In the 1990s, I must have missed out on a lot of good parties. (That's for a reason: I was shitting diapers the first half of the decade...) The glam-a-like jet-set celebrated limitless freedom in colorful decorated glitterclubs. However, that's not for everyone. And for those who enjoyed more... direct expressions? There was gabber-culture: hardcore raves with 150-190(...!!) BPM and a functional aesthetic: preferably in Aussie track-suit, often bald-shaved. Functional: leg-jumping and fist-pumping turned out to be a legit art of dancing.
"Party-people were spoiled. Everything had to be decorated. And there at the Energiehal... there was a hall and a damn loud bass"
I'm not a fan of rivalries between cities, but in those days... I guess one can say there was a difference. The glamorous up-town described above? Based on Amsterdam. Gabber? The Energiehal club? No way: gabber-culture is born in Rotterdam: the underdog.
Slogan: "Being gabber is no disgrace!" // Track 1: Amsterdam.... where is that even???" (Audio by a *click*)
As a kid: I inevitably wanted to be a gabber. I even enrolled in athletics so I could run and jump around in a track-suit with shoes from a certain A-brand. Doing athletics was all fine, but... my parents were worried. Back then, I noticed because they gave me the B-brand shoes. Later, I realised that gabber was often misunderstood for aggressive and neo-fascist. (Ironically: the Jewish-Dutchmen brought gabber into the dictionary, as a synonym for mate, comrade or basically: friend. I don't think such etymology meant very much for 1990s party-animals. It's a reminder though how Yiddish contributed to the Dutch language!) And indeed, neo-nazis did try to take over the gabber-dancefloor.... Of course, the neo's were without any success:
"Weirdos with flags and slogans, they started abusing gabber's success for their political statement. They may have looked like us, but were completely different. We wanted to party, they wanted politics. How stupid can you be..."
Much more (although less dangerous than neo's), the success of the raves was followed by an endless wave of cheap parodies, in which gabbers were depicted as brainless idiots... Luckily, some contemporary documentaries made a more honest attempt of understanding these underdogs. What I like most in this one, is the 'let-them-talk'-style & the honesty of many gabbers:
Documentary (1995). Click here for video!
A longer, documentary about gabber culture in retrospective is broadcasted more recently. It really adds up!
Documentary (2013). Click here!