Diploma
Reeperbahn Festival leaves difficult times behind
Surprise: The Japanese Ichiko Aoba won the Reeperbahn Festival’s Anchor Award for talented newcomers in Hamburg. photo
© Markus Scholz/dpa
Hamburg’s vibrant club scene is known far beyond Germany. This is also due to the Reeperbahn Festival, which attracts hundreds of bands to the neighborhood once a year. This year, quiet sounds triumph in the end.
475 concerts, around 400 acts, around 49,000 guests and at the end an unusual Anchor Award winner: the Hamburg ReeperbahnThe festival has once again lived up to its reputation as an important meeting place for the international music scene. On the final evening of the four-day concert series and industry meeting, the Japanese Ichiko Aoba received the Anchor Award for talented newcomers – to the surprise of experts.
The 33-year-old took the audience to a timeless Japan with her art, jury president Tony Visconti explained the choice on Saturday. “Their music comforted us, calmed us and brought us to tears.”
Ichiko Aoba prevails against international competition
In addition to the award, Ichiko Aoba received tour equipment worth 20,000 euros. With her minimalist performance and her spherical, mystical singing and guitar playing, the Japanese singer prevailed against international competition from Sweden, Germany, Great Britain and the USA.
In addition to Ichiko Aoba, Berq, Daisy the Great, Hannes, Paris Paloma and Waterbaby were nominated. The acts are “an inspiration for your own music,” said US singer Banks, who sat on the jury together with producer legend Tony Visconti, singer Katie Melua and US songwriter Tayla Parx.
Festival boss Alexander Schulz had set himself the goal of getting as close as possible to the pre-Corona record year of 2019. Because of the experiences of the past few years with the corona pandemic, exploding energy prices and event costs as well as an enormous lack of young talent, the scene is still struggling.
Schulz was certainly optimistic after the 18th edition of his festival. “International talents, specialist audiences and companies are back. Together with the industry, we have been able to set topics that will make music more sustainable,” he told the German Press Agency. The festival underlined its position “as the most important European marketplace for music, linking the next generation of talent to the industry”.
Fewer visitors than in the record year 2019
In the end, he and his team counted 49,000 visitors – and as expected, around ten percent less than in the record year 2019, when around 54,000 guests flocked to the neighborhood.
The Reeperbahn Festival has been taking place since 2006. This year it once again offered a colorful program of pop, rock, indie, folk and electronic music with concerts, art and literature demonstrations and specialist conferences.
For the first time this year, there was an additional offer on Friday and Saturday during the day of the digital conference Republica, which has been held in Berlin every year since 2007. “Who would have thought that we could put on such a show with such a wonderful reception in the slipstream of the Millerntor,” said Republica managing director Andreas Gebhard.
Already in the first few hours, memories of the first conference in Berlin in 2007 arose, where they thought: “We should do that again.” And the Republica makers want to do that in 2024 – then at the 19th Reeperbahn Festival from September 18th to 21st.