Through the back door of Soundsystem Culture

Berlin… the city where the gentrification runs faster than people’s lifestyle. Spectacles happen everywhere, daily. It’s the techno capital with clubs that seem to be open non-stop and us, the cultural contributors, the DJ*s, VJ*s and producers, the ravers, the writers, the anti-fashion, anti-establishment proclaimers. Where are we heading to?

In this article I want to reflect on and give an overview of what is actively going on in the city, right now. First, thanks to all the visitors who came to our launch event and made it a fantastic success. It’s great to witness that people want to share their (sub-)culture as we saw it during the panel discussion on the different aspects and foundations of soundsystem culture in Europe. Also, Yaam invited for ‘Culture Talks’, this time on ‘women in soundsystem’ and Female:Pressure celebrated their 20th anniversary calling for the ‘Heroines of Sound’. Even established institutions take on a similar ride. The HKW hosts ‘100 years of copyright’ discussing the sample and its influence on contemporary music production, or the Berlin Jazzfest, which organized panels on afrofuturism and empowerment.

While everyone was crouching next to each other to make space in the tiny low-ceiled basement, One Woman Army in Dub told us how she’d been organising together with Digitron Soundsystem the ‘Days of Soundsystem Culture’ in Zagreb’s Medica-Squat. Also, Austria’s third biggest town Linz dedicated a weekend on afrofurutism by the beginning of this year and held the ‘Symposion Subcultura’ about a year ago.

So what was our shared consensus of the talk? Obviously, we all, whether we play dub or techno, barely find (public) space to set up our speakers and hear the music that we love loud. They remain in garages. At the same time, it seems as if we confine ourselves in this sort of uncomfortable comfort zone. Why are we afraid to define our own sub-culture as valuable, artistic and intellectual. While we stay in this bubble, we leave the theoretic discourse open to many who judge, systematize and sell our values and culture to the mainstream market.

Being busy with setting up, playing, chanting, decorating… of course we can overlook the broader impact within society that our subculture is capable of. It’s so easy to fall in a nihilist attitude and circle between weekly nine-to-five jobs and the next rave that is calling. In the end, consumerist attitude and capitalist dynamics stay coherent even in our parallel existence.

What could we do instead? To say it in a punk attitude ‘Go DiY!’.

Hearing the women from the Brazilian ‘Feminine Hi-Fi’ soundsystem talking about their sound, their own productions and self-organization in promoting, producing and representing their own work all made by women, I was impressed. Roots dub presents the dancehall and the soundsystem as a mass. It’s the words we hear, the chants being sung and the heavy bass remeinding us of our own physicality and rootedness to the ground we are standing on. In techno we celebrate utter freedom, not as a diasporic belief but as something to be taken now and experienced for the moment. Noise and breakcore demonstrate that the destruction of hegemony and our comfort zone, experimenting with unfamiliar sounds and going to the extreme can endorse on something completely new and unheard before and generate a new listening and therefore require us to accept and hopefully to appreciate the different other.

Instead of mourning that the mainstream is taking over, we could use its appropriative dynamics for our own purpose. The use of creative commons and licencing our own productions means sharing our work, but it also ensures that the author will receive their credits. Teaching each others how to develop creative work in sound, print making, writing, farming, fixing cars and even marketing can ensure our self-sustainability. Knowledge and education have inevitably been tools of empowerment. It doesn’t matter, what style or genre of music we favor, the procedure and the basics remain pretty much the same. How great is it if we all knew how to set up our speakers, edit our zines, create our web pages, etc. etc. all enhanced without the structure of the education system we grow up with but through a collaborative approach? Through sharing our skills we can learn to appreciate each others, each others subculture and develop our own universal culture. Let’s head on to a culture of sound!