ABSTRACT
Berlin is celebrated worldwide as being a true multicultural metropolis and music plays a central role in this claim. Go to any one of Berlin’s notorious nightclubs and you will hear techno, house and electronic dance music blasting out to hoards of enthusiastic partygoers from all over the world. Electronic dance music (EDM) scholarship often looks to Berlin for examples of how EDM − as both a genre of music as well as a ‘movement’ − has developed, with the fall of the Berlin Wall often being cited as a deeply influential historical moment in this. Within the literature it is often proclaimed that Berlin’s EDM nightclubs offer safe spaces for people of ‘diverse’ backgrounds who are welcome to attend and treated equally once inside. It is as though these nightclubs have managed to temporarily suspend social hierarchies and unite all people under one roof. In this chapter, this diversity discourse is deconstructed using an intersectional lens and situated within a wider political context, with a specific focus on perceptions of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. The operating logic of this discourse is critically examined.
