Abstract
In this chapter I will give an overview of diversity issues within the field of electronic (dance) music and Berlin club cultures. This perspective is taken from the viewpoint of a member of the female:pressure network and a scholar of popular music studies and cultural studies. This chapter starts out to grasp the issue of diversity within the context of my PhD research on German and Austrian avant-garde festivals or transmedia festivals (I define transmedia festivals, as urban festivals which showcase not only club and experimental electronic music, but alongside a diverse range of other art forms such as discourse, media art, sound art, sculpture/installation, or performance that are often linked to technology). By unraveling the quest for more diversity in club cultures, I will start with a discussion on gender inequality and how these are linked to technology, introduce the platform female:pressure and discuss the muting of diverse perspectives in the history of club cultures. I also point out some of the myths that have been repeatedly contested about Berlin techno, as repeating them does not make them facts, it made these tales just more suspicious; or at least incomplete (at the cost of other groups and subcultures). Subsequently I connect this discussion with the booming business of techno in Berlin and close with pointing out the recent rise of collectives and the challenge of collective problem-solving, and end with a bird’s-eye view of the issues at stake. The title of the book The “New” Age of Electronic Dance Music and Club Culture is very much inviting such an investigation. This is done via a mix of personal accounts and discussing the work of other scholars, media coverage, and video documentation.
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Notes
- 1.
Female∗ is used in this chapter to refer not only to the biological sex of women but also to trans-artists; this includes trans-men and trans-women as they usually relate (if they have to) rather to females than to males. As the following analysis aims to unmask gender stereotypes, it still relies on referring to male and female∗. See also Rodgers about this dilemma in fn #5.
- 2.
“female:pressure is an international network of female, transgender and non-binary artists in the fields of electronic music and digital arts founded by Electric Indigo: from musicians, composers and DJs to visual artists, cultural workers and researchers. [...] female:pressure intends to strengthen networking, communication and representation—a standard instrument to obtain information about artists, contact them, and find out about other, maybe less known women in electronic music all around the globe. [...] The network comprises of almost 2400 members from 75 countries as at March 2019” (female:pressure 2019a).
- 3.
I remember that also media was at stake in the list discussions and counting but did not make it into statistics.
- 4.
Electric Indigo is a Viennese DJ and producer. In the 1990s she worked at the Hardwax Record Store in Berlin. In 1998 she founded female:pressure. Today she lives in Vienna and performs and DJs internationally.
- 5.
Of course this is not only happening in music, as a scholar of cultural studies I was shocked that in a book released in 2006 on contemporary cultural theory out of 44 introduced important thinkers in cultural studies only 4 were women. And I add for those who do not know that the majority of students in cultural studies are women∗. This amounts interestingly to the first ratio of the female:pressure survey, only that here more women∗ than men are involved, at least in the past 30 years.
- 6.
Jlin is an Afro-American DJ and producer from Indiana, seemingly indifferent to codes of femininity displaying a casual gender-neutral style. Her debut album of 2015 was a little sensation in the world of club and electronic music and received critical praise.
- 7.
Astrid Gnosis is a multidisciplinary artist working with sound, video, and performance, who has Colombian roots and grew up in Spain and now lives in London. As her main influences she mentions Dutch hardcore, hip-hop, rave and pop. As though herself and the article locate her in hardcore techno, at a presentation about my book on gabber and breakcore I quote her and play a video of hers, later some of the male attendees and musicians stress that she is not hardcore. And genre purism seems like a mechanism to exclude women eventually as a lot of female DJs and musicians do not want limit themselves to one style or genre.
- 8.
“I rely notoriously on the terms women and men to frame the project because these social categories significantly affect the organization of electronic music histories […]” (Rodgers 2010: 4).
- 9.
“I didn’t want to talk about that kind of thing for 10 years, but then I thought, ‘You’re a coward if you don’t stand up. Not for you, but for women. Say something.’ So around 2006, I put something on my website where I cleared something up, because it’d been online so many times that it was becoming a fact. It wasn’t just one journalist getting it wrong, everybody was getting it wrong. I’ve done music for, what, 30 years? I’ve been in the studio since I was 11; […] I’ve sometimes thought about releasing a map of all my albums and just making it clear who did what. But it always comes across as so defensive that, like, it’s pathetic. I could obviously talk about this for a long time” (Hopper 2015).
- 10.
This is also stated by Therese Kaiser of Femdex: “I think that this is the dynamic of a certain development: the guys do the music and the women do the entrance, the flyers or decoration” (Vihaus 2017, translation by the author).
- 11.
Another crucial aspect in my opinion is that always the same artists are interviewed over and over again in latter books and documentaries as if there were no other relevant protagonists involved in the making of Berlin techno. Obviously it is not about an in-depth research that brings forward new aspects but rather about attaching popular names to ones work.
- 12.
The NSU trial was a trial against several people in connection with the National Socialist Underground (NSU)—an extreme-right terrorist organization in Germany—and the NSU murders. It took place between 2013 and 2018 in Munich. The trial was notable for being one of the largest, longest, and most expensive in German history and made public claims of institutionalized within the German police force who for years ruled out the Neo-Nazis as potential suspects in the killings and instead focused on suspects with Turkish backgrounds.
- 13.
“Possibly this is connected with the importance of pop music for the construction of a ‘new’ German identity in the post-reunification period, which has increased to an unprecedented extent since the 2000s. The techno memory boom should therefore primarily be understood as an important forum for today’s negotiation of national identity in reunited Germany and also for the self-image of the new and old capital Berlin as a new ‘capital of lightness’, whose founding myth today transfigures and commercializes the history of the techno and club scene of the early 1990s” (Pasdzierny 2016: 118).
