Boom Festival | Rehearsing the Future

Home , Boom Festival, Christian music festival, Early music festivals, Energy (event), Lightning in a Bottle, Music festival

Boom festival | Rehearsing the Future

Music and the Prefiguration of Change

by Saul Roosendaal 5930057 Master’s thesis Musicology August 2016 supervised by dr. Barbara Titus University of Amsterdam

Boom festival | Rehearsing the future

Contents

Foreword ...... 3 Introduction ...... 4 1. A Transformational Festival ...... 9 1.1 Psytrance and Celebration ...... 9 1.2 Music and Culture ...... 12 1.3 Dance and Musical Embodiment ...... 15 1.4 Art, Aesthetics and Spirituality ...... 18 1.5 Summary ...... 21 2. Music and Power: Prefigurating Change ...... 23 2.1 Education: The Liminal Village as Forum ...... 25 2.1.1 Drugs and Policies ...... 28 2.2 Action: Sustainability and the Environment ...... 31 2.3 Networking: Cooperation and Reverberation ...... 33 2.4 Summary ...... 36 3. Being Together ...... 38 3.1 The Gathering of the Tribe ...... 39 3.2 Reconnecting and Healing ...... 42 3.3 Participation and Musicking ...... 46 3.4 Summary ...... 51 Conclusion ...... 52 Bibliography ...... 55 Abstract ...... 58

Cover picture: the Dance Temple of the 2012 edition at twilight.

Foreword In the summer of 2014, I planned to go to Boom, a psytrance festival I knew virtually nothing about. I went there with some friends, some of whom had already gone before and had spoken admiringly about its positive energy, its spectacular art and music, the sizzling weather, and the sustainability agenda embedded in the festival’s premises. My curiosity was awakened, and I decided to go. I still had to write my master’s thesis, and borne out the strong desire to combine the subjects of my academic studies with my personal quests, I thought why not combine them. This paper is the result of that research, one that, to stay in line with some of the vocabulary used, adds to the ensemble that makes up the various levels of the festival and its many intense experiences. The project has been a long and arduous journey, but a very personal one that brought great satisfaction and many valuable lessons. As I hope to make clear, the participatory nature of the festival requires active engagement, allowing for such personal development. Attentive readers will surely notice my unabashed appreciation of the festival, which I consciously include because of the fact that I am taking part by musicking, as any other visiting the festival, being first and foremost a participant. I dedicate this to all Boomers, and to all others who inherited the hippie ideals of love and peace; who believe in change, starting from within and growing from the small. It corresponds to the prefigurative mode in which Boom festival operates to contribute to creating awareness and change. And it all began with coming together and celebrating, which remains preserved at a core it has never lost.

Introduction

BOOM FESTIVAL, Portugal, is one of the world’s leading psytrance (psychedelic trance) festivals, held biennially since 1997. At Boom, music is always everywhere, albeit in the background. It is a starting point from which other things happen, actions take place, and in fact the festival (and all it entails) was founded around it. There are various kinds of music at the festival, featuring different music stages and accompanying various activities, but psytrance forms the overwhelming centre of attention. The Dance Temple, Boom’s main stage featuring only psytrance, can be heard in most places at all times, save for a few afternoon hours of rest. It remains, literally and figuratively, at the centre of the festival, which has grown and expanded. Nowadays it is but one element of the festival, still binding other things together by its sheer omnipresence. With academic research of Electronic Dance Music Cultures (EDMCs) still in its infancy, this paper is a venture into the curious world of psytrance and its culture. The festival is full of activities, and far more than music and dance alone, Boom offers a full program of lectures, workshops and rituals of all kinds. In addition, it has an extensive environmental program that demonstrates and educates sustainability on different levels. Leisure studies scholar Erin Sharpe explains how leisure activities can create a context that may contribute to potential social change, as they ‘provide opportunities for individuals to resist and rewrite the dominant cultural narratives that shape their lives,’ where leisure is being seen as ‘a space for collective organizing to address social problems’ (Sharpe 2008: 218). Accordingly, following the objective of social sustainability, Boom explicitly states its aim to ‘develop a credible alternative to the models of mainstream culture’ (http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/environment/mission-awards/), thoroughly explored in Chapter 2. At the festival, all these cultural expressions are intimately linked. The festival experience is a whole experience, with all of its individual segments working together as an ensemble, as will be explored in more detail in the first chapter. All these things are continuously shared with mostly like-minded people who, having different objectives, still share similar experiences. Researchers have asserted that the festival experience can have a lasting positive impact and change people’s lives (Packer & Ballantyne 2011: 168-170), and in all, the festival provides a place that can ‘transform the everyday space of the familiar and mundane to one that is rather otherworldly and spiritually uplifting, even if the jollity and improvement are serious stuff’ (Waterman 1998: 58). This does not mean that the festival

