Rave the Planet: If Music is the Answer, What is the Question?
In which the author revisits his misspent youth
There are not many foreign countries these days where I would join in a major political demonstration the day of my arrival. Germany, or more specifically, Berlin, is one such place. And so I found myself yesterday in the blistering sun dancing to techno through the Tiergarten, fighting for the right to party.
No really. The Rave the Planet demonstration — latter day descendant of the Love Parades of the 1990s — was a gathering of thousands supporting what the Germans call the “recht auf kulturelle und non-verballe tanz-und musikdemonstrationen.”
You know the American cliché? “The Germans have a word for …” Well, the Germans have a word, well, a phrase for “the right to non-verbal dance and music-based cultural and political expression.”
Yes indeed, you have to fight for your right to party. And the Germans are doing it. In New York, where we have a so-called “nightlife mayor” who cracks down on the unhoused, guts funding for public education, and generally acts as a Republican in all but name, it is easy to be cynical about party politics as a smokescreen for the transformation of the city into the playground of the wealthy.
Not so in Berlin, which is much closer to Samuel R. Delany’s fabled city of Bellona than any American city (even than Detroit, come to think of it). No American city has briefly been the capital of a would-be thousand-year global empire, been defeated and reduced to rubble, endured a half century of division between world powers, and then been “reunited” under the triumphant blazon of capitalist democracy.
Seen in the crowd: a man my age wearing a a shirt that read (in English): born in the 70s, raised in the 1980s, rave in the 1990s, we are the lucky ones).
I attended with an Ossie friend who first attended the Love Parade at age 13 with his mother.* There were plenty of Gen X and Millennial parents in the crowd with their kids, grooving alongside kinksters in leather and lace, self-described Trailer Park Trash in glitter mullets, candy ravers, and of course old Father Time.
Rave the Planet felt very pagan, and indeed, one of the political demands (more relevant outside Berlin I would guess) was for the abolition of Christian Sunday dancing bans.
I was talking with a young friend the other day, and I asked him Grace Lee Boggs’ question: what time is it on the clock of the world. He took a beat, then gave the thoughtful reply: witching hour.
* [After the day rave, I sent this friend an essay I wrote last year on techno, which he kindly read and liked the question I asked: what do they know of techno, that only techno know? This is a foundational question of cultural studies, of course. It makes a difference that CLR James — a Caribbean intellectual in exile in the US, then the UK — asked it. The difference it makes in this context is what white Germans, now one nation under the groove, owe to the black Detroit originators of non-verbal dance and music-based political culture. I will have more to say about this, but I am formulating my thoughts, because this is no longer a matter for “hot takes.”]
Ich liebe dich
"The witching hour." Love it!