Von ABBA bis ZAPPA
by Christian Walter

Salsa from Sindelfingen

106-107
Local Pop
Ambitious Local Heroes - The Sindelfingen and Böblingen Rock Scene in the 1970s and Beyond

Branko Arnsek also gained his first experience with rock music at the Sindelfingen Youth Center. The pianist (born in 1959), who played a Hohner Clavinet, met there with other music enthusiasts in the rehearsal room for jam sessions. Among the young amateurs was drummer Lutz Groß, with whom he founded his first band. The Quintet plus One was not a conventional rock band, but rather, with trumpet and violin, inspired by the then-current jazz-rock of Chick Corea or the group Weather Report. The band rehearsed in the attic above the old library in Böblingen's old town, but only managed a few gigs.

The teenager, from a Slovenian immigrant family, broadened his musical horizons by learning to play the double bass, as there was always a shortage of bassists and he had previously often been forced to play the bass with his left hand on the clavinet.

The Quintet plus One disbanded when Arnsek began an apprenticeship in the Hessian town of Hadamar. There, he was involved in a traffic accident, spent four days in a coma, and then returned to Sindelfingen for three months to recover, where he reconnected with the music scene at the youth center. Soon, Klangwerker was formed, a band with two female singers who played reggae and funk in the style of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters. Like Arnsek, some of the musicians were multi-instrumentalists, which led to frequent instrument changes during performances.

Inspired by the Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave), the bassist started a band called Gruhf 4 with guitarist Michael Müller in 1980. The band was influenced by The Police and Ideal, and the two wrote their own songs with German lyrics. While living in a shared apartment, Arnsek met musicians from Latin America and developed an interest in salsa. In 1982, he founded the group Wawanxo with Americans and a singer from Peru, "one of the first salsa bands in Germany."

Their performance area expanded more and more. Wawanxo played around Lake Constance and at the Vier Peh cultural center in Esslingen. They maintained close contact with trombonist Rudi Füsser's group Connexión Latina, helping each other out with musicians when needed. The group's activities only slowed down somewhat when Arnsek began studying jazz in Switzerland in 1986. At the Bern University of the Arts, he was taught by Jimmy Woode, who had once played bass for Duke Ellington. A whole group of music students from Sindelfingen, Böblingen, Stuttgart, and Herrenberg, including pianist Martin Johnson and guitarist Philipp Konowski (both from Chickenfarm), traveled to Bern on Monday to study, planning to return to Sindelfingen in the second half of the week for concert performances. Today, Arnsek works as a professional musician and instrumental teacher in Stuttgart, where he continues to cultivate his love of Cuban music with various bands.