The Menschmaschine and the Kosmische: The Divergent Paths of Krautrock

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In the late 1960s and early 1970s Germany was still licking a few fresh wounds from World War II and having an enormous concrete wall dividing the capital didn’t lend to any less tumultuous times. Social unrest and student riots perpetuated through German youth culture. While some youth rebelled by joining left-wing militants like the Red Army Faction others explored the counterculture of creating some of the most inventive and influential music of the 20th century, birthing the Krautrock movement.

Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter in 1973

Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter in 1973

Perhaps the most commonly known German band of this period was Kraftwerk, who managed to chart in the UK and US thanks to cheerleaders like David Bowie. One possible explanation for Kraftwerk’s success is that they fit into the English-speaking world’s imagination of Germans: mechanical, unemotional and slickly engineered–like a finely tuned automobile. In name and demeanor, Kraftwerk is a thoroughly German band and essential to the revitalization of German culture and art.


Though easier to locate than most first-editions of Krautrock records, early Kraftwerk albums are a difficult find for crate-diggers, so it’s a real treat to find Ralf & Florian held in the Marr Sound Archives–Kraftwerk’s third studio album and a major breakthrough for the band. While it lacks the paeans to marvels of manufacturing and technology that run through most of their subsequent albums, there is a marked movement towards the “Menschmaschine” concept. Percussion is entirely by drum machine and except for a few claps and Florian Schneider’s processed flute, all instruments are electronic; they favored Farfisa organs and electric pianos to accomplish what would become their signature sound. They condemned the guitar strum for being too human, and preferred more electromechanical approaches. What results is mathematical and calculated; loop-based parts build momentum through repetition.
Through the 1980s onward interest in Krautrock artists continued to grow and names were saved from obscurity. The psychedelia revival of the 1990s proved to be fertile ground for reissues of hard to find releases like Ash Ra Tempel’s 1971 self-titled debut. The 1997 reissue on french label, Spalax, brought the two adventurous tracks to a wider audience.

Ash Ra Tempel in 1971

Ash Ra Tempel in 1971

Ash Ra Tempel’s musical aesthetic couldn’t be further from the persistent control of Kraftwerk–the two sides contain one song apiece, spanning 19:52 for side A’s “Amboss” and 25:31 for side B’s “Traummaschine.” Where Kraftwerk relied on repetition, Ash Ra Tempel approached songwriting as free-flowing jams of jazz-influenced drumming and electric guitar oozing and soaring through mountains of delay and reverb with bits of low-key electronic drones.

Ash Ra Tempel’s improvisational style was commonly referred to as “Kosmische” or cosmically-oriented music, and it’s easy to understand why. The two tracks have an exciting, metaphysical quality to them, balancing serenity with explosive licks. Their entire discography–particularly this seminal album–is an absolute trip, and deserving of its legendary place in the acid rock canon.

Konrad "Conny" Plank at the Controls.

Konrad “Conny” Plank at the Controls.

However, the link between these two very different albums of the 1970s is not merely country of origin. The engineer at the helm of Ralf & Florian and Ash Ra Tempel is truly what makes them such outstanding works. Konrad “Conny” Plank was an influential engineer who became known for his early adoption of multi-track recording (one of Europe’s first) and proved to be an ace at manipulating sound through mixing, reverb, echo and EQ effects to create distinct sounds that seamlessly blended the abstract with the conventional. His work heavily influenced David Bowie’s collaborations with Brian Eno and John Lydon’s Public Image Limited. Throughout the 1980s he racked up production credits for the Eurythmics, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Damned among others.

In 1975 Lester Bangs wrote that the future of music is German. And though few German bands managed to crack the US charts since then, the influences of Kraftwerk, Ash Ra Tempel and their contemporaries permeated from the late 1970s onwards. Krautrock continues to be a relevant inspiration for some of today’s most respected artists.

Portrait of a Lady (On the Smallest Canvas You’ve Ever Seen)

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While you may already know of Martha Jane Starr as a local philanthropist, advocate for women and families, and significant contributor to the development of UMKC from the 1950s-2000s (for more on that, see this), you may not have known that she and her husband, John W. Starr, were avid collectors of portrait miniatures.

Richard Cosway's "Portrait of a Lady," from the mid-18th- early 19th century. Part of The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, and currently on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Image courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Richard Cosway’s “Portrait of a Lady,” from the mid-18th- early 19th century. Part of The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, and currently on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Image courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

The portrait miniature, developed in the 16th century, gained popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the days before photography, the portrait miniature served a similar function to the snapshot. Lovers carried portrait miniatures of their beloved; fathers sent portrait miniatures of their daughters to potential suitors; and mothers kept portrait miniatures of their children. Portrait miniatures were often affixed to jewelry, such as rings and lockets, or were used to decorate the tops of snuff boxes.

