Overview of the development of pop culture in Parkstad, Limburg in The Netherlands from 50s to now, without the video's.

1. KR!MPLEZING
van femina tot en unitas sheltur:
popular music in parkstad
theo ploeg
01092011
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2. five years ago there was no cultural spring
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3. ‘tales from the dowside’ (2007), Patrick Bisschops
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4. back in 2007...
• highest youth unemployment in The
Netherlands
• no sense of purpose or place
• third generation stil yerns for the past
• or moves elsewhere to study or work
• pop culture isn’t visible (underground)
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5. where did that come from?
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6. 1960s
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7. the mining industry
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8. the church
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9. marching bands
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10. Holland
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11. Detroit, 1960-70s
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12. MC5: white technology meets black masculinity
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13. “Rock and roll, the music holds the community
together. The reason is simple: there isn’t
anything else here.... Life in Detroit is
profoundly anti-intellectual. Our institutions
are industrial and businesslike, not cultural or
intellectual.”
Robert Duncan in Creem (1970)
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14. “The history of Detroit...is also a history of humiliations; it is a
history of humiliation. What I mean by this is summed up in
the famous dictum attributed to Henry Ford: ‘history is bunk’.
Fordism was all about that: the creation of a material
plentitude so vast that people would quit worrying about the
past, and history would cease to matter. Detroit’s humiliation
of history seemed an exhilarating idea, so long as the good
times lasted, but when they ran out, it left both the city and
the people in it painfully undefended and up for grabs.”
Jerry Herron, Detroit Wayne University (1993)
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15. ‘tales from the dowside’ (2007), Patrick Bisschops
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16. in Detroit people had rock, in Oostelijke
Mijnstreek they had nothing
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17. no past, no future, no rock and roll
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18. ‘Hello Josephine’, The Scorpions (1964)
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19. Salvatore Adamo (Schlager, the European soul music)
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20. (real) rock came with the AFCENT
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21. and AWACS
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22. AFCENT and pop culture
• thousands of Canadians and Americans
brought their pop culture to the region
• like big cars, weird bikes and ghettoblasters
• radio: CFNB (and BFBS)
• music, albums, tapes, disco and hip hop
• and....
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23. “I was born in the Willemstraat. As a
seventeen year old I saw someone smoke
heroine in disco Shangri-La. I didn’t want it
but it was easy to get. It was introduced by
the American soldiers. Thirty years ago
Heerlen was, in a way, metropolitain. More
than Utrecht, where I moved to study.”
writer Hans Dupont in newspaper Limburgs Dagblad
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24. Luxor, Hoensbroek (1979)
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25. Sheltur, Brunssum
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26. Femina, Heerlen
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27. Peppermill, Heerlen
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28. important places, but...
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29. lack of healthy music culture
• fragile music scenes
• mostly music consumption, not making
• proud of bringing bands to the region, not of
the own music scene
• too small for national impact
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30. 1990s, 2000s: after pop culture
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31. 1990s
• pop culture becomes mainstream, but in
Oostelijke Mijnstreek it goes underground
• there is no pop culture, only music
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32. Heerlen, the Dutch Seattle
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33. hardcore: Born From Pain
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34. hip hop: Het Verzet (True Villan)
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35. dubstep/drum’n’bass: Raadsel
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36. the have a lot in common...
• ‘proud’ of ‘their’ roots and past
• poorly educated
• loud, raw, energetic, ‘old school’
• lack of connection with mainstream culture
• ina way resisting the alternative
mainstream
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37. ‘tales from the dowside’ (2007), Patrick Bisschops
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38. what vibrant alternative pop culture needs...
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39. a lot...
• visibility
• unity
• (some) intellect
• institutions
•a future
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40. example?
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41. Incubate festival, Tilburg
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42. so?
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43. we have to connect
• mainstream and underground
• high and low
• left and right
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44. and...
• explore the past
• to be able to (re)write the future
• thus to become proud of the pop culture we
have
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45. exploring the past?
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46. vrijdag 2 september 11

47. thanks for your attention
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