The (heart)beat of the city
Understanding club culture in post-1989 Berlin through authenticity discourse
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The (heart)beat of the city
Understanding club culture in post-1989 Berlin through authenticity discourse
MA Thesis in European Studies, Identity & Integration Graduate School of Humanities
Universiteit van Amsterdam Vera Vaessen, 12771686 First examiner: Dr. Guido Snel
Second examiner: Dr. Alex Drace-Francis April 2021
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Foreword
While writing this foreword, it is April 2021. The last time I spent a night in a club is over a year ago. Not because I voluntarily decided to quit clubbing, but due to a virus which does not deserve more attention than this sentence only. I now – involuntarily – have a consistent sleep rhythm and a lot of knaldrang, as we say it in Dutch.
Despite all clubs being closed, I decided to write a thesis on club culture. And maybe this actually has been the perfect moment to reflect on something so intangible. This period has made me think about what defines clubbing, what it is that we cannot simulate just by dimming the lights and putting on loud music by ourselves in our living rooms. It is hard to capture the essence of this ephemeral phenomenon in words, let alone in an academic thesis. Nevertheless, in this thesis I have tried to do justice to the uniqueness of clubbing experiences – I hope I have succeeded.
I would like to thank dr. Guido Snel for his supervision. I hope the insights of my thesis have encouraged him to go clubbing in Berlin once clubs reopen. Also special thanks to my friends Jenneke, Sophie and Johanna. Lastly I would like to thank the current circumstances for a sleep rhythm, for without it I would probably never have been able to spend as much time on this thesis as I have now.
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Abstract
This thesis is concerned with club culture within the local context of post-1989 Berlin. It seeks to examine discursive fields within Berlin club culture, focusing on the idea of authenticity. Club culture is a ‘glocal’ and urban phenomenon with an ephemeral and transient character, due to the centrality of the physical, embodied experience. Authenticity is regarded as a discursive phenomenon, subject to local circumstances as well as developments in the global discursive field. Four phases of club cultural discourse will be analysed through Der Klang der Familie (Denk & Von Thülen 2014), Lost and Sound (Rapp, 2010) and a selection of online sources in order to distinguish discursive patterns. Despite processes of globalisation, the scene remained inward-looking and reorients its definition of authenticity, basing it on factors such as seniority in the scene or the originality of music. Several threats to the authenticity of club culture can be found in the material, such as tourism, gentrification and commercialisation. Keywords: popular culture, club culture, Berlin, authenticity discourse, discursivity
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Table of contents
Foreword 3 Abstract 4 1. Introduction 6 2. Theoretical framework 9 2.1 Club culture 9 2.2 Discursivity 13 2.3 Authenticity 153. Phase I: The fall of the Wall, the drop of the beat (1980s-1990s) 19 4. Phase II: Challenges for the underground (2000s) 26
5. Phase III: Clubsterben? (2010s) 33
6. Phase IV: Rewriting existing narratives (now) 40
7. Conclusion 45
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1. Introduction
‘Techno capital’ Berlin is considered a global metropolis of electronic dance music (EDM)1
culture (Baker 2019). The German capital has transformed from a city of voids into a subcultural utopia, with club culture being the city’s dominant subculture after 1989, which has given shape to the city’s identity and still continues to do so, especially for young people. The common narrative of Berlin as a techno capital connects club culture to German reunification, in which the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 preluded the development of the so-called New Berlin (Bauer & Hosek, 2019). However, the city did not acquire this status spontaneously right after the fall of the Wall, nor did electronic music culture coincidentally bloom in Berlin.
The city already had a longer history of artistic culture – club culture is the latest in a succession of several flourishing subcultures, such as dada, jazz and swing, cabaret and punk communities. Notably after World War II Berlin had a reputation as a cultural refuge for artists, especially from West-Germany but also from abroad. The circumstances for migration were attractive for creative people. Contrary to the GDR, West-Berlin was known for its lack of regulation. Furthermore rents were low and living was cheap. An exchange of inhabitants occurred: Berliners who chose for business migrated to West-Germany, West-Germans who were orientated towards art moved to Berlin (Sievers 2020). Internationally West-Berlin was already attractive to artists as well, with the well-known examples of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. The (sub)cultural character of Berlin had thus already been established long before 1989.
However, the social, cultural, political and geographical circumstances after the Cold War did enhance the rise of club culture. A few years prior to the fall of the Wall the first illegal parties were held in the West. Additionally club music started to reach the East due to the cultural transition based on Gorbatsjov’s glasnost and perestroika, when radio stations in the East were allowed to play new genres (Peter 2014, 177). Immediately after the fall of the Wall, there was not only access to music, but also to empty spaces: especially the Zwischennutzung (temporary use) of empty buildings strongly enhanced the development of a vibrant club scene in Berlin. At the time, the scene completely relied on unregulated, temporary spaces.
Meanwhile, the municipality had big plans to change Berlin into a global capital, after it was determined to be the new, national capital of united Germany. The local government made ambitious plans for urban development and private investors made their entrance into the city (Arandelovic and Bogunovich 2014). There was a feeling of euphoria and speculation about major projects that had commenced. Between 1995 and 1999 the realisation of big building projects started, however, the city did not become the global power the government intended it to be and its growth stagnated from 1999. Many offices and warehouses were still empty, which ensured the club scene, with its temporary character, to further establish itself.
The development of an EDM subculture in the late 1980s and 1990s did not occur solely in Berlin. The complexity of the international electronic dance music scene is illustrated by Reynolds’ (1998) comprehensive history of international rave and club scenes. He describes parallel developments of club culture in the 1990s which were happening across many different styles, actors and local scenes in, for example, Chicago, Detroit, Berlin, Manchester, Ibiza and London. Club culture is thus shown to have a so-called ‘glocal’ character (Knights and Biddle 2007): club scenes manifest themselves on a local, urban level, which together constitute a
1 Thereby referring to electronic dance music as an umbrella term for electronic music, not to be confused with the current genre denomination EDM.
7 global movement, similarly to other music subcultures (Kruse 2010). Local scenes have often influenced each other, the reciprocity between Detroit and Berlin being an important example, but Reynolds illustrates the intricacy of all these connections. Especially in the 2000s, under the influence of globalisation, club culture has involved more people and has grown into a culture with many actors and gatekeepers, ranging from DJs to promoters and from clubs to record shops, and, most importantly, clubbers, who have altogether established their own discourse. A complex international network of producers, promoters and DJs started to form when electronic dance music became more popular – many of which have relocated to Berlin in the early 2000s (Nye 2013).
