The new Rave Party scene
The new party scene packs the old spirit, but this time with more guitars and gewgaws, says FREDDY DIAS
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Visit any night club or dance music party and it is quite amazing how much energy today’s young partying people possess; they dance almost non-stop and freak out at such events. A closer scrutiny will reveal the real cause. Many of them are high on drugs – narcotics and/or synthetic drugs, a necessary ingredient of the rave party scene.
The numerous dance music events which are regularly held at various coastal areas of Goa, from Keri in Pernem to Palolem in Canacona, particularly during the Christmas-New Year festivities and the Carnival celebration, are nothing, but a modified version of the ‘80s-90s’ rave. Even the controversial ‘Sunburn’ (dubbed as Asia’s biggest electronic dance music festival) which is held in the state since 2007, is the new rave (also spelt ‘neu rave’ and ‘nu rave’. It is the Rave revival, as it brings back all the things that used to make maniac magic – with a distinctly bonkers twist.
What is a rave? According to Wikipedia, a rave is a dance event where disk jockeys and other performers play electronic dance music. The slang expression ‘rave’ was originally used by people of Caribbean descent in London during the 60s to describe a party. Mainstream Haves, sometimes called ‘radical audio visual experience’, began in the late 60s as a product of reaction to and rebellion against trends in popular music, night club culture and commercial radio.
Raves, which has always been associated with electronic music, electric style and esoteric high-inducing substances, had been criticised as hippie culture, even in relatively permissive western societies like the USA and UK, and the law enforcement agencies have broken up such events. The availability of drugs – narcotics like cocaine, heroin, brown sugar, etc, had caused raves to be targeted and criticised by law enforcement officials and parents’ groups worldwide. But now, the psychedelia is suddenly pulling back the party-hearty punks. Whether it is London, New York or Manila, the new rave culture – with a spirit of inventiveness – has made a grand comeback. Its presence is being felt in India too, and particularly in Goa.
People who have participated in dance music parties in the last few years, say that the new rave movement is very hot. It is hitting everyone. The music is very electro and gangsta style. It’s about listening to weird underground music or trance music. It’s also about freak dressing. The clothes are excessively bright and showy. The costumes are bizarre. Think weird. Think unpredictable. It’s the new eccentric fashion. New ravers are thriving on humour, absurdity and creativity, they say. In Goa, we can see that the mood is fast catching on in music and clothes.
Analysts are of the opinion that the new rave isn’t much more than the old one, it is completely revitalised and reinvented. It’s about adding today’s sensibilities to music and fashion statements that characterised the old rave. The essential idea is to tap back into the old spirit, all gurgling keyboards, drugs and secret parties, only this time with more guitars and gewgaws. And while the classic ‘80s-90s’ rave attracted tens of thousands of people to a venue that would often remain secret up until a few hours before the event, today’s rave can often be more about quality than quantity. Today, a rave can be as small as 25 people or larger than 25,000. This new rave has a different influence as disk jockeys and rock artists are experimenting with newer genres. The new rave is a mish-mash of everything hip, cool and happening in music.
For new ravers, it is a very dance party act. There was a time when rock was cool, then rap was hot, but now, the mood is rave. It is not like the old rave, but very electro with crazy beats and sounds. Rave is about allowing your spirit to be free. Weird music is fun. The weirder it sounds, the better it is. The new rave movement has been triggered by fusion of various types of music.
What makes the new rave different is that it is not just about crazy, weird music, but also about your fashion, your accessories, and your attitude. The mood is very punk rock glam. Very eccentric, be it hairstyle or clothes. You have got to be flamboyant and flashy.
So, it is about putting what you see on the fashion ramps through your personal prism and coming up with something completely whacked out that showcases your psychotic psyche. Coloured glasses, wigs and cheap gold and silver jewellery, spiced up with the season’s hottest ingredient, a crazy attitude. Being a raver is about being free from predictability.
Social activists, however, point out that part of the charm of a rave is its living-on-the-edge mood; for a generation that’s grown up on music video lewdness and play station games, that involve shootouts and drug busts. This is the slice of real live action that is hard to resist. Ravers let go of all inhibitions and indulge in illegal, often life-threatening drugs. Many of them get high on drugs, a necessary ingredient of a rave scene.
In the last few years, drugs use at a rave has undergone a drastic shift. Usage of cocaine and heroin has declined globally while opium and hashish, traditional drugs in India, have given way to synthetic drugs – especially Amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) and prescription drugs. These drugs appeal to the needs of today’s young people and have become part of modern lifestyles. Their use is to enhance performance, which include dancing. They are often taken in a discreet pill form, which avoids the dangers of injection or the social stigma of smoking. These drugs are also easily available as they can be brought and sold over the counter, sourced via the internet, sent through the local courier or even through the regular postal services. In fact, for the first time in India’s history, drugs have come out in the open. They are visible and are also dangerous.
