xv Preface The electronic dance music (EDM) has given birth to a new understanding of certain relations: men and machine, art and technology, ancient rituals and neo-ritualism, ancestral and postmodern shamans, physical and virtual environments, natural and artificial elements, among other concepts visible in the world of Psychedelic Trance. This scenario has brought forth certain neo-ritualistic practices grounded in spirituality, using high tech elements as the guides to imaginary worlds and alternative states of consciousness. Technology has led to a growing disenchantment with the world. Despite that, some mystical impulses continue to incorporate those notions of myth into a new electronic state of enchantment. Created as a mixture of retro-futurism, spirituality, free thinking and technology, Psychedelic Trance is no longer merely a musical genre: it s a state of mind and a way of life shared by a worldwide movement that goes beyond the physical reality into virtual and transglobal dimensions. Growing at the same time as it spreads throughout the virtual world, digital platforms like social networks and online communities are creating new identities and redefining the concepts of self, tribe, subculture, belonging, inner space, consciousness, psychedelic, party, trance, experience, immersion, interaction, real, virtual, among others. It is then clear that the electronic dance music cultures are a vast universe which can and should be explored, interpreted and explained. More so, it is now clear that the conventional understanding of the world has been breached by a complex and dynamic reality, permeable and constantly changing as it is today. The postmodern man turned himself into a biopsychosocial being that can no longer be understood in isolation. We have come to realize that cells, men, machines, society, knowledge and cosmos seem to follow the same principles of organization and unity. Even with some valuable insights offered by recent scientific publications about this issue, we feel there is a need to go further and combine approaches from several academic fields to offer an interdisciplinary and holistic view on the subject.
xvi Although the scope of this book has as its common thread communication and technology sciences, its approach towards the social and the human was conducted with a deliberately intent to bring new contributions to the understanding of these fields. Assimilating knowledge from several academic views and personal experiences, gathering transdisciplinary contributions from the communication sciences, multimedia and digital platforms, new information and communication technologies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology, philosophy, religion studies, aesthetics and art, cultural studies and musicology in a single publication has revealed itself a tremendous task with powerful results. Academics, researchers, advanced-level students, developers, artists, producers, trance-listeners, electronic music followers or just curious readers will find it a useful resource with noteworthy topics about the most recent psychedelic incursions into the reality of Psychedelic Trance. This book is organized into thirteen chapters. The authors are academics from different backgrounds with a professional and personal interest in EDM, music cultures, music scenes, and specifically in Psychedelic Trance. The first chapter explores the biogenetic structural perspectives of shamanism, raves and collective dance rituals, music and psychedelic substances. The author addresses common themes underlying shamanic rituals and raves, focusing on the social and emotional bonding, personal healing, and altered states of consciousness brought by the symbiosis of dance and music. In this approach, the rave parties are seen as modern manifestations of the same biological principles of shamanism. The second chapter presents an historical retrospective of the roots of trance in a musical context considering the influences of some bands from the 1970 s and 1980 s. The author reflects on his own experience and analyzes concepts such as music, lyrics and others, including a discussion on various genres like Psychedelic Rock, Electronic or Punk artists as contributing to the development of trance, in the emergence of Psychedelic Trance. Noting how Psychedelic Trance events have been growing and taking new names as psychedelic gatherings or transformational festivals, the third chapter suggests them as new religious movements presenting a comparison between religious cults and Psychedelic Trance events. The author discusses elements such as belonging, identity, spiritual practices, self- development and religiosity among the transformational culture based on these new forms of musical festivals, taking for example those happening in North America. Furthermore, it is clear that EDM is inseparable from the technological factor, not only in the musical conception but also in all the surrounding that characterize most of its events. The fourth chapter explores the relevance of multimedia technologies in Psychedelic Trance gatherings, exploring these mediums as high tech environments where technology converges with sensitive and spiritual experiences. In it, the authors advocate that multimedia environments provide visual and auditory effects
