To introduce this year’s edition, we met one of the two programmers of DOUR. In an interview, Alex Stevens shed light on what to expect from the upcoming edition and it gets us even more hyped.
Power girls to the top?
Over 200 acts from a lot of different genres have been confirmed for the five-days counting festival, where electro meets urban and rock. No boundaries can be found and every kind of music seems to find its way into the lineup. Headliners like A$AP Rocky, Disclosure, Vince Staples or Roméo Elvis are extremely popular at the moment. But as we take a closer look at the top of the lineup, we immediately see that there are no female-fronted acts in the headliner position.
The Balzaal, the electronic walhalla of DOUR, actually has the biggest electronic act in the world with a lot of strong women. From Charlotte De Witte to Amelie Lens or Nina Kraviz. The gender equality of the Last Arena (DOUR’s main stage) is looking totally different. There are a couple of reasons for that. One of them is that over-all, the festivalgoers of DOUR don’t often listen to female hip hop or pop. The agents of those female artists are aware of that and they ask five times more for a female headliner, which is simply too expensive. For example, Solange and Rosalia were among the acts that were proposed and were in the running to take a headline spot, but the price was too high.