The latter detail proves that although dance music culture has become a worldwide phenomenon, the subculture has proven to be especially relevant for Berlin. Additionally the German Bundesfinanzhof has recently acknowledged that techno must be considered music, therefore granting German techno clubs to pay the same tax rate (Umsatzsteuer) as other cultural institutions (Radomsky 2020). Concerning Berlin, the positive reputation of techno might rely partly on the fact that the municipality started to use Berlin’s subcultural status as a trademark in the 2000s.
The latest city branding narratives of Berlin have been based on its historical variety of subcultures, framing the city as a cosmopolitan, young and free city with large amounts of space and appreciation for subcultures (Colomb 2012a & 2012b). This is symbolised by former mayor Wowereit’s description of the city: “Berlin ist arm, aber sexy.”2 (Sontheimer 2004). In
addition, Erek & Gantner (2018) highlight how strategies of self-historicisation or urban imagineering have been put into play to create a persistent cultural image of Berlin as a cosmopolitan, open minded and creative city. Within this semi-constructed narrative of Berlin’s identity, techno music and club culture are said to have played an important role. Bader & Scharenberg (2009) for example contend that there is a strong link between Berlin’s post-1989 identity and the electronic music subculture. These institutional developments are rather typical for Berlin, since subcultures have long been ingrained in the government’s city marketing – this phenomenon did not originate after the fall of the Wall, but already before 1989, and perpetuated (Lanz 2013).
Club culture is thus being instrumentalised for the economic value of the city. On the one hand, the central role of club culture in city branding has enhanced the establishment of techno culture in Berlin, but scenesters dissent from its side effects, such as the attraction of many tourists who do not ‘belong’ to the local scene, threatening its authenticity. This thesis will focus on the latter, namely discourses of belonging and authenticity. Whereas the economic revenues and institutional structures of club culture are quite straightforward, studying club culture from a cultural perspective is difficult, as it is characterised by ephemerality and transience: as soon as a clubbing experience has ended, all reflection on it is done in hindsight. Rather than focusing on the governmental or economic value of club culture, this thesis will try to grasp patterns within club cultural discourse, focusing on the idea of authenticity. The notion of authenticity is inherent to subcultural discourse: what can be considered ‘real’, or ‘credible’? Who belongs and who does not? For hip hop, for example, there is a fine line between being an authentic artist and ‘selling out’ (Wermuth 2002).
8 This thesis will examine the ways in which authenticity discourse have shaped and continue to shape the understanding of club culture within the local context of post-1989 Berlin. The following sub questions will be central:
● What are the characteristics of club culture as a subculture? ● How is authenticity constructed within popular music cultures?
● How does a discursive approach help explain the development of club culture in Berlin?
● What are the existing narratives on club culture in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall?
● Which authenticity discourses can be distinguished concerning Berlin club culture since the fall of the Wall?
In my examination I will distinguish four phases and conduct a discourse analysis for sources covering these phases. For phase I (1980s-1990s) and phase II (2000s) comprehensive journalistic book publications are available which are illustrative for the scene in those eras: Der Klang Der Familie (Denk and von Thülen 2014), a montage of citations by scenesters who were active in the 1980s and 1990s, and Lost and Sound (Rapp 2010), a personal yet contextual narrative of 2000s club culture. Due to the object of this research, however, the sources for the latter two phases are less encompassing: popular culture develops fast and no comprehensive works are yet available for club culture since 2010. However, the discursive field is increasingly being constructed through online media publications, niche as well as mass (Thornton 1996). Therefore I will be using a selection of online, mainly written, sources for the last two phases I distinguish in defining the discursive patterns.
In analysing my sources, I will attempt to give insight into the discursive fields at play, and more specifically into conceptions of authenticity within Berlin club cultural discourse since the fall of the Berlin Wall. How does this discourse shift? Which aspects remain stable? Which indicators are there for a tension within the conception of authenticity and which threats is this tension based on throughout each phase? The following chapters will illustrate the dynamics of club culture, its transience and ephemerality, the complexity of the Berlin context, the influence of global as well as local developments and the continuous struggles of the local scene in defining who or what can be considered authentic at different points in time.
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2. Theoretical framework
2.1 Club culture
2.1.1 What is club culture?
Before elaborating on the central concepts of this thesis, club culture itself must be defined and contextualised in order to understand the discursive mechanisms that underlie authenticity within this culture in a Berlin context. The recent work of Drevenstedt (2020) already gives a comprehensive definition of club culture: “Club culture describes the phenomenon of people meeting in clubs or in similar spaces (e.g., open-air concerts, warehouse raves, or festivals) characterized by a program focused on live music, restricted access of a certain nature to create a protected space with its own rules, and a community to listen to music, dance, and socialize.” (12) Although scholars have made use of several similar terms, such as ‘rave culture’ – which has lost its traditional connotation of illegality (Hutson 2000, 35) – as well as ‘DJ culture’ and ‘electronic dance music (EDM) culture’ (Garcia 2013a), ‘club culture’ will be used in this thesis, as it is considered all-encompassing.
The most important feature of all these terms is the centrality of music in the formation of a community (Haslam 1997, 169). Club culture is generally based on dance music and all its subgenres, defined by Bennett (2000) as “contemporary forms of DJ-oriented music” (73). These subgenres are highly changeable and develop on a monthly basis, accelerated by consumer culture as well as the appropriation of genres by clubbing communities and artists (McLeod 2001).
Two big, overarching EDM genres, namely house and techno, originate in the genre of disco, which was established in the United States in the 1970s by Black and gay communities as a reaction to White rock music, which was considered racist and homophobic (McLeod 2001, 62). By the end of the 1970s, disco reached a mainstream status. Throughout the 1980s the genre went back ‘underground’ to its core Black and gay communities and its legacy evolved into house, which was named after the club Warehouse in Chicago. House reached the UK and was, characterised by slight musical differences, appropriated and renamed to ‘acid house’. Dance music communities in Detroit, led by artists such as Derrick May and Juan Atkins, further developed the music style and ‘techno’ was appropriated as the term to replace ‘acid house’, because the genre name had been overexposed and too associated with drug use (Thornton 1996, 75). This (re)appropriation and (re)definition of dance music genres is a continuous process, ambiguous in terms of authenticity as these definitions rely on cultural constructs, which is characteristic of club culture.