During their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Starr amassed The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, a collection of over 250 portrait miniatures, which they donated to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art through an initial gift in 1958, and subsequent donation in 1965. The collection represents portrait miniatures from the 16th through through the 19th centuries, and remains on rotating permanent display in gallery P27 at the museum.

Although easy to overlook, the portrait miniatures in the Starr Collection merit closer attention. (As in, you may want to bring your magnifying glass with you.) It’s easy to take the portraits for granted, until you begin to notice the tiny details within each one: a miniature pearl necklace, the ruffles on the front of a gentleman’s shirt, or the folds in a blue satin sash looped over a lady’s shoulder. (And, keep in mind that most of these miniatures are little more than 2”x2”.) Each individual face in the collection has a story and a history of its own. The collection even includes a series of “eye miniatures,” close-up miniature paintings of a beloved’s eye, which were popular tokens of affection in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

VandA

A letter to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from a Nelson-Atkins curator, written on behalf of Mrs. Starr.

To enrich a historical understanding of the Starrs’ collection of portrait miniatures, LaBudde Special Collections possesses a series of correspondence between the Starrs and the Nelson-Atkins (along with several other museums). The letters document the debut of the collection at the Nelson, as well as the Starrs’ correspondence, with the aid of the Nelson-Atkins’ curators, to organize donations and collections with other museums around the world. Correspondences include letters to and from the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Huntington Gallery, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. The letters document not only the relationships that the Starrs built with museums and collectors around the world, but also serve as a testament to their desire to curate a life and legacy together.

letterfromsaintlouis

A letter from a fan of the newly donated collection at the Nelson-Atkins, addressed to Mr. Starr.

Evie Quarles and Her Muse

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KIC ImageAfter 35 years of designing greeting cards, Evie Quarles finally decided to pursue her innate yearning to become a professional photographer. In the Fall of 1997 her son Josh persuaded her to put down her paintbrush, pick up a camera and enroll in a photography class at Penn Valley Community College. What Evie would choose to photograph was not to be of the usual common nature, but rather a phenomenon ingrained into her spirit at a very early age, referred to as the Blues. Growing up in West Tennessee, she would accompany her father to joints to service Juke Boxes on weekends or in the summertime. It was in the black joints she would discover her call to the Blues. In her words, “the call would come as a whisper”, because “race’ music was not played on the radio in those days. Parents did not want their teenagers to be influenced by the Devil’s music.

A few months into her photography class she was wandering around 39th and Main iMillage Gilbertn Kansas City, looking for visual material for her final exam. She heard music coming from the open door of the Grand Emporium, a local Juke Joint. She wandered in and quickly became immersed in the music of Millage Gilbert’s Blues. When the band took a break she introduced herself to Millage and asked if she could photograph his next set. He approved her request,, and so here her new journey began.  Quarles soon contacted the proprietor Roger Naber to obtain permission to photograph local & national acts, to which he agreed. For the next seven years the Grand Emporium would become her “Muse”. GE

In May of 2013, Ms. Quarles bestowed upon the LaBudde Special Collections a generous selection of photographs from her vast collection. The black & white images create a compelling depiction of Quarles’ love and passion for the epic American art form known as the Blues.

Teresa Wilson Gipson

Black History Month: Zora Neale Hurston on American School of the Air

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hurston

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The American School of the Air was an educational radio program aired on CBS during the 1930s and 40s. The long-running show tackled American history, science, music and literature under the heading of daily subjects such as “Frontiers of Democracy,” “Science Frontiers,” “This Living World,” and “Gateways to Music” and broadcasts were often used as a supplement to classroom education across the nation.

On December 8, 1938 the umbrella title was “American Literature of the Twentieth Century” and the guest was author, anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston. In this very rare episode of American School of the Air, Hurston tells African-American folk tales from her collection entitled Mules and Men. These may be the only audio recordings in existence of her reading these particular works.

Among the folktales heard here are “Why There Are Negroes and Other Races,” “How God Made Butterflies,” a series of animal tales as well as tales of exaggeration as heard below:

[audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Zora-Neale-Hurston-tells-an-exaggera.mp3|titles=Zora Neale Hurston tells a tale of exaggeration.]

Perhaps best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston was active during the Harlem Renaissance alongside such contemporaries as Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. She received widespread criticism for her heavy use of dialect in her writing. Critics felt she was perpetuating a longstanding tradition of racially charged stereotypes of African-American men, women, and children in literature and popular culture.  She was also praised, however, for her use of idiomatic speech and her dedication to preserving and handing down the grand tradition of African-American folklore and oral history.

Hurston’s work as an anthropologist led her to back to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, where she recorded oral histories and gathered ethnographic research on music and folklore dating back to the days of American slavery. She gives a brief history and explanation of “negro folktales” and their contribution to American culture at the begnning of the episode.

[audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Zora-Neale-Hurston-explains-folk-tal.mp3|titles=Zora Neale Hurston provides a brief explanation of negro folk tales and their origins.]

The Marr Sound Archives holds approximately 162 episodes of The American School of the Air within the J. David Goldin collection, all of which are all searchable in the library catalog and RadioGoldindex and are available upon request.

Black History Month: Local activist Leon Jordan shaped by African experience

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jordan-p168ipFrom police detective to politico, Leon Mercer Jordan became one of the most distinguished African-American leaders in the state of Missouri before his untimely death in 1970. Forging a prolific and colorful career that took him from Kansas City to West Africa and back again, Jordan served three terms in the Missouri House of Representatives, co-founded a local political organization for African-Americans, and trained the national police force in the Republic of Liberia.

The Leon M. Jordan Collection, housed in LaBudde Special Collections, consists of material related to the late activist and his wife, Orchid Irene Ramsey Jordan. Much of the collection focuses on their experiences in Liberia, Africa, a key impetus in Jordan’s later political and community activism. Also included in the collection are addendums of biographical research and writing material amassed by UMKC Professor Emeritus Dr. Robert M. Farnsworth, as well as police and FBI files and court depositions used in the investigations after his murder.

’68 K.C. Race Riots Remembered

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1968riot-slideshowOn April 9, 1968, students in the Kansas City, MO, school district desired to hold a march in honor of the recently assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. The Kansas side of the city did not hold classes on that day, but the Missouri side did, and this led to tension, anger, and action by an African American population that had already been feeling the full weight of the institutionalized racism in America at the time. Students from Manual, Lincoln, Central, and Paseo High Schools marched out of school that Tuesday morning, culminating in a gathering at City Hall. While peaceful at first, these marches and gatherings soon grew restless and then violent as they spread throughout the city, with Police using mace and tear gas on marchers, widespread looting and destruction of property, and general civil unrest. After four days of these riots, the damages to the city neared four million dollars, and six people were killed. On one level, the ’68 riot was a direct reaction to specific current events, but it was also a result of long-established racial tensions in the city and the country as a whole. In this sense, it was not only an important moment in the history of Kansas City, but in our nation as well. *

The ’68 Riot Collection, housed in LaBudde Special Collections, consists of writings, interviews, images, audio and other items documenting the events surrounding April 9-13, 1968, in Kansas City.

[ *Excerpt from “It Finally Happened Here: The 1968 Riot in Kansas City, Missouri.” Joel P. Rhodes. Missouri Historical Review, April 1997 (Vol. 91, No. 3) pp. 295-315.]

Charles Dodge- Earth’s Magnetic Field & Bell Laboratories

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dodgeCharles Dodge’s Earth’s Magnetic Field: Realizations in Computed Electronic Sound, was composed in 1970 and was released by Nonesuch. Bell laboratories developed many important technologies that were employed by electronic music composers. A more detailed account of the developments can be found in the annotations of Computer Music, by Nonesuch. One of the first main contributions from Bell labs, in the late 1950’s, was a computer sound synthesis program that could—theoretically—produce any sound. Another main component was the Digital Audio Converters that made it possible to hear the sounds that were being programmed. This translated to the work that was being done at Columbia and Princeton, where composers sought to utilize these developments. Charles Dodge was one of the composers working at Columbia and Princeton that worked also at Bell Laboratories on his music.

With this piece, Charles Dodge mapped magnetic field data to musical sounds. Over the course of a year, 2920 readings were taken of the magnetic field. This was then mapped to a four octave span, or 45 notes (the average span of an instrument). Between different points within this data, interpolations were made to create the other aspects of the music—tempo, dynamics, and register. Here’s part of the readings that he used:

Magnetic field data

Sample of magnetic field data

Regardless of the mapping and per-determined form, this piece still flows musically and has some beautifully crafted moments. With lyrical lines and sweeping gestures, the piece brings the data to life. In my opinion, the musical representation of the data can be quite catchy at points.

Here’s a sample of Earth’s Magnetic Field, from roughly eleven minutes into the piece.

[audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EarthMagField.mp3|titles=Earth’s Magnetic Field.|artists= Charles Dodge]

 

When Are We Ready For Going Steady?

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howdoyouknowitsloveHappy Valentine’s Day, folks! Do you know it’s love?

These late-1950s leaflets, many of which were produced by the Christian Education Service, can help you answer your  puzzling  love questions. Titles of pamphlets include “Going Steady: Pros and Cons,” “SEX In Your Life,”  “How Do I Know It’s Love?”  and “Now You are Engaged.”

