Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Festival will take place this month for the 19th time, from September 18-21. It has grown immensely in the past decade, this is in terms of size as well as international reach. What started as a club festival at the end of summer has developed into one of the most important music industry conferences in the Northern hemisphere. This happened partly by its own success, and partly by large amounts of city money being invested. So much so, that even the Mayor himself shows up for its grand opening, celebrating this year’s motto Let the Music Grow.
But while the festival became a nice little badge of cultural and economic success for the city, the name-giving Reeperbahn street and its many small clubs and music venues experienced much less city-supported growth in the past decade. If you walk down Reeperbahn and its side streets, you will see many empty store fronts and unoccupied buildings as well as vacant construction sights. Many of the music venues that made the neighborhood in the 80s and 90s and gave rise to Reeperbahn Festival in the early 2000s have since been forced to move or to close, crumbling the microcosm they had created.
Now, change is always welcome of course, and neighborhoods experience all sorts of gentrification, but while the city happily spends millions elsewhere, the smaller players of the scene need to fight hard to “justify” a few thousand euros that would make a real social impact that is so sought after. For the average music head then, Reeperbahn Festival is the only time of the year, when music and culture are returning to Reeperbahn.
Frustrating as this may be, Reeperbahn Festival is once again a big stage and a great opportunity for a lot of rising musicians and market participants: 400+ concerts in more than 80 venues. It creates a wonderful atmosphere around this failing street and its large audience from across the globe give Hamburg what it so often lacks: international appeal.
It would be great to see the same enthusiasm that the city authorities have shown for this festival for almost two decades bear fruit for the neighbourhood in which it is located and whose name and cultural brand it happily carries.
Team Poule will present our favorites from the line-up right here, in the next few days.
