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Multiculti festivals
Large festivals such as Dunya in Rotterdam, Roots in Amsterdam and Mundial in Tilburg can be considered part of a relatively new and growing category in the European festival landscape: the multiculti festivals. Each of the three has its own character, but there are significant similarities. They offer a varied spectrum of activities, but the emphasis is on music groups from all over the world performing on several podiums.[3] Sometimes these venues are continental, i.e. one per continent, so that the spectator can visit all continents in one day as it were.
But certainly nowadays there often are other arrangements. In addition to the official programme, multiculti festivals offer markets selling jewellery and trinkets, clothing and accessories. The food smells are also similar, and enhance the visitor’s physical experience.
The Dunya festival has three main podiums: African, Latin-American and European / Asian. In addition to these ‘continental’ podiums there is a ‘Young and Urban’ podium, a ‘Poetry Park’ and a children’s playground. Strikingly, many groups performing on the continental podiums consisted of members with a Dutch background as well as members from other cultural backgrounds. Thus, while offering music from all over the world, this also confirmed Dutch society’s multicultural character.
In addition to the performances the Dunya festival also features a market, with so many products that it defies description in full. I selected one stall to focus on, not because it was so special but precisely because the array of products it offers is so similar to the collections found in many other stalls. In the stall I chose there were African masks, but also wooden drums with a top of stretched skin pulled taut with a rope. Some drums were decorated, for instance in red, yellow and green, the colours of the Ethiopian flag also used by Rastafarians.
From the stall’s tarpaulin roof hung a Chinese lantern. With tiny mirrors attached to its green and yellow fabric, a feature that was also found on an oblong cloth decorated with black and red fabrics, and hanging at the front of the stall. The tiny mirrors as well as the miniature golden yellow elephants embroidered on the cloth reminded one of India or its neighbouring countries. Flat little rectangular textile bags in brilliant colours also hung there. Equally bright were the colours of the roughly woven textiles used for the rucksacks on the floor. At the back there were batik print T-shirts, and in front of the stall stood a rack of coats at 25 euros each, 45 for two.
Other stalls offered different collections but nevertheless they breathed the same exotic ‘far-off countries’ feeling, for instance a Latin-American stall where under its top Canadian dream catchers whirled about , and thick woolen jumpers with loud prints were on display as well as leather and textile wrist straps. Though varied, to the frequent visitor of multiculti festivals like myself, the collection is very familiar.
Together with other visitors, I slowly moved along the whole display, and like the others I rarely buy anything. First the entire market is looked over, and the small bags, the wrist straps and cloths are fingered. It is the seduction, the foreplay that I and many other visitors enjoy most of all. We are more active spectators who actively and physically experience and form the festival’s performance. Like the woman in the introductory incident, we let ourselves be seduced by the exotic character, in this case not primarily of people, but of merchandise. In fingering, judging and selecting the products and in our surrender to the seductions, we are active consumers. Thus, consuming the products becomes a performance, in addition to all the other performances at the festival, in which presenters and stage performers meet with consumers and spectators.
The intertwining with a specific group of visitors makes it possible to see the Dunya festival as a kind of lifestyle fair where world music lovers can watch their favourite music being performed, where household accessories from countries we would someday like to visit on vacation can be purchased, as well as outfits befitting the multiculti lifestyle. Here the latter concept refers to a group sharing a certain taste and consumption pattern. Clearly this is coherent with all kinds of other factors, such as a specific combination of economic and cultural capital, as Bourdieu puts it (1984, 114-125). However, not everyone adopts the multiculti lifestyle to the same extent and in the same way. I see people who in appearance totally fit the multiculti lifestyle, and others who do not. And though I myself loyally visit the various festivals in my neighbourhood, I am also somewhat sceptical about both the multiculti lifestyle and multiculturalism.
The Dunya festival attracts visitors from all over Holland, in 2004 there were 150,000 to 160,000.[4] The varied supply of food, music, clothing and accessories has a certain target audience, and in attracting that audience the components mentioned reinforce each other. Just like other lifestyle fairs, whether erotic or for millionaires, each offers the opportunity to experience one particular lifestyle – rather than a location where different lifestyles or cultural backgrounds meet, as intended by the organizers and as is obvious from their presentation of the festivals. For instance, the Dunya festival newspaper’s front page cries out: ‘Step into the city’s mirror!’ This implies that all groups in the city are equally represented at the festival. One glance at the crowd suffices to realize that this is not the case.
That the multiculti lifestyle is intertwined with the festival, is obvious at the Dunya festival where for instance the type of objects sold, reappears elsewhere at the festival. Quite a few visitors wear clothes and jewellery very similar to those on offer at the festival market. And the Press Centre features loudly decorated purple, yellow and red cushions with tiny mirrors that could have been bought at the festival as well.
In addition to the official programme and the products offered at the stalls, of course there is something which to many is foremost in their minds: food and drink. Here as well, the selection is familiar, due in particular to a specific kind of diversity. We can get food from various continents: Surinamese baras, Turkish döner, but also Dutch ‘poffertjes’ (miniature pancakes) and chips. These are offered in a way that emphasizes the ethnic or national singularity, for instance by means of cocktail sticks decorated with little national flags. And tacos sold against a background poster showing swarthy men wearing sombreros, with brightly coloured Mexican cloths and a real sombrero hanging from the roof.
The presentation and combination of refreshments are not always directly linked to an ethnic or national origin. For instance, a stall near the European / Asian platform of the Turkish Association for the Unity of the Peoples sells mint tea, a Moroccan version I never encountered in Turkey or when visiting Turkish-Dutch families. But this Moroccan tea that some trendy Amsterdam cafés feature on their menus, is more popular than the strong version used in Turkey, and provides more profit and interest for the organization.[5]
Despite the abundantly clear interest of the market and the consumption of food and drink and objects, the map of the Dunya festival location does not show where the latter are sold, and in the festival newspaper most attention focuses on the stage performances. Finally, on the 17th of its 19 pages the publication mentions food and drink. There is a good reason for this. At the 2004 Dunya festival the event organizer Loc 7000 took care of the stalls selling food and drink. As a result the number of stalls was reduced by 50%. So as to reassure the visitors, the paper reported: ‘Of course there still are the exotic snacks. And still catering to every taste: from baklava to falafel.’ However, the paper’s interpretation of this representation of the festival – in which music gets far more attention than food – could also be turned around. The music then forms the background against which people eat and drink, and buy all sorts of products.