The first, largest and commercially most successful independent record company in whole Germany until today has been Türküola. It was founded in Cologne by the Turkish migrant Yılmaz Asöcal in 1964. In the history of independent record companies as well as in the history of pop music in Germany Türküola and the many other Turkish …
By 2000 everyone will be bored to death. Falco (1957-1998) Ask most Americans and other English-speaking people, and they will tell you that Falco is the German one-hit-wonder with that “Amadeus” song. Dance music and rap freaks among them may also remember “Der Kommissar” and Falco’s legacy as one godfather of white rap. But that’s …
What else in hell should be so great about the USA, other than this music? When this album got released, I listened to it over and over and over again. I can still sing along to songs like It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) und Subterranean Homesick Blues. Back then, I sat in front of …
Countless wealthy white musicians have copied, have been heavily influenced by, or have shamelessly ripped off black blues guitarists/singers who lived in poverty during the 1920s and the Depression era of the 1930s. These wealthy white musicians more often add flash without feeling, style without substance. This criticism cannot be leveled at Ry Cooder’s deeply …
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the German word Sehnsucht can be translated as “craving, desire, longing, pining, wistfulness, yearning.”, with the second syllabe ‘Sucht’ meaning addiction: the addiction to yearn and desire. Franz Schubert’s life and music are a complex experience of Sehnsucht, starting in his twenty-sixth year when he contracted an illness which inspired …
I’m always my father’s daughter, and I’ll always be a Somali girl. And that is the pride that you put in yourself, the pride of yourself and never lowering your worth. You don’t have to lower yourself. They’ll meet you where you stand. Iman (Originally published on April 8, 2021, this article was the most …
The last film was shot and I put my camera and flash in my bag. One last cigarette before I would head home, and I watched the buzz around me that got slowly muted by the upcoming dawn. The waiters started picking up glasses and shards around the pool; carefree beauties swimming and kissing between …
La vie est presque belle- Life is almost beautiful. Benjamin Biolay (‘Novembre Toute L’année’) ‘Rose Kennedy’ (2001) is the spellbinding debut of Benjamin Biolay, an album like no other that holds a special place in this great French artist’s discography. The wonder and amazement starts with the fact that a young French musician records a …
I first heard Nightporter whilst listening to the Top 40 on Radio 1 one Sunday evening. It was sandwiched incongruously between Supertramp and Dionne Warwick. The elegant simplicity and lack of clutter in the sound created space in my head. Everything else seemed clattering and brash by comparison; it was uniquely at odds with the world. I …
Delia Derbyshire was born on May 5, 1937 in Coventry, England to working class parents Edward Derbyshire and Emma Dawson. As a child and adolescent, Delia was fascinated and obsessed with sound: the sounds of her father’s sheet metal factory, the sounds of the German blitz bombers as they flew over Coventry during World War …
