COPS CAN'T DANCE – Post-Event Report Summary

Recently I started exploring the concept of atmosphere in cooperation with the Identität team, you can check it out right here. Although I don’t think I could ever find a single definition that would lead us to a universal truth in this topic, but why shouldn’t we consider those options that don’t necessarily promise a single predictable, concrete result? Since last time the main focus was on the location and its utilization possibilities, now I attempted to think from a different perspective and found inspirations and new impulses on the first event of COPS CAN’T DANCE.

First of all, let’s say a few words about the above-mentioned event and the people behind it. The COPS CAN’T DANCE formation made its debut in the middle of June, in the outdoor garden space of Telek, and not just by any means – but with a particularly refreshing theme. The exact intention of the team – Ahmad Samer Badaro, Andor Nagy, Zsombor Nagy and Abhishek Sehgal – was to unpack, rethink and reshape the usual expectations, and let’s be honest, these innovative ideas are precisely what we expect from new clusters (quite rightly so), and the organizers certainly didn’t disappoint.

So what did they exactly create? A fusion, or more specifically a cohesive force merging two very different styles: hip-hop with electronic music, supported by the power of street art.

(Hungarian criminal law considers street art to be a crime (as mentioned in the law as ‘doodles’), however this law mustn’t be so serious as lawmakers are famous for their fine sense of humor.)

Let me shout out to the event’s organizers for their remarkable work: Ahmad for the visual design, Andor for managing the line-up artists, Zsombor for the graffiti and hip-hop themes, and Abhi for arranging the location and event logistics.

It might be misleading to highlight the organizers one by one, as they worked together as one team, which resulted in a culturally and program-wise diverse, yet synergistic event.

While the event organizers have a remarkably great ‘teamgeist’ despite representing different genres, backgrounds and skill sets – it’s also worth calling out their individual projects for further inspiration (see links below). They all have very distinct and unique music tastes on their own – however if we look at their common cross-section we realize how local and international bookings (as different genres too) work so well together. Let’s take for example German-Brazilian Alys and our local rap legend Bankos: Both artists are very different in many ways, but each of them belong to specific subcultural groups of their own which creates a sense of likeness. Apart from the great themes and line-up, the entertainment was also provided by an extremely cute ‘sausage dog’ playing around with the crowd with his little ball. Many of us started searching for the well-known hip-hop hero and rapper Bobafett, and his little dachshund, János, it easily could have been them…

Here we can finally turn back to the new aspects brought up at the beginning of the report, which are aimed at the audience this time. Last year, Telek was unable to open its gates as many times as it would have been desired due to the consequences of the pandemic effecting the entertainment industry. Therefore on this event of COPS CAN’T DANCE the explosion of colors and genres were not by mere chance, but because the guys made an interesting discovery:

The graffiti artists of the younger generations no longer approach their art strictly from the rap genre as before,

when this connotation existed in a lot more fixed way. Thus the involvement of visual creators simultaneously enriches the look of Telek, and indicates the remarkable presence of a changing genre orientation. Although by excluding the undanceable policemen, we still haven’t found out much about who they would like to see at their next event.. (It’s expected to happen late August/early September, but further details are going to be released later). The team’s ideas are about to be implemented in many small packages, luckily they are not in a rush to get anywhere.

By summing up the expectations set in advance and the subsequent conclusions, it can be firmly stated that they succeeded in surprising everyone with their work, even themselves: Andor, as someone more active in the electronic scene (soon releasing an EP!), expected that the evening programs would attract the audience more, while on the other hand Zsombi, who participates in a different subculture as a tattoo artist, was curiously watching those who came from the hip-hop sphere and still expressed their openness toward electronic music. However in the end, the guest turned out to participate in continuous fluidity covering the morning, afternoon and evening programs in equal proportions. To combine the genres, the organizers chose a symbolic link: Zsolaa, who first performed as a rapper, and later slayed the stage with a crispy-bouncy electro set. He showed everything – and took it all!

We could also mark the event’s motto as an encouraging offer –

Let’s have a nice, chill day!

As from my experience, a particularly community-building atmosphere was created. The most apt remark of the night came from a shaken-together couple: their personal insight was that the target group of today’s techno or electronic music events in Budapest are rather limited to the young adults, their new-generation needs, taste, and expectations regarding the tempo, while the old-school hip-hop faces, who are still rather winking towards the ghetto-side have been impatiently waiting for someone to finally think of them once again!