- 14.
The Black Atlantic describes the historical and contemporary movements of people of African origin across the Atlantic—from Africa to Europe, in the Caribbean, to America and later vice versa.
- 15.
For Weyehile German history and historiography “which to a degree are due to the fact that large-scale German colonialism ‘only’ lasted from the Berlin Conference to the end of World War I. As a result, colonialism and the longstanding presence of people of colour in Germany can be continually disavowed, because not doing so would mean ‘un tuning’ the white harmonic scaffolding of German collective memory” (Goh 2015: 43).
- 16.
Berlin Magazine in English, originally for Ex-Pats, founded in 2002.
- 17.
The builder-owner of the Mercedes Benz Arena (until 2015 O2 World Arena), was the Anschutz Entertainment group, one of the largest investment companies who owns and runs the biggest arenas, theaters, and entertainment places worldwide. It is owned by Philip Anschutz, a US billionaire, who owns various venues and sports teams in Berlin and against the protest of many the property at the Spree was sold to him. The protests were due to the fact that he is a conservative republican who financed, e.g., campaigns against gays and owns media and research institutes through which his conservative world views are promoted. Strauss refers here to him and the harsh contrast of the promoted image of Berlin opposed to businesses affairs of the city.
- 18.
For a very good overview how sleaze, corruption, and old boy-networks are ruling Berlin since a long time, unbroken by the reunification see M.D. Rose (1998).
- 19.
Imperial castle refers to the Berlin City Palace that was demolished in 1950 by the German Democratic Republic authorities. The Palace of the Republic was built in 1970 on that spot. In return, after the reunification, the German government decided to demolish the Palace of the Republic and rebuilds the Berliner Schloss since 2013.
- 20.
“The Musicboard Berlin is the only institution of its kind nationwide with the aim to fund pop music in new and creative ways, and maintain a dynamic discourse on pop music in Berlin. […] The Musicboard provides a new and courageous form of pop music funding. […] Since the beginning of 2013, the Berlin Senate set up Musicboard Berlin under the lead of Katja Lucker. Its task is to strengthen the local pop music scene by supporting projects of national and international scope which are able to enlarge the visibility of Berlin as a center of artistic productivity” (Musicboard Berlin n.d.).
- 21.
Meetup was originally an offspin of female:pressure activities in Berlin. It is a new and growing community of female∗ artists in the fields of music and arts in Berlin. There are 10 meetings throughout the year to discuss and exchange ideas, develop projects, and combine forces to make things happen. Meetup provides an opportunity to meet likeminded individuals for collaborating on projects.
- 22.
For some of us who are dealing for two decades with gender issues, it is odd that one has to explain why this still makes sense today, especially when one applies for a funding with a gender quota. The jury, of course, includes women, but also women often do not agree with quotas or female∗ spaces, especially when they themselves had successful careers and male mentors or supporters (and as a matter of fact, male support seems still to be the most effective way to build a career).
- 23.
We Make Waves took place in November 2017 and is an “first-of-its-kind organization designed to support the work of women, trans and non-binary people working in the music industry. […] Beyond its year-long activities, WMW hosts a three-day festival and conference […]. Our work goes beyond the annual festival and conference. Our goal is to nurture a vibrant independent community not only by exhibiting the work of emerging artists but also by providing essential support systems for those who otherwise have none” (We Make Waves n.d.).
- 24.
Dice took place in November 2018 in Berlin and appears to be some sort of follow up to WMW: “DICE Conference + Festival is a three-day event including workshops, panels, lectures and live performances featuring female, trans, and non-binary artists and speakers” (Dice n.d.).
- 25.
For example, the Perspectives Festival 2013, 2015, 20 years of female:pressure in Berlin, 21 years of female:pressure in Vienna, international single and regular f:p events, solidarity cd-compilation for Pussy Riot, solidarity compilation for women of Rojava, Open Sound Vienna/Open Sound international DVDs/CDs.
- 26.
Unfortunately the recordings that have been made are not available to the public due to internal conflicts.
- 27.
Just now many US states try to pass bills that prohibit abortion, even in the case of rape. The Republicans want to force the Supreme Court to a revision of the 1973 law which made abortion legal in the United States.
- 28.
This cannot be emphasized enough that collectives rest most of the time on the dedication, effort, and extra time of single individual members. Some of them are: Andrea Mayr (programing and maintaining the database), Death of Codes, Michelle Endo and Tanja Ehmann (Facts Surveys), Stephanie Roll (statistician Facts Surveys). AGF (Twitter, Tumblr, Rojava Compilation), Acid Maria (gig-collection of members for Facebook), Sonae (Facebook Page, female:pressure concerts in Cologne), Kaltès (Facts, Perspectives Festival, female:pressure @ Tresor nights), Akkamiau (Rituals × female:pressure Berlin, SoundCloud, Facebook, f:p meetups), Mo Chan/Aiko Okamoto (Perspectives Festivals, spokesperson, female:pressure visual pulse group, Meetup Berlin). Xyramat (female:pressure radio Hamburg), Rosa Danner and Anna Steiden (female:pressure radio Vienna), Aschka, Kritzkom and Rona Geffen (female:pressure radio Berlin).
Niet! (female:pressure podcast), CO/RE (f:p graphics), Olivia Louvel (Bandcamp).
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Ludewig, B. (2020). The Berlin Techno Myth and Issues of Diversity. In: Jóri, A., Lücke, M. (eds) TheNewAge of Electronic Dance Music and Club Culture. Music Business Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39002-0_4
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