Raggare

Raggare: the Swedish rock’n'roll cult comes of age

The biggest pop tribe in Sweden isn’t indie kids or techno heads. It’s made up of people who adore Chuck Berry and drive vintage cars. Meet the raggare

In high summer, deep in the Swedish countryside, you could easily believe Rebel Without a Cause or The Wild One are being remade. The quiffs, classic cars and 1950s clothes aren’t for show, however. These people aren’t costumed extras, they are raggare, members of the largest pop-culture tribe in Sweden, and one of the most influential in Scandinavia.

Rock’n'roll never died for the raggare: they are still devoted to the music, the fashion, the aesthetics. For 50 years they have kept its spirit alive, but where rock’n'rollers in other countries have dwindled into small groups, in Sweden they have gone from strength to strength – there are now estimated to be half a million of them.

The first raggare would travel in convoy from one hick town to the next to beat lumps out of each other and ogle the women. There are still organised raggare brawls, but the movement is part of the mainstream now, its most visible manifestation the cheap 50s and 60s US cars the raggare still drive and the vintage clothes they wear. You can have three generations of raggare within the same family, and there was no more eloquent statement of raggare respectability than the 12 kronor commemorative raggare stamp issued by the Swedish post office a few years back.

Arboga is a town of 10,000 people, 80 miles or so west of Stockholm. It’s a dullish place, with late-night entertainment limited to a few service stations dishing out food. There’s nothing to do here, which means it’s a perfect place for raggare culture to thrive. The Burning Wheels are the smallest of three chapters of raggare from Arboga. They meet every Sunday at Georg’s Garage to rev their engines, play rock’n'roll records and talk about the 1950s, while their children run around getting ice cream handprints all over the car seats.

It wasn’t always like this, according to Georg. “We used to meet up on Sundays to have fights. We were honest fighters. No weapons, no martial arts, no kicking – and if you fell on the ground it was all over and you’d buy the guy a drink.”

The raggare didn’t confine the fighting to themselves. They singled out punks and hippies for beatings, and did it so often that the Rude Kids, a Swedish punk band, released a single called Raggare Is a Bunch of Motherfuckers. “Those were the drinking days,” Georg says. “The crazy drinking days.” If you drink too much nowadays, you’ll be kicked out of the Burning Wheels, they say.

The raggare have always tended to be drawn from country folk: farmers, petrol station owners, low-skilled workers. The growth in their numbers is the result of the differing fortunes of the US and Swedish economies over the decades: successive oil crises and a poor exchange rate saw Americans trading in gas-guzzlers for more economical models; the Swedes, relatively rich in comparison, bought their cars for a song.

For young Swedes, these giant American cars, which contrasted with the safe, boxy Volvos their parents drove, were the ultimate symbols of rebellion. And they were dirt-cheap. “They were stupid,” Georg says about the Americans. “Some of the cars were limited edition. They built maybe 70 of them and they were selling them to us for a few thousand when they were collector pieces.”

Georg picked up his first US muscle car, a black 1965 Pontiac, for $2,000 in Los Angeles in 1980. He found it in a lot, rusted and part-inhabited by a eucalyptus tree. By the time he’d shipped it home, sourced original parts, resprayed and kitted out the whole body, it was worth 20 times as much, with an engine that purred and a stereo that roared. The latter is the only concession to modernity acceptable in a raggare’s restored car; music is a huge part of the culture. “You don’t exactly want to have hip-hop playing from your car when you’re cruising,” says Martin, a farmer who drives a lime green Chevy. He listens mostly to Creedence Clearwater Revival. “That music came from a period when America was really great. You can hear it in the lyrics.”

Martin’s top-of-the-range sound system is hidden inside the glove compartment. Every weekend, in car parks and petrol station forecourts up and down Sweden, the rest of Scandinavia, and even in some parts of western Russia, raggare gangs play out their classic rock’n'roll albums until their car batteries pack in.

When the raggare have parties, they tend to have them in their garages: comfortable enough spaces, filled with pots of grease, car jacks and stacks of fenders. The more capable raggare jitterbug and twist; others shuffle from foot to foot, stopping occasionally to pull out the kink in a poodle skirt or run a comb through a greasy quiff.

Maud is the longest-standing female member of the Burning Wheels. She’s short of cash at the moment, and has to cruise around in a 20-year-old Volvo – and Volvos are to raggare what dirty overalls are to mods. “I fell in love with the scene thanks to my grandparents,” she says. “The music they listened to and the cars they drove are so attractive.” Maud is also involved with a girls-only raggare group who visit schools as part of a raggare awareness group, teaching pupils about the raggare lifestyle and the notion of respect.