Additionally, club culture can be defined through its spatial dimension. Firstly, club culture is generally an urban phenomenon, manifesting itself in cities, often capitals or other big cities (Chatterton and Hollands 2002). Furthermore club cultural experiences mostly take place at clubbing locations, such as clubs, raves and other venues (Drevenstedt 2020, 12). There is also a temporal dimension: club culture is often referred to in terms of night culture or nightlife. Although it also manifests itself outside of night time hours, for example through radio stations focused on electronic dance music, communities getting together at day and dance music festivals, most club cultural experiences entail a club night in a venue, where clubbers physically get together. Club culture thus also holds a powerful physical dimension. Whereas many musical genres are intended to be listened to, the music that constitutes club culture is produced and played to dance to. Instead of rather passively watching a concert, clubbers
10 physically get together on a dancefloor. As Malbon (1999) describes, club culture relies on “experiential consuming” (24), in which the embodied experience is central.
2.1.2 Club culture as a business
Despite Malbon’s focus on the experiential aspect, by simultaneously describing club culture as a form of consuming, an economic dimension is added. Whereas club culture originated in low-cost initiatives organised in empty warehouses, it has since taken the form of a business. For Berlin it has become an important source of income, generating an annual economic turnover of 216 million euro (Damm and Drevenstedt 2019, 28). This is also related to Yudice’s (2003) theory about the expediency of culture. Culture is being instrumentalised for policy purposes such as economic growth and the attraction of tourists. In Berlin this is especially relevant, as club culture is incorporated into city marketing and the attraction of tourists (e.g. Pogoda and Traxler 2018; Peter 2014; Stahl 2014). Although economy has become an important aspect of club culture, this thesis will take on a cultural perspective. I would similarly like to contest Malbon’s use of ‘consuming’ as for many clubbers, the club cultural experience is not merely a form of consumption, but a performative practice. Nevertheless, the economic dimension will appear to be relevant for the development of Berlin club culture and its authenticity discourse.
2.1.3 Club culture as a subculture
Presently club culture is dominant in creating cities’ cultural characters, not only in Berlin, but for example also in Amsterdam. It is, however, important to remark that club culture was a niche before house, techno and other subgenres entered the realm of popular music in the late 1990s. Although nowadays dance music culture could be considered mainstream, or rather the ‘alternative mainstream’ (Keunen 2014), it originated as a subculture.
Club culture has therefore been theorised within the framework of subcultures, which are characterised by community formation and feelings of belonging among the members of that community, based on common taste, for example in music, culture or sports. Besides being an urban phenomenon, subcultures are generally considered a youth phenomenon, seeing them as a rite de passage towards maturity (Northcote 2006). However, a recent edition of dance culture journal Dancecult (2019) suggests also taking into account older generations of clubbers, organisers and artists, broadening the definition of club culture as a youth culture phenomenon. Moreover Berlin is an example of a club scene that still has many non-youth members who remain involved in the scene, such as club owner Dimitri Hegemann and DJ Marcel Dettmann. As previous generations of club goers are growing older, club culture is not merely a youth cultural phenomenon, although its origin lies in youth culture.
Subcultures have been conceptualised in various ways. Both Malbon (1999) and Bennett (2000) have based their work on Maffesoli’s concept neo-tribe, which he introduced in 1988 (Maffesoli 2019 [1988]). The concept refers to people’s urge to distinguish themselves from mass society by establishing smaller social networks based on organisational principles of post-modern tribes. Within those rather small communities people share similar experiences, based on unwritten rules, conventions and sometimes rituals. The sociologist has recently revisited his theory, thereby emphasising the importance of taste on the one hand, but space on the other (Maffesoli 2016).
Hence a concept that is closely related, connecting taste and space, is ‘scene’. Local subcultures centred around the common interest in a specific type of culture, mostly music, are referred to as scenes, in scholarly research, generally musicology and cultural studies, as
11 well as the club field itself.3 Kruse (2010) describes a scene as a geographically determined,
local formation with a certain type of music as their common denominator, which have economic as well as social networks. Drevenstedt (2020, 13) then defines a club scene as a local network of groups of regular clubbers, in which often overlap exists between the roles of organis er, artist and audience: a scene is formed by as well as for members of the scene. These scenes are thus spatial and therefore often referred to by their locality: people specifically refer to the Berlin club scene or the Amsterdam club scene, for example.
Subcultural capital
Picaud (2019) states that Berlin’s subcultural capital is being dramatised as a strategy to enhance the city’s identity and, as a result, develop the city’s economy. The notion of subcultural capital in relation to club culture has been introduced by Thornton (1995). She illustrates, following Bourdieu’s (1984) theories of distinction and cultural capital, how the dynamics of club culture are based on subcultural capital: the cultural knowledge, values and uses acquired by members of a subculture, that give them a certain status and differentiate them from other cultural groups. Thornton (1995) examines the following mechanism: insiders of a subculture see themselves as different from ‘mainstream’ culture, based on their own idea of a hierarchy – which is, as opposed to Bourdieu’s conceptions, not based on class. What exactly constitutes the mainstream is abstract, but it is always considered homogeneous in contrast to the subculture, which members of that specific scene will consider heterogeneous. Clubbing spaces are perceived as an alternative world to ‘normal life’, in which clubbers experience other conceptions of space and time (ibid, 57). Subcultural capital within club culture can be based on knowledge of dance music, social network of other clubbers or time involved in the scene. Keunen (2014) additionally remarks that the rejection of economic capital leads to the accumulation of symbolic capital within alternative culture (42).
McLeod’s (2001) perspective on the naming of subgenres is also relevant in this regard: the naming and renaming of dance music genres can be considered a mechanism to generate cultural capital. For example, renaming a derivative of Chicago house music to ‘acid house’, a genre which was essential to rave culture in the UK, did not have to do so much with the musical characteristics, but with the appropriation of this type of music by young, white, middle-class kids. Popular music genres are not just determined by their musical characteristics, but also entail a cultural process of belonging and group identity formations. McLeod describes that “the naming process acts as a gate-keeping mechanism that generates a high amount of cultural capital needed to enter electronic/dance communities” (60) – being ‘in the know’ of a certain genre that the dance community has determined to be authentic helps to constitute a clubber’s sense of belonging within that community. Thus, genre naming is a determinant for what is authentic at a specific moment and what is not.
2.1.4 Ephemerality
As Malbon (1999) emphasised, physical experience, or embodied experience is central to club culture. I would like to further explore this sense of experience, by elaborating on the ephemerality or elusiveness of club cultural experiences. This transience is a unique feature of performance culture in general, but several aspects make it especially applicable to club culture. Schelvis (2017, 40) describes electronic dance music as having a post-semantic meaning, given that the experience of club music evokes extra-cultural effects that go “beyond
3 In the interviews I did for my report about club culture in Utrecht (Vaessen 2020), multiple people from
club cultural organizations referred to a ‘club scene’.
12 comprehension”, in which effect of the music on the body is elementary. I think that the understanding of these effects can be found in the idea of ephemeral and transient character of club culture.