that help the projection of the individual to altered states of consciousness. These elements are suggested as modern shamanic tools, replacing and complementing shadows, chants and drums used in ancient tribal dance rituals. The Psychedelic Trance movement is also a product of the information society, now anchored more than ever in cyberspace, virtual environments and online communities. This subject is addressed in the fifth chapter, which explores the Psychedelic Trance tribe s new digital territories, practices and online behaviors, as well as the relation between physical and digital communities. The migration to the web has been transforming this subculture into an enormous global movement from which more and more gatherings are flowing, including three-dimensional environments such as Second Life. Based on ethnographical field work, the authors come within reach of the reality of Psychedelic Trance virtual gatherings and analyze the position of the virtual Psy parties in relation to the conventional meetings. Following this frame of thought, the sixth chapter presents the main technological requirements of a digital platform for virtual events. Digital platforms provide fused experiences between offline real life and online digital objects, and in this chapter the authors present examples of computing devices considered essential for the highest experience of virtual Psychedelic Trance gatherings. More so, Electronic music is often used in interactive artistic installations. In the seventh chapter, the authors present the role of Psychedelic Trance on touchless interactive experiences. This approach reports experimental results of multimedia interactive digital experiences with electronic music and human behavior, when confronted with unfamiliar technological equipments. The project consists of a geodesic structure where people interact with the sound through their body movements, with Psychedelic Trance music providing specific rhythms and sound that allow interesting and harmonious results between the audience, captured by sensors which generate different sounds. The eighth chapter explores the technognosis concept, which combines media, arts, performance and technology with the notion of gnosis, contextualized in the spiritual dimension of Psychedelic Trance parties dance-floor. Psychedelic Trance as a phenomenon is analyzed as the possible enhancer of a new paradigm of human existence, articulating aesthetic, visionary experiences, multimedia and performance expression, with religious studies. The ninth chapter explores the paradox of self through a phenomenological approach within its philosophic concepts to understand the notions of self, real and existence on the context of the trancers mind-set. Inspired by the works of poet Teixeira de Pascoaes and Ancient Greek sage Pythagoras, the author reveals the trancer not only as a follower of a specific music style but as someone who is in a deep quest of existence while experiencing Goa Trance on the dance-floor. xvii
xviii Continuing in the same line, the tenth chapter explores the experience of self in the Goa Trance dance-floor focusing on the relationship between the DJ s performance and the participation of the trancers on the dance-floor. Based on the musical sub gender of Psychedelic Trance, it also demonstrates that Goa Trance provides a non-self-centered experience, where the shamanic presence is not produced by the DJ individually (despite his responsibility in keeping the whole connection process) but is otherwise coming from the collective spirit of the dance-floor in which the DJ is also immersed. The eleventh chapter does a brief review of the generic musical attributes of Psychedelic Trance in the global scene of electronic dance, based on latest academic contributions. The overall aim is to interpret the culture of local psychedelic scene of England in accordance to the global scene. The twelfth chapter deals with Dark Psytrance as one of the branches of Psychedelic Trance and the musical transpositions of psychedelic experiences with LSD, based on ethnographic fieldwork. It seeks to discuss the musical and social aesthetics of Dark Psytrance and its manifestation in the Australian electronic dance music scene. Finally, the thirteenth and last chapter analyzes the emergence and dynamics of Psychedelic Trance based on the inputs from post-subcultural studies, in order to analyze the phenomena at a global and Portuguese level. The author discusses sociological theories, considering various heuristic interpretations of electronic dance music cultures in which Psychedelic Trance is included. The technological man and its interaction with the postmodern world are sometimes inspired and shaped according to the most natural and primitive essence of human beings, leading to the creation of new forms of reality. The new communication technologies and the global access to information may have spread the phenomenon of Psychedelic Trance on a global scale; however, it has also led to the need of an approach to Psy natives beyond the borders of their physical gatherings. Trancers became simultaneously cyber-natives and retro-futuristic characters, placed both in an organic and technological nature. Taking from its neo-tribal context and gatherings, this genre has produced a ritualization process where music and dancing bodies prevail in both natural and artificial atmospheres of spirituality and technologies. Through psychedelic or transformational festivals, the trancers and their neo-tribes seem to attempt to rescue some imaginary paradise lost - and simultaneously take back their connection with nature, the universe and themselves.
The work found in this book attempts to help understand the universe of Psychedelic Trance, its natives, and their belonging to a bug global neo-tribe. United by a beat, they are one. We are One! Emília Simão Portuguese Catholic University, Portugal Armando Malheiro da Silva University of Porto, Portugal Sérgio Tenreiro de Magalhães Portuguese Catholic University, Portugal xix