In its tenth year, the festival also opened up new possibilities for pop culture. The focus on music from Africa proved to be a great benefit.
Yemi Alade, superstar from Nigeria, euphoric the crowd Photo: Votos-Roland Owsnitzki
Phew, pop culture must be groaning in view of everything that Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth wants to burden it with: “Those who want pop want diversity, want a democratic society,” she stated in her speech at the opening of the Pop Culture Festival.
Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking. Right-wingers and Islamists in particular have long since integrated the emotionalizing potential of pop into their strategies and are using a corresponding aesthetic to capture souls. Apart from that, it has recently become apparent that parts of the supposedly open pop world lack tolerance for ambiguity – and the willingness to “provide the benefit of the doubt”.
Perhaps it would be better to agree that pop is neither social glue nor a panacea for conjuring up diversity, but at least it opens up new possibilities. And that is exactly what pop culture is all about, and we can congratulate the festival on its tenth birthday.
Once again, a wide variety of formats were presented from Wednesday to Friday on the grounds of the Berlin Kulturbrauerei; in addition to concerts of various genres, there are talks on topics such as memes, right-wing esotericism or the opportunities and risks of AI, exhibitions and much more. A unique selling point of this festival are the so-called Commissioned Works, which allow musicians to devote themselves to a topic without having to keep an eye on its economic viability.
Participation of people with disabilities
Showing what can be done – that is one way to describe the festival's programmatic approach. Whether it is the gender-equal booking, which was quite astonished at the first edition in 2015 – which is again astonishing from today's perspective, even if there is of course still room for improvement in many parts of the pop industry. Or the participation of people with disabilities. Pop culture also conveys, quite nonchalantly and casually, what the globalized world, including in pop, has to offer in terms of venues beyond those established in this country.
In this sense, it is a great benefit that the curatorial team is focusing on the African continent. Right at the start, there is a sensational performance by Kabeaushé, which one almost missed given the shimmering midsummer feeling at the karaoke at the Çaystube, the free and outdoor part of the festival.
In his performance, the musician from Nairobi – he currently lives in Berlin, but he developed his ultra-hybrid pop performance in the orbit of the busy Nyege Nyege collective in Kampala, Uganda – shreds hip hop and rave elements and enriches them with a bit of avant-garde and Afrofuturism. Prince can be expected to be in his ancestral gallery, as can Ziggy Stardust.
Yemi Alade's performance on Thursday evening proved to be much more mainstream-compatible, but no less entertaining. The superstar from Nigeria was the first woman to open the Africa Cup of Nations at the beginning of the year, and today she is euphorically delighting a crowd that knows astonishingly well the lyrics with her mix of Afropop, highlife and dancehall beats. She is flanked by two brilliant dancers who perform humorously, sometimes with self-irony. Towards the end, her performance takes a gospel turn, and the audience sings along with her without irony: “Love and Peace”.
Lots of soulful faces
In general, you see plenty of soulful faces during these three days. This was also the case at the performance of the Munich quartet with the lovely name What Are People For – a project with tentacles in the world of art and theater. They manage to make rough art pop sound colorful and dark at the same time. With their song “Bring Back The Dirt” they ask a legitimate question that you want to pass on to an increasingly algorithmized pop world: “Why are you so squeaky clean?”
The performance by Berlin band Hope is less of a rollercoaster of emotions, but highly immersive. The reduced synthesis of post-rock and ambient is illustrated with underwater worlds by British video artist Emma Critchley and finds a harmonious echo in sublime and somewhat eerie images.
Not every commissioned work is so successful: Christin Nichols was once part of the duo Prada Meinhoff, and her second solo album has just been released. She also works as an actress, but in the performance “The longer I stare at you, the less sense you make” one feels more like one is in a school theater.
The title seems to be an involuntary program. It deals with the question of how much success an artist needs to feel that their own work is valuable. But the author doesn't get to see how the whole thing is resolved; too many cringe moments full of lukewarm jokes force the reader to flee beforehand.
Successful anniversary edition
All in all, this successful anniversary edition leaves us with beautiful, kaleidoscopic impressions. The birthday weather contributes to the fun that will allow us to drift through the warm nights.
And sometimes it's enough if a space of possibilities turns out to be a sound cocoon in which you can simply let yourself go. With beat-driven psychedelic shoegaze that seems comfortably familiar, the British post-punk duo The KBV brings the festival over the finish line.
