Inevitable. This is the word that keeps rolling into my mind after hearing the sad news about Sunwaves 35 being the very last edition on the Black Sea Coast.
Sunwaves will always be a Romanian only affair
Like some of the few hundred who have attended Sunwaves since 2007, this gathering will always have a special place in my electronic heart. First of all, it was our festival, something we were proud of. A place where you could saw tINI dancing in the middle of the dancefloor. A place where you could share a beer and a cigarette against a fence with Bill Patrick, while talking about the differences between NYC’s club scene and the rest of the world. A place where you could ask Ricardo Villalobos what’s the record that screams deep house for him and you could actually receive an answer and a joyful smile (yeah, this is where and how Half Is Enough was born). A tiny 10 sqm backstage where young Romanian DJs were hypnotized by Rhadoo’s outworldly DJ skills. Where the same DJs were trying to take a look into Pedro’s record bag to decypher the fine print on his records, some of them concealed by band aids.
It was that (in)famous straw shack where I’ve first listened to Zip playing. The same shack where Herodot closed SW on a chilly Monday morning, with no more than 20 people still dancing. Where collaborations were born to redefine the house music as we know it. Where totally unexpected back to back sessions appeared out of the blue. Where timetables were for announced for the sake of announcing timetables, with just a few DJs respecting their time slot. Where only the beer was warm as the sun disappeared behind Lake Siutghiol and the chilly humid breeze cut through your bones like a surgical knife. The accomodation was shitty, the La Scoica food was awful. Yet, Sunwaves at Mamaia was one of the few places where Romanians got out of their introvert shells and displayed how they really are on the inside: friendly, creative, joyful. For that matter, Sunwaves at Mamaia was a safe place to be, with inferiority complexes and intergenerational biases and beliefs left at the entrance.
The Foreign Legion
An endless party with a vibe you couldn’t feel anywhere else in this world? No wonder that Westerners started to quickly fill the Sunwaves crowd. Despite the Balkanic caveats (shady cab drivers, zero transfer options from Otopeni airport to Mamaia, a real adventure to find a decent accomodation in Mamaia), clubheads all over Europe and the US started to taste the Sunwaves experience. As popularity grew, so did the crowd. In a matter of a few years, right before the pandemic, hordes of Italians, Germans and Brits came to see the miracle of Sunwaves: Marco Carola playing for 24 straight hours, tINI & Bill Patrick smashing Marco’s record with a 31+ hours set. Way cheaper than Ibiza, Mamaia has set itself as THE Destination for properly starting the rave season each and every year. Bigger spenders prompted the festival to increase the bar prices and entrance fees. The bigger stages wiped out the intimacy feel. The connection between the record selector and the crowd was lost even in the Romanians’ tent, now transformed into a proper festival stage, with the DJ booth isolated from the crowd.
Dying of its own success
You know something is wrong when commercial TV stations are doing live reports from inside the festival in prime time. When half naked people whistle and cheer whenever Priku filters down the bassline. Maybe for some of us it’s hard to understand, but Romanians hate being under the spotlights. It’s that very intimacy and secrecy that built the foundation for Romania’s take on house music. The mystery aura, the hard to find tracks, kept only between a handful of artists. A few years ago I had a long conversation with Isis Salvaterra. Isis is a veteran clubhead, running the Toi.Toi.Musik booking agency and party label. She’s also one of the finest observers when it comes to the underground electronic scene. Off the record, she perfectly described where the energy of the Romanian house music comes from: the complex profile of the Romanian record selector and producer. Centuries of opression and censorship, a trauma passed from generation to generation. Feeling inferior against Western countries. Anxieties hidden into subtle harmonics and grooves perceived only by those who really clicked the music. Fear of success and the fear of loosing it all. Above all these, the immense cultural heritage, washed through various imperial influences and, against all odds, cemented into a unique sound. And by the way, Romanians hate the RoMinimal tag: it’s impersonal, superficial and doesn’t do justice to the way we reshaped the electronic underground.
Sunwaves lost exactly the elements found at the core of Romanian’s underground scene: the intimacy, the friendliness, the innocence and the authencity. It was inevitable. It became too big and too mainstream to sustain itself financially in Mamaia, especially after the pandemic. Sure, the local authorities put the last nail in the coffin, by enforcing strict policies that are supposed to be followed by any festival in Romania.
From the profit margin point of view, Sunwaves made a wise move: follow the money and go closer to the source. And maybe it’s better this way, for both the crowd and the organizers.
But in the end, Sunwaves anywhere else except Romania is just another festival. The crowd, the non stop music, the breeze, the sunrise, the smiling faces, the shitty food remain burried here, on the Black Sea shores. Hopefully, someone will dig them up soon.
My hope was that this very last edition of Sunwaves in Romania will be closed with a memorable track. A track that would access my innocent raver subconscious and roll back the immense amount of nice memories. Instead, we got a Paraziții manifesto, that expresses the sheer frustration of artists who grew up with Sunwaves. So, I am only left with remembering the moment Barac and Arapu closed Sunwaves with this one (probably more than 10 years ago). Enjoy it as much as we did back then.
Photo Credits: Kay Ross