The pamphlets were originally written to address teenagers’  questions about premarital sex, relationships, and marriage. What is most interesting about them is their  tone of relative openness, especially  considering the time period in which they were written.  While the leaflets  undeniably discourage premarital sex, the tone of the writing is not  damning or bombastic. Lines such as “There is no reason to have had these guilts if we properly understand that this discovery of sex and self is part of growing up” and “now is the time we should know the facts of life  very clearly and begin to call a spade a spade” show that the writers , and the Christian Education Service itself, maintained the stance that sex should be talked about instead of ignored.

The ten leaflets (part of the Martha Jane Starr Collection, available at LaBudde Special Collections) serve as a testimonial to Mrs. Starr’s advocacy for women and families, and her attitude of open communication about issues such as sex and family planning. Mrs. Starr, who gifted her collection to LSC in 2010, dedicated her life to serving women and families in the Kansas City community.

Born on November 27, 1906, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, she was the daughter of L.E. Phillips, a co-founder of Phillips Petroleum. She moved to Kansas City soon after marrying John Wilbur “Twink” Starr in 1929. Mr. and Mrs. Starr worked as active community leaders in Kansas City. Mrs. Starr was the first woman to be elected to the UMKC Board of Trustees, after the University of Kansas City merged with the UM system in 1963. She was also on the board of the Kansas City Planned Parenthood chapter, and even served as the local organization’s president.

In addition to her many other philanthropic contributions, she founded the UMKC Women’s Council, was the first woman to be honored with the Chancellor’s Medal, and, in 1971, spearheaded the creation of the UMKC Graduate Assistance Fund , which continues to assist women graduate students at UMKC. Mrs. Starr passed away on November 14, 2011, just weeks before her 105th birthday.

Thanks to artifacts such as these historical leaflets, which represent a small fraction of her collection,  her message of open dialogue on issues affecting women and families continues to resonate with us today.

Staff Picks: Buzzcocks – Love Bites

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lovebitesWhat a rare treat it is to stumble across out-of-print punk rock and new wave LPs within the deep shelving of the Marr Sound Archives. Aside from an impressive library of releases from Sire Records and a short stack of SST recordings, the genre’s presence in our holdings is few and far between.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at work one morning to find a newly cataloged import copy of Buzzcock’s Love Bites which had, apparently, been stuffed away with thousands of other items from our massive backlog of uncataloged LPs. This particular copy is an import distributed by Jem Records under a special licensing agreement which allowed the label to sell the album in the USA. It’s like my very own private valentine from the universe!

Buzzcocks generated copious amounts of recorded material in 1978, including their first two studio albums, a handful of hit singles, and two sessions with illustrious BBC disc jockey John Peel. Love Bites, was released in September on the United Artists label to tremendous success in the UK. The album’s initial single “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” won NME Single of the Year and earned the band a lip-syncing gig on Top of the Pops:

If love bites then so does this record, as does frontman Pete Shelley who comes out baring his teeth. Sharp hooks and sugary melodies make this album a masterpiece of pop genius, capable of rotting your molars right out of your head upon first listen. Shelley’s lyrics range from melancholy, to downright bitter and the universal appeal of the album’s subject matter has allowed this album to stand up to the test of time as a “feel bad to feel good” classic.

Deep cuts of note: “Operator’s Manual”, “Nostalgia”, and “Nothing Left.”

BBC Radiophonic Workshop ‎– Doctor Who – The Music

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Dr Who CoverThe BBC Radiophonic Workshop in London opened in 1958 to produce music and new effects for radio. Composers for Doctor Who started working here in 1963, under the direction of Ron Grainer. The theme for doctor who was created mostly by Delia Derbyshire in the style of Elektronische Musik—or music created from only electronically produced signals. This term was coined in 1949 by Werner Meyer-Eppler, and rivaled the French style of Musique Concrete, which used sounds recorded from acoustical sources, instead. To use this style of music in television, was new and innovative. It was also groundbreaking, because “televised science fiction was a new concept for the BBC” (factmag). The soundtrack for Doctor Who was comprised almost exclusively of electronic music through 1989, and the composers working at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop created most of the incidental music and sound effects.

One of the most famous tracks that was released in the 1970’s for this television show was “Sea Devils,” which was noted for being much more experimental than the usual incidental music of Doctor Who. It was composed by Malcolm Clarke, and used the EMS Synthi 100 of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

[audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Output-1-2.mp3|titles=Sea Devils.|artists=Malcolm Clarke]

EMS Synthi 100 – Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Another important track on the LP is “The Leisure Hive,” composed by Peter Howell. By 1980, the workshop was creating music for every episode. By this time, the workshop had gained a lot more synthesizers, which would make the music a lot richer.

[audio:http://info.umkc.edu/specialcollections/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/drwhotrack9.mp3|titles=The Leisure Hive.|artists=Peter Howell]