RAVE PARTY : THE ORIGINS

Techno music reflects our effort to live in harmony with the technology and nature.

"Some people love it for its form, melody and the rhythm, some people love it for its idea and the concept and some are simply letting chemicals dictate what they think and feel.

discovering interaction with music

Some at the other hand, take the next step and abandon the habit of passive listening and start interacting with music realising how much more rewarding it is to create than simply receive. Availability of modern computers and intuitive audio software today, makes it really easy for any motivated individual to interact, manipulate, design sounds and compose music.

At raves we are controlled by the beat, we're willing to unite and feel the energy of the collective - something we don't experience every day - even though we live in the system where we all function together and exist as a community.

So what does that make techno music? Perhaps our very basic instincts tell us to celebrate the phenomenon of technology. We only act as it's written in our genes - it's all just the human nature - just another human fetish - another form of religion, another church - another philo..."

History

Typical Party

Law and Police

Squat Party

Drugs

Locations

Teknivals

French Teknivals

UK Teknivals

Subculture

Clashes with authority

Hippies of a New Era

Northern California scene

Mid-west scene

Outlaw Parties

Popular culture

A free party is a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement.

It typically involves a sound system playing electronic dance music from late at night until the time when the organisers decide to go home. A free party can be composed of just one system or of many and if the party becomes a festival, it becomes a teknival.

The parties can be thought of as autonomous zones where all the people present create and enforce the rules. This means that drugs are readily available and noise levels are usually illegally high. The word free in this context is used both to describe the entry free and the lack of restrictions and law enforcement. Motivations for organisers range from political protest to just wanting to have fun. An example of free parties as political protest was their prominence during the M11 link road protest. At most parties no money is asked for entrance since the aim is not to make profit. However at some (most often indoor) events it is requested at the door to make a donation to cover costs. Typically organisers make little profit or make a loss setting them up.

The term free party is used more widely in Europe than in the US. In Canada and some parts of Europe they are also referred to as Freetekno parties. A free party might have once been described as a rave, and the origins of the two are similar. Since the birth of nightclubs in town centres in Europe the use of the word rave had largely fallen out of fashion, however in recent times it is increasingly being used again.

History

After the emergence of the Acid House parties in the late 1980s up to 4,000 people were known to attend a rave. These events happened almost every weekend. The noise and disturbance of thousands of people appearing at parties in rural locations, such as Genesis '88, caused outrage in the national media.

The British government made the fine for holding an illegal party £20,000 and six months in prison.

Police crackdowns on these often-illegal parties drove the scene into the countryside. The word "rave" somehow caught on to describe these semi-spontaneous weekend parties occurring at various locations outside the M25 Orbital motorway that now attracted up to 25 000. It was this that gave the band 'Orbital' their name.

In the 1990s raves began to expand into a global phenomenon. Around 1989-1992 people who had travelled to attend the first raves began setting up promotion companies in each region to organize their own parties. This happened on a grassroots basis, often informally. By the mid-1990s, major corporations were sponsoring events and adopting the scene's music and fashion for their "edgier" advertising, making the scene become more commercialized.

After sensational coverage in the tabloids, culminating in a particularly large rave (near Castlemorton) in May 1992, the government acted on what was depicted as a growing menace. In 1994, the United Kingdom's Criminal Justice Bill passed as the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which contained several sections designed to suppress the growing free party and anti-road protest movements (sometimes embodied by ravers and travellers).

By the early 2000s, the term "rave" had fallen out of favour among some people in the electronic dance music community, particularly in Europe. Many Europeans identify themselves as "clubbers" rather than ravers. The term 'free party' has been used for sometime and can be seen on the Spiral Tribe video 'Forward the Revolution' in 1992. It tried to disconnect raves from big commercial events of the early nineties to a more anarchist version of a party.

