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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

#201

Post by elevaet »

codethief wrote: post #166
wheels wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tourism definitely wasn't a major drag on the techno scene. There's always been the tourist clubs and the clubs that were more underground. Berliners usually don't go to Berlin's best known clubs. (Who the hell goes to Watergate or Tresor? Old joke was that Tresor was the biggest club in Dresden.) I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat…

I think your comment depicts the current & past situation in Berlin quite well. Overall, rents & overall cost of living in Berlin have increased tremendously, and available resources (unused warehouses, apartments, …) have gone down. It just can't be as underground and "poor but sexy" anymore if your DJs and ravers, during the day, all need to work high-paying 9-to-5 job to make ends meet. Sooner or later, the Berlin…

I think this same kind of dynamic happened with London as well.

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

#202

Post by Detroiterr »

piva00 wrote: post #116
cookiemonsieur wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wouldn't say "gentrified", techno just evolved from the Detroit roots, first in the UK and then continental Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, etc.). Techno came from an already gentrified African-American community in Detroit, the Belleville Three [0] were from a more affluent part of Detroit at the time, inspired by the 70s/80s German and Japanese electronic music scene, it was never like the roots of hip-hop…

> the Belleville Three [0] were from a more affluent part of Detroit at the time

Nobody in Detroit has ever called Belleville affluent (or 'more affluent' or whatever), and I go back to those days. I will politely omit the lol because you (obviously) aren't from around here.

Techno was indeed the music from middle-class African-Americans. It's too bad the world demanded that young Black male artists must act like the white world expected - like gangsters - to sell hip-hop records.

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

#203

Post by kjkjadksj »

wheels wrote: post #118
lippihom wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A room in a flat now for €500? Maybe way outside the ringbahn...

I was trying to make a comparison to the €100 rooms from 20 years ago. That would be a single room in a 4-6 person shared flat. Those are still €500-ish. (In places just outside the ring like Treptow, Britz, Wedding, Lichtenberg.) In my shared two person flat back then I paid €300 (bills included). That room now would be way over €500.

Minimum wage also went up to be fair

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

#204

Post by vidarh »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #185
vidarh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The urban area of Paris ("aire d'attraction de Paris") extends well past the areas where people would consider that they are "in Paris". It might well still be the biggest in the EU if you drew limits based on what people considered part of the city - I don't know - but it certainly would not be as big as its urban area. In fact, I'd argue you're unlikely to find any major city anywhere in the world where most people…

Just to point that "aire d'attraction" is not the same as the urban area. It is the area of influence and extends much further than the urban area. I live outside of London, howver you define 'London', but still in London's area of influence considering how many people commute into London from here every day.

It's a tricky one, because by some definitions it fits what is often called a metropolitan area, but there's no formal, objective definition of either urban or metropolitan area that is universally accepted. You're right it's probably wider than most uses of urban areas in English.

At the same time it's specifically meant to be aligned to OECD and Eurostats definition of a Functional Urban Area, which is a definition meant to ensure comparable statistics across countries, which neither the "old style" urban nor metropolitan area terms provide...

Which really just goes back to the main point that you can get pretty much whichever result you want here unless you narrow it down to the specific criteria that actually matter to you...

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

#205

Post by wheels »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #203
wheels wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to make a comparison to the €100 rooms from 20 years ago. That would be a single room in a 4-6 person shared flat. Those are still €500-ish. (In places just outside the ring like Treptow, Britz, Wedding, Lichtenberg.) In my shared two person flat back then I paid €300 (bills included). That room now would be way over €500.

Minimum wage also went up to be fair

There wasn't actually a minimum wage back then. That was introduced in 2015 in Germany.

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

#207

Post by Detroiterr »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #104
throwaway2562 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actuall…

> Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can hear it Totally. I have somewhere in my pile of neglected vinyl one of the "Final Cut" releases, which was a straight-up wax-trax style EBM/industrial thing which Jeff Mills was involved in. Late 80s/early-90s. > The UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long before the US did Arguably, the US never really did. Most people here in North America remain clueless to w…

> Detroit itself is a fairly small city, population wise

Detroit's population has decreased. It was the 5th or 6th largest city in the US around 1980, iirc.

> Detroit techno producers and DJs spent most of their time touring in Europe (where they could get paid), not here in North America.

> The Detroit Electronic Music Festival events were kind of a rare acknowledgement by a larger audience (I went to the first two only, though).

Yes, they were virtually unknown in Detroit. I also remember the first DEMF. Detroiters had no idea what was going on - what was this music? Why were people coming here from all over the world? One of my favorite memories was Derrick May finally taking the stage as the headliner:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4xqV9_7rf0

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

#208

Post by helloplanets »

empath-nirvana wrote: post #167
helloplanets wrote: post #133

"Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall" [0] is a good book on the origins of the Berlin Techno scene. It's based on interviews and discussions by the people originally setting up the whole thing, making it a pretty breezy read that you don't necessarily have to go through chronologically. No city can really replicate the absurd situation Berlin was in after the second world war. The absolute…

> after the second world war. I think you mean the cold war.

No, I was talking about the atmosphere before the wall came down, during the cold war. That paragraph was written in a bit of a confusing way now that I look at it, though.

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

#209

Post by helloplanets »

hackandthink wrote: post #141
helloplanets wrote: post #133

"Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno and the Fall of the Wall" [0] is a good book on the origins of the Berlin Techno scene. It's based on interviews and discussions by the people originally setting up the whole thing, making it a pretty breezy read that you don't necessarily have to go through chronologically. No city can really replicate the absurd situation Berlin was in after the second world war. The absolute…

Can't remember climbing a ladder down to get into Tresor. The ladder was into the cellar of the Fischbüro location somewhere in Kreuzberg 36. (these guys started Tresor later) (Eimer (Bucket) was a really bad location several years later, you wouldn't have been able to get out of the basement if ...)

Sorry got my details mixed up, Tresor had a staircase that led downstairs to the vault!

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

#210

Post by wheels »

larodi wrote: post #200
wheels wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tourism definitely wasn't a major drag on the techno scene. There's always been the tourist clubs and the clubs that were more underground. Berliners usually don't go to Berlin's best known clubs. (Who the hell goes to Watergate or Tresor? Old joke was that Tresor was the biggest club in Dresden.) I think the biggest drag is actually rent prices. When I got to Berlin 20 years ago you could get a room in a shared flat…

Yea prices, forgot to mention it. Indeed very massive factor, Berlin is much more expensive compared to… say 2005. Belgrade is long way from Europe although the scene is good, but I’d say Croatia and Albania are much more preferred by promoters

I think with the references to "promoters" a few times it's clear you're talking about a different metric than I am. Clubs in Tirana and Zagreb feel gltizier, more what one would expect from Balkan clubbing (which obviously exists in Belgrade too). Belgrade has some grittier clubs where both the decor and crowd feel like they're taking style cues from Berlin.
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