The 25th anniversary of the techno party Awakenings couldn’t be celebrated more enthusiastically. After two years of silence and corona sadness, the most venerable techno event in the Netherlands organized an ultimate anniversary edition: for the first time on the expansive festival site at Beekse Bergen in Hilvarenbeek. And for the first time, three full days and nights, including camping area for over-tired dance-goers. And that is special, for a festival that focuses on a subgenre of dance.
Techno formed the basis of dance and club culture. From the eighties, a strict electronic beat traveled the world from the American music city of Detroit. Pioneers such as Juan Atkins and Derrick May were inspired by Kraftwerk’s European synthesizer music and the imagination of science fiction, and drew tight and mechanical rhythms from their drum computers, on which you could move very well.
In Europe, and certainly also in the Netherlands, the art form developed into a versatile musical subculture, ranging from minimal dub techno to razor-sharp acid and high-quality art and listening music. The Awakenings parties, which were organized by founder Rocco Veenboer from 1997, grew into a rock-solid dance brand with a steady and loyal following and an annual summer festival.
The 2022 edition once again emphasized the diversity of techno, around eleven different dance floors, and in a total of more than two hundred DJ sets and live shows. Old heroes like Robert Hood and Jeff Mills swapped turns with up-and-coming talents like Icelandic Bjarki, Spanish Indira Paganotto and new Dutch techno giant Reinier Zonneveld. In the end they let more than 100 thousand visitors dance and forget the suffering of the past years.
