Foreigners and tourists are different groups, albeit with significant overlap. The techno scene has a problem with tourists in particular, whether foreign or not. A Bavarian tourist booking an all-inclusive guided tour to pose on social media is going to stick out all the same. Meanwhile an Algerian on a student visa who spends more time partying than studying will fit right in.
This has nothing to do with foreigners and everything to do with outsiders/passerbys/tourists.
It is basically the techno scene version of gentrification (not talking about the impact or harm or whatever else being comparable between the two, just the mechanics of it), except it is happening with the techno scene instead of housing.
This is not incongruent with your observation about “somewhat leftist” techno scene people hating on outsiders destroying their tradition. It is very similar to the analogous complaints those “somewhat leftist” people would make about gentrification.
A very comparable similar example: Burning Man. Look at how it changed and what people who have been attending it since forever ago are saying. Very similar things, and it obviously has nothing to do with actual foreigners. It has everything to do with “gentrifying” the event, and it just slowly turning into a trust fund glamping larp.
I'm a foreigner, nobody cares about that. People coming in and recording their adventures, sitting in the corner texting, wearing fur boots or eye paint, etc are the ones that aren't so much appreciated. Nobody's ever had a problem with my shitty German as long as I've been partaking in the atmosphere as intended.
They aren't super 'lefty' but "Aryan" is completely unfair. Berghain cares a lot about diversity, and non-straight and non-white people have a sligtly higher chance of getting in (never any guarantees for non-regulars of course), which is the opposite of what a nazi place would promote.
Non-white and non-straight as long as they looked like they were coming right from a balenciaga catwalk. And they weren't shy in the past of hosting notoriously hard-right aligned djs and artists.
Berghain antics aside, the point I was trying to make it's that Berlin club scene isn't exactly as "welcoming" of outsiders as a whole as the OP was suggesting.
Vatican Shadow is probably the most infamous example, it had resonance even outside of the local scene. It was probably the point when their usual "We don't take a political stance" position didn't fly at all.
This is a different branch of music that doesn't have much in common with Chicago style house/techno. It's similar so people lump it together, but it evolved separately from synthpop, eurodance and electronic music that Kraftwerk did in 70s. The modern commercial EDM/techno is pretty different from what you're going to hear at a Berlin/Prague underground techno club, and has almost nothing in common with freetekno as heard in the forests.
I beg to differ. Plenty of Berlin techno is a descendant of Detroit techno. The fact that you only mentioned Chicago already shows a lack of understanding. Kraftwerk and the others you mentioned influenced Detroit techno pioneers, Detroit techno pioneers influenced Berlin techno pioneers. It's a transatlantic sound.
Nonsense. Jeff Mills was a Skinny Puppy fan, and you can hear it. All the Belleville Three were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and euro-electro, and you can hear that too. All of them namecheck a much richer and diverse set of influences than Chicago house, itself a refinement of disco, a far from strictly racially-defined movement. The UK was the first to wake up to US techno, long before the US did, if you actually know/ lived through the history. Then of course you have Plus 8, Tresor, Basic Channel and so on. You can try for an Afro-American imperial case, but it’s going to get factually unstuck fast.
The whole damn point was people dancing in a room together, not whatever authenticity tests you have in mind.
> 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 what techno is and can't distinguish from EDM or other dance music forms. In Detroit itself, there was obviously an active scene, but much smaller than anything you'd find in most European cities (Detroit itself is a fairly small city, population wise), and much smaller than its own hip-hop scene. Back in the 90s when I was much more into this scene, it was very much a niche underground thing. Active scene participants here in southern Ontario/Toronto (3rd/4th largest city in North America) were a few hundred people at most and we pretty much all knew each other. 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).
All said though, the "Detroit" "authenticity" pole in techno served as a counteracting force against the unbearable soul-less, drug-rush-focused, "whiteness" of trance, progressive house, etc.
> 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:
> One of my favorite memories was Derrick May finally taking the stage
That was a great moment. I recall the Stacey Pullen set being great, too. I'd seen both those people before and not been impressed, actually. But at DEMF it was amazing.
That last part - was trance/prog house always like that? Or did it start more underground and organic in 1989 onward until the mid-90s where it became very commercial and then went to the next level with someone like Tiesto?
When those forms became distinguished as separate genres, basically yes. I think there was a vein of maybe more interesting "trance" in 92, 93 timeframe (I'm thinking about Oliver Lieb's stuff and maybe Rabbit in the Moon and some other stuff) that was a bit more techno-ish, but with some of the hallmarks of what came to be the "trance" form. But by the time people were specifically carving out "trance" it had basically the drum rolls and drug rush thing going on. By 96 when I started paying attention to that, it was already unbearable (to me).
Yep, exactly. It was German etc sounds being appreciated by African Americans in Detroit, being mixed with their influences in Chicago, and then travelling back across the Atlantic. Its a transatlantic international group effort and to deny either side of it misses the whole point.
You both explained it very succinctly. I don't get why people have to grasp at depictions of history that simply aren't true. They want to believe that Jeff Mills and Belleville 3 somehow created this new music from nothing and inspired the entire world.
Detroit deserves much more in its failed financial state to be made héritage of like anything… Urban heritage man, re u joking. Sadly no bright future for Detroit for the time being…
I think the scene is complaining about tourists and "foreigners" was a bad choice of word in this thread. People are flocking to big names and entry prices are as high as they have ever been. It's less about the actual music.
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.
If you are suggesting that "modern house and techno" emerged fully formed from black kids in Chicago and that Berlin techno is just imitation, I do wonder why you're even bothering to take time out to comment - this isn't really a position that could be seriously held by someone who's ever actually listened to the music.
It's funny how the (somewhat leftist) techno scene hates on foreigners destroying their tradition. Berlin and Bavaria aren't so far apart after all.