There are several aspects that together constitute the ephemeral and transient character of club culture. Firstly the centrality of the physically present dancing body makes clubbing a very corporeal and momentary experience (Drevenstedt 2020). The often repetitive and bass-focused character of the music, as well as the darkness and loudness that are fundamental and similarly unique to a club setting amplify the intensity of this temporal experience (Hutson 2000). Stengs (2007) for example describes in detail her sensory and elusive encounter with dance music culture during fieldwork, pointing out the synergy of the music and the bodily reactions of the people who surrounded her in that specific moment. In some clubs (e.g. Berghain and Tresor in Berlin) clubbers are
furthermore required to cover their phone cameras, which makes it impossible to capture tangible memories of the experienced night. Also intoxication due to the use of substances, such as alcohol, but more commonly party drugs like MDMA or XTC, enables the temporary sensations and even ‘altered states of consciousness’, as for example Malbon (1999) and Reynolds (1998) have mentioned, although the latter emphasises that drugs are not necessary to reach such a state. St. John (2004) also uses the idea of ephemerality to explain how a clubber can achieve a form of spirituality during a rave.
2.1.5 Community: between global and local
A seemingly paradoxical characteristic of club culture, but also of music subcultures in general, is the interaction between the local and the global, which is emphasised in Biddle & Knights’ (2007) volume. Whereas their work refers to the national when using the term local, this thesis will use local to refer to a smaller entity than the national, namely cities as urban centres of club culture.
Club culture on the one hand forms an international network, with many different actors, manifesting itself as an imagined community. The often recited concept of the imagined community was coined by Anderson (1983) with regard to awareness of national identity. In this thesis I will not use the term with reference to nationalism, however, imagined community is considered a productive concept in its more general sense: the idea of a community with members who are not familiar with each other, but nevertheless feel connected. Globally clubbers feel connected to other clubbers they do not know personally, through listening to the same music and taking part in similar performative practices of clubbing. The international appeal of electronic dance music is constituted by its repetitive and bass-focused character, in which lyrics generally are not central. The internationality of club culture, alike other music cultures, is furthermore enhanced by processes of globalisation, such as the increasing amount of cheap flights which allow clubbers to visit other local scenes, access to music through the internet and easier processes of migration, enabled through for example EU regulations.
However, this globally imagined club cultural community, similarly to other musical subcultures, does not function without local scenes. Reflections on club culture generally focus either on manifestations of the urban phenomenon in one local scene, such as Berlin, Paris (Picaud 2019) and Chicago (Rietveld 1997), or a comparison of various local scenes (Nye 2013). In the case of club culture, cities are important junctions in this global network, also interacting with each other. An example is that of electronic music genre ‘acid’, which originated in
Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 2. Clubbing experience at e-werk in Berlin (Brembs 1995)
13 Chicago mid-1980s4, became popular in London and Manchester scenes late-1980s, where it
reached a popularity peak during the summer of 1988, and similarly made its entrance into Berlin’s underground. Bader & Scharenberg (2009) describe this dynamic as follows: there are local networks of creativity from which globally popular musical output arises – vice versa, the local music scenes can only be conceptualised in the context of global developments in EDM culture. On a local level, furthermore, embodied experiences are central. The importance of shared embodied experience in club culture has been illustrated previously in different contexts by, for example, Malbon (1999), St. John (2004) and Garcia (2011). Additionally, subcultural theory about club culture centres these embodied experiences as well, as physical presence is also said to determine subcultural capital of a clubber (Thornton 1996; Picaud 2019). The centrality of the embodied experience in local community formation, in which globally available music is reproduced and reinterpreted in local clubbing contexts, can be explained through Rigney’s (2014) theorisation of embodied communities. In her case study of the commemoration of 19th century writer Robert Burns, she finds how commemoration has shifted from static, physical lieux de memoire (Nora 1989) towards a more dynamic practice of commemoration, in embodied and performative forms. Burns was commemorated globally, but on a local level each community practiced this commemoration differently, which led to the experience of local, embodied communities. Although club culture is a different phenomenon than the commemoration of a writer in the 19th century, the dynamics are similar and I would even like to argue that, due to the centrality of the ephemeral and physical experience in clubbing, club culture is a more vivid example of an embodied community.
Club culture can thus be considered a ‘glocal’ phenomenon, in which the interaction between the local and the global for club culture can be understood as follows: club culture constitutes a global imagined community, existing out of local scenes, which could be described as embodied communities.
2.2 Discursivity
Although club culture in post-1989 Berlin has been studied previously, few of these studies have taken on a discursive perspective. A generally consistent narrative of a utopian and creative urban hub with an important role for techno music has been presented by several scholars (e.g. Bader and Scharenberg 2009; Stahl 2014; Oktay 2015). This narrative is about the reinvention of Berlin after the fall of the Wall into a ‘New Berlin’, a creative urban space with techno music as ‘the sound of Berlin’. Most of the existing examinations have not taken into account the fact that the narratives as they are often presented rely on social and cultural constructs and reproduce each other without taking into account discursivity. The consistency of this narrative can be contested by reflecting on the discursivity of this topic.
Due to its ephemeral character, reflection on and reproduction of club experiences is always obsolete. One can never fully grasp the core of club culture, especially not while reflecting on it, in a scholarly or non-scholarly approach. Therefore research on and reconstructions of club culture experiences must always take into account the high level of discursivity. The discursivity of reflections on club culture is furthermore based on the high degree to which club culture is a cultural and social construct. Subcultural capital is (unconsciously), alike other subcultures, considered an indicator for belonging to the group and for being perceived by
4 Although the actual roots of the genre reportedly lie in the album ‘Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat’ by Indian artist Charanjit Singh (1982), which was released several years prior to Phuture’s ‘Acid Tracks’, the EP that is said to have defined the acid genre (Aitken 2011).
14 other clubbers as ‘cool’ (Malbon 1999). These identities are highly stylised and clubbers constantly monitor themselves against the then applicable features of ‘coolness’, which are constantly modified and rather fragmented (Thornton 1996, 98). Club culture is thus selective, already starting before one enters a club, by a process of self-selection: the choice for a certain clubbing experience relies on how a clubber perceives themself in relation to a crowd with which they want to identify (ibid).
This is then amplified by the clubbing experience itself, mainly through club’s door policies. According to clubs themselves, door policies exist in order to maintain a safe space for inclusivity and physical freedom, but also to ensure a certain atmosphere. The latter is related to the construct of coolness and belonging: several clubs are known for excluding people for not adhering to the ‘correct’ identity or degree of coolness that fits that club, for example based on clothing. In my previous research a club promoter stated that they were satisfied with a club night if it had ‘the right audience’ on the dancefloor (Vaessen 2020, 62). The door policy of Berlin’s famous club Berghain is a magnified example of how club culture is a social and cultural construct. It is known for having a very strict door policy – numerous journalist articles have been written about the best strategies to get in (e.g. Dundon 2017; Jaksa 2019), but it has likewise been alleged for arrogance and racism.
