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05-17-02 Carnival of Cultures, Berlin, GER

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Cla.at editor Killaswitch visited Berlin few weeks ago to attend several dances and the famous Carnival of Cultures. Read the full story...
Berlin is definitely one of Germany's dancehall capitals, and as selector K-D from Bandulero Soundsystem invited me to visit it to attend some dances and the famous Carnival of Cultures (Karneval der Kulturen) I eagerly agreed. So, on Friday May 17th, I packed my stuff and went to the capital via car.

After a long and annoying cartrip of 8 hours Raddy (webmaster of the famous "Raddy's Reggae and Dancehall Site") picked me up and we drove to the ex-WMF to attend the Pow Pow ls. Mighty Crown dance. The first surprise for me were the doorguards at the club - after checking the people they even wish them to "enjoy the party", a fact which I never experienced amongst doorguards in my hometown...

This evening I also experienced the Berlin bashment crowd for the first time: they eagerly give forwards on every occasion and sing along with most of the tunes, but they do not dance as extatic as the crowd here in Cologne. Pow Pow definitely bust the place, long time i haven't heard them in such a good mood; Mighty Crown on the other hand did disappoint many attenders, and i really doubt if the 10€ were really worth them. Everyone expected a dubplate massacre, but in the first round the Japanese played only a few dubs and then went on playing bashment 45s from 1998-99, which is quite funny to party, but not exactly what you expect of such a top-a-top sound. In their second round they finally digged out some very nice foundation dubs, but the overall impression was still average.

Leaving the ex-WMF quite early, we drove to another club, where Bandulero Sound just finished playing, and I finally met the guys whose Cla.at support was quite impressive all the time: K-D, Riton, Marc and Fat Eric. With the first 3 I drove to the place where I was supposed to stay for the weekend: a big old-fashioned flat in Kreuzberg, shared
by K-D, Riton and Jesco (from Such-A-Sound). After hanging around in the kitchen till 6am and playing the newest Bandulero dubplates (which were very impressive indeed) we finally went to get some sleep.

On the next day I went to check out the city. I was absolutely surprised in a positive way: Expecting Berlin to be a grey concrete ghetto, I found it green, friendly and flourishing. And it's not the caplital of Germany for nothing: even the streets seem much bigger than everywhere else, and all buildings seem really impressive, the tall old houses in Kreuzberg aswell as the modernistic buildings
at Alexanderplatz, the Pergamon museum aswell as the NY-style trainbridges going across the whole city. After walking around in the city and visiting an old schoolmate of mine, I teamed up with Riton, K-D, Jesco, Marc and some other people we went to get some barbeque started in the park near to the Victory statue. Leaving out the fact that we somehow forgot to bring a proper tapedeck with us, we
really had a good time, eating bbq stuff, boozing and discussing things, at the same time trying to ignore some boogaman groups occupying the park meadow some 100 meters away...

The Sunday was the climax of the weekend, featuring the Carnival of Cultures streetparade in the afternoon and the Long Night of Soundsystems in the evening. Unfortunately, the weather turned out to get really bad, so first we just hung out in the flat, watching the parade on TV. On some point though we finally got our asses outside to see the whole thing live, and it was quite fun. I have expecting the parade to be more Nottinghill Carnival style, featuring reggae/dancehall/soca only, but Carnival of Cultures turned out to represent music from all kind of cultures, from some turkish folklore over native african music to techno and jungle. There were a few reggae/dancehall truck featured too, some with live bands and some with soundsystems playing. There was a truck of some very good ska band too, too bad I forgot their name.
But the most impressive ones were perhaps the soca trucks, having the sexiest dancing queens and motivating whole crowds to wave their rags and follow the parade.

In the evening the Long Night of Soundsystems took place, featuring Berlin's top-a-top sounds Supersonic and Such-A-Sound. The location was as impressive as unusual: the new-built Tempodrom, a huge amphitheatre-like hall, normally featuring musicals and classical/rock-concerts.
After we got in (thanx Jesco!), we saw an entrance hall more suiting a poshy-dressed upper-class society than the colorful dreadlocked and baldheaded bashment crown which was filling it. It was really a deluxe location...

The dancehall was in the middle of the amphitheatre, with a soundsystem platform built exactly in the middle of it. The sounds moved the crown the whole night long with a very versatile musical program - the ones expecting just bashment tunes definitely went wrong. Concrete Jungle played several soca rounds, making the crowd blow their wistles and wave their rags like mad; Supersonic surprised everyone playing a round of ska classics like "Israelites", "Carry Go Bring Home" and so on, getting the whole place skanking.

Such-A-Sound got the dancehall bashment on fire, playing loads of dubs and introducing their new MC, Supa-G, who did a great performance.
All in all, it turned out to be one of the best dances I attended this year, and the whole Berlin experience was definitely worth the expenses and the long trip.

Thanks and greetings to: K-D, Riton, Jesco, Marc, Alex, Raddy, Fat Eric, Chris, Supa-G, Salvo, Ben and everyone else I met in Berlin.

It'll be for sure not the last time I'll be there...

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