Rock music in Germany

German rock music (Deutschrock) came into its own only by the late 1960s, but spawned many bands spanning genres such as krautrock, Neue Deutsche Welle, heavy metal, punk, and industrial. Rock and roll itself arose in the United States in the 1940s, and spread around the world beginning in about 1956. There were few German performers at that time, even though American rock was popular in (West) Germany. Rockabilly stars like Bill Haley & His Comets were of particular popularity. The reasons for this lack of German musical innovation were the suppression of "degenerate" forms of music by the Nazis and/or the traumatic effects of the war—while Germany was a center of several forms of modern music before the Nazi era, it had difficulty developing its own music culture after the war. 1960s and 1970s: Krautrock Mostly instrumental, the signature sound of krautrock mixed rock music and "rock band" instrumentation (guitar, bass, drums) with electronic instrumentation and textures, often with what would now be described as an ambient music sensibility. By the end of the 1960s, the American and British counterculture and hippie movement had moved rock towards psychedelic rock, heavy metal