Some communities preferred the term "festival", while others simply referred to "parties". With less constrictive laws allowing raves to continue long after the United Kingdom tried to ban them, more anarchic raves continue to occur in Central Europe and France, where the law says there can be only 4 teknivals per year (2 in the south, 2 in the north). In France the larger teknivals can attract up to 30 000 people in a three-day period. The terms free party and squat party have become the predominant terms used to describe an illegal party.

The term "rave" is still often used to describe an unlicensed party in some parts of the United Kingdom, particularly the South East - perhaps because larger licensed "rave" events have become less common due to anti-drugs enforcement causing venue owners to be wary of hosting them. Free parties tend to be on the boundaries of law and are strongly discouraged by government authorities, occasionally using aggressive police tactics.

Typical Party

Free parties are much like other rave parties, their main distinction being that the venue is free to use. The result is that they are often held in isolated outdoor venues or abandoned buildings, where they are also known as squat parties. If the building has a power source that is used but if not then the organisers will use generators.

Often free parties involve a lot of ( mostly illegal)  dance drug use. The music played at free parties is very bass heavy. It is for this reason that they are usually held in isolated venues or places where police interference is unlikely, such as protected squatting residences ( particularly in the UK, where police used not to be able to enter a squat easily ).

The types of music played are usually various forms of dance music with fast repetitive beats, but, due to the lack of a commercial interest, the genre chosen is often far from popular main-stream tastes and is decided purely by the tastes of the DJs who play for the sound systems putting the event on. Each sound system has its own music policy, following and entourage. The current trend is towards breakcore and gabba or, in another musical direction, psy-trance but many sound systems still play traditional techno, Acid Techno, Hard Trance and Electro House/Techno. Some parties in England, but also across Europe such as in the Netherlands, now incorporate elements of performance art ("synthetic circus") as well as electronic dance music.

Due to the lack of licensing restrictions, these parties often start after midnight and continue through the night until morning, often longer. Parties lasting several days are not uncommon; some large teknivals can go on for a week.

Law and Police

In UK under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 where the definition of music played at a rave was given as:

{{{   "Music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.   }}}

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

Sections 63, 64 & 65 of the Act targeted electronic dance music played at raves. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act empowered police to stop a rave in the open air when a hundred or more people are attending, or where two or more are making preparations for a rave. Section 65 allows any uniformed constable who believes a person is on their way to a rave within a five-mile radius to stop them and direct them away from the area; non-compliant citizens may be subject to a maximum fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale (£1 000). The Act was ostensibly introduced because of the noise and disruption caused by all night parties to nearby residents, and to protect the countryside. It has also been claimed[2] that it was introduced to kill a popular youth movement that was taking many drinkers out of town centres drinking taxable alcohol and into fields to take untaxed drugs.

The number of people attending and organising such an event for it to be deemed illegal were altered in the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 section 58 to cover indoor parties and outdoor parties of more than 20 people. It is also a crime if, within 24 hours of being told by a police officer to leave a rave, a person makes preparations to attend a rave.

More recently in the United Kingdom, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) have been used against unlicensed rave organisers if the police receive repeated complaints about noise and littering from locals.

Despite these laws, free parties continue to exist. They do so in a number of ways. They can be small (with fewer than 100 people) and remote so that they are unlikely to cause distress to the local residents. If the police find out about the party and turn up, it is rarely worth the use of resources to attempt to arrest people and seize equipment. The people at the rave would then have to leave without having time to tidy up and potentially still incapable of driving safely. The other way free parties continue is to be large enough to make breaking them up difficult. When there are more than 500 or so people then there is a potential for a riot. A typical police response to why a rave was not stopped is: "officers had decided not to stop the rave because they had only received one complaint about noise and the amount of resources needed to stop it would not be justified."

In August 2006, an unlicensed party organised by United Sounds - Aztek, LowKey, One Love, Mission, Illicit, Monolith & Brainskan Sound Systems in Essex, England was broken up after 24 hours resulting in approx 60 injuries from both sides and over 50 arrests. This was one of the largest confrontations between police and ravers that had occurred at an unlicensed event for many years.