Furthermore subcultural formation, as Thornton (1996) illustrates, is not only constructed by lived experience, but also through media perceptions, on which media, but also clubbing communities themselves base their identity (117). For example the conception of the mainstream, against which subcultures form themselves, grows out of the reciprocity between the media and lived culture (ibid 109). Wermuth (2002) also acknowledges the heavily mediatised discursive construction of subcultures, leading to the configuration and reconfiguration by members of a subculture of what constitutes their culture.
Within popular music culture locality is considered very important (Bennett 2000; Knights and Biddle 2007). As described, although electronic dance music is a global phenomenon, the formation of music scenes mostly occurs on a local level, even when under the influence of new media and the internet (Kruse 2010). For electronic dance music specifically the locality is evident, since embodied experiences are important in this culture. The discourse surrounding club culture is thus also dependent on the local context, in this case Berlin. The social and cultural circumstances of Berlin club culture within which the authenticity discourses develop will therefore be taken into account in my analysis.
2.2.1 Methodology
Given the discursive character of club culture, a discursive approach is considered the most appropriate method for this thesis. I will carefully take into account the cultural and social mechanisms at play in my material as well as the local context. Despite stating that previous scholarly research specifically into Berlin club culture has not taken on a discursive perspective, there are several scholars who have handled a discursive approach on closely related topics, from which I will draw for my own methodology.
Walkowitz (2012) analysed discourses of cosmopolitanism within the local urban context of Soho, London, from a historical perspective. She emphasises the importance of popular or commercialised culture in the shaping of political formations. Although this thesis does not claim to give all-encompassing insights into political processes in Berlin or Germany, it is important to acknowledge that popular culture, like club culture, does not only function within the realms of that specific culture and its community, but is always embedded into broader
15 cultural, social, political and geographical systems, which together constitute a discourse. Walkowitz in her work first presents a theoretical framework on the central concept of her book and then in each chapter contextualises the discourse she is analysing in a chronological order, which is similar to the structure that this thesis will employ. Considering the urban context of Berlin, Sark (2018) has looked at the discourse formed by cultural production about the city after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She shows how different instances of cultural production around the 2000s constitute a seemingly consistent narrative of nostalgia to Berlin culture in the first decade after 1989 and also references the compatibility within this narrative of the idea that electronic dance music was ‘der Sound der Wende’, as Gutmair (2014) posed it.
Regarding authenticity discourses within popular music culture, Anttonen’s (2017) study is insightful. She elegantly describes a discursive phenomenon as “a cultural construction built with language and communication” (5), which also legitimises the use of written primary sources, which is relevant for this thesis as well. She conducted a comprehensive discourse analysis of written media coverage about three popular music case studies within three different music genres, whereas I will focus on one genre. Anttonen applies discourse analysis from a macrolevel rather than a microlevel, given that authenticity is a broad cultural construct rather than an idea formed by a single outcome of cultural production, which is also the approach that I would like to take on. Jaimangal-Jones (2018) looks more specifically at club cultural discourses, analysing media discourses about the authenticity of DJs in magazines dedicated to electronic dance music culture.
In my own analysis of my primary material, I will present the narratives of club culture that are offered, examining discursive constructions of authenticity. To analyse my primary material I will conduct a discourse analysis, through which I will see which discourses of authenticity my sources convey and how these help to understand existing narratives of Berlin club culture. I will structure my analysis according to four hypothetical phases of discourse, also providing a cultural historical framework for these phases.
Finally I am well aware that the research I am conducting in this thesis is also discursive. Although this thesis will present a discourse of continuity, expecting to find rather chronological, linear phases of understandings of authenticity within the subculture, there is also the possibility of disrupted continuity and unexpected developments to be found in my material. In terms of discursivity it is also relevant to reflect on the researcher’s position in relation to the studied subculture, as the proximity of the researcher influences the research process (MacRae 2007). That being said, I am not conducting field research, for which previous club cultural researchers have had to immerse themselves in clubbing experiences (e.g. Malbon 1999; St. John 2004). As a 22-year old clubber, I have a rather close socio-cultural proximity as well as personal interest in and therefore familiarity with my general research subject of club culture. This helps me in understanding the discourse and distinguishing trends through earlier encounters with niche media and social media that I follow out of personal interest. However, as I am not a part of Berlin’s local club scene myself, a divergence is established between the researcher and the case study chosen for this thesis. My understanding of the primary and secondary material is thus enhanced by my prior knowledge, but I have no connection to and therefore no interests within the Berlin scene, resulting in enough distance from the topic.
2.3 Authenticity
The question “What is club culture?”, is thus highly discursive and its conception is dependent on interpretation of ephemeral experience, local context and media perceptions. Following
16 Anttonen (2017), I will also regard authenticity as a discursive phenomenon. Within popular music studies, authenticity has long been an important concept. Previously, academic scholars attributed terms such as ‘authentic’, ‘honest’ and ‘actual’ to artists or their musical production, similar to the way in which music critics utilise conceptions of authenticity when examining the extent to which an artist is authentic; often this is either regarded inherent to the characteristics of the music or related to the performance of an artist (Moore 2002). However, academic consensus has now long been established that authenticity is “a matter of interpretation which is made and fought for from within a cultural and, thus, historical position” (ibid, 210), underlining the discursivity of the concept. Similarly Shuker (2017) writes that “we should be asking not if particular stylistic characteristics can be considered ‘authentic’ or non-authentic, but rather how authenticity is constructed in particular music genres and performers, and the strategies involved” (25), seeing conceptions of authenticity as a form of ideology within popular music culture. This thesis will be concerned with the different ways in which authenticity is constructed within club culture given the local context of Berlin.
As an inherently discursive concept, then, authenticity has been attributed to many different determinants to authenticate either the artist, the audience or the Other against which authenticity is formed, such as intimacy, immediacy, social standing, integrity and musical reinvention (Moore 2002). In examining hip hop culture, McLeod (1999, 139) distinguished several semantic dimensions of authenticity, against determinants of ‘fakeness’: staying true to yourself and remaining underground are considered authentic as opposed to following mass trends and becoming commercial. Authenticity can furthermore be attributed to a medium, a genre or even a whole scene. A relevant recurrent aspect which has been rendered central to perceptions of authenticity for subcultures specifically is whether the authenticated entity (whether it is a genre, an artist, a performance et cetera) is able to articulate at that specific moment a figurative place of belonging with which the listener can affirm its identity within or membership to that subculture – in other words, whether it is able to constitute subcultural capital for a member of the subcultural community (Thornton 1996; Moore 2002; Mau and Nicholas 2020).
