Théo LessourBerlin Sampler: Un siècle de musique. Du cabaret à la techno

History has struck Berlin like few other cities, and this book aims to guide the reader through its musical meanderings. After dancing on the volcano of hyperinflation and the post-war period to the sounds of Kurt Weill’s cabaret or the Blue Angel, of musical expressionism, of Dada, swing was played clandestinely under the Nazi dictatorship and then rock under the communist regime. Its location as a capitalist island made it a haven for deviant sounds: krautrock, the cosmic ambience of Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze, the madness of Einstu¨rzende Neubauten, Blixa Bargeld and other brilliant dilettantes or the blues of Nick Cave. After the fall of the Wall, taking advantage of its large empty spaces, it is quite natural that it reinvents itself as the European capital of techno.