When the first raggare appeared, they caused moral panic across Sweden, where they were seen as an oversexed bunch of hard partiers. As the original raggare have grown older, they’ve been trying to heal their reputation. “It’s important to be a gentleman,” says Georg. “If you want to join the Burning Wheels, you have a one-year probation period. It’s not easy to join. You have kids driving round in their parents’ Volvos calling themselves raggare when they’re not.”

That free use of the word has caused problems. Raggare get blamed when far-right gangs attack Gypsy camps and smuggle drugs. To outsiders, gangs in cars out drinking are all raggare. Not to the Burning Wheels. “We’re like craftsmen. The lifestyle is an art,” says Martin. “It’s not just drinking and driving fast. There’s responsibility with what we do.”

It’s funny how often the words respect and responsibility are used by a group who take their cues from music and films whose very purpose was to express rebellion. That’s partly the result of the Swedish government realising there was more to be gained from embracing the raggare than alienating them. In the 60s, the government made the decision to consult the raggare about decisions that might affect them – so now they pay no car or import tax on their vehicles, and Sweden has the largest collection of classic cars outside the US. Another 6,000 were imported last year alone.

When winter comes around, the majority of raggare go into hibernation. They tuck their Buicks under blankets, slip off their blue suede shoes and pull on their snowboots. And the next time they pull out of their driveway with Chuck Berry on the stereo, it’ll probably be in a nice warm Volvo.

Dancing in the Dark

This piece appeared in Friday’s Guardian. And unlike the last time I wrote about Kosovo, in this article I didn’t make the mistake of saying my Kosovar mates were ex-members of the KLA. Safe.

Power cuts, a shortage of kit and war damage haven’t stopped Kosovars from creating a club scene that’s gaining fans worldwide.

There is an electronic musician in Pristina called Toton. He has written a track called Coca Cola, which petitions the owner of the world’s most popular beverage to buy Kosovo, paint it red, plaster the Coke logo on to everything, do whatever the company wants to the place – just, please, sort out the electricity problem. Kosovo’s entire energy supply, such as it is, comes from only two thermal power stations. “We’re probably the only electronic musicians in the world producing music without electricity,” says Toton, “Our ministers need to tighten standards so that things start working.”

Kosovo has the youngest population in Europe – 60% of Kosovars are under 25 – and also one of the continent’s most unexpectedly progressive and dynamic electronic music scenes, thanks to a small, cosmopolitan group of music producers and promoters. Spray Club, the focal point of techno in Pristina, was included in DJ magazine’s top 100 clubs in the world, and records made by Kosovar producers get played by internationally known DJs such as Richie Hawtin. The scene is so close-knit that if you meet one DJ on a Friday night, by Sunday you’ll have clinked bottles with all of them. Promoters call each other at all hours of the night to borrow leads, cables, lights – whatever has just blown and needs immediate replacement. Small bars in the city play dubstep and techno, and bootleg white labels that haven’t reached the rest of Europe.

It all started with one song. In 1995, Josh Wink’s Higher State of Consciousness turned a generation of Kosovar punk kids on to techno. There was no money to buy equipment to replicate the song’s rush, so people improvised and assembled their own drums, amps and speakers, while putting money aside to buy proper mixing decks. They held parties in squats and abandoned buildings – parties at which drugs were rife, given the country’s position astride the supply routes between Africa, Asia and Europe. The stories go that one in four people in Pristina dropped acid during the 90s.

Pristina is a gloomy city except in summer. The seemingly constant rain carries ash and mineral particles, which coat all they touch, leaving everything feeling muddy. After dark, it feels as if you’re trespassing in an abandoned city. Those who were dropping acid and dancing had one way to escape the gloom, but when the fighting with Slobodan Miloševic´’s Yugoslav forces intensified in 1998, the party scene in Kosovo went on hiatus. “There was no real partying during the war,” says Toton. “It would have been a bit pointless seeing as our friends were targeted for execution or imprisoned.”

The majority of Kosovar people are ethnic Albanians; during the war, more than a million of them fled, mostly to Germany, Switzerland, the US and UK. Young people who left kept in touch by listening to Kosovo’s only independent radio station, radiourbanFM. The station began after the Nato bombings of Yugoslav targets in 1999 and acted as a soapbox for the new electronic music being created in Kosovo. Toton left his job to dedicate himself to the station, where, like many of the station’s producers and DJs, he worked for little or no money. In turn, the listeners were patient enough to not switch channels during the frequent blackouts.

In contrast to the mainstream news stations, with their reports of economic and political problems, radiourbanFM offered information about local gigs and events, and helped talk up the scene. It would eventually encourage a lot of those listening around the world to move back to Kosovo. Berna, whose friends call her Bass Face, was involved with the station from the beginning, hosting her own new music show. “It’s the only station in Kosovo where you are free to say whatever you want and can listen to underground tracks,” she says.