2.3.1 Authenticity and performativity
Driver (2011) poses a critique to previous studies of authenticity of live performances, which is grounded in the ephemerality, but also the performativity of subcultural experience: he problematises the symbolic character of such subcultural theory and accentuates the importance of taking into account affect, based on the physical momentum of human experience, rather than symbolic notions of authenticity. Although it is difficult to take into account the effect that physical experiences create when conducting a discourse analysis of written sources instead of fieldwork, I will be careful in making statements on authenticity based on signs rather than lived experience. Although Driver has researched hardcore music scenes, his work is also appropriate with regards to club culture, to which this ephemeral and performative physical momentum is so central.
Albrecht (2008) furthermore effectively compares the experience of authenticity and performativity in popular music culture to a study by Nauta (2003) about the religious practice of priests. Nauta theorises that authenticity always has a performative and constructed nature, even if it has to represent an experience of the sacred. However, as long as the receiver believes that the performance is authentic, it can be considered authentic. Embodied, momentary experiences, such as a club experience, thus require a sense of surrender in order to be conceived of as authentic. Albrecht (2008) applied this theory to popular music live
17 performance, thereby emphasising the importance of contextualisation of understandings of performance and authenticity. This is relevant for club cultural encounters, since in this context not only the DJ is performing as an artist, but the experience of clubbers is also highly performative. Authenticity is thus discursive, but similarly performative, requiring a sense of surrender to the embodied experience.
2.3.2 Authenticity in club culture
Different genres or subcultures are subject to different conceptions of authenticity. Tropes of authenticity can be disseminated by terms as ‘realness’, ‘sincerity’, ‘credibility’ or ‘truthfulness’. ‘Realness’ or ‘the real thing’ has especially come to the fore in authenticity discourses within hip hop culture, as both McLeod (1999) and Wermuth (2002) illustrate, as well as ‘street credibility’. Wermuth also emphasises that the conception of authenticity is discursive, within hip hop predominantly dependent on who is interpreting the idea of authenticity: while insiders of the subculture perceive authenticity mainly as a certain style and street credibility – the acknowledgement of their authenticity by others within the culture –, outsiders see artistic reinvention as a determinant of authenticity. Westinen (2014) shows how authenticity discourses for hip hop culture are furthermore subject to its locality, elaborating on global, national and local authenticity. A term that is often used to constitute a discourse of authenticity within club culture is ‘underground’, which is often rather local and therefore also based on local embodied communities or scenes (Thornton 1996). Bennett (2000) theorises how local dance music scenes are constituted by an “underground sensibility” (85), which is for example established by physical participation in alternative nightclubs, which are defined against ‘mainstream’ clubs – I will further expand on this in the next paragraph.
Wiltsher (2016) employs a descriptive rather than discursive perspective on authenticity and distinguishes three perspectives on how to determine whether a certain form of club culture is underground and therefore authentic: knowledge of genres can discern authenticity, as well as features of the establishment of a scene or original cultural production – the latter predominantly lies in Black communities in the USA, which makes the degree of ‘Blackness’ a determinant for authenticity according to Wiltsher. Jaimangal-Jones (2018) found that within media discourse about DJs innovation and originality in musical style, commitment and effect on the audience constitute ideas of authenticity. Thornton (1996) considers two approaches to authenticity in club culture, one being originality or aura and the other being the naturality with which a musical entity (genre/artist/performance) is perceived among the members of the subcultural community. These conceptualisations of authenticity in club culture help to find similar tropes in my primary material, but are evidently not finite and my analysis will be open to other, context specific discourses.
2.3.3 Authenticity under threat
Conceptions of authenticity are discursive, which also implies that reorientation of authenticity discourses occurs according to its historical and local context. One of the contextual influences on these discourses is when members of a subculture experience the authenticity of their community to be under threat. In the theorisation of subcultures and authenticity I have identified several threats that can lead to tension surrounding authenticity discourse and therefore reorientation and I expect to discern more context specific threats in the analysis of my primary material.
Authenticity is always defined against the idea of a mainstream, since members of a subculture have “the desire to be part of something that is not widely distributed” (Thornton 1996, 121). Moore (2002) even states that the opposition of authenticity and mainstream is seen as a
18 paradigm. Popularisation and commercialisation of a musical entity, or ‘selling out’, referring to Wermuth (2002), therefore constitutes a threat to authenticity. This is, however, paradoxical, as musical subcultures are already considered within a framework of ‘popular music’ and Moore (2002) acknowledges that the opposition he poses is illusory, as subcultures also function within a capitalist framework of consumption – be it of records, experience (Malbon 1999) or lifestyle (Thornton 1996). The relation between authenticity and mainstream is even more complex given that record labels, at least within hip hop culture, see authenticity as a trademark (Wermuth 2002, 310).
Another threat to authenticity within music based subcultures is the involvement of authorities, which I expect to also be relevant for Berlin club culture, since this subculture has been anchored into city branding and cultural policy since the 2000s (Picaud 2019). Dance music culture is originally known, however, for its do-it-yourself (DIY) character, typified by precariousness on an economic, legal as well as material level: there was no regular income, spaces were often squatted and equipment was often set up on the spot (Bennett 2000; Vivant 2009, 40). I am interested in seeing whether the tension between the expediency of club culture for policy purposes and ideas of authenticity will be discernible in my material.
McLeod (2001) also relates the trope of ‘going underground’ to commercialisation, but similarly to (re)appropriation of genres: “Throughout the 1980s, it was widely believed that disco was “dead,” but it had simply gone back underground to its core Black and gay urban audiences, and it had taken a new name.” (62) I think it is appropriate to be critical of his use of ‘simply’ in this understanding of genre appropriation, as the underlying mechanisms certainly are not simple. Debates of reappropriation and authenticity claims of music by Black communities, under great influence of Gilroy’s theory on The Black Atlantic (1993), have become an important threat to the conception of authenticity in club music. Although scholarly attention has been granted to this tension, this is especially the case for other genres, like hip hop (Wermuth 2002) and generally focused on the USA. Only more recently, to a great extent related to the expanding visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a vast critique in popular media has emerged on white appropriation and therefore the reclaiming of house and techno music as well, also in a European context. An example is the closing of Amsterdam club De School after, alongside financial struggles, a severe conflict with its own community, accusing the self-proclaimed progressive and inclusive club management of racism and a lack of acknowledgement about the Black roots of techno and house (Miedema 2020). Whether the topical discourse on cultural appropriation affects authenticity discourses within Berlin will also be taken into account in my analysis.
