Zeuhl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zeuhl (pronounced about ['zœl]) is a style of music that was established in the early 1970s by the French band Magma around the classically trained drummer Christian Vander . The genre name is invented by Vander artificial language Kobaïanisch borrowed in the Zeuhl Wortz roughly means "heavenly music".

The musical roots of the Zeuhl go back on the one hand to pioneers of the free jazz movement such as John Coltrane , on the other hand there are folkloric echoes and influences from Carl Orff's work.

The Zeuhl is determined by several characteristic elements. A dominant rhythm section is particularly important, usually in the form of a pumping bass guitar and a dragging or flexible drum kit . Slow repetitive structures, which serve to build up a hypnotic atmosphere, are just as distinctive as solo passages of high technical finesse. Singing is often widely available and can, for example, consist of polyphonic choral movements (cf. Carl Orff's Carmina Burana ) or passages performed as soloists with shrill intonation. Zeuhl bands also often have a solo guitarist . The piano or e-piano usually has an accompanying function, especially to emphasize the repetitive pattern.

Representative

Representatives of the genre can be found mainly in France and Japan. It can be said that French bands tend to play in a conventional, genre-typical framework, while in Japan you can find livelier, wacky varieties with additional influences from popular music. The Japanese group Ruins established Zeuhl-Punk as a sub-genre . Various blogs and other websites dealt with the genre.

French bands: Japanese bands: Other bands (sometimes only distantly related to the Zeuhl stylistically) :

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Marc Adler: Kohntarkosz - The Blog for Magma and Zeuhl Music. 2009, accessed on August 6, 2016 .