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Endnotes
1.
Victor Turner, on the necessity of an acute centering of attention
on the "here and now" in ritual performance. See Turner,
From Ritual to Theater 56.
2.
Rave is commonly referred to as ritualistic. See, for example,
Gore, "The Beat Goes On," in Helen Roberts, ed., Dance
in the City 52–56; Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy: into
the World of Techno and Rave Culture 241–242; Silcott,
Rave America: New School Dancescapes 54; Saunders, "The
Spiritual Aspect of Rave Culture" par. 1, Accessed 13 February
1998; Somberg, "Rave as Ritual: Creating Community in a Postmodern
Society" pars. 1–8. 3.
The relationship between music and trance remains highly controversial.
See the classic text on the subject, Gilbert Rouget, Music
and Trance: A Theory of the Relationships between Music and Possession.
A variety of arguments appear in James Porter, et al., "Trance,
Music, and Music/Trance Relations: a Symposium." 4.
Some rave activities occur during the daytime. The ASR (Always
Something to Remember) collective, and other rave crews, fairly
regularly put on parties in public parks.
5.
Rave parties are generally characterized by drug use, but it’s
important to note that there are many rave participants who do
not use drugs. There are plenty of participants who believe the
sensorial experience of a rave does not require chemical "enhancement."
6.
On the musico-perceptual effects of, and bodily response to, combining
MDMA (Ecstasy) with repetitive, rhythmic music, see Matthew Collin,
Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House
27–28, and Reynolds 81–86.
7.
On the slippery task of defining the rave movement, see Gore 50–51.
8.
There have been numerous references made to the DJ as a shaman
or cult figure leading ravers to a transcendental experience.
See, for example, Gore 52, 61–65; Lysloff, "DJ Shamanism
and New Age Technospirituality: Trance and Meditation in Popular
Music;" Fikentscher, "‘You’d Better Work’:
Music, Dance, and Marginality in Underground Dance Clubs of New
York City;" and Reynolds 35.
9.
See Reynolds 13–37.
10.
A raver explains:
I don’t think there’s any official definition of a massive—it’s
just a big, generally horribly commercial party. How big does
it have to be to qualify as a massive? You’ll get a huge
range of answers—old-schoolers might say anything more than
about 300 people, others would say starting at around 2,000 (realistically
I’d give the 2,000 number myself). Because they are so big
and commercially publicized, they tend to attract the high-school
kids who think they can become "ravers" by putting on
some plastic beads and buying e from the first person they find,
and spending the rest of the night passed out on the floor. The
"real" ravers are connected into the underground and
won’t go to most massives (although massives can afford to
bring in bigger name dj’s that smaller undergrounds could
never afford, so occasionally people may grudgingly go just to
see their favourite international dj). Also massives have their
uses in that many newbies arrive in the scene through massives
and the few truly dedicated people may eventually filter through
the system and find their way into the underground—hopefully
the underground does a good enough filtering job (makes itself
hard to find, etc) that only the dedicated will make it through."
Personal e-mail communication with anonymous raver, 23 July 2000.
11.
As Sarah Thornton notes, a persistent concern of underground subcultures
is the "gushing up" effect, or the appropriation of
underground subcultural items by the "aboveground" mainstream.
See Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural
Capital 5.
12.
In my experience, massives tend to be looked upon with some disdain
by underground ravers. In another "above-grounding" context,
a recent appropriation of underground dance music "artifacts"
for an exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in March
of this year drew mixed responses from ravers on the sfraves internet
discussion list. Below is a press release for the event, followed
by a couple of posted raver responses.
ZERO:ONE celebrates the opening of this year’s most highly
anticipated
SFMOMA exhibition, 010101: Art in Technological Times.
ZERO:ONE offers a rare opportunity to explore the West Coast’s
largest contemporary art museum in the context of an underground
dance party. The 010101 galleries will be open until 2 a.m., with
dancing continuing until 3 a.m.
ZERO:ONE is comprised of two massive dance arenas (ZONE:ONE and
ZONE:ZERO) offering a variety of electronic musical styles-from
techno, tech-house and ghetto tech to triphop, future-jazz and
two-step. The event will fuse elements from the underground electronic
music scene with avant-garde video and projection artistry, installations
and actions creating a unique and highly anticipated experience
inside the city’s landmark museum.
Excerpts of responses regarding ZERO:ONE posted to sfraves:
The irony behind the SFMoma "experience" is everything
"they" are trying to take away from our scene, was served
up on a silver platter for all the leather jacket wearing, latte
drinking, beer drinking ex-dot.con’s cliques of SF. Bitter?
Do I sound a bitter? Yep. They have dressed up all the sensory
experiences we have appreciated for years; light shows, eye candy,
music and they are calling it Technology Art. Damn straight its
art! But it is not something that should be experienced in a museum
like it doesn’t exist in the real world because it does and
it will not be accessible to everyone now because of the crack
down on our scene. Not that I do not agree with exposing people
to culture but it is like going to a zoo to see wild animals,
its ironic.
The people at the event were a tiresome group of individuals.
