This shared memory is an important element of community-building through what Lynne Segal calls collective joy. From the 8 March demonstration, what I remember is a lot of music, and a lot of joy.” Many of the memories of this demonstration, described above, are the same moments that remained in Bułacik’s memory too. Agnieszka Bułacik, a Polish-speaking activist, and member of Otucha choir, said: “I really remember what the music did to my body.
Those memories are often sensual: you may not remember a conversation, or the content of a speech, but you may remember how you felt, what you saw, and what you heard. What remains from many of demonstrations like these, especially the annual ones, are memories. The demonstration ended at twilight outside the headquarters of a German arms lobbyist, back on Unter den Linden, to the sounds of feminist reggaeton and a dance performance by Perrxs del Futuro – a Berlin-based collective whose motto is ‘If I can’t perrear, it’s not my revolution’ – and a light show courtesy of the many cars of the Berliner Polizei surrounding the remaining group of protesters. From the stage-truck at the front, songs in many languages were played in-between speeches delivered largely in accented English or German, other times in the speakers’ native tongues. At some point you could see a group performing the choreography to El violador en tu camino, created by Chilean feminists in 2019. As you walked towards the front of the demonstration to which cis-men are not invited, different rhythms would weave through the crowd. Joining the demonstration of the Alliance of Internationalist Feminists, on Unter den Linden as it was turning onto Friedrichstraße – two of the largest road’s in Berlin’s Mitte – you were welcomed by a samba band accompanying feminist chants, while the sun was shining onto the Brandenburger Tor. International Women’s Day, increasingly known as the Day Against the Patriarchy, in 2021 was a warm, sunny day. Thousands of FLINTA* people filling the streets with their voices, music and performances will tell you it’s the 8 March: Traditional songs in Arabic, feet hitting the ground rhythmically in the dancing of dabke, and ululation might tell you it’s a demonstration insolidarity with Palestine. A tense silence broken only by police announcements telling protesters to go home, protesters shouting Ganz Berlin haßt die Polizei, and helicopters whirring overhead will tell you it is the end of the 1 May demonstration. Sometimes before you even see the crowds, you can feel it is a protest from what you hear, and the emotions conveyed by the sound. In Berlin, sometimes turning a corner means entering an entirely new sound world. The sounds and musics of the South Asian, Polish, and Palestinian communities, and on two groups that perform in and around the city’s political struggles – the Out of Time Embassy and Comunidad Sikuris – will contour the different ways that sound is used as resistance in the streets of Berlin. And finally, Berlin is a city in which musicians integrate the streets into their artistic practice. Berlin is a city in which the sounds of its streets reflect the struggles that are contained within it. Berlin is a city in which each of these social movements resonated on its streets through the actions of its many diasporas. They were also marked by huge social upheavals and growing social movements across the world. The last two years were not only marked by enforced isolation and a shift of many people’s lives online. Street Fighting Human Sounds of resistance in the streets of Berlin
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