As new drugs find their way into urban and semi-urban setups, young people seek a dash of chemical comfort – easy to procure, cheap to buy, that allows them to navigate under the radar of social and legal scrutiny. Synthetic drugs (psychoactive substances produced in a lab) are the flavour of night-clubbing or a Rave scene. They cover a wide range, from mind-altering amphetamines, ecstasy, LSD and other designer drugs to the easily available and pocket friendly prescription and over the counter (OTC) medicines. In fact, pharma drug abuse is on a high – drug cocktailing, mix and match of synthetic chemicals is the new flavour of rave and club parties.
Medical experts say that misuse of pharma drugs, such as painkillers, sedatives, anxiolytics, hypnotics and systhetic opiods like buprenorphine as well as polydrug use is steadily rising, which could be a public health disaster in the making. Synthetic drugs are particularly attractive to young people, as they bring down social inhibitions and produce a sense of high energy and competence. Indeed, the rave scene and club parties have popularised an assortment of drugs which many young people mistakenly believe are harmless.
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In other words, words
By Marc de Souza
Sometimes, my mind is so busy reading the inner working of my musings that the external voices which seek my attention are put on hold. After a few minutes, they register, but often too late. You see I love sound of rare words. When I hear something, my mind immediately begins to work on all the possibilities contained in the sound. What you are saying in the meantime has to wait.
You will not find the word ‘glooping’ in the dictionary, because I believe I invented it. It’s not something you or I very often do, but young people, especially adolescent boys, seem to do an awful lot of it, as in: “stop glooping around, boy, and earn your keep”. Roughly translated this means something like, “Get up off your fat backside, you lazy layabout, and help your father.” A glooper uses grunts and groans as best he can. Thus “Aww, Mmm!” translates as “Do I’ve to do everything round here? Can’t you leave a chap in peace for just a few minutes?” “Mmm,” means “I’ve heard you and I’m doing my best to ignore you.”
Each family develops its own private language over the years, composed of words that mean nothing to outsiders. Does your family have a name for those nasty speed breakers that shake your car and occupants when you drive over them? There are loads as you get to the Vintage Hospital. Some call them camel ‘Humps’, but my family members prefer to call them ‘bumps’.
A BF Goodrich executive kept exclaiming: “Zip her up! Zip her up!” as he played with the contraption before “zippers” were named in the 20s.
Some families call the underwear a ‘bookcase’ it’s really a bra that is being discussed. I remember a family whose embarrassed youngster once warned her mother when they went shopping for her first brassier to call this item a ‘bookcase’. If anyone asked where they were going, the mother was to reply, “Out to buy a bookcase.” Apart from the sheer fun of it, a lot of the reasons why we invent and continue to use such terms, is to have secret code words known only to the club members. Terms known only to insiders encourage a sense of belonging, and sayings based on shared experience remind family members of their history.
To our son, “Peggies” mean spaghetti. “Tubby” means tell me to our No l daughter. ‘Hottie’ means hot chocolate to our No 2 daughter. Then there are ‘lalos’. Our youngest daughter craved for bananas as an infant, but could not pronounce the word. So her siblings tried teaching her to ask for ‘yellows’. The closest she could come was ‘Laloos’. And that’s what bananas have been to the family ever since.
To think of it a few years ago, if someone told you that you were ‘green’, you would have taken it as an insult, as indeed it probably was. Now, however, if someone made the same remark, they are not likely to end up with a black eye! Reason? As we all know, our ‘greenness’ is measured by our care for the environment.
A beautiful thought of Iran comes leaping from my memory bank. I recollect my first trip, returning from the Caspian Sea to Tehran with friends Rock Fernandes SDB and Agnelo Lacerda of the Portuguese Embassy. It was just growing dark as we were bouncing down. The skyline loomed up in the twilight. It was glorious, with tall tree-lined road, and running water nearby. We had returned via the mountain road which runs through a certain village called Tamazchale. I didn’t know how to pronounce the name on the map until I was told that the natives had named their village after two voluntary workers, a doctor and engineer, called Thomas and Charlie, who helped them in various ways to stand on their own feet. Thomas and Charlie were both Americans, who laboured with the villagers for many years. Then I knew how to pronounce the name. Truly, to perform good deeds, there are no man made borders!
