Raving Society

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The Raving Society (also German: raving company) was in the mid-1990s, the vision of a model of society that the values of the techno culture projected coverage on everyday and public life. The Raving Society was proclaimed by Jürgen Laarmann , the publisher and editor-in-chief of Frontpage magazine , and the DJ and producer WestBam , who appeared together in the RTL television magazine Explosiv as the mouthpiece of the techno movement before the term was spread . In a 2013 interview, Westbam described the Ravende Society as the forerunner of the fun society .

meaning

The term originated in 1994, while techno was gaining popularity as a new youth culture and there was a sense of euphoria and optimism within the scene . It was currently considered the answer to questions about the goals and content of the techno movement. In-scene media endeavored to define the social and political significance of the movement and to recognize it in everyday life. Due to the exponential increase in the number of visitors to the Love Parade , the utopia of techno culture solidified as a global, leading social culture , based on the characteristics of joy, tolerance and charity ascribed to the techno scene, as well as the individual pursuit of happiness and pleasure. WestBam commented:

“For us, the Raving Society is a world of its own with its own rules and structures, the hottest form of democracy. For us it is a higher community with a higher reality, with its own language and its own holidays "

The Mayday and the Love Parade were declared as the official raver holidays. The Ravende Society demanded "fun immediately and without detour". The aim and ideal was a “society with lots of happy people who are satisfied with their identity and function, have enough fun, good mood, sex, sound judgment, high self-confidence, etc.”.

Similar approaches existed before under the term “Rave Nation”. The Raving Society was particularly promoted through projects in which WestBam and Jürgen Laarmann were themselves involved, such as the Frontpage or Mayday , which were organized for the events on 25. – 26. November 1994 The Raving Society carried the motto. For a short time, a commercial for WestBams album Bam Bam Bam was broadcast, in which the "Ravende Society" was announced.

The term was also interpreted as the social network of various actors from the fields of music production and distribution, events, fashion, journalism, art and graphic design, who concentrated both their private and professional lives on techno culture and thus formed a kind of parallel society.

Later the term was only occasionally used by outsiders as a synonym for the techno scene.

criticism

Within the scene, the idea of ​​the Raving Society was controversial, largely adapted from the mainstream and criticized by the underground .

The term “Raving Society” was criticized for not being based on the ideals of techno culture, but merely as a strategic market tool to promote projects such as Mayday, Frontpage or the Low Spirit music label , on which several People around WestBam and Jürgen Laarman were directly or indirectly involved. The DJ and producer Richie Hawtin criticized the term in an interview as a “promo gag” (“The people who talk about it would like to have a raving society so that the next Maydays are also sold out […] I have the feeling that you just try to give people a further incentive so that they keep going to the parties. According to the motto: Look, if you go there, you belong to something very special. ")

In addition, the term was criticized for having contributed significantly to the commercialization of the scene.

Another point of criticism was the fundamental political concept, which the bourgeois society criticized as restrictive was only abstractly questioned, but neither specifically formulated nor addressed directly, but instead took up market strategies that opposed the underground and idealism and merely worked through cooperation with industrial groups led to a consolidation of the existing social conditions. The way to a social revolution in the sense of the techno movement should be realized without political content, only with the further increase in ravers.

As a reaction to the values ​​of the Raving Society, criticized as being consumer-oriented and standardized, the Berlin Club Bunker organized a series of parties in 1994 with the name Payday and the motto The Raving Variety , with a focus on musical diversity and personal individuality.

The Austrian hardcore techno duo Ilsa Gold also distanced themselves from the term and declined further appearances at the Mayday events after it was announced.

Even Jürgen Laarmann admitted the criticism of the term as a “propaganda catchphrase” in Groove magazine at the end of the 1990s . ("As such, 'Raving Society' did its job, filled a Mayday, sold Low Spirit a few records and caused a lot of fuss.")

In 2018, DJ Tanith commented in an interview with Tagesspiegel that the idea of ​​a raving society would “dilute” the subculture and said: “I have always thought the idea of ​​letting a whole society rave was pretty stupid. A subculture should remain a subculture, otherwise you will lose what it is all about. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview with Hajo Schumacher and Westbam , Deutsche Welle, 2013
  2. ↑ The attempt to define the term “techno” . In: taz , November 25, 1994
  3. ↑ Kito Nedo: The Ravende Society - What is political about techno? ( Memento from February 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) In: Philipp Anz, Patrick Waldner: Techno . Zurich 1995, quoted from: fluter, issue 14: Superstar Subkultur, February 2003. Retrieved on May 9, 2019.
  4. ↑ Human Concentration Center ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. mp3.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mp3.de
  5. ↑ Interview with Richie Hawtin ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / home.pages.at
  6. ↑ Commerce and Underground ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. szene-extra.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.szene-extra.de
  7. ↑ The endless rhythm - the techno culture sterneck.net
  8. ↑ eve-rave.net Flyer No. 1 , Berlin 1994, p. 5 and p. 27
  9. ↑ mego.at ( Memento of the original from November 5, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mego.at
  10. ↑ Andreas Hartmann: 30 years of techno: “We wanted it to be crazy” . In: Der Tagesspiegel Online . September 12, 2018, ISSN  1865-2263 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed September 12, 2018]).