Krimplezing

KR!MPLEZINGvan femina tot en unitas sheltur:

popular music in parkstad

theo ploeg01092011

vrijdag 2 september 11

five years ago there was no cultural spring

vrijdag 2 september 11

‘tales from the dowside’ (2007), Patrick Bisschops

vrijdag 2 september 11

• highest youth unemployment in The Netherlands

• no sense of purpose or place

• third generation stil yerns for the past

• or moves elsewhere to study or work

• pop culture isn’t visible (underground)

back in 2007...

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where did that come from?

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1960s

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the mining industry

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the church

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marching bands

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Holland

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Detroit, 1960-70s

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MC5: white technology meets black masculinity

vrijdag 2 september 11

“Rock and roll, the music holds the community together. The reason is simple: there isn’t

anything else here.... Life in Detroit is profoundly anti-intellectual. Our institutions are industrial and businesslike, not cultural or

intellectual.”

Robert Duncan in Creem (1970)

vrijdag 2 september 11

“The history of Detroit...is also a history of humiliations; it is a history of humiliation. What I mean by this is summed up in

the famous dictum attributed to Henry Ford: ‘history is bunk’. Fordism was all about that: the creation of a material

plentitude so vast that people would quit worrying about the past, and history would cease to matter. Detroit’s humiliation

of history seemed an exhilarating idea, so long as the good times lasted, but when they ran out, it left both the city and

the people in it painfully undefended and up for grabs.”

Jerry Herron, Detroit Wayne University (1993)

vrijdag 2 september 11

‘tales from the dowside’ (2007), Patrick Bisschops

vrijdag 2 september 11

in Detroit people had rock, in Oostelijke Mijnstreek they had nothing

vrijdag 2 september 11

no past, no future, no rock and roll

vrijdag 2 september 11

‘Hello Josephine’, The Scorpions (1964)

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Salvatore Adamo (Schlager, the European soul music)

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(real) rock came with the AFCENT

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and AWACS

vrijdag 2 september 11

• thousands of Canadians and Americans brought their pop culture to the region

• like big cars, weird bikes and ghettoblasters

• radio: CFNB (and BFBS)

• music, albums, tapes, disco and hip hop

• and....

AFCENT and pop culture

vrijdag 2 september 11

“I was born in the Willemstraat. As a seventeen year old I saw someone smoke heroine in disco Shangri-La. I didn’t want it but it was easy to get. It was introduced by the American soldiers. Thirty years ago Heerlen was, in a way, metropolitain. More than Utrecht, where I moved to study.”

writer Hans Dupont in newspaper Limburgs Dagblad

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Luxor, Hoensbroek (1979)

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Sheltur, Brunssum

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Femina, Heerlen

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Peppermill, Heerlen

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important places, but...

vrijdag 2 september 11

• fragile music scenes

• mostly music consumption, not making

• proud of bringing bands to the region, not of the own music scene

• too small for national impact

lack of healthy music culture

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1990s, 2000s: after pop culture

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• pop culture becomes mainstream, but in Oostelijke Mijnstreek it goes underground

• there is no pop culture, only music

1990s

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Heerlen, the Dutch Seattle

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hardcore: Born From Pain

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hip hop: Het Verzet (True Villan)

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dubstep/drum’n’bass: Raadsel

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• ‘proud’ of ‘their’ roots and past

• poorly educated

• loud, raw, energetic, ‘old school’

• lack of connection with mainstream culture

• in a way resisting the alternative mainstream

the have a lot in common...

vrijdag 2 september 11

‘tales from the dowside’ (2007), Patrick Bisschops

vrijdag 2 september 11

what vibrant alternative pop culture needs...

vrijdag 2 september 11

• visibility

• unity

• (some) intellect

• institutions

• a future

a lot...

vrijdag 2 september 11

example?

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Incubate festival, Tilburg

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so?

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• mainstream and underground

• high and low

• left and right

we have to connect

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• explore the past

• to be able to (re)write the future

• thus to become proud of the pop culture we have

and...

vrijdag 2 september 11

exploring the past?

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vrijdag 2 september 11

thanks for your attention

vrijdag 2 september 11