Berna owns a bar called Llocks, one of the few venues in Pristina with a proper sound system; in a city where the roads need surfacing, the hospitals need beds and a tap in your home is no guarantee of running water, sound systems come a long way down the list of priorities. But Kosovars are shrewd improvisers. If a DJ wants to play, they’ll make it happen, even if that means transforming a bare bar into a venue.

Equipment gets passed around depending on who needs it, and Toton learned to mix on a set of decks he shared with half the street. “It’s what’s made the scene happen,” he explains. “Not everyone can afford to get a decent mixer or turntables.” Though he has DJed across Europe and in the US, Toton still doesn’t have a record player of his own at home.

“We make the best of whatever there is or try to provide what’s needed,” says Likatek, another Kosovar DJ who has managed to make the transition from local to international star and now runs a regular interantional night called Episodes. “There’s some charm to it, though, and carrying equipment everywhere helps to keep the DJs’ weight down.”

Despite the practical difficulties, Kosovo clubbers demand good music. Until a couple of years ago, many of them were going out in London, New York and Berlin, and now that they’re back home, they won’t accept a compromise on quality. Besa, who was working at the New Yorker a year ago, now runs her own publication in Pristina. She sees the boom in DIY creativity in Kosovo as a reaction to the 90s, when the Miloševic´ government in Belgrade stamped out freedom of expression. “We had to find alternative ways to express ourselves,” she says.

These days, survival for a Kosovar electronic musician doesn’t mean fleeing repression, but getting out of the country frequently to play bigger venues and earn decent money – and that’s not easy. The visa regime requires that anyone leaving Kosovo must prove they intend to return, Officials find it hard to believe that young DJs with no savings, family obligations or regular employment will want to come back, so most Kosovar artists fall victim to a visa rejection at some stage. One day, Kosovo will probably join the EU – France, Germany and the UK all back its inclusion – and travel will become easier. But the waiting, especially when artists are forced to turn down festivals and gigs that they have worked hard to secure, is maddening.

“The combination of disappointment and frustration is severe,” says Likatek. “Most of the time, the promoters abroad have no idea of the requirements in place, and frankly I don’t blame them as their freedom of movement was never limited in this way.”

Funnily enough, one place DJs can travel to is Serbia; to Serbs, it’s all still the same country. Toton was one of the first Kosovar DJs to play in Serbia after the war. He was booked to play the dungeon of a castle. All night long, he had a beautiful, toned blonde woman by his side. To make matters clear, she told him immediately, “I’m not here to fuck you; I’m here to protect you.” She was a black belt in half a dozen martial arts.

It would be wrong to suggest that the newly installed Kosovar government isn’t weighing in with financial support for music in the country, but a lot of the time the trade ministry chooses dubious recipients for its funds. For example, it spent half a million euros on a concert for young Kosovars that featured Elvis and Abba impersonators, and a headlining slot for Samantha Fox.

Of course, there aren’t many electronic music scenes anywhere that get government support. The musicians in Kosovo know this, and they’re not looking for a handout; they’ve kept the scene alive by themselves so far. But they say they would appreciate it if the people in charge could do something about the irregular power supply.

Toton says there’s something in the soil that radiates a positive energy and keeps the young people feeling good. If Europe is looking for proof that religious tolerance, cooperation and optimism can thrive in the face of material shortage, it could do a lot worse than to check out the electronic music scene in Kosovo.

Fresh in Pristina: Kosovo’s techno DJs

Traditional Kosovar music is made with a 7/8 time signature – not the easiest to dance to – but, like every other electronic scene in Europe, Pristina is influenced first and foremost by the music coming out of London and Berlin. Minimal techno, dubstep and house are the sounds you hear in the bars and clubs. Kosovar house and techno producers add darker, grungier, more industrial beats to standard electronic music templates to give a distinctive flavour.

Pristina’s most famous club, Spray, is home to the city’s best-known DJs – Likatek, Toton, Legoff, Goya and Naka, who is considered by many to be the best techno DJ in the country, play there regularly. And when international DJs come to Kosovo, Spray is where you’ll find them. Seven years ago, Likatek started a regular techno and house night at Spray called Episodes. It brought together DJs, producers and designers to create a complete Kosovar clubbing experience. Episodes now has residencies in the Netherlands and Albania.

Apart from techno and house, there’s a vibrant trance scene in Pristina where parties are put on in the woods around the capital. Word about these raves is usually circulated in the bars around Pristina, but the Bass Face show on radiourbanFM is the primary supporter of local musicians in the capital. Right now they’re playing a lot of a new Kosovar electronic music collective, founded by Toton, called Pischmen.

Where can I hear a sample?

likatek.net
myspace.com/pischmen
radiourbanfm.com
myspace.com/nakadj

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/29/kosovo-dance-clubs-bass-face-toton