| After its successful premiere in 2002, this summer popdeurope will again demonstrate the diversity of popular music cultures: club culture and dancehall, hip-hop, R&B and soul ? all these styles have long since become the lingua franca of pop music, and ? refined by local slang terms ? are becoming the new sounds of the cities. In the relaxed atmosphere of the Tiergarten park, near the Chancellor's Office, Schloss Bellevue and the Brandenburg Gate, popdeurope's Friday and Saturday concerts will present live acts on the open-air stage followed by DJs and sound systems as part of the club programme. During the week guests from around the world will work with Berlin's young people in a Summer Music Camp, introducing them to other cultures through the medium of pop music in an entertaining way. In the video lounge musical documentation will provide further information on central topics.
2003: Globalizer in Metropolistan
The metropolises of Europe are breathing to a new beat. Cities like London, Brussels, Marseilles, Athens, Lisbon, Barcelona, Genoa and Istanbul are the birthplaces and stomping grounds of a new form of pop culture, whose sound is rooted in the heart of globalisation and reaches out to the world ? even the world beyond mainstream media channels. Hip-hop, dancehall, reggae, R?n?B, break beats, 2step ? in the past few years all these styles have developed into pop languages spoken all over the world. They represent a potent and accessible means of identification and orientation in a complex media world. In the mainstream music industry globalisation promotes worldwide commercial "exploitation" of role models such as Robbie Williams and Britney Spears. But there is a counter-development to this trend, which is not least evident in Europe's metropolises. The children of immigrants and artists who have made their home in Europe but learned their musical skills in their countries of origin, growing up among many traditions, use globally understood pop languages in a different way. Indian kids in London base their bhangra pop music on classical Indian music but also help themselves to current British dancehall sounds. The Algerian youth of Toulouse sings French workers' songs with an Arab accent and fuse them with hip-hop. In Turkey young musicians find astonishing parallels between House and techno, and the spiritual music to which the dervishes have been dancing for centuries. In Brussels some of the latest interpretations of Maghrebi and Central African music are being generated by integrating texts in the languages of these regions into a soul or dancehall context. Although the musical styles which these fusions engender may be very different, the common features of the methodology are quite obvious: the global languages of sound are being used to transport local identities, slang and styles. The uniting elements of a beat or rhyme can arouse interest in the unknown aspects of a migrant culture. popdeurope has taken this development as the starting point for its own "migrating sounds in and out of europe".
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