spirit and everyday life are complete opposites, on the contrary. Transformational festivals (see Chapter 1) like Boom, especially, transcend such a distinction. As I will demonstrate, the festival is something that can transcend everyday life, and may ultimately have the power to transform it.

When I first set out to write this thesis, I centred on psytrance music and its role at Boom festival. Gradually, the focus on the music alone did not give me the answers I was looking for. The close relationship of psytrance culture to its music makes it necessary to understand that culture, and culture in a more general sense, in order to understand the musical genre. Therefore, out of necessity my view broadened to include the cultural context of the psytrance scene, and Boom in particular. Indeed, if we consider the musical genre and its culture together, the connections between aesthetics, style and social elements become more obvious, and the ways in which they are linked are more intricate than expected or acknowledged until that point. Popular music scholar Georgina Born argues how music ‘in itself’ virtually doesn’t exist, as all music is produced, mediated and consumed in a social context that may be considered immanent to the music in itself. She argues for stronger academic interactions, understanding music through culture. ‘By “music as culture” in this broad sense,’ she says, ‘I refer to the ensemble or constellation of practices, beliefs, communications, social relations, institutions and technologies through which a particular music is experienced, and has meaning’ (Born 1990: 211). She further stresses the importance of ‘the multitextuality of music-as-culture; and the need to analyse its particular forms […] as an ensemble’ (Born 1990: 217). Nearly a decade later, musicologist Christopher Small takes a step further, deploring how for a long time music has been seen as a thing, and how the presumed autonomous ‘thingness’ of works of music, and of art in general, values not the creative aspect of art, but the resulting object (Small 1998: 4). This problematic view requires a reinterpretation of the concept of music, as its fundamental nature and meaning, Small argues, ‘lie not in objects, not in musical works at all, but in action, in what people do. It is only by understanding what people do as they take part in a musical act we can hope to understand its nature and the function it fulfils in human life’ (Small 1998: 8). The term music has been ascribed to many different kinds of settings, actions, and ways of organising sounds into meanings. To Small, the meaning of music, or indeed its function, cannot be subtracted from any of them, hence the preference for the plural—musics. He even goes so far as to say that ‘There is no such thing as music’ (Small 1998: 2). Instead, he employs the verb musicking to take in the entire

set of relationships that constitutes a musical experience, demonstrating how music’s primary meanings are indeed very social, which is fundamental to an understanding of the activity called music. In recent years, the ideas of Born and Small gained impetus, and the call for a more inclusive approach has led to the consolidation of a movement called Cultural Musicology, originated by music scholar Wim van der Meer, who appropriates the term from colloquial usage throughout the 20th century. The direction taken by Cultural Musicology favours a more detailed approach, and Van der Meer set out to situate all musical experiences in a wider social and political context. Musicologist Nicholas Cook similarly builds on the ideas developed by Born and others, using the term Relational Musicology, and seeing the encounter between different elements that act together in, we might say, by analogy to Born, an ensemble, as critical. Considering the interrelatedness of the elements of such an ensemble, and by extension of all participants in a musical event, is ‘an enacting of intersubjectivity and social relationship[s] in which each is dependent upon the other, and in which there may be no absolutes specifiable outside the context of performance interaction: it is in this sense that the performance even of fixed texts can be understood as an act of collective improvisation’ (Cook 2012: 195-6). The insistence on using the concept of ensemble as a tool, without taking the metaphor too overtly literally, evokes connotations with the performance of a musical ensemble. Usually consisting of several sections, each with its own particular instruments as performers, none is more important than the others, instead creating musical meaning as a whole. This integrating approach seems adequate in the analysis of Boom festival. The aesthetic experience as a whole, as with popular music, is integral to the musical experience with an event so complexly constructed as a festival, which is multitextual by definition—we can even see Boom as an ensemble itself.