As will be illustrated in the analysis of my primary material, different conceptions of authenticity and what threats affect these conceptions are related to their context, which in the case of this thesis is local as well as chronological. The trope of ‘going underground’ has been used to describe the club scene at several crucial points in time, under the influence of constant factors as well as contemporary threats in that period.
19
3. Phase I: The fall of the Wall, the drop of the beat (1980s-1990s)
While the Berlin Wall was still standing in the late 1980s, a new scene had started to manifest itself in the city, starting in the West. Following up the punk scene, techno culture – still considered the city’s predominant subculture – has only been given rise fairly recently, around the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 .The social, cultural and political circumstances in Berlin post-Wende are said to have enhanced the development of a vibrant club scene, especially concerning the Zwischennutzung (temporary use) of empty buildings. Not only has popular media propagated a narrative of techno as the “sound of the reunification” (Gutmair 2014), but also scholarly analyses have taken on this perspective, considering techno culture as a “mechanism for separate communities of young people […] to come together in a neutral environment” (Schofield and Rellensmann 2015, 117). The establishment of subcultures, among which club culture or electronic dance music culture, is seen as one of the main characteristics of Berlin city culture after 1989, often neglecting the city’s longer history of alternative culture.
Der Klang der Familie
The narrative in Der Klang der Familie by journalists Felix Denk & Sven von Thülen (‘The Sound of the Family’, originally published in German in 2012, English version in 2014) aligns with this general story of Berlin club culture around the fall of the Wall. However, alongside giving insight into the local scene as a whole, Denk & Von Thülen also illustrate the centrality of individual personal experiences, reflection in hindsight and conflicts within the scene. Both
20 journalists were participants of the Berlin scene in the 1990s. Their work is an oral history, based on 150 interviews with around 70 scenesters that were active in Berlin club culture – Berlin natives as well as people who moved there either from elsewhere in Germany or from abroad – since the late 1980s into the 1990s, mostly conducted in 2011. They present their narrative entirely through a collage of literal quotes they derived from their interviews, only for the English version that was published in 2014 they added a short preface. The work offers an insider’s perspective on the early years of Berlin club culture, from the 1980s until mid-1990s.5
Through choosing this form Denk & Von Thülen emphasise the polyphony and discursivity of the topic, as their narrative relies on the reproduction of club cultural experiences long after they have been lived in the 1980s and 1990s. They illustrate that reflection on club culture is based on an individual's experiences of events that have occurred in the past rather than a singular narrative. In this case this past is additionally fairly distant, since the selection of quotations reconstruct club culture 20 to 25 years after the actual experiences have taken place. Furthermore it is important to take into account the fact that the work presents a specific discourse by offering a perspective from members of the early Berlin club scene and thus a perspective from ‘inside’. Such discourse also forms and defines the scene, as Thornton (1996) ascribed. The title is a reference to techno track ‘Der Klang der Familie’ by 3Phase and Dr. Motte, two important artists in the Berlin scene who have also been interviewed by Denk & Von Thülen. Throughout the book, scenesters also refer to the idea of the scene as a family, a trope which I will expand on later.
All the personal accounts are written into one seemingly coherent narrative, which is, however, neither chronological nor consistent, although Denk & Von Thülen have marked three phases by their chapters: the 1980s, 1990-1991 and 1992-1996. The differentiation between these time periods already indicates the fast pace of the development of the scene over time. The demarcation of the second and third phase illustrates the two years of fast development of the scene on the one hand and on the other hand the decline of the club culture after 1992 due to increasing popularity.
The narrative that Denk & Von Thülen have compiled shows the crucial role of the locality of the early scene, as well as singular entities within this scene, such as certain people, venues and party concepts, but also illustrates how all these entities are intertwined, as scenesters were involved in or at least aware of activities of others. The scene commenced fairly small and comprehensive, but towards the second half of the 1990s it became bigger and eventually became internally divided, mainly under the influence of commercialisation. Denk & Von Thülen illustrate that there is not only a discourse shift between this phase and the following years of club culture, but that within the first discursive phase there is already a lack of continuity among scenesters.
From West to East
Although club music’s popularity reached a peak right after the fall of the Wall, the culture already started its run-up on both sides of the Wall in the late 1980s. Punk and new wave’s popularity declined at that time (Denk & Von Thülen 2014, 18).The Wall was still up, but in the Western part of the city a small club scene started to emerge slowly as punk and new wave had experienced their best days. Under the influence of Chicago house and UK acid house,
5 Denk & Von Thülen’s work is exemplary for this phase of Berlin club culture, however, additional perspectives are presented by Gutmair (2014) and Hockenos (2017), as well as documentaries ‘We Call It Techno’ (2008) and ‘Berlin Babylon’ (2001).
21 music genres to which the West already had access, the first parties were already being organised in the second half of the 1980s. Simultaneously the cultural transition based on Gorbachev’s reforms in terms of glasnost and perestroika generated the accessibility of radio stations from the West and thus new genres to East-Berlin (Peter 2014, 177). However, when the Wall fell in 1989, the parties in the West were soon deemed commercial and circumstances on the East part of the city further led to the advancement of club culture. As there was a lack of political organisation, many physical spaces were still left empty – they were referred to as Temporary Autonomous Zones (T.A.Z.) – and could be utilised by the club scene to organise parties, at least temporarily. Examples of important temporary locations were Turbine Rosenheim, 90Grad and Quartier Latin, which all existed for a maximum of three years between 1986 and 1992, see Figure 1 for the geographical distribution.
Despite the fact that Berlin techno culture originated in the West as this part of the city already had access to predecessors to Berlin club music from the UK and the USA, club culture in the East has repeatedly been considered more authentic. These different conceptions of East and West are not only relevant in terms of authenticity discourse, but also implicitly counteract the ‘techno as the sound of the reunification’-narrative, whereas other scenesters as well as Denk & Von Thülen in their foreword explicate this narrative as well. While the West had already been influenced by capitalism and international forces, the scene that developed in the East had more of a DIY-character and the freedom would supposedly be expressed through the characteristics of the music on this side of the Wall (25). This underlines both conceptions of authenticity based on originality in music, but also against commercialisation (Wermuth 2002; Jaimangal-Jones 2018). For example, Mark Reeder, a music producer who migrated from Manchester (UK) to West-Berlin in 1978 and organised illegal concerts in East-Berlin in the early 1980s, considered techno music from the East more ‘real’ than music from the West:
Mark Reeder It was my dream to start a techno label in the GDR where kids from the East could release their music. […] The future looked so optimistic. And the music should reflect that. I saw it as the soundtrack of the fall of the Wall, of freedom. […] I told Hoffman, ‘The Wall is gone, the Stasi people are gone, the fat cats too. Now you can release real music.’ He didn’t understand what I meant. I wanted them to invest in a music that the western labels didn’t have. (92)
The passage strikingly indicates subversiveness against communism, but also against capitalism. Additionally, the scene in the East was more often considered more credible because of its lack of commercialism, thereby already preluding the eventual divide and decline of the club scene in the beginning of the 1990s due to the threat of commercialis ation and techno selling out.
