 399) Thus, Schmidt, despite his objection to the idea that Can were a political band, recognizes that their music reflects some of the principles of the youth movement. Can saw themselves as constituting a different kind of social formulation that did not engage in «politics» in the sense of explicit interaction with the actions of parties, protests, or platforms. Instead, Can’s music was a trace of the political imagination of cultural possibilities in 1960s West Germany. As Schmidt makes clear, the desire «to start something new» recognized a different conception of the functions of popular music than mere entertainment. While his quote evades the concept of politics, clearly what is «symptomatic» about his description of the group’s social stance is its reflection of certain historical political ideals. https://norient.com/index.php/academic/deep-end Page 2 of 15 Can's «Mother Sky» in Skolimowsky's «Deep End» (1970) | norient.com 7 Oct 2021 05:54:58 The idea of symptomatic or even «reflective» relationships between music and politics implies a direct correlation between text and context that may seem to evade agency. Despite my historical argument's reliance on the political contexts of the music and film, much of my primary evidence relies on the individual subjective accounts from the members of Can. As composers and performers, Can did not merely «reflect» by representing the contexts of their surroundings, but «reflect» in an interpretive sense that involves critique and creativity. Moreover, the reimagination of cultural forces like music and politics were not entirely unique to Germany, and indeed my argument does not contain any sense of an essential German national identity. One could make the same arguments about psychedelic musicians in any part of the world that experienced the symbiotic creation of psychedelic music and New Left politics (and indeed, both were global occurences).3 I have chosen to focus on Can and the German New Left because of personal interest, but also because of the richness of scholarship available on German politics during this era. While there are definite overlaps between the German psychedelic scene and the radical leftist politics that both carried over into the 1970s, the interactions are not entirely clear. Arne Koch and Sei Harris (2009) identified a stance that they referred to as the «politics of the unpolitical». Borrowed from Gordon Craig’s analysis of Goethe’s artistic context, Koch and Harris read a political potential into the band Faust’s unwillingness to attach their music to specific worldly contexts.4 By maintaining a notion of musical autonomy «in seeking to create a music all their own… Faust without a question strove to create a world that was all their own» (2009, 581). For Koch and Harris, this idea of new musical worlds allowed for an escape from the criminal politics of twentieth century Germany and into a realm that simply provided something different. Lloyd Isaac Vayo (2009) saw the German psychedelic band Neu! as a part of a musical attempt to create a new German identity in the post-war era. Michael T. Putnam (2009) portrays German rock music from the 1970s as a musical response to the radical politics of the Red Army Faction. Instead of arguing a correlation between music and national identity, Putnam sees German rock (particularly the band Ton Steine Scherben) as reacting against German identity and the «Auschwitz generation» in order to establish an international position that is isomorphic with the RAF’s ideal of «proletarian internationalism» (2009, 596-597). While many rock journalists have associated German psychedelia with Baader-Meinhof and the RAF, Putnam is careful not to overreach the boundaries of his claims.5 Indeed, there is little evidence that bands from this era supported the radical left-wing beyond their relationships with communes and squatters, but Putnam limits the scope of his argument to the rare examples of «Krautrock-affiliated» groups that did support political violence – Ton Steine Scherben and Einstürzende Neubauten (2009, 600). Similarly, Ulrich Adelt (2012b) interprets this period of rock music as attempting to cope with the Stunde Null («Hour Zero«) era of German history. Adelt (2012a) https://norient.com/index.php/academic/deep-end Page 3 of 15 Can's «Mother Sky» in Skolimowsky's «Deep End» (1970) | norient.com 7 Oct 2021 05:54:58 saw Can as eliding their identity as a «German band« in favor of a more «global» musical identity. While all of these scholars provide useful models for understanding psychedelic music in this era, for this particular essay, dealing with the concept of utopia, Koch and Harris's model of musical escapism provides an excellent starting point. In order to comprehend the context of the utopian ideals at this time, an explication of the social/historical use of utopianism is necessary. The German New Left and Utopian Theory One major distinction between the German New Left (of the 1960s and early 70s) and previous generations of post-war leftists was their rejection of Theodor Adorno. While Adorno held extreme intellectual capital amongst the German left wing during the post-war era, his work fell out of fashion during the New Left movement of the 1960s, partially due to his outright dismissal of popular culture. Famously, Adorno’s final course at Frankfurt University in the summer of 1969, «An Introduction to Dialectical Thinking», was interrupted by student protestors angered by Adorno’s condemnation of the New Leftist student movement.6 Leftist student groups like the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (or Socialist German Student Association) heavily criticized Adorno’s view on art as lacking praxis and encouraging an artistic «intellectual domination» that was a «precondition for domination in all other areas» (Von Dirke 1997: 52). In 1967, the young philosopher Helmut Lethen critiqued Adorno during a public debate on the merits of Walter Benjamin’s theories of mechanical reproduction by claiming Adorno «feared the eruption of aesthetic barbarism if all privileged aesthetic education were to be abandoned» (Von Dirke 1997: 56). While some Adornians theorized from within the student movement (such as Michael Scharang), they still largely rejected Adorno’s valorization of high art while favoring Adorno’s critiques of aesthetic autonomy.7 Instead, the younger generation of leftists looked toward utopian thinkers like Benjamin, Bloch, and Marcuse as theorists that radically rejected authoritarian politics and capitalism while maintaining an anti-elitist view that blurred the capabilities of «high» and «low» art.