RAVE ? Raw And Vitual Energy.
By PsySufi (Amit K Chatterjee)
Talking about Raves, one has to experience it to believe it. Is not just another party on a Saturday night. Its an underground party with futuristic music.
A party where the BPM (beats per minute) never drops, as the old saying goes ?Higher The Better? matches perfect to what I am yet to say.
?Rave is a high energy spiritual state of mind, where one connects to the raw and virtual energy music to achieve TRANCE which is a temporary state of mind.?
Rave is all bout psychedelic music, psychedelic environment and definitely a psychedelic state of mind.
I have been hearing this for a while till I actually saw it to believe it. I remember it was a full moon night and we were sipping on our drinks at the George?s.
It was about 12:50 am and we were just bout done with the beer, as George steps out to tell everybody about this RAVE PARTY that was on somewhere.
Everyone look very excited bout the whole thing, where I had no clue of what was happening till George tells ?Lets GOA?.
What on earth was ?lets GOA? ?? Surprised, confused and excited to know what was it all about, I decided to start the trail?
I got on to my machines to hit the road and find out what a Rave was all about?
I just couldn?t stop thinking what would this RAVE be like, I tried to link what George said with the word RAVE but its just made no sense?
Rave? and lets GOA, well all I knew is, I was in goa and the last thing I could think of is a carnival at 1:30 am in the morning. I remember it was long ride and I also remember the bike getting stuck in a paddy field?
Yes, I did wonder too? where the hell was I upto ?
It was 2:20 am when we reached the other side of GOA, I suppose. It was pitch dark and all I could see were the tiny red back lights of the bikes I was following.
We come out to a open space next at Anjuna Beach where the rave is supposed to be.
I get down to get some smokes for my self when a shabby looking guy approaches me and sayz ? U WANT TRIPS?.
I tried to understand him as it was really windy, I asked him ?What ?? he smiles and sayz, ? Do you need trips for the rave ?? . I had no idea what he was talking about, but said an ?YES.?
He then digs into his hemp bag by his waist and ask, What do u want ? LSD, Rolex or E ?
I took a wild guess and said, give me E. He takes out a small blue pill and places it on my palm.
It was a tiny blue pill with a smiley face on it, looks somewhat like one of those cough n cold pills that my mom would give me?
I asked him how much is this for ? He smiles and tells me I will give it to u for 400/-.
I looked at him, and asked him if he has anything better?
Right out he says, ELVIS DOUBLE DIPPED LSD, a trip that would be there for 36 hrs.
That convinced me some how and I said, I will take it. He digs into his bag and gets a sheet of brown paper out from an old diary that he carried.
It was a brown paper with a painting of Elvis? he tears a blot out of it and gives it to me n says ?Go On Acid? by the time I could react he vanished in the crowd with the cash.
If I remember correctly he probably took 600/- chips for that piece of paper.
I was about to experience something out of the world, as he sayz, so 600/- chips didn?t quite bother me.
But what worried me was, if I was cheated.
?THE NEXT PART OF THE EXPERIENCE WILL BE UPDATED BY PSYSUFI ONCE HE IS OFF THE LSD TRIP?
Take for instance the comments of a hard-core raver on the net: “Everyone who’s ever been to a Goa-party knows that they are really incredible and that it is 100 per cent different from normal parties or clubs. When you arrive at a Goa party you mostly can’t believe your eyes, most of the parties are on locations you can only dream about...”
Plastered all over the internet are websites dedicated exclusively to ‘Goa trance’ and rave party schedules for across the world: from the one in Berlin on February 18, to the ‘Caleidoscope’ in Vienna and the ‘Freedom Party’ in Sofia, Bulgaria around the same dates.
The party schedule for Goa remains ominously blank these days. So what is Goa trance?
“The music has its roots in the popularity of the Goa region in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a hippie mecca, although the actual Goa trance style would not appear until early 1990s.
As the tourist influx (the reference here is probably to the hippie tourist influx) tapered off in the 1970s and 1980s, a core group remained in Goa, concentrating on improvements in music along with other activities such as yoga, recreational drug use and various New Age pursuits.
The introduction of techno style and technique to Goa led to what would eventually become the Goa trance style; early pioneers included DJs (disc jockeys) like Laurent, Fred Disko and Goa Gil, or Mark Allen a bit later.
Many “parties” in Goa revolve entirely around this genre of music; Goa (meaning Goa trance) is also often played in other countries at raves, festival and parties often in conjunction with other styles of trance and techno” (from ‘Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia’).
Almost half of Goa trance music produced today comes from Israel.
The Israeli connection
Young Israelis still flock to Goa to unwind in what is known as the ‘post army trip’. “Because of the war there, many of them come to India to forget things, ” one raver says. Their large presence in Ozrant, Anjuna, has earned the beach the pop cult name of ‘Tel Aviv’ beach. But the Israeli connection extends well beyond techno beats to the dark world of synthetic drugs that fuel the rave party cult.
“The Israelis deal in LSD, heroin and MDMA (methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, known better by its street name Ecstasy), ” a 30-year-old Goan restaurateur who is a regular at the raves says.
While most Indians like him (many upwardly mobile young Indians from Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi have been known to descend on Goa specially for the raves) stick mainly to regular ‘hash’ (hashish) and the more expensive ‘Manali cream’ (a purer form of hashish), the foreigners, he says, are definitely on the harder stuff. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to dance to trance, sometimes four days in a row.”
Digital trance
The last party he attended this year was in the open at Hilltop in Anjuna. It started on January 23 and went on till January 27. There was a crowd of 3, 000 ravers and the ecstasy trippers were more pronounced at around 5 a.m. “when the digital trance beat gets faster”.
“I know from my experience of the rave parties that have been going on around Anjuna for the last 28 years that at least 35 per cent of ravers use some drug or other, ” says Dr Jawaharlal Henriques who runs the 20-room St Anthony’s Hospital in Anjuna.
Drug problems
A large number of his patients are foreigners with drug-related problems.
This year three of Dr Henriques’ patients died of heroin overdose. Last year he saw 10 heroin-related deaths.
Drugs at the raves are a serious issue, the young restaurant owner agrees. But he and his friends believe “there’s too much of a fuss being made over the parties”.
In the last few years, the profile of ravers in Goa has changed. “They are usually in the early 30s, working, hooked on trance dancing. They come to Goa only to party.”
Stopping the raves could have a huge impact on this segment of tourism, he points out.