On the evolution of subcultures - 9/15/06

After attending last night’s 2006 Burning Man Decompression Party, a friend asked me how similar I thought the festivities were to the peak of the rave scene. You have to understand, the larger posse remarked all night on the similarities, and the afterparty, a sick little shindig in some loft off downtown was straight-up time travel back to 1996 or so. The techno had regressed in its evolution, had climbed another iteration of some upward spiral path. The tracks blended into each other, syncopation left to a minimum. The crowd dug it. There was some booty-shakin’, I don’t have to tell you. But anyway, I digress...

So there I was, eating chorizo and pondering the ol’ ‘compare and contrast’ third grade assignment in my mind. What intrigued me most was that for every similarity, I found another difference. Or, not so much a difference per se, but truly an evolution, a paradigm shift in underground culture. And the first example I could think of to support this sudden theory got down, for me, to the bottom of the whole underground phenomenon to begin with. Organization.

There are likely those out there who know far more than I about the politics and economics of rave promoting in the late 1990s. But it always seemed to me, on the “demand side,” that because of the embedded competition in capitalistic party promotion, competing parties were thrown that all took advantage of the culture. That is to say, the culture was there, it had developed independently, and as the parties got bigger, the market demanded more, and enterprising personas rose to fill an unmet need. So no one party ever formed the backbone of the culture, it was a powerfully amorphous spiritual trend across location and time. But the Burning Man phenomenon is different. One party to rule them all, one party to find them. Yes, well, you know how the rest of that goes. And yet that after-party, the remnants, the folk on the fringe, was the same as the ghost party memories in my mind…

But again I chase my tail. So: the differences first. Burning Man is a phenomenon all on its own. Oh, the scene was influenced by several subcultures, rave culture being but one, but the experience of Burning Man has elevated the culture to something more, or at least something different. Something shifted to involve an element of pilgrimage, of inner faith. Plus, the rules are different, out there on the playa, and people return to their lives a little more sure that every perception is subjective, that rules are of our own creation, and that the world is as malleable as molten gold.

So the costumes, for one, are a bit crazier, as if every event were truly Halloween, to be gone all out for. Though, I must admit, having never personally been to Burning Man as of this moment, I will not A) say that I can comment on the extent of costumes nor B) compare the costumes to the rave scene. But I will say that when, driving around, trying to find parking, one friend said to another, ‘any moment now you’ll see a bunch of people dressed up as freaks, and you just follow them,’ or some such comment, I smiled as I thought back to The Magician, written well before my recent acquaintance with the decades-old Burning Man tradition…

Another difference: no friggin’ drum n’ bass. Let me caveat the following rant by reiterating that I thought the Decompression Party was bad ass, a massive eerily reminiscent of old times and a beautiful wonderland world, a portal into an ancient and future realm opened in the center of a sprawling megalopolis. Never had I been to a party of that size with the downtown skyline glass as my constant silicon backdrop, silent bridges and condemned avenues supporting jumbotrons, turntables and art cars, and a party populous as friendly, rockin’ and beautiful as any scene before it. Still, no scene is perfect, and for all the sweet industrial techno and throwback house that was played, not a one DJ pulled out the funky Jungle.

I don’t know if Junglism is supposed to be perceived as raver business, or some off-beat slanted path running at crooked angles to the whole shebang. But I do know that deep, dark Jungle is some of the freak-damn hottest sickest shit around. And, I don’t mind telling you, it broke me lil’ heart not finding just the smallest art car with some DJ breaking out some new synchopations…

…Rambling and ranting aside, the similarities before I just get fed up with trying to define the indefinable by compartmentalizing two independent phenomena, or perhaps even one overriding gestalt…

The similarities between rave culture and Burning Man are the similarities between all underground cultures, and, if I were a bit more metaphysical, the similarities connecting all perceptual reality. 'Radical self-reliance, radical self-determination, radical self-expression.' In the raver days it was always ‘peace, love, unity, respect.’ The two credos sound different to the ear, they emanate superficial differences in my mind. But in my soul I know it all stems from the same place. Inside the core, beyond our egos, our primal need to evolve drives those who are aware, who have shaken the burdens of their conditioning to reveal the sky abyss of choice. And why not? The rave scene peaked and valleyed, and though it seems resuscitated recently by the renewed interest in underground parties, this new life seems in large part due to Burning Man, which is, in all fairness, the new hotness. Which makes my heart warm, if honesty is what you require, because if the key to evolution is that the same undercurrent forces manifest structural changes over time, then no subculture ever dies. As long as future generations delve into themselves, beyond any stale realities imposed upon them by sinister forces, then we might wonder at some distant future in which that mystic tolerant underground pervades all human interaction...