17 Hippies

Emerging from Berlin during the mid-1990s, the German ensemble 17 Hippies forged a distinctive path by weaving together instruments such as accordion, clarinet, cello, trombone, and guitar into fluid compositions that merge traditional European foundations with rock, folk, jazz, pop, and further explorations across cultures and tongues. What began as a quintet evolved into an expansive collective, sustaining its core through the enduring presence of Christopher Blenkinsop on vocals, bouzouki, and guitar alongside Kristin Sauer’s vocals and accordion. Their debut arrived with Rock ’n’ roll 13 in 1997, followed by Texas Radio in 1998 and Wer Ist Das? in 1999, periods during which the lineup swelled and incorporated Cajun, Americana, and Eastern European folk elements while alternating lyrics in German, French, and Italian.

By the 2000s the group’s reach broadened through worldwide performances, film work on the 2002 feature Halbe Treppe, and parallel endeavors under the names Sexy Ambient Hippies and Hardcore Troubadours. Their standing as an unpredictable stage force was captured on the 2005 release Live in Berlin, while studio efforts such as Heimlich in 2007 marked increasing recognition. El Dorado followed in 2009, marking their first worldwide distribution and supported by travels spanning Asia and the Middle East.

Further recordings arrived with Phantom Music in 2011 and Biester in 2014 before the expansive double-disc anthology Anatomy & Metamorphosis appeared in 2016, pairing career-spanning selections with reinterpretations from fellow artists. The ten-piece configuration that had stabilized by then issued Kirschenzeit in 2019. Their seventeenth long-player, 9.000 Nächte, surfaced in 2023.