and Swiss singer
Francine Jordi The roots of German schlager are old. Originally, the word meant a hit or a strike. The first use of the word applied to music, in its original meaning, was in an opening night critique in the newspaper
Wiener Fremden-Blatt on 17 February 1867 about
The Blue Danube by
Johann Strauss II. One ancestor of schlager music in its current meaning may be the operetta, which was highly popular in the early twentieth century. In the 1920s and 1930s, the
Comedian Harmonists and
Rudi Schuricke laid the foundations for this new music. Well-known schlager singers of the 1940s, 50s and early 60s include
Lale Andersen,
Freddy Quinn,
Ivo Robić, Gerhard Wendland,
Caterina Valente,
Margot Eskens and
Conny Froboess. Schlager reached a peak of popularity in Germany and Austria in the 1960s (featuring
Peter Alexander and
Roy Black) and the early 1970s. From the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, schlager also saw an extensive revival in Germany by, for example,
Guildo Horn, In
Hamburg in the 2010s, Schlager fans still gathered annually by the hundreds of thousands, dressing in 1970s clothing for street
parades called "Schlager Move". The Schlager Move designation is also used for a number of smaller schlager music parties in several major German cities throughout the year. (This revival is sometimes associated with
kitsch and
camp.) In the meantime, private radio has brought Schlager back to the radio. Schlager Radio is a station that broadcasts its program terrestrially in Germany via transmission towers on both FM and
DAB+. Stylistically, schlager continues to influence German "party pop" or "
party-schlager" (e.g. "
Layla", 2022): that is, music most often heard in
après-ski bars and
Mallorcan mass
discos. Contemporary schlager is often mingled with
Volkstümliche Musik. If it is not part of an ironic kitsch revival, a taste for both styles of music is commonly associated with folksy pubs, fun fairs, and bowling league venues. In the English-speaking world, the most popular group to have included elements of schlager in their style is probably
ABBA, a band that mixed traditional Swedish music, schlager, and pop-rock to create their own sound. == See also ==