When I worked in Berlin in 1998 the trendy record store in the city’s gay-friendly Schöneberg district had a category called “schwarz” music. It took up a lot of the shop and seemed a bizarrely useless generalisation, given the huge popularity of both imported and home-made Rap music. There was even a whole cluster of GI rap stars – African American soldiers who stayed on after their tour of duty because of the huge German market.
But the record shop captured something of the unsettling oddness that persists in modern multi racial Germany’s mono-racial insistence on labeling and categorisation. Nowhere in Britain could you advertise a “washes whiter” detergent with a very dark skinned African born TV star as you could in Germany in the ‘90s.
Yet the German authorities are passionate about trying to internationalise their arts scene. In Berlin in particular, writers and artists from all over the world are encouraged, often with grants and programmes to come and work there.
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