Recommendations of the Editorial team
You need strength in the legs, endurance and, above all, curiosity and intellectual admission ability. 450 bands and artists who appear in clubs, churches, buses and other unorthodox venues – most of them newcomers – are also a challenge in the 20th year of the Reeperbahn Festival.
The music buoyancy in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg likes to be called “discoverer festival” because you actually feel as if you are looking for rare orchids in a jungle of possibilities in long nights. The day again, the day was more about business, a panel of the state of affairs chased the next.
“From globalization to isolation” examined the effects of American cultural struggle on the European music market. A cooperation with RE: Publica gave visitors events such as “Deepfakes: Who controls our digital body”. A lot of self-expression: from the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg, to the showcases of the individual countries, sometimes in the package on the XXL stage on Spielbudenplatz, sometimes spread over the 70 different venues.
As expected, Iceland Edgy
Iceland presented its artists: As expected, Edgy. The songwriter Jófrídur Ákadóttir, which is called the simplicity for the sake of JFDR, sang her halbel electronic troll lifting songs in the “resonance room”, deep inside the green field street bunker. Usually the ensemble rehearses here, an orchestra for contemporary classical music. No venue of the festival offered a better sound! Folk and the reflection on musical and cultural roots was one of the more dominant topics at this year’s festival. At the Austrian folk music pop Anna Bucheggeror if the Hamburg hip-hop producer Farhot Mix Afghan chants with the jazz syncopes of his exceptional drummer Silvan Strauss. The wonderful Yasmine Hamdan Combined melancholic memories of their old homeland in Lebanon with animated fresh club beats.
56% Flinta*artist: inside
Of course there were also “surprise appearances” well -known names. Nina Chuba presented her new album with a lot of fireworks and exuberant hops on the free accessible XXL stage. Power club Completely completed 15 mini appearances in a few hours. And in the 25 club tried Gene Gallagher – the son of Liam – with his band Villanelle to climb onto the broad shoulders of the Oasis family. Will be, you want to call him, but then had more fun with the highly talented Viennese woman Sofie Royer in the crazy.
In general: So many women have not yet been experienced on the Reeperbahn Festival enthusiastic about the keychange: the quota of this year’s line-up was 44 percent male and and 56% Flinta*artists: inside. The Anchor Award also went to a woman. The jury, to which Laurie Anderson, Suzie Quatro and Max Giesinger belonged, decided this time for the dreamy, jazz -infected songs of the New Yorker Mei Semones. Not a bad choice! The one awarded by the association of independent music entrepreneurs in Germany, or VUT for short, won this time Vandalisbine (Best Newcomer), Masha Qrella (best act), Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst (for “The Call” as the best experiment), Ebow For “FC Chaya” (best album) and Grand Hotel van Cleef As the best label.
The Belgian band concert personally Omar Dahl The most enthusiastic. Alone how they stood on the stage: a North African-looking saxophonist on the left, on the right a highly concentrated violinist and in the middle two playful guitarists, with a soft spot for surf music and slope for posing. Together with the oriental beats from the hard disk, huge sound paintings were created for dancing, which opened the sky over the desert very far. It is moments that pull each again into the bustle and crowds of the Reeperbahn Festival.