With the concepts of the ensemble and musicking at hand, this paper is an exploration of the tactics, styles, and aesthetics of Boom, investigating in broad currents what happens at the festival. From different perspectives, the festival can be seen as a music festival, as cultural politics, or with a focus on its vast set of environmental aspects. Recognising its ambitious outlook, I investigate how these different levels of musical experience at the festival are connected and how they work together in a musicking ensemble, asking, In what ways can Boom contribute to change, challenging dominant perceptions in public opinion and experience? How does this affect its visitors, both during the festival itself and on the

long term? And how does the position of music in the ensemble interact with the other levels? To understand these questions and to answer them, I shall analyse a number of the levels of the ensemble in detail, recombining them in the end. In subsequent chapters, I consider the academic contextualisation of music and culture, including an evaluation of recent musicological debate. Next, I consider the interaction with the local and global environments in which the music festival has become, and now operates, discussing music’s transformative powers in the context of an event. Finally, I examine what its own policies, goals and purposes are, and in which ways the public is addressed and involved, including this paper and myself. Situating Boom festival in its wider local and global context, I will focus on some of the most prominent themes of the music festival, such as cultural politics and visitor participation, raising questions about the effects of the event on musical experience, the environment and, ultimately, individuals’ lives. Following Small’s concept of musicking, connections can be made on various levels, including historical links to music festivals and hippie gatherings, and connections to self-sustainable, ecofriendly initiatives. As a strongly participatory event, Boom is created by its visitors, and thus part of this thesis is about people and their experiences when visiting the festival. Concerning my own position, I also consider myself principally to be a visitor, or rather participant at the festival. Graham St John’s and Chiara Baldini’s gathering of information comes from ‘participation and research experience within psytrance’, they claim to be no ‘white-coat-wearing or clipboard-clutching researchers, and have both had a passionate though rational involvement with the event and its wider culture’ (St John & Baldini 2012: 521-2). They were, however, more formally involved, by way of giving lectures in the Liminal Village. I hover somewhere in the liminal zone between them and Erin Sharpe who, on the other end of the spectrum, started out more as an outsider. It only became clear to her during her involvement in the Hillside festival that, besides her planned interviews with organisation officials, a further exchange of information with people on different levels would infuse and enrich her study. ‘It became apparent that a more accurate boundary was at the level of the community of individuals (often referred to as “Hillsiders”) who were interested, involved, and committed to the festival’ (Sharpe 2008: 221). It is my belief that researchers cannot take an objective outside position that guarantees an objective view on things. Certainly, my experience as researcher or musicologist may vary considerably from that of a non-expert. Yet, I find any and all experiences equally important and valuable for consideration, including my own, particularly

given the circumstances of Boom’s ‘being One’ philosophy, the flexible positions of participants at the festival, and the conscious treatment of all as equal. Having pen and paper on me at all times, I spoke to many people about their reasons for coming, motivations, and experiences. Still more often, I did not reveal my position (of doing research for this thesis), so as not to influence any behaviour or response. As cultural and social behaviours are often performed without reflection on it, asking about them may not always be the best option (Blommaert & Dong 2006: 3). With my knowledge of and experience with psytrance, prior to visiting Boom, being very limited, I attempted to set my preliminary research aside, and during the festival my approach was very much to just take it as it came. My research, including conducting field research during a trip to the festival in August 2014, aims to argue for complex, inclusive interpretations of experiences, including my own observations and private conversations and incorporating literature from the disciplines of musicology, human geography, leisure sciences, anthropology and sociology. Coloured by my personal experiences, I want to render the position of myself as researcher transparent. Without a specific academic approach, my presence at the festival and my communication with the people there was colloquial. This paper, then, is an effort to tackle the complexities of Boom by seeing with my own eyes through participant observation. In an attempt to understand the relations between music as culture, the music festival, integrating the seemingly opposite ends of the local and the global, the organic and the digital, weaving them together, with other more complex levels of the festival, into an ensemble. In doing so, I ultimately hope to show how Boom exploits the possibilities of music to make a difference in socio-political conceptions and cultural experiences.