The Chief Superintendent in charge of the police operation said "These sorts of raves are quite unheard of in this county - I have not seen this sort of violence since the old days of acid house."

Squat Party

A squat party is a party that takes place either in a disused building (broken into and secured for the party) or in an already existing squat.

Squat parties are usually advertised either by word of mouth, postings on internet bulletin boards, flyers handed out at other similar events and through phone lines set up by the sound system(s) organising the event. This is for security reasons, since the organisers do not want the authorities finding out about them and trying to stop them. Other events might be much smaller acoustic nights run more like a cafe . Squatted buildings are often used as social centres and creative spaces for people to use.

Most squat parties usually run for 12 to 24 hours, finishing when the organisers have had enough or if they are shut down by police. Most large cities in the UK have a squat party scene but London is the most active cities by some extent. The majority of London squat parties occur in mainly industrial sectors e.g. East London, as abandoned warehouses make ideal venues and a smaller chance of residential noise complaints. The London squat party scene of recent years has seen an influx of European travellers, largely from the East, where there is also a large rave culture, for example events such as Czechtek.

Squat parties are typically either free or charge a small donation on the door. Typically the organisers also try to make additional money through selling alcohol inside.

Squat 'eviction' parties occur when the squatters residing in a building have been given a final date for their eviction, and as a final act of resistance organise a large scale party and protest in order to try and withstand the police or bailiffs.

Drugs

Drugs sale and use is long standing and accepted, especially ecstasy, cannabis, LSD and ketamine. Drugs are available at almost all free parties and people use them whilst dancing to bass heavy music all night - and sometimes all day - long.

In early years 'uppers' such as MDMA were the most common drugs taken at parties, however over the last fifteen years there has been a steady increase in the popularity of ketamine as the drug of choice for party-goers, most noticeably in the London acid techno scene, where ketamine has a massive presence and has been said by some to have spoiled the atmosphere found at earlier parties. Since 2000 ketamine has crossed over from being almost entirely a drug found in the free party scene to one commonly found in mainstream clubs as well.

Locations

Typical parties in the European scene range from small parties with a couple of hundred people up to huge multi-riggers involving a thousand or more people. The number of sound systems involved also varies - small parties may have just one or two sound systems, larger parties may have anything up to 20 or more, including several "link-ups" where two or more sound systems will combine their rigs into a single large system.

Although London is the central location for squat parties, they exist outside the capital and places such as bedfordshire and buckinghamshire also have popular scenes. Outdoor parties are popular all over Wales and the South West and can attract up to a thousand people. Outdoor parties are organised so that noise pollution is not a factor. If the local residents complain then the party is much more at risk of being stopped. In most big cities there is a underground counterculture centred around free parties which are predominantly outdoor parties in the summer and squat parties when it is too cold.

TEKNIVALS

Teknivals (the word is a portmanteau of the words tekno and festival) are large free parties which take place worldwide. They take place most often in Europe and are often illegal under various national or regional laws. They vary in size from dozens to thousands of people, depending on factors such as accessibility, reputation, weather, and law enforcement. The parties often take place in venues far away from residential areas such as squatted warehouses, empty military bases, forests or fields. The teknival phenomenon is a grassroots movement which has grown out of the rave, UK traveller and Burning Man scenes and spawned an entire subculture. Summer is the usual season for teknivals.

Sound systems gather on the site and play varied types of electronic music. Along with each sound system come friends and travellers so most teknivals have a multicultural atmosphere. The parties can last for several days or even weeks. Teknivals are organised by the sound system community using underground methods such as word of mouth, answerphone messages, flyer (pamphlet) and internet discussion boards. Normally the flyer states that the party is an open invitation, thus any artist who turns up can play music. The emphasis is on a DIY ethic. As well as local sound systems, who might act as the hosts, larger sound systems can spend the summer travelling from one teknival to the next before returning to their home country for the winter.