Trying to get across the room, people where blocking the path
completely, oblivious to the fact there was other people in the
room. The big questions, "where is the bar" and "where
is the coat check", "oh my, the coat check is full what
am I going to do?" What really topped things off was when
this mousy little blonde in her Saks Fifth Ave garb was talking
to her little group, "oh, we gotta hurry up, did you take
it yet, do you feel it?" Something that our scene is scorned
for is perfectly acceptable in this room, because the person doing
the drugs has a beamer parked out side and guaranteed, more then
half of these people made sure they had something because "that’s
what your suppose to do at a rave", and then they top it
off with beers at the same time, duh! . . . A photographer on
stage was flashing a few pictures so, all the little groups turned
around, faced the DJ to get there pictures taken. Drinks up in
the air—look at us we are at a rave. (posted 11 March 2000)
"yeah i was in the front during swayzak’s set and i
kept hearing this annoying lady w/way too much makeup and her
boyfriend yell ‘FASTER, FASTER, we want to dance.."
whatever though...her loss, plus i think she figured it out when
she realized that everyone except her and her hubby were loving
it!". . . it was cool cause it wasn’t like everyone
was dancing, but it seemed like most people were groovin’
and enjoying the music, and then up front and by the speakers
there was more dancing
my only gripe...what was up with turning on the lights at 2:30!!
so anyways, i had fun and thought it was well worth it. (posted
11 March 2000)
13. For contributions
on the San Francisco rave scene, see Reynolds 149–156; Silcott,
"San Francisco: Peace, Love, Unity, and Utter Wickedness,"
in Rave America 47–74; Sellin.
14.
René Lysloff reminded me that Return to Innocence
is also the name of an album of techno-ambient music by the group
Enigma, released in November of 1998.
15.
The existence of various rave subcultures maintaining multiple
meanings of the rave event is a topic worthy of further discussion.
16.
The email address for the San Francisco ravers’ internet
discussion list is sfraves@hyperreal.org.
17.
This quote was taken from an abstract appearing in the PsycINFO
database. The abstracted article is Robert B. Millman and Ann
Bordwine Beeder, "The New Psychedelic Culture: LSD, Ecstasy,
‘Rave’ Parties and the Grateful Dead."
18.
On the psychological and emotional effects of ritual synchronization
of physical activity, see William H. McNeill, Keeping Together
in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History.
19.
See Carol Laderman, Taming the Winds of Desire: Psychology,
Medicine, and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance
86–112.
20.
See Jihad Racy, "Creativity and Ambiance: an Ecstatic Feedback
Model from Arab Music."
21.
René Lysloff asserts that drugs are themselves artifacts
of technology, in "DJ Shamanism" 7.
22.
For discussions of proto-rave techno music, see Collin, "The
Technologies of Pleasure," in Altered State 10–24,
and Reynolds, "A Tale of Three Cities," in Generation
Ecstasy 12–39.
23.
Nicholas Saunders, "The Spiritual Aspect of Rave Culture,"
Accessed 13 October 1998.
24.
"At the heart of a true rave there’s the pulse of something
intangible; a positive unifying groove, a extraordinary feeling,
a Vibe that transcends description." From "The Spirit
of Raving Archives" at http://www.hyperreal.org/raves/spirit/.
The Vibe is often nostalgically referred to by ravers as something
we as human beings are yearning to return to.
25. This group
is an offshoot of a larger Balinese gamelan ensemble (Gamelan
Swarasanti) that is part of the curriculum at the University of
California, Santa Cruz. "Swarasanti" is roughly translated
as "The Sound of Peace." "Anak" means "child."
26.
For a detailed description of the gamelan angklung ensemble
and its repertoire, see McPhee’s definitive chapter "The
Gamelan Angklung" in Music in Bali: A Study in Form and
Instrumental Organization in Balinese Orchestral Music 234–255.
27.
According to Michael Bakan, modern villages that cannot afford
to own the theoretically required three different types ceremonial
gamelan orchestras employ gamelan beleganjur (a processional
ceremonial gamelan) in place of gamelan angklung
as it can be used in a greater number of contexts. See Michael
Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the
World of Balinese Gamelan Beleganjur. A member of Anak Swarasanti
recently purchased a set of beleganjur instruments and
the group sometimes performs with this set instead of the gamelan
angklung. At a rave in August of 2000, gamelan members processed
from the main stage to the ambient space playing beleganjur
with the mainstage DJ performing interactively with them. Some
ravers were inspired to dance to the resulting groove.
28.
Having experienced a Celtic rock band playing in the ambient space
at one particular event in 1998, I can personally attest to the
fact that the unique aural feel of technologically produced music
is absolutely vital to the rave, furthering the idea of this performative
genre as a quintessential artifact of technoculture.
29.
See also Jane Belo, Trance in Bali on traditional contexts
of gamelan music as a component of ritual trance in Bali.
30. The kind
of musical structure described above, in its electronic form,
has been described by Phillip Tagg as nothing short of a revolution.
Tagg suggests that this style signals the decline of melody and
the "rise of ground" in Western popular music, and also
codes a shift in socialization strategy. See Tagg, "From
Refrain to Rave: the Decline of Figure and the Rise of Ground."
31.
See Ameba, "Why Tribal Future: The Only Thing Constant is
Change" par. 1.
32.
On the socio-musical ramifications of "schizophonia,"
see René Lysloff, "Mozart in Mirrorshades: Ethnomusicology,
Technology, and the Politics of Representation;" Peter Manuel,
"Music as Symbol, Music as Simulacrum: Postmodern, Pre-modern,
and Modern Aesthetics in Subcultural Popular Music;" and
Reynolds, "Digital Psychedelia: Sampling and the Soundscape,"
in Generation Ecstasy 40–55.
33.
Many, many thanks to René Lysloff, who has been continually
supportive and helpful with this project. Thanks also to the suggestions
of Jihad Racy, Helen Rees, Erik Leidal, Jaqueline Warwick, the
wonderful creative work of Gordon Haramaki and the design crew
at ECHO, Cecilia Sun, Maria Cizmic, Glenn Pillsbury, the anonymous
readers, and most particularly, Martin Randall & the members
of Anak Swarasanti. To Margaret and Karen: this piece, as promised,
conceived on that drive back from the Sierras in ‘97.