1. A Transformational Festival This chapter gives a general introduction to the festival and its origins, discussing its contextualisation within psytrance and the festival scene. Boom began around 1991 as regularly occurring open air parties between dance enthusiasts coming together to celebrate under the full moon in the forests of southern Portugal. It started with around 1500 people, but within a few years, it was growing larger, with 6000 people annually enjoying themselves in an increasingly successful gathering. To deal with the popularity growing too fast, a gap year was introduced in 1999, the festival now being held only every two years. The festival grows more popular with every edition, being sold out for the first time in 2014 (and again in 2016). The festival area, called the Boomland, covers over 150 ha of land, and includes four music stages, among which the central Dance Temple, exclusively for psytrance. It also includes a Healing Area, a space for yoga, therapies and workshops; a Sacred Fire area, an enchanted forest full of art installations; the Liminal Village, a discussion and lecture centre; and the Visionary Art Museum, with psychedelic art works and shows. Furthermore, there is a flea market, several chai shops, restaurants and bars, and gardens and art installations spread all over the Boomland. In the 2014 edition, 1000 workers were employed in pre-production, as well as over 800 performing artists, with 40,000 – 50,000 (estimates vary) visitors attending (http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/tickets/boom-2014-tickets-info/). Through the music and the site, and aided by the use of psychoactive substances, psytrance culture has a distinctive psychedelic mysticism that taps into ancient spiritualities and religions. It intends to mark a transition into a new world order, while maintaining a close relation to the earth and all she has to share. Offering seven days of splendid party, full of great weather, music and psychedelics, this is called a transformational festival, which, like Australian doofs, has the festival spirit at its core, a prevalence of electronic music, spirituality, and goes to great lengths to ensure connections to humanitarian and sustainability causes, creating consciousness.

1.1 Psytrance and Celebration Boom is based on psytrance (psychedelic trance), up-tempo Electronic Dance Music (EDM) that includes various musical styles and acts, characterised by a fast, pounding bass (typically between 140 – 150 BPM) with steadily propelling sixteenths, interlaced with distorted sound effects, blurps, and echoes scattered around in a multitude of psychedelic auditory movements. Psytrance has its roots in Goa, India, an international hub of hippie culture since

the 1960s with influx from different countries and cultures—Diogo Ruivo and Pedro Carvalho (organisers of Boom) met there as children, tells Graham St John, an authority on psytrance and rave culture (St John 2014: 55). In Goa, psychedelic hedonism came under the influence of EDM flooding in from Europe’s rave scene in the 1980s, introducing developments in production techniques capable of producing the strange psychedelic effects that would become its decisive aesthetics, leading to the emergence of a new spirited music and scene initially called Goa trance (Greener & Hollands 2006: 395). The distinctive 1980s MIDI sound and complex layering gradually gave way to a drier and cleaner, more digital, techno-oriented sound towards the end of the 1990s. What started out as an amateur, underground music scene grew into the worldwide phenomenon we now call psytrance. Today, the style is becoming increasingly well-known around the world, with blossoming scenes in for instance Israel, Brazil, and Japan, including various offshoots in the form of substyles like progressive, full-on, darkpsy, and psybient (for a genealogy, see http://i.imgur.com/5IIM9.jpg). Besides many smaller underground parties, one-day or several- day psytrance events occur on a weekly basis around the globe during the summer months (for more information, see http://www.psybient.org/love/trance-festivals-list-calendar/#). Nevertheless, psytrance retains some of its underground alternative spirit and many characteristics of its hippie heritage, and it continues to be associated with alternative modes of thinking and ways of living. According to contemporary religion professor Christopher Partridge, psytrance marks the crossover from free festivals into rave culture (Partridge 2006: 55-6). His article traces the continuity between the free festivals of the sixties and seventies through rave culture as it emerged in the 1980s. Psychedelics play their part, as well as the roots in festival culture do. The merge of the free festivals of the sixties and seventies continued not only the scene but also ‘a particular blend of ideologies and spiritualities. The Pagan, punk, anarchic, hippie values of the former, began to shape the latter’ (Partridge 2006: 52, see there for further discussion). Festivals are traditionally meant for celebration of shared values and identities and to articulate various ‘social, religious, ethnic, national linguistic or historic bonds’ (Bennett et al. 2014: 1). In other words, the community’s identity values are celebrated through the festival (Waterman 1998: 57). Once meant to establish and reinvigorate one shared identity, the forms and functions of the festival now become a celebration of difference. ‘The contemporary festival therefore becomes a potential site for representing, encountering, incorporating and researching aspects of cultural difference’ (Bennett et al. 2014: 1). As such, besides the carefree option for listening to music in beautiful settings, the festival provides, as will be

