What is a rave? Raving is a highly subjective experience. One person’s best rave is another person’s worst. Any attempt to analyze rave culture must recognize the highly personal factor of the experience. Author Daniel Martin defines a rave as “a long period of constant energetic and stylistic dancing exhibited by a large group of people in a hot, crowded facility providing continuous loud House music and an accompanying strobe lit psychedelic light show” (78).
But what effect does the rave scene really have on popular culture? Since the beginning of this culture there has been much controversy on the legality of what goes on in the scene. Through the history, music, people, spirituality we are introduced to one of the newest things affecting pop culture today. Rave culture can be traced back to Native American religious ceremonies.
It can be traced back to the sixties Be-Ins and Love Ins and Acid Tests. It can be traced back to anarchist revolutions in Italy and France. It pulls energy from many different directions. It had its origins in Chicago and Detroit disco clubs and gay dance clubs, and also in progressive music from England such as Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode. England and America traded musical influences back and forth during the late seventies-early eighties until techno finally started to be formed. The actual rave movement, however, combining this new music with dancing, occurred in England.
The Essay on rave culture
Rough draft ged-155 This essay will explain rave culture. The reason that I chose to research and write on this topic is that I am involved with rave scene and enjoy going to ?raves.? From researching this topic I discovered that rave culture displays many of life?s simple pleasures, such as dancing. Over the last 10-15 years, a new trend of parties has been evolving. These gatherings are known ...
At almost the exact same time, raves started popping up in Manchester and Ibiza, a noted English vacation spot, in late 1987 and early 1988. At this same time, the rave phenomenon was taking hold in Germany, most notably in Berlin (Jordan 30).
The popularity of raves grew in both countries, and soon the intimate all-night dance parties were drawing thousands of kids. They were also drawing DJs from the United States. Author Joel Jordan talks about the beginning of this movement when he states, “In the early nineties, the rave scene began moving across the Atlantic to America, fueled by American DJs eager to take this incredible thing back home, and English DJs eager to expand their horizons” (34).
The first U.S.
raves were held in San Francisco, long noted for its liberal and psychedelic culture. From here, they moved to Los Angeles and the rave scene was born in California. (Jordan 40).
The rave scene that was born in America was one of complete illegality. It began when Frankie Bones, a New York native and one of the U.S. DJs that was spinning in England, saw that the scene was moving into America, and wanted to bring it to his hometown of Brooklyn. He started a series of parties called Stormrave in early 1992.
The parties started out small, 50-100 kids, and Frankie resorted to projecting videos of the massive raves in England to show kids what it was all about. It was during this period of Stormraves that many DJs made their debuts. Now household names among ravers, Sven Vath, Doc Martin, Keoki, Josh Wink and many others began their careers at Frankie’s Stormraves. It was in December of 1992 that the rave scene started growing. Frankie held a party at an abandoned loading dock in Queens that drew over 5000 kids from New York and neighboring states (Redhead 60).
According to rave myth, this was when Frankie made his speech about peace, love, unity, and respect, which were to become PLUR, the foundation of the American rave scene. It was also during this rave that three guys from Milwaukee decided to come check it out.
These guys later were to form Drop Bass Network, based in Milwaukee, and now one of the bigger promoter groups in the country. Joel Jordan explains, “They also introduced the scene to the Mid-West. The rave scene grew in America in 1993 and 1994” (56).
The Essay on Raves Rave Scene
RAVES Many people ask, what is a rave When attempting to analyze the rave culture, people must recognize that raves are a highly personal experience. Descriptions of raves are basically one person s opinion. Aside from that, a rave is basically an all night party where people have the most incredible time. People become one with the music. Raves are pretty much all about the music, the vibe and ...
While the rave scenes in England and Germany were becoming commercial empires, the American rave scene still had its fresh idealism. There were now raves happening across the country, in all of the states. The music at a rave is techno, primarily electronically created music that generally has a high level of bass.
It tends to be fast-paced, running from between about 115 Beats Per Minute (BPM) to 300 BPM, with the most common being about 120 BPM to 140 BPM (Jordan 78).
Barnard describes techno by its “slavish devotion to the beat, the use of rhythm as a hypnotic tool. It is also distinguished by being primarily, and in most cases entirely, created by electronic means’ (44).
Normally at a rave, a DJ ‘spins’ to create the music that the ravers hear. The act of spinning is the art of mixing songs together using different pitches, different speeds, and an equalizer to create an ever-flowing, ever-changing wall of sound. In effect, artists record techno songs, which are then reinterpreted and mixed with other techno songs, creating a spontaneous new song. Techno has its origins in gay dance clubs and hip-hop. Chicago DJ’s began mixing their dance music with a drum synthesizer and house was born: The classic House is simple: a four quarter beat: 1 2 3 4 in a not too fast tempo(120 beats per minute) at about the speed of the heart of the dancer.
On the 2 and 4, there is a snare drum or hand clap; in between 1 2 3 4 of the bass drum, you hear hi hats. The tracks are finished with some happy/swinging sounds and a simple melody. (Swertz) From house, came acid house, which involved adding the Roland 303, a synthesizer that was able to produce different layers and pitches. It contains a deeper psychedelic sound of “trippy” waves. Then the music continued to evolve, into techno, both ‘Detroit’ style and Hardcore. Experts New Order and Kraftwerk describe it as ” a fusion of American P-funk and European synthesizer music” (qtd. in Swertz 1).
Hardcore is basically a really hard and really fast version of Detroit techno. From here, we get further permutations.
Breakbeat uses hip-hop samples and reggae tunes. Jungle uses a lot of percussive bongo and drumming sounds, as well as bringing in chants. Darkside utilizes minor chordal progressions to create an ‘evil’ feeling. Trance was developed, very melodic and hypnotizing music that tends to be on the slow side. Author Swertz states “The basic beat is 1 2 3 4, hence techno, and 140+ BPM. The hi hats between the four beats are louder than in other genres….The bass can go higher and lower.
The Term Paper on Electronic Dance Music
Electronic dance music (also known as EDM, dance music, club music, or simply dance) is a set of percussive electronic music genres produced primarily for dance-based entertainment environments, such as nightclubs. Dance music is generally produced for use by DJs and is most often presented in the context of a DJ mix.[1] So called “DJ producers” often perform live sets of their own ...
The tracks are finished with dreamy and spacey sound scapes” (2).
Dancing is, to an extent, yet another reiteration of the music. The music that the DJ creates spontaneously is a text. Author Roberts explains, ‘The dancer then in turn re-interprets this text through movements of the body…the ‘reader’ therefore, whether in the role of dancer, DJ, or user of sampling technology contributes a mindset that is culturally specific and productive in itself’ (87).
Rave dancing can be highly stylistic, or extremely vulgar. The beat is the driving force.
Whether one is doing highly choreographed dance moves or simply thrusting their body back and forth ceases to matter. It is losing oneself to the beat, becoming one with the music by letting the music control your movements. Ravers are a unique crowd. While rave culture es ….
