The Politics of Underground Electronic Music
Lillian Morrissey explores the politics of underground electronic music.
Midnight, July 13. Creeping out of the semi-darkness of the industrial outskirts of London is a deep, repetitive beat. Embedded in a neon spectacle of lights and movement, I can see more clearly with every advancing step, tucked under a highway underpass between a canal and a vacant lot. Cars pass overhead, entirely unaware of what is happening beneath them. The highway becomes a division between different worlds: the underground psytrance party below, the rest of society passing by unaware. What, exactly, is the relationship between the two?
Played at ‘raves’, ‘squat parties’, ‘warehouse parties’, ‘bush doofs’ and ‘open airs’, underground electronic music – electronic music that exists outside of mainstream club culture – is generally explored in alternative settings that avoid the legal and commercial confines faced by legitimate for-profit music venues. The ‘rave scene’ is in fact an eclectic range of underground electronic music communities. By avoiding mainstream venues, these communities provide themselves with greater freedom in terms of music, drug taking, artistic expression, and behavioural norms.
“Underground electronic music … is generally explored in alternative settings that avoid the legal and commercial confines faced by legitimate for-profit music venues.”
But what is the ‘politics’ behind what may seem like simple music? Hal Foster, author of Recodings, considers the ‘rave’ to be one example of the individualism, hedonism and escapism of modern amusement. From this perspective, underground electronic music culture represents a retreat from wider society in the pursuit of superficial and apolitical distraction.
According to one Toronto raver, it is simplistic to assume that all those who attend raves do so for political motives. “The rave is not just one thing.” Some people attend “to have a spiritual experience”. Others are there merely “to have a good time”.
However, in a society where experience is controlled through regulatory and social norms, creating a community that exists outside of that and is able to be more than ‘one thing’ to each participant is in itself a political move, whether intentional or inadvertent.