explored in more depth in the next chapter, many opportunities for the exposure of cultural difference. There is space for radical self-expression or political discussion, creating a platform for alternative approaches to various subjects, and allowing for experimentation on a wider scale. The temporal and spatial framing of a festival and its alternative social arrangements have lent it opportunities to overturn the established order and dominant social relations, and in fact, ‘festivals have also been linked to wider movements for social change’ (Sharpe 2008: 219). The festival thus provides the ideal environment for psytrance. This is where the scene thrives best, as the celebration of different cultures and religions is intrinsic to the psytrance way of living. In general, raves—barely planned, free-of-charge parties where considerable crowds gather to dance on EDM—retain that impromptu heritage from their predecessors. A preference for alternative venues, like open places in the woods, deserted areas, industrial zones, and squats, as well as the continued connections to squatters, festival-goers and other alternative and open-minded folks, can be clearly traced to the abandoned or reclaimed open places of the free festivals of the 1960s and 1970s. It shares this trait with other EDMCs, such as the teknivals associated with tekno music. However, what sets psytrance apart from the other styles ‘with which it otherwise shares music production and performance techniques’, is a decidedly psychedelic mysticism (St John & Baldini 2012: 522). The Goa connection infused the movement with Buddhist and Hinduist elements, and as Partridge described it, ‘Psychedelic festival culture was transformed into Easternised psychedelic rave culture’ (Partridge 2006: 46). New Age spiritual awareness from the sixties onwards also led to a renewed interest in pre-Roman and pre-Christian cultures and an emphasis on local folklores. Hence, regional psytrance scenes focus on ancient local traditions, like Aboriginals in Australia and Native Americans in North America. The connections to ancient cultures and religions are most eloquently argued by avid proponent of psychedelics and psycademic guru Terence McKenna, in the self-evidently titled The Archaic Revival (1991). According to McKenna, much of the rave culture’s connections to ancient cultures and religions are indebted to its hippie forbearers, with which Partridge agrees. In music, this is reflected by the inclusion of initially eastern, and later other local instruments, such as the didgeridoo (Partridge 2006: 48-9). Dance continues to be seen as a sacred act, as explained by psytrance act Insectoid, in the accompanying booklet to their 1997 album Sacred Sites: ‘the dance space in trance-dance parties is a sacred space. It is a form of meditative collective spiritual worship. It is a reconnection with the elemental, primordial rhythms of organic, cosmic life force’ (quoted in Partridge 2006: 48). McKenna’s influential

writings helped shape the ideological backdrop for rave culture and they remain popular in the scene. His importance in and indeed formative influence on the genre is demonstrated by the inclusion of fragments of his texts and lectures that infuse the psychedelic lyrics that are included as fragments in psytrance tracks and sets (and other electronic music). To name but a few, besides the many samples he has actively collaborated and can be heard in The Shamen’s 1992 album Boss Drum, and psytrance acts Entheogenic, Spacetime Continuum, Zuvuya and Shpongle, on the latter’s albums Tales of the Inexpressible (2001) and Nothing Lasts… But Nothing is Lost (2005). This text-based communication of some of the philosophy is just one example in which the music relates extra-musical ideas, and they are very much interconnected. The way music and culture are related, and should be studied, is topic of discussion in its own right. Some recent developments in musicology of the last two decades ultimately required a reconsideration of music itself.

