wild greens
Well-known member
That "Damas" one sounds like a terrible booking
Positive discrimination/affirmative action etc in music
- Thread starter IdleRich
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- this is dumb
IdleRich
IdleRich
I think a bit of both in that they tokenistically added someone (and it wasn't the right person), but yeah they did it incompetently so that while the damage of adding the wrong person was done, they failed to capitalize on any potential gains.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I don't think anyone can argue with that. More diverse line-ups that are good and which are popular and which bring the punters.
I'm sure we'd all agree that there is no reason why men should be better DJs than women. If the same number of women started dj-ing as men and got the opportunities to play in clubs and so on then we'd expect that the best djs (whatever that means) would be roughly an equal mix of men and women, and someone picking a line-up for event would be looking at a list of men and women and would likely end up picking a mixture of men and women.
Why do you think that is?
IdleRich
IdleRich
Not totally sure which bit you're talking about here, I'm guessing the Lena Willikens thing. What it was, is we had arranged with Lena to come play in Lisbon. The line-up was her, Liza and this girl Ana Pacheco from Porto. So we had that line-up ready to go and we wanted a suitable venue to do it. There was one we considered and we were talking with them but when they discovered Lena was straight they were less keen.
So it wasn't a gay night as such, it was just a night that we were offering to various venues. But what is strange is that the person who changed their mind on realising she was straight was himself straight. And in fact I've since realised that this person - and his wife - quite consistently reject and in fact criticise people for being straight.
So it's the total opposite of booking people who are your own sexuality.
Maybe you were talking about something else though and I've misunderstood, in which case, er, sorry.
To the broader point, another factor is you're more likely to get funding if you can demonstrate you're hitting certain targets. I've mentioned before my mate's complained about having to really lean on his sexuality and make it part of his pitch when trying to get his films made as he just wouldn't get a look in otherwise.
wild greens
Well-known member
There's no hard and fast answer but i think overly masculine clubnights are quite boring really and the more women you have in a club the better the atmosphere. From a London/Essex standpoint the only mostly male line-ups with longevity is the Supa D world and they play loads of big vocals and have a good balance of feminine pressure.
Sorry i did miss that they were straight but if you're booking a gay night as a promoter then maybe you need gay DJs? These two do sound quite annoying though
you're speaking like it's 2009. Which checks out cos that music has undergone micro evolutions since 2009, just like mainstream house/techno. Which is no bad thing. The stability and the stasis of house is its strength. But what about those who want something different? Do we really have to settle for night slugs deconstructed trance and gabber? You're looking at this from too much of a nuum perspective but that world doesn't exist in the same way.
As for this thread it's the dumbest whitest shit I've read in some time, what does it matter if the line ups are diverse and the crowds aren't?
You lot should be bringing turbo nuttercore 14789230+u423897 bpm sludge acid to the asians, something I am doing but you lot are not.
As for barty I didn't say a word. The RA blokes saw that he couldn't keep his (public facing, if you will) cock in his trousers. Look we all know they have a racial fetish, but the RA weirdos are middle class enough to bully ppl with it.
This is make believe. If anything the opposite has happened after covid. Line ups have gotten more diverse but crowds are whiter than they ever have been.
Why didn't you tell the promoter to shut his trap and not assume peoples sexuality? That is such a huge thing in these communities, just because xyz is in a het relationship doesn't make them straight etc etc. You could have gotten him cancelled but you were too @Corpsey - conflict averse!
Very Erik Ten packet fags this. Guess the 7-0 still hurts.
every cloud has a silver lining. Imagine mount Kimbey James Blake Tommie Lee Sparta or Skillabeng?
No, joy orbison drill was not a good look. Count your blessings.
also one of the new staff at RA is one of those South Asians who grew up in the UAE, basically the most upper class from our asian diasporas. It's fucking fantastic, I can't wait for Bashar Al-Assad to get into business techno. maybe even there will be a version for taliban militants to listen to whilst doing bureaucratic work. Did Hermes Conrad convert to Islam?
I mean chicago/detroit house, black form, 99% white in London. Broken beats, multicultural, today 85% white crowd. Jungle, again multicultural 95% white crowd. Garage, mostly a white crowd. Ditto UK funky.
The only clubs where you really see diversity is in main stream hip hop/rnb/bashement clubs playing the hits which close at 2 AM. Let's be real here. Even grime is basically a scene populated by your jonathan-mellevilles nowadays.
These are just facts. This is a way bigger problem than line ups.
There's an issue with some proponents of the nuum where they become music journalist consumers of delicatessan. Even barty had this problem, in that he abandoned drill as soon as he couldn't put any libidinal investment into it. It's actually a non-poptimist, poptimist approach. Music should be hard work, one should stick to their guns.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I dunno if I'm not saying this clearly - it was not a gay night. Not in any sense. It was not anti-gay at all, but sexuality was not involved or mentioned at all in any way...
So, once again, we were not booking a gay night. In any sense. It's not a straight night either, it was just a night for anyone who wanted to come.
In short we were just booking a night. We had three DJs, Lena who is - by my standards anyhow - a big name and two other women. There are only a few venues in Lisbon that were the right size so we spoke to all of them. One person who we spoke to at one venue suddenly became less keen when they realised that Lena was not gay even though a) it was not a gay night b) it was not at a gay club and c) the person who got less keen was not gay. To me that is a very strange attitude.
What I'm saying is it was not a gay night, there was no specifically gay element to it. Noone who was playing or booking it or promoting it or who was involved in it was gay. Unless maybe Ana is gay, I've no idea to be honest, I've never asked her. But one of the non-gay people booking the non-gay night suddenly looked down on one of the non-gay people because they were not gay.
What I have a problem with is a straight, cis, white, married person criticising someone for being straight.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I am quite conflict averse... but the reason I didn't speak up on this occasion was cos I wasn't involved. Liza was dealing with it, not me.
ok fair enough, still had to fit the Erik Ten Packet Fags punchline in there.
A lot of stuff seems to revolve around this sort of dynamic. There's often a sense of things like Hollywood films about slavery amounting to products to make people feel they're doing something noble consuming it.
IdleRich
IdleRich
One thing in Lisbon is that a lot of the people who work in clubs are gay. Basically everyone we know from DJ-ing at Le Baron or Damas or anywhere is gay. I'm not sure why that is. One person put a review on Yelp of the staff at Damas, they described them as "So young, so beautiful, so mindless" which made me laugh a lot.
Then again in Dusseldorf, particularly Salon Des Amateurs, almost all the bar staff are Georgian, I really don't know how or why that happened but it's a definite thing.
Then again in Dusseldorf, particularly Salon Des Amateurs, almost all the bar staff are Georgian, I really don't know how or why that happened but it's a definite thing.
It's hard to talk about this sort of thing without capitulating to liberal inanity, but generally I think the extroverted middle class whites in England and USA are ashamed of the way they carry themselves in public life. Their relationship to geek or nerd culture really reflects that. And as far as clubbing is concerned, its never been as much middle to upper class. Probably more than the pre-acid house era even. Inclusivity has generated its own exclusions.