Lined by enormous flatbed trucks sporting larger-than-life speaker systems, it was hard to think otherwise.
For a square best known as the place where Mussolini’s lifeless body was hanged on 29 April 1945, it was a perfect link to that day.
The music would express the release of that historical moment, in all of its life-affirming glory.
Granted, the styles – hard techno, and gabber – aren’t exactly The Internationale of yore, let alone Woodstock.
But the significance of such idioms is no different, albeit reflective of the post-Cold War era and its never-ending crises.
Taking in the heavily tattooed, trans-positive crowd, this was an archetypal temporary autonomous zone not to be missed.
The importance of its lifestyle and gender politics cannot be overstated in a repressive environment like this.
Particularly when leftists turn out in large numbers and generate sub-bass frequencies which rumble across the city.
Talk about metaphors. For that reason alone, anyone who dismisses dance music should have their head examined.
For a lifelong underground music fan like myself, the mix of radical culture and politics was reassuringly familiar.
Of all the May Day events I’ve gone to, this antifascist rave, for lack of a better way of describing it, would be a first.
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Photographs courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