Since a teknival can last a week or longer, many musical styles will be represented. The music which grew in tandem with teknivals was free tekno, which is characterised by heavy, repetitive kick drums and is normally about 180 bpm. The DJs and party goers are unconcerned by musical boundaries, so a lot of different, mostly electronic, music is played and performed.

Most sound systems play styles such as hard trance, acid techno, spiral tekno, terrorcore, electro, jungle music, breakcore and speedcore. Instead of focusing on genre, the music can be characterised by being more underground than the music heard in clubs and at commercial parties, although some sound systems might specialise in a certain subgenre. The music is played by DJs playing vinyl records and Mp3 files on a computer. Livesets are also frequently played using a variety of equipment: keyboards, drum machines, guitar effects pedals, MIDI controller and computers.

At early teknivals, sound systems would play until either no-one was left dancing or the diesel ran out in the generator.

History

Teknivals are a larger scale version of free parties and emerged in the early 1990s, when acid house parties and travellers in Great Britain became the target of political repression, culminating in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Section 63 of the Act gave the police new powers to close down illegal parties.

Sound systems then started travelling to countries in Europe where laws were less restrictive and the authorities were uncertain how to stop the festivals. One of the most famous of these sound systems was Spiral Tribe, which was at the forefront of the free party movement in Europe. Other systems were called Bedlam, Circus Normal, Circus Warp and Vox Populi. Desert Storm sound system organised teknivals in France and Spain and brought raves to war-torn Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1996. At one party the front-line was 10 kilometres away and they were asked to turn off their lights in case they attracted enemy fire.

While some teknivals are one-off events, most take place every year on or around the same date; the biggest, such as the ones in France or Czechtek in the Czech Republic (which blossomed from a small festival in 1994), can attract up to 80,000 visitors.

Just as the word 'teknival' was formed by merging together the words 'tekno' and 'festival', teknivals in different countries are referred to by abbreviated names, such as the aforementioned Czechtek, and also Poltek (Poland), Slovtek (Slovakia), Southtek (South Germany), Bulgariatek (Bulgaria), Rotek(Romania) Helltek(Greece, Hellas in Greek), Dutchtek (Netherlands), Easttek (East Germany), U-Tek (Ukraine),Northtek (Canada) and Occitek (Occitania, South France). NorthTek was held on Crown Land in Ontario.

French Teknivals

As thousands of sound systems proliferated post-Spiral Tribe, France rapidly became the center of the teknival world. The May Day teknival at Fontainebleau near Paris was attracting 60-80,000 people by the late 1990s and, by 2004, as a now legitimate (but still non-commercial) event, up to 110,000 with over 200 sound systems. Eventual amendments to the public safety laws, the Loi sur la Securité Quotidienne, were passed in 2002 (known as the “Mariani Law” named after politician Thierry Mariani) in which free parties became linked with terrorism. Like the UK’s CJA, this effectively criminalized large free festivals and increased police powers to prevent these events. Legitimate teknivals, now dubbed “Sarkovals” after Nicolas Sarkozy would require permission from the Ministry. But while regulatory interventions have inaugurated the institutionalization and commercialization of a scene rooted in an autonomous vibe, the scene still thrives. Currently French law permits free parties with 500 people or under (subject to no noise complaints), and while Prefets generally refuse the applications now required for free parties with over 500 people, through constant negotiations with the Ministry of Interior since the August 2002 teknival on the French/Italian frontier at Col de l’Arches where sound crews set up rigs inside the Italian border facing the party goers in France,[3] the French Government have reluctantly allowed up to three large teknivals each year, even though they are technically unauthorized events. Teknivals also take place outside legal festivals such as Printemps de Bourges, Transmusicales in Rennes or Borealis in Montpellier. Teknival negotiators deal directly with the Ministry of Interior, not the Ministry of Culture (with whom the commercial ventures seeking official status must deal) indicating that they are largely not cultural but security concerns.