Alec Empire Virtually overnight, West Berlin became a total non-issue for me. Including the nightlife. I was almost exclusively in the East. There was absolutely no commercial pressure there. You could just get going and try things out. Musically, too. […] Everything was full of possibilities. (80)
“It was somehow liberating to crawl through this hole in the floor”
In its early years, however, the scene was mainly occupied with establishing what could be considered ‘underground’ and what not, who belonged and who did not. In Der Klang der Familie, the notion of ‘underground’, which has often been related to authenticity (Thornton 1996; Bennett 2000), appears to be ambiguous. In the earliest years of club culture the term had a literal connotation, referring to the underground spaces in which club culture manifested
22 itself. Love Parade organiser Kati Schwind illustrates how the physical location of parties, often basements, was an important part of the embodied experience:
Kati Schwind It was somehow liberating to crawl through this hole in the floor to the basement. Away from all that ‘80s muff, which was stuffy to the extreme. It just felt like a dead-end road. House had that spirit of awakening. It was totally new. Even just the experience on the dance floor. (34-35)
In this quote, going underground is used in its literal sense, but can similarly be interpreted as a metaphor, referring to the (re)definition of (sub)genres against music from the 1980s. The arrival, development and definition of genres, based on their musical characteristics, appears to be a recurring process in the early years of club music. Genres evolved fast, especially in the beginning, and new impulses were often considered better than previous music, breaking with conventions, evoking new reactions and also responding to local political circumstances, which is acknowledged by Detroit DJ pioneer Robert Hood – although Schwind is also aware of the reflexivity and elusiveness of the club scene:
Kati Schwind This new music, house, was simply groundbreaking, mind-blowing. At least it seemed that way to us. (35)
Robert Hood It was shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there was this resurgence of a new electronic sound – more brutal, more assertive. Before, it was more of a fantasy-based electronic sound; now, it was more reality-based and in tune with what was happening in the world, with the fall of the Wall and the political situation. (147-148)
Within club scene discourse, there existed the conception that the redetermination of which music defined ‘underground’ or coolness was a necessity, something that “had to happen” because “[n]o one could listen to the old shit anymore” (35). Even in hindsight, the combination between the music and the locations was not considered a coincidence or a result of political and cultural circumstances, but as a logical development inherent to the scene: “We didn’t have any other choice but to get going in old barracks. Underground.” (35) This necessity is also reflected in a later period marked by Denk & Von Thülen, when “techno needed a second phase” (171).
Techno as a business
Remarkably, development of subgenres and certain musical production could not only lead to the development of a new conception of underground, but could also indicate ‘selling out’ (Wermuth 2002). An example is the development of the acid house scene in Berlin: this genre reached Berlin from the UK, but its popularity quickly declined among the Berlin scenesters when acid house became too popular in the UK after its ‘Second Summer of Love’6. Although
the musical characteristics of the genre did not change, the context and popularity did and therefore also its discourse. Gradually the discourse shifted and the threat of professionalisation and corporatisation became the predominant factor against which authenticity was defined.
The professionalisation of the record industry as well as the rise of mass events influenced the indicators of credibility within the scene. Among several scenesters a fear of selling out arose,
6 Refers to the summer of 1988, but also 1989, when electronic dance music and the prevalence of drugs (MDMA and acid) led to mass illegal parties in the UK, drawing parallels with the original Summer of Love in San Francisco.
23 while others were simultaneously involved in the evolution of techno as a business, which the former group saw as the biggest threat: as DJ Dr. Motte states, “[t]he conflict was: true culture or profit?” (212), indicating that true or authentic culture and profit are direct opposites. Mayday, a techno festival first organised in 1991, was seen as one of the accelerators of selling out (160).
However, there were also members of the community who were involved in this process of techno becoming a business – Love Parade organiser and editor of club culture magazine Frontpage Jürgen Laarmann is portrayed as the leading example of the combination between club and capitalism in Der Klang der Familie:
Terrible At the time, Laarmann only ever ran around in tailored suits, convinced he could sell his Frontpage empire to Gruner + Jahr. When he marched down the hall, rolls of money would fall out of his pockets. (274)
Techno family
Eventually the commercialisation of techno was not solely a phenomenon of the West anymore and the potential of turning into a business took over the scene. This opposition between commercialised techno and ‘real’ techno further divided the scene, to which DJ Westbam refers as a “techno culture war” (270). In this regard the reference to the scene as a family also appears: “The family couldn’t just keep getting bigger and at the same time remain intimate.” (279) Intimacy was thus considered an inherent characteristic of the scene, thereby also indicating a focus on the local. Although there were already influences from abroad, most importantly the reciprocity between the local scenes of Detroit and Berlin in the early 1990s, the scene was still very much inward-looking.
The increasing degree of commerce within the club scene also led to a realisation about what club culture then was lacking that it was previously able to establish. Rave activist Stefan Schvanke describes it as follows:
The parties were professionally conceived and executed at a high level. If that’s what you were looking for from nightlife, you weren’t disappointed. But for me, something was missing. Something of our own, something that belonged to us, wherein we could recognize ourselves. (256)
The parties were thus not able to evoke a sense of agency as well as belonging to the clubbers. The idea of belonging that Schvanke mentions is conceptualised in different ways throughout Der Klang der Familie. Firstly a genre, performance or party can be rendered authentic if it is able to evoke a feeling of belonging for its audience, being the community or scene that the music or artists serves. This is exemplified through this excerpt from bouncer Arne Grahm, who declares the punk genre dead because a performance did not evoke enough enthusiasm from the audience: “You could tell from the crowd that punk in the West had been dead at least five years.” (30) Techno, however, was able to bear resemblance to its community, although scenesters mainly ascribe this idea to the early years, when the scene was still small, and also oppose it to the economical dimension:
3Phase The feeling of being part of something special produced a moral code of conduct. […] We felt like a part of the whole thing, not like customers. (129)
Related to this idea of belonging and community is the centrality of the community as a whole and the absence of dominant personalities or DJs as stars were seen as an important