1.2 Music and Culture What exactly it is that musicology should or should not include in its field of study is not always clear. In any case, it relates closely to music, but what that exactly is proves no less simple a matter. Although claims to music’s universality might seem plausible, the plural form (musics) may be just as necessary as for the concept of universe itself. The 20th century saw the emergence of various new and experimental musics, such as jazz, serialism, electronic music and new types of popular music, that have challenged the traditional musical establishment. With each creating a new set of musical practices, they vastly altered and expanded the roles of composers, performers and audiences. The necessity of musicology as a discipline to respond to these changing modes of production and consumption has led to a reconsideration of the ontological status of music itself. By the end of the century, traditional views on music and prevailing analytical techniques were considered by some as overlooking the complexities that surround its varied and indeed, sometimes contradictory nature. In particular, music in itself, as if it were one thing, a product, autonomous and commodified, and whether such a thing exists at all, has been increasingly subject to sometimes fierce debate, reflecting similar discussions throughout the humanities. For instance, the treatment of commodification in semiotics has had profound effects on both art history and criticism and literature in the postmodern, globalised era. The call for a stronger contextualisation of music, i.e., the relation of music to culture, politics and society, has increased in recent decades. In 1990, Georgina Born sees the need to address the relations

between music and culture by noticing that the historical music-analytical techniques fail to address the complexities particular to the music she studies. In her seminal paper ‘Understanding Music as Culture: Contributions from Popular Music Studies to a Social Semiotics of Music’, she argues how music ‘in itself’ virtually doesn’t exist, as all music is produced, mediated and consumed in a social context that may be considered immanent to the music in itself. Nearly a decade later, Ralph Locke addresses the pretension of objectivity that has hitherto characterised much musicological thinking in his essay, ‘Musicology and/as Social Concern’ (1999). Attempting ‘to reveal the social messages that art-music has conveyed’, he draws attention to the way ‘music scholars themselves—ourselves—tend to express social values, including aesthetic ideologies, in published work and teaching, whether consciously or not. I might add here my belief that an increased willingness to make our assumptions explicit can strengthen musicological discourse in several ways’ (Locke 1999: 501). Music, after all, is a very social engagement, and the refusal to look at what people do, and how and why they do it, constitutes the ‘social value systems’ that have characterised much historical musicological thinking, which according to Locke ‘tends to act within a given framework of given values’ (Locke 1999: 510). Therefore, the methodological approach of this historical framework, which focuses on Western art music and the analysis of traditional musical parameters, such as harmony, melody and instrumentation, has also been criticised. To Born, the elusive qualities of the pop aesthetic, and thus its problems, ‘are shared with non-western musics, and with much electronic and computer music’ (Born 1990: 215). For too long, EDMCs in general, including psytrance and festival culture at large, have been largely neglected in musicological debate. Much like popular music, EDM is not based on notation, most ideas and principles are orally transmitted during performances rather than written down, and communication in the scene is characterised by physical experiences (i.e., coming together). In many respects, EDM is in fact popular music, and it is slowly gaining a foothold in that musicological department. The purely musical analysis of the popular music Born describes seems to ‘miss the musical point’, and it regards EDMCs and music festivals in much the same way. Meaning in these musical cultures resides not only in the aural mediation of music (i.e., the musical sound), but also in its social, visual, discursive, and technological mediations, with the aesthetic subsuming them all (Born 1990: 215). With different musics, different aesthetics emerge, and another set of appropriate tools is required, prompting an understanding of music as culture (Born 1990: 213). This music as culture, to reiterate, is the ensemble of ‘practices,

