Max HeyraudAt 63, German techno artist The Tunegirl is challenging one of electronic music’s most persistent assumptions: that club culture is, and should remain, the domain of the young.
Last week, The Tunegirl wrote on Instagram that she “didn’t understand why people” are so confused by her age, adding that techno “isn’t just for young people.” Her comments raise a broader question: does club culture and electronic music have an uncomfortable relationship with age compared with other genres and cultural spaces?
The Tunegirl is a 63-year-old German electronic music artist from Melle who has risen to prominence in recent years after going viral performing live techno on her Eurorack modular synthesiser system. She has since played at Awakenings, Superbooth, Tresor West and elsewhere. Her technical ability and musicianship are clearly central to her success, but it is also difficult to ignore the novelty of seeing a 63-year-old artist at the centre of a culture so often associated with youth. Her age may have helped her stand out, but perhaps that says more about electronic music than it does about her.
Club culture is overwhelmingly associated with youth. Nightclubs are closely linked with electronic and dance music, youth subcultures, LGBTQ+ communities and urban nightlife. That association is understandable, but it becomes more complicated when you consider the history of the culture itself.
Two of the clubs that helped establish the foundations of modern electronic music were The Warehouse in Chicago and Paradise Garage in New York. The Warehouse closed in 1983, while Paradise Garage closed in 1987. If you were 20 when The Warehouse closed, you would now be 63. If you were 20 when Paradise Garage closed, you would be 59 or 60.
In other words, the people who were there at the birth of the culture are now entering their 60s and beyond. Yet there can still be an assumption that clubbing is something you eventually grow out of. That seems fundamentally strange.
The word “nightclub” itself carries a particular cultural baggage. It can conjure images of hedonism, excessive drinking, late nights and chaos. Those things certainly exist within club culture, but they aren’t necessarily what the experience is about. For many people, particularly those who attend clubs because of the music, the dancefloor is fundamentally a place to engage with an artist and a musical experience.
The fact that clubs tend to start late and finish even later can make them feel like a young person’s game, especially when combined with the way nightclubs are portrayed in popular culture. But this is largely a question of social convention rather than an inherent limitation of the music. There is nothing about electronic music that suddenly becomes less meaningful when you turn 40, 50, 60 or 70.
Compare this with live music more broadly. It is entirely normal to see people attending concerts well into their 70s and 80s, provided they are physically able and interested in doing so. There is comparatively little stigma attached to an older person going to see their favourite band or musician, even when alcohol and late nights are part of the experience. Why, then, does the same idea seem so much more unusual when the venue is a nightclub?
Part of the answer may be that electronic music has always been particularly intertwined with youth culture. But that doesn’t mean the music itself belongs exclusively to young people. In fact, electronic music has now existed for long enough that several generations have grown up with it. The people who built its early scenes are ageing, as are many of the people who spent their formative years on those dancefloors.
The arts as a whole have a complicated relationship with age and often place an enormous amount of value on youth. Electronic music and club culture are no exception. But perhaps this is something the scene now needs to reassess. The Tunegirl’s story is a useful reminder that techno isn’t a young person’s genre. Neither is the dancefloor.
There is, of course, evidence that club culture and the people who grew up with it are growing older together. Go to a night centred around artists such as Sasha & Digweed or Jeff Mills and the crowd will often include a significant number of older clubbers. But even here, it can feel as though this demographic is largely concentrated around the scene’s most established and seminal acts. Those artists naturally have generations of younger fans too, but outside of these particular spaces, there often seems to be far less mixing between age groups.
That lack of intergenerational exchange is a problem. Younger and older clubbers have plenty to learn from one another, and a healthy scene should allow those different experiences to exist alongside each other. Instead, it can feel as though club spaces are becoming increasingly segmented by age. The longer that continues, the more unusual the presence of an older person becomes to younger clubbers who simply haven’t grown accustomed to seeing a broad range of ages on the dancefloor. Eventually, that unfamiliarity can turn into something more uncomfortable, with older dancers made to feel as though they are entering a space that belongs to someone else, as though their presence is somehow intrusive or unsettling. For a culture built on openness, community and shared musical experience, that is fundamentally at odds with what the dancefloor should represent.
If electronic music wants to celebrate its history, it also needs to make space for the people who lived that history. That means creating environments where older artists can continue to perform and older audiences can continue to participate without feeling as though they are somehow out of place.
The culture is getting older because the people who created it are getting older. That’s not a problem to be solved; it’s a natural consequence of a culture that has lasted for decades.
Perhaps the real question isn’t why a 63-year-old is playing techno. It’s why we’re still surprised that she is.