UK Teknivals

Recently in the United Kingdom teknivals have occurred again, despite huge police attention. In 2002 the tenth anniversary of the legendary Castlemorton rave was celebrated at Steart Beach in Somerset (there had also been a smaller teknival at the same location one year previously). In 2005 there was a UKtek in Wales and also a teknival known as Scumtek that happened twice in London. The first Scumtek was stopped by the police.

2006 saw a teknival occur in Camelford, Cornwall. The event saw approximately 2,500 people attend, and was eventually clamped down on by the police three days after the event began. UKtek 2008 took place in a moorland quarry above Rochdale in North Manchester resulting in a significant police response. Dog units, mounted police, and police in full riot gear attended as seen on video available on youtube. The UKTek in 2009 took place on a remote hillside near Brecon, Wales.

Subculture

The teknival is often regarded as an example of what Hakim Bey has termed the Temporary Autonomous Zone, though in interviews Bey has professed that rave culture's interest in technology remains problematic for the implementation of the TAZ. However this has not stopped various groups from claiming the teknival and rave culture in general as the implementation of the TAZ. Anyone is welcome to enter the site, there is no ticket or fee. Normally any artist who turns up is encouraged to participate. Over the course of a few days the site can grow into a confusing village of sound systems, cafes, tents and vehicles.

Recreational drug use is common but by no means a prerequisite for entry. Drugs used include marijuana, ketamine, MDMA (ecstasy), alcohol, amphetamine (speed), LSD and magic mushrooms.

At the teknival site one finds a mixed group of young people which may include students, tekno travellers, squatters and hippies, bonded together by their love for listening to free tekno 'sous les etoiles' (translation: 'under the stars') - as an early flyer proclaimed.

It is usually the perception that there is no "coherent" politics or philosophical stance represented by the teknival subculture, mainly due to the fact that emphasis is placed on individual freedom. Many young teknival goers are disillusioned with mainstream politics. Nevertheless, the parties themselves require complex collective organisation and, in order to be successful, a sustainable environment of community relations. In themselves such events can be seen as a political statement of self-organisation at a distance from the State. Clashes with the police have mobilised some people to action against laws which would prohibit self-organisation and gathering to enjoy teknivals. These clashes date back to the '80s (when teknivals were arguably indistinguishable from UK Orbital raves, summer acid house parties, UK traveller gatherings, Stonehenge pagan events, early Burning Man and tribal gatherings, trance parties in Goa, India and the like) and have continued to be part of teknival life. In April 2006 there was a march followed by a small teknival in Strasbourg, France to protest against police repression generally and more specifically against the closure of Czechtek in 2005. During the implementation of the Criminal Justice Act in the UK, various large-scale protests took place during daylight and in public. The Reclaim the Streets and Anti-Capitalist Carnivals of the '90s that led up to and beyond the Seattle WTO protests (and subsequent "anti-globalization" events) drew from teknival and rave organisation and culture, often involving many of the same organisers and cross-section of the population.

As occurs with many subcultures, a dress code has developed. This 'underground look' involves dark, baggy clothing (often ex-military) and extreme haircuts, such as dyed hair, dreadlocks or a shaved head (or a combination of the above). Body piercings and tattoos are common. People often buy large vehicles second-hand such as decommissioned buses, coaches or trucks. The vehicles are often primarily homes, lived in permanently or for a few months while travelling (see Irish Traveller). They are also used to transport sound equipment. The tekno traveller is also known as a New Age traveller or "crusty".

Clashes with authority

As the teknival movement has grown bigger, attention from the police has increased.

Teknivals will sometimes be stopped; each country has different attitudes and laws concerning teknivals. To stop a teknival, police will usually begin by asking the organisers to move on but they can resort to measures such as using tear gas and impounding sound systems, for example at Czechtek in 2005.

Teknivals still happen in

Scotland, England, Wales, France, Canada, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Austria, Slovakia and Japan...

and

THE SPIRAL HAS NOT END...

GIVE THE MESS@GE TO YOUR NEIGHBOUR