beliefs, communications, social relations, institutions and technologies through which a particular music is experienced, and has meaning’ (Born 1990: 211). More recently (2010), she has further extended views on the subject, adopting notions by herself and Small into a ‘Relational Musicology’, a musicology ‘that addresses different orders of the social in music and their complex interrelations’ (Born 2010: 235). A reflexive and inclusive approach which maintains difference and which is based on the relationships between various parties, beyond the individual interpreting subject (see Born 2010). This Relational Musicology is best described by Cook, based on premises posed before by Born and Small, into a comprehensive line of thinking that focuses on Relational Musicology. ‘as a means of addressing key personal, social and cultural work that is accomplished by music in today’s world [: this is helping …] to counteract some of the blind spots of a traditional musicology oriented more or less exclusively towards the aesthetics of subjectivity, and towards musical products rather than processes of meaning production’ (Cook 2012: 196). He proceeds to include not only the ‘intercultural encounter’ of the various elements of musical performance that only gain meaning in relation to one another, but also various other elements of musicology, i.e., analysis, interpretation, and even of various musicologies themselves, ‘as a transaction between self and other’ (Cook 2012: 200). The interactive approach to knowledge sharing is also central to a recent movement aptly denominated Cultural Musicology. The term was definitively coined by Dutch music scholar Wim van der Meer, who jointly with German musicologist Birgit Abels organised several workshops on the subject, as well as a colloquium in early 2014. While insisting on an open and inclusive approach, within the new movement one ‘can, should and will study any and all music, from any part of the world, art music or popular music, living music or dead music, without distinction’ (Van der Meer & Erickson 2014: 121). Providing a framework for Cultural Musicology, Van der Meer envisions it as open to transdisciplinarity, using various concepts from throughout the humanities as tools. Central to this cultural musicology is musico-logica, or ‘music as a knowledge system’, introducing different lines of musical thinking that include others than the institutionalised western ones. Regarding its modes of analysis, he says it can be done in any way possible, but with ‘more attention to detail and difference’ (Van der Meer & Erickson 2014: 122). Clearly, the concepts and premises by Relational and Cultural Musicology carry great diversity and openness for the complex interrelations of music and musicology alike, allowing for multitextual analysis and ventures into other disciplines. Following Born, in this way one might ‘uncover either cumulative and reinforcing effects or, more interestingly,

contradictions and tensions operating between the levels of the ensemble’ (Born 1990: 218, italics in original). The tension between these different levels is only one of several reasons for a multitextual approach. An interesting one to note here is the innovations that some musics have attempted to make by critiquing established forms of role patterns, not only in an aural or technical sense, but also regarding the social relations of music production (Born 1990: 218). The next chapter addresses these differing levels at Boom festival in more detail. When we consider Boom as an ensemble itself we may, for example, include the music, style and aesthetics, and the themes and messages the festival aims to put forth. We may even extend the definition of musicking by including/seeing all participants at the festival together in the same act. Small himself proposed the following definition: ‘To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing’ (Small 1998: 9).

1.3 Dance and Musical Embodiment It is definitely the rhythm and the music that brings us here. […] In the beginning of this whole, it was the concept, the emotion of actually moving our bodies to a constant rhythm. This moment of connection, this moment of feeling ‘One’ when you look to your sides and you see people dancing exactly at the same frequency you are at this kind of contact that you generate by having a few hundred or thousand people around you that are in the same frequency, understanding the same sounds, perceiving the same emotion at that precise moment. This is unique. Boom co-founder Diogo Ruivo during a lecture in the Liminal Village (The Alchemy of Spirit part I, 13:18)

Perhaps the first and most basic musicking activity is dancing. As the ‘condition native to dance cultures of all times’, dance is said to allow us to reconnect to ourselves, to other people, and to the earth, by going back to a basic human form. In this manner, as St John argues, the decidedly psychedelic mysticism of psytrance potentiates, through the dance event, a transgressive dynamic called the crossroads of consciousness. In several steps, a dissolution of traditional ‘rational consciousness’ is to be achieved, through the ‘ecstatic entrancement […] in which participants are unburdened of disciplined, voluntary, modes of subjectivity and embodiment’ (St John & Baldini 2012: 524). Consequently, this should lead

to an immersion in ‘cosmic consciousness’, a transpersonal state of mind reconnecting to our ancestral roots, the connection to whom we had lost. Ultimately, there will be an ‘evolution of consciousness’ into a new era in which humanity will have lost the ‘chains of oppression that separate [it] from its own potential’ (St John & Baldini 2012: 524). Some of these tendencies are not only expressed by scholars; I have heard several participants speak in similar terms (see below). ‘Since the principal means by which these tendencies are affected is dance, and the chief stage upon which this integralism operates is the dance floor, considerable resources are invested by both event-organisers and attendees to potentiate the experiences of communitas, synchronicity, and novelty that is emically understood as the “vibe” (or the “Goa vibe”)’ (St John & Baldini 2012: 525). Shared by the whole community, the conscious, open energy of this ‘vibe’ is described in a whole range of terms. They include, among others, the ‘sensation of “newness”’ (St John 2009: 38), the ‘flow’ (Malbon 1999), or a ‘buzz’, as one participant described it—‘when you’re really enjoying yourself and you can turn around and you can see 20 other faces of people who are enjoying what they’re doing for exactly the same reasons. It just gives you a bit of a buzz’ (quoted in Packer & Ballantyne 2011: 169). All of them refer to the shared elevating feeling of togetherness and reconnection characteristic of dance, one that is extended to the whole festival. It reminds us of the festival’s roots in music and dance, singled out here but blending in with other levels of the ensemble, that can be felt both personally and collectively, and as such prevails as an atmosphere at Boom’s Healing Area (see Chapter 3). Recalling Terence McKenna’s Archaic Revival, the collectively felt desire to return to ancient, symbiotic and more spiritual ways of living and communicating, the processes sketched out by St John are thus integrated with and in line with Boom’s overall festival experience. This can be attested to not only by views stated by the festival’s organisation (see below), but also by festivalgoers asked about their experience. In the Boom documentary, The Alchemy of Spirit (a play on Terence McKenna’s lecture, ‘The Spirit of Alchemy’, in two parts to be watched on YouTube), a small group of people sitting and talking somewhere at the festival grounds, describe with a similar vocabulary this transitory evolution of experience, reinforcing St John. A boy says, ‘We’re social animals and dance is a very social behaviour. And we do it all together. We don’t just communicate with it, we need it to really feel united. And bees use it for work, and we use it to not feel completely disconnected from everything else, from everyone else.’ A girl next to him agrees: ‘That’s what I was gonna say, it lets us reconnect with the real things, that are not exactly the city, the routine, the work, the

study, whatever is your life. It lets you reconnect to the roots’ (The Alchemy of Spirit part I, from 15:51). This reconnection occurs at the very apex of our physical existence, our bodies. The ability of rhythm to synchronise dance as movement to music as sound allows people to align physically to the same basic pulse (Kai Fikentscher, as quoted in St John 2009: 38). Ofer Rosenthal, coordinator of the Water Tent that offers water therapies at Boom’s Healing Area, explains how exactly it does that. Sound literally enters the body because, he says, ‘Water has the best conductivity of sound in all of nature’s things’, pointing out that sounds ‘can be heard with your ears but the sound goes through your bones, enters through you thus playing with the liquids inside your body’ (The Alchemy of Spirit part II, 20:25). Music, then, is directly experienced through the body. The sheer physicality of music that is described here regarding water has its parallel in the bass on the dance floor, creating a physically felt alignment— unity, if you will—in the bodies of the dancers. This very physical form of musicking shows yet another level of the ensemble that together makes up the festival, mimicking the ‘collective improvisation’ that Cook describes as the inevitable form of interaction in the encounter of people together on the dance floor. Dance then, by synchronising the body to the movement of sound (in this case, psytrance music) passing through it, enables individuals to respond to the movement that the sounds themselves create in the body. This feeling, in turn, is shared by all those who engage together in dancing to the same music, connecting them all together. Nevertheless, this is not unique to psytrance. It might be said of other EDMCs as well, and of other musics altogether. Some visitors to the festival, including myself, do not really come for the psytrance, if at all, as it is not their preferred music style. Boom however does offer, besides non-stop psytrance, three other stages with an eclectic soundscape varying from Afrobeats to techno, and from psychedelic rock to fusion. In addition, smaller sound systems create improvised dance floors with various musics on the beach, or anywhere else at the festival, attracting more intimate, but no less funky crowds. The liberating feeling of a mind- altering, deep reconnection to the roots, however, is a characteristic strongly associated with psytrance by both scholars and participants (see Chapter 3), as well as the specifically psychedelic mindset, and in turn a red thread woven through all Boom’s experiences, as will be detailed below. The pivotal role played here by dance is creating a sense of unity and community that is felt and reiterated through the music, allowing Boom’s visitors to attune to each other through non-verbal communication, by physical means. In all, ‘dancefloors enable habitués

direct contact with nature, to the four elements, the cycles of the cosmos, and to ground- quaking bass’ (St John & Baldini 2012: 523). They serve as the festival nexus of this deeper connection to the Earth, the self, and the other, reverberating an energy that one, even if not an enthusiast of psytrance, comes to understand and eventually even appreciate as psytrance forms the basis of all else at the