Welcome then Rave Reparations, a self-described “social experiment”, demonstrating the power of small-scale reparations.
White musical acts have adopted black sounds forever: from the Rolling Stones adopting the sounds of blues and jazz music to Australian rapper Iggy Azalea facing criticism for adopting a “blaccent”. Of course, the gentrification of these genres and spaces fits into the larger relationship straight, white culture holds with the work of marginalized communities. Elsewhere, black media theorist DeForrest Brown Jr launched apparel adorned with the call-to-action, Make Techno Black Again last year. Last year, the documentary Black to Techno examined the birth of techno in inner-city Detroit and how white DJs from Canada and Europe whitewashed the genre. “It’s so weak how people would rather blame those who are excluded than actually interrogate how it’s fucked to have a techno festival of over 100 acts with only 5-10 black acts,” she tweeted. Photograph: Steve Black/Rex Featuresįrankie Decaiza Hutchinson, co-founder of Discwoman, a New York-based collective and DJ booking agency focusing on DJs of marginalized backgrounds, criticized the lack of diversity at Dekmantel and Awakenings last year, two major rave festivals held in the Netherlands.
