01 July,2011 07:45 AM IST | | The guide
The police raid of a rave party near Karjat, last Sunday, was another reminder of the evolution of 'rave culture'. Raves, however, didn't always mean psytrance, strobes and drugs
Last Sunday, 300 bodies crowded inside a large room in the Mount View Resort in Khalapur, near Karjat. To an outsider, the men and women -- mostly between the ages of 20 and 25 years -- were attending the 'Shanti Jatra 2011', a 'promotional party for a Nepali festival dedicated to Mother Earth'.
Later that evening, police would round up the hapless revelers that "included 60 women". Turns out, it was a rave: the sort of party where the music is so loud, you can swear it's your heart's that's pounding in your ears; the sort of party that "good girls" are never invited to; the sort of party there is expected to be wild dancing, drinking, and drug use. Incidentally, Sunday was World Anti-Narcotics Day. So, while someone has a sense of humour, unfortunately for the 300-odd 'party animals', the cops weren't laughing.
Ecstatic to meet you
Raves though, weren't always synonymous with drug abuse. While the first documented use of the terms 'Rave', 'rave dance' and 'rave party' can be pinpointed to April 4, 1970, according to Wikipedia. But the existence of these so-called 'wild parties' can be traced as far back as 1950s-London.
During the late '60s the term was being increasingly less frequently. And it would take another two decades for the term to reemerge, and be adopted by a new generation.
Techno and Acid House were the music genres that were most closely associated with the parties held in the mid to late 1980s that were held in warehouses and clubs around Manchester and London. At the time, these 'early raves' were referred to as Acid House parties: a direct reference to the almost hypnotic music played at these parties that attracted tens of thousands of people at one time.
The movement would slowly grow from being a predominantly London-based phenomenon and transform into a countrywide, albeit underground, scene in the UK. By 1991, organisations were hosting legal raves in empty warehouses and open fields. On occasion, these parties were open-air, all-night affairs that attracted up to 30,000 people. By then, however, the scene was slowly beginning to change and political efforts were being made to discourage parties from being held.
In the meantime, the movement had been growing and expanding to Europe and America. It was in America where with post the Right To Dance (refer to box) and the adoption of the four (and later five) tenets to form the acronym PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity and Respect) that some of the negative associations with the term started to fall away. Back home, there's still a long way to go.
The tenets of Rave culture
Americans Nicholas Luckinbill and Branden Powers helped create the political movement, Right To Dance (RTD). The non-violent protest was held in San Diego and Los Angeles to prove to city administrators that that Rave as based on the tenets of peace, love and community. These protests would prove a turning point in the re-shaping of the Rave scene in America.
The cultural tenets associated with rave culture are: Peace, Love, Unity and Respect (PLUR). In the latter half of the nineties, 'Responsibility' was added to the acronym to promote awareness of increased drug overdoses at rave parties.
