In 2023, at least 67 countries still had national laws criminalizing same-sex relations. Millions of queer people are silenced, imprisoned, and killed by their governments in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and other countries. Even some European countries like Georgia and Turkey are restricting the rights of LGBTQI+; in July 2023, Pride parades in Tbilisi and Istanbul were cancelled last minute, preventing the queer community from speaking up. Their voices were imprisoned by the bubble of censorship, so we decided to break that bubble and amplify the voices during Berlin’s Christopher Street Day’s Parade — the biggest LGBTQI+ event in the world.

As the advocate of the LGBTQI+ community, BVG took the last year’s Berlin Pride Parade motto ‘Be their Voice and ours’ seriously and made the ones who were forced silenced heard.

By hacking into our own DJ set and turning our Pride truck into a platform for the LGBTQI+ people to speak their truth safely, we amplified the repressed queer voices and gave them the chance to be present and loud at the world’s most significant queer event.

In 2023, at least 67 countries still had national laws criminalizing same-sex relations. Millions of queer people are silenced, imprisoned, and killed by their governments in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and many more countries. And even some European countries like Georgia and Turkey are restricting the rights of LGBTQI+; for example, in July 2023, Pride parades in Tbilisi and Istanbul were cancelled last minute, preventing the queer community from speaking up. Their voices were imprisoned by the bubble of censorship, so we decided to break that bubble and amplify the voices during Berlin’s Christopher Street Day’s Parade — the biggest LGBTQI+ event in the world.

We reached out to representatives of the countries restricting the queer communities and invited them to share their stories with us. Then, we turned their voices into a vocal sample and incorporated them into our DJ-set, making them present at the world’s most significant queer event.

Beacuse the CSD is officially registered as a protest, the music has to stop every 20 minutes to give the stage to political speeches. However, the ones who needed speaking up the most, don’t get this opportunity.

A week before the event, BVG collected the voices of the international queer community. Our DJ turned their statements into a library of vocal samples and mixed them into his longmix.

On 22 July, the Parade Day, our samples stood out among all speeches and dragged the attention of all event visitors, giving a chance to the voices, which had been attempted to be muted, to be present and loud at the most significant queer event in the world.

After the event, we uploaded the samples on freesound.org — a top spot for artists to search for sounds. Now, every DJ can use the BVG proud samples and make sure their voices will

In less than a week, we collected the voices and stories of hundreds of representatives from 25 countries; each of them finally had a chance to speak up and join the Pride without fearing for their life. More than 500,000 people attended the CSD Parade in Berlin, most of whom have listened to the ‘Loud and Proud’ samples, while millions were following the event online.