LOVE MINUS PARADE
- Series: Ruhr Music
The dead are buried. After the shock, their families and friends will mourn their losses. The media have been covering all aspects of the tragedy. The prosecutors can study the files and penalise the culprits.
It's about time to honour the culture which has made possible the parade in the first place. A culture which -like the stairs and stones on which 21 ravers were trampled to death in Duisburg- is not responsible for this catastrophe: the techno movement.
The USA invented Rock ´n Roll, Great Britain Pop – and we invented Techno
Coming up in Frankfurt and Berlin in the late 80s, Techno was a ricochet of the industrial beats of Kraftwerk, a band hailing from Düsseldorf, at first. The combos's electronic sound was played in New York, Chicago, and Detroit, was enriched by black Funk and Soul - and came back home as an irresistible mixture.
Still, the importance of Techno has never been fully appreciated in its home country. The USA invented Rock ´n Roll, Great Britain is the cradle of Pop – and we have Techno. In the 90s, there were few events epitomising the positive image of reunited Germany better than the millions of ravers in the Tiergarten in Berlin, so not only clubbers and DJs owe this phenomenon a lot.
What was it all about in Berlin then? It was about fun, music, freedom and ecstasy. Well, of course it was also about ecstasy and acid - as LSD had been part of „St. Pepper“. But till then, the synonyms for wild parties in this country had been "Schützenzelt" and "Oktoberfest", or maybe the celebrations when the wall was torn down... So, the success of the crazy parade was a quantum leap.
The Loveparade was bound to go mainstream
German youngsters, until then reduced to drunkards with their heads in sangria buckets on Mallorca, suddenly were considered at the helm of a new cultural movement - because that was what Techno and its main event, the Loveparade, became within the next ten years. This impression got further enhanced by the corresponding happenings in Tel Aviv, Kapstadt, Wien, Mexico City, San Francisco, and Santiago de Chile, too.
So, the Loveparade was bound for mainstream, even before its move to the Ruhr area. And it shares its fate with many other mass movements: the moment of incredible happiness achieved by being part of a huge mass turns into a death trap... Rock ´n Roll in Altamont, football in Heysel, and the Islam in Mekka: these catastrophes never neglected the powerful ideas the event tried to convey - the tragedies were triggered by dilettantism, ignorance, and greed by the respective environments.
Victims of lucre and vanity
It is tragic that the danger of this conflict of interests has not been recognised in Duisburg. You can't blame those who were eagerly awaiting the party, but the event's organiser, the mayor, the head of the security department, and the plice superintendent - that much is obvious even without any court judgement. Maybe these men will only take on their responsibility after a certain time - but each of them will have to cope with those horrible 30 minutes in the afternoon of July 24, 2010, for the rest of their lives.
21 ravers are dead. They are no victims of the Loveparade, but victims of lucre and vanity, induced by new a new kind of players which never were part of the core idea at all when it started in 1989.
A new era begins - even for this music which is produced for dancing and thus just consists of various stages of euphoria. The parade is dead - Techno will live on.
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