During ADE, the nightclub is sometimes literally a church – with somewhat poor acoustics for a dance party

We walk from the metro station through storm Benjamin through a bleak Amsterdam North. This goes against the KNMI’s stay-at-home advice, but our Amsterdam Dance Event planning is ambitious. Oh well, we were already soaking wet at a packed Bar Théo on the Rozengracht, where the Rotterdam label Clone celebrated its annual ADE pop-up. This was expanded with a party at club RAUM, in Noord. Serge Verschuur performed as if he is not a day older than when he founded Clone in 1992. The Benjamin Button effect of ADE: it makes you younger and younger.

His set, back-to-back with the German Mell G, is punchy, bouncy, tight. No-nonsense techno without edits, with songs like ‘Antifascist State’ by CEM3340. In the room above is PLO Man, the Canadian enigma who starts his vinyl set with a soundscape-like harmony. The audience stands around him, bathed in smoke and flickering white light, like ghosts being called to order around a pulpit. That order is rave.

At club RAUM there is none of the big commercialism that also comes with ADE. With more than three thousand parties and more than half a million visitors, the festival is still expanding. There is a conference side, and there are major Arena shows such as the Amsterdam Music Festival in the Johan Cruyff ArenA (including Ki/Ki and Armin van Buuren) or the Awakenings festival at a new location in Halfweg. But there is also the counterculture: in RAUM the phone cameras are covered up, there is no merch for sale, there is no yellow light box logo. At the door you are asked to leave the expensive Pro Pass in your pocket. RAUM is by and for the underground, the queer scene.

The same resistance energy was previously there in the Benelux Bar, also in Amsterdam North. Storm Benjamin roared over the roof in the old harbor shed, while producer Cheb Runner moves around his modular synth as if in a trance. He turns knobs, pulls out wires and plugs in new ones. The system produces more breath than beat, as poet Khadija El Kharraz Alami recites the names of murdered Palestinian journalists and recites the poem ‘If I Must Die’ by the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer. The sounds grow more and more intense, anger is reflected in broken beats, Moroccan percussion and outright hardcore, in solidarity.

‘Refugees Welcome’

A day earlier, the underground scene had gathered in the SkateCafé for a fundraiser Refugees Welcome. Panel discussions during the day, big DJs in the evening who come to play without a fee. On the wall posters with ‘Your actions matter‘. Moody Mehran plays back-to-back with Westfa, excited house by Kerri Chandler. Unfortunately the room is still half full, but the atmosphere is safe and caring.

That was different at the beginning of this opening evening. South African DJ DBN Gogo created a canonical moment with the Metropole Orchestra in the Melkweg. In a red gala dress and blonde wig, DBN Gogo described it as “recognizing African electronic music.” The tension of the South African genre of amapiano is not in the drop or the build-up, but in a kind of menacing dreaminess. As if the cloud we are floating on could break at any moment. It is special how the Metropole notices every crack, glues it, closes it and adds volume, air, wind instruments. A saxophone solo elicits shouts of surprise from the audience, every hit is sung along, every drum is copied with their hands in the air. Pride reverberates through the room, joy radiates from the room. „DJ, we wanna party!”

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From that energy we move on to Parallel, where the duo Chamos plays. They asked the audience via Instagram to bring Kurdish flags, and as soon as an edit of ‘Explosion’ by Kalwi & Remi is played, those flags shoot into the air en masse. Two fingers up, laugh, shout. The DJs are surrounded by a frenzied audience as if in a boxing ring. Spontaneous Kurdish line dances arise: forward, back, leg up, leg to the left, shoulder to shoulders. Here too, the telephones were taped up, but pride trumps discipline. Everyone wants to capture this.

Cancellations

That recording of a party had also happened a few months earlier. In The Loft, high in the A’DAM Tower around the corner from Parallel, during the Jewish dance party We will dance again. Videos of that celebration, which featured waving Israeli flags, went viral. Three artists subsequently canceled their ADE performances in The Loft, after which the venue decided We will dance again is no longer welcome there. That too is ADE, and rave in general: clashes, tensions, politics.

It clashed in a completely different way on Friday in the Nieuwe Kerk on Dam Square. Under the breathtakingly high ceilings, the audience was breathing down each other’s necks, it was so packed. Organizer Audio Obscura always manages to arrange bizarre locations for their shows (such as in the bicycle tunnel of the Rijksmuseum, or on the highway during the Festival on the Ring).

Honey Dijon and the SO! Gospel Choir in the most famous church in the Netherlands, that promises something. When the first sounds come from the organ, Dijon shouts: “We are taking your asses to Church. Black queer church. This church is about joy, celebration, community and love.” Unfortunately, the acoustics are poor, the amplified voices of the choir sound shrill and the light of God bursts into hundreds of flashing phone cameras. But the idea is clear: necessary recognition for the intimate interrelationship of black organ music and gospel with house.

Although this show feels a bit like a ‘gimmick’, the nightclub as a church of love and community runs (sometimes as reality, sometimes as desire) as a common thread through this ADE – which is far from over: on Saturday Dekmantel will throw a party in the Klaproos with a still secret line-up, on Sunday the Ugandan label Nyege Nyege will celebrate its tenth anniversary in the Melkweg, and on Monday morning the Utrecht SlapFunk will close. ADE traditionally ends with a 24-hour rave in the Bret. Storm Benjamin has now subsided, ADE continues to rage.

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