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Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

theguardian.com

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Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#21

Post by piva00 »

cookiemonsieur wrote: post #11
carlmr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. It's funny how the (somewhat leftist) techno scene hates on foreigners destroying their tradition. Berlin and Bavaria aren't so far apart after all.

Which is immensely ironic considering that modern house and techno is an invention of African Americans in Chicago. We've truly come full circle. The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.

Just to be a bit pedantic: techno didn't come from Chicago but from Detroit :)

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#22

Post by cookiemonsieur »

piva00 wrote: post #21
cookiemonsieur wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is immensely ironic considering that modern house and techno is an invention of African Americans in Chicago. We've truly come full circle. The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.

Just to be a bit pedantic: techno didn't come from Chicago but from Detroit :)

My bad. But the point stands. Complaining about a cultural movement that they have almost entirely gentrified is massively ironic.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#23

Post by L_226 »

sabellito wrote: post #8
larodi wrote: post #4

According to many people, including record shop owners I’ve talked to, Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. Rich people nowadays buy property in Potsdam, and the scene is moving towards Leipzig. In a more general sense the old rave cities are making way, and have been making way, to other cities. A movement spanning more than 20 years now, thank…

Heard exactly that, including the Leipzig part, every year for the 5 years I lived there 10 years ago. Berlin is the biggest city in continental Europe, there's a lot of everything and there'll always be hidden little nooks.

Bigger than Paris? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_the_Eur...

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#25

Post by piva00 »

input_sh wrote: post #3
world2vec wrote: post #2

Going on a cultural trip to Berlin this next May, with some of my best friends. What are your most favourite underrated techno clubs in Berlin? I've been to the big ones already, keen to explore the fringe places.

Sisiphos (temporarily closed right now I believe, not sure if that'll be the case by May), Renate, Birgit, Ritter Butzke.

Those are not really underrated or underground these days though, they are some of the mainstays of clubs in Berlin.

I don't think even Golden Gate nor ://about:blank would be considered truly "underground" anymore. As usual with the underground stuff you need to dig deeper to find them, as I don't live in Berlin I need to rely on my local friends to take me to these places as they are inserted within the underground culture.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#27

Post by pgeorgi »

throwaway11460 wrote: post #15
cookiemonsieur wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is immensely ironic considering that modern house and techno is an invention of African Americans in Chicago. We've truly come full circle. The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.

This is a different branch of music that doesn't have much in common with Chicago style house/techno. It's similar so people lump it together, but it evolved separately from synthpop, eurodance and electronic music that Kraftwerk did in 70s. The modern commercial EDM/techno is pretty different from what you're going to hear at a Berlin/Prague underground techno club, and has almost nothing in common with freetekno as…

Haven't you heard about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_for_Electronic_Music_(W..., America's finest place of avantgardist music and sound experimentation? (/s)

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#28

Post by Tenoke »

larodi wrote: post #4

According to many people, including record shop owners I’ve talked to, Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. Rich people nowadays buy property in Potsdam, and the scene is moving towards Leipzig. In a more general sense the old rave cities are making way, and have been making way, to other cities. A movement spanning more than 20 years now, thank…

>towards Leipzig.

This has been a meme forever, and while Leipzig has its own decent scene for its size, it is not remotely close to rivaling Berlin. Pick a decent sample of either established or up and coming DJs and compare how often they play in Berlin vs there to disuade yourself of that notion.

>and even Sofia.

Yeah, no. Just because a city has some parties here and there, it doesn't mean it should even be in the conversation in this context.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#29

Post by defrost »

jen729w wrote: post #19

Any Australians here who were there for Melbourne’s ‘dirty electro’ scene through the 00s-10s? I feel very privileged to have lived my 30s through that time. Public Office in West Melbourne. The Lounge! Oh my god the Lounge on Swanston. E55 at the bottom end of Elizabeth. And let’s never forget Revolver, not that it needs forgetting as it’s still going. Everyone in that scene was there for the music. We all danced, w…

"I'm too old for that shit" ~ Lethal Weapon.

However .. I was there for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yyUO93JpEw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Band_scene

and later made it to Berlin to being working tech crew for Wim Wenders Wings of Desire when the scene with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds was shot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPf6SWcENWo

Two decades seems excessive, I was there for the shortest no-wave ever(?) The Immaculate Consumptive in the time of Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel.

Melbourne's always seemed to have several layers of music scene on the go at any one time, for better or worse many of the acts travel onwards and outwards, some returning to base camp.

Re: Berlin's techno scene added to Unesco intangible cultural heritage list

#30

Post by throwaway2562 »

cookiemonsieur wrote: post #11
carlmr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Berlin’s scene is actually not so underground and not so cool anymore as a result of tourism and immigration. It's funny how the (somewhat leftist) techno scene hates on foreigners destroying their tradition. Berlin and Bavaria aren't so far apart after all.

Which is immensely ironic considering that modern house and techno is an invention of African Americans in Chicago. We've truly come full circle. The same thing is being done to hiphop in a similar way.

Nonsense. Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can hear it. All the Belleville Three were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and euro-electro, and you can hear that too. All of them namecheck a much richer and diverse set of influences than Chicago house, itself a refinement of disco, a far from strictly racially-defined movement. The UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long before the US did, if you actually know/ lived through the history. Then of course you have Plus 8, Tresor, Basic Channel and so on. You can try for an Afro-American imperial case, but it’s going to get factually unstuck fast.

The whole damn point was people dancing in a room together, not whatever authenticity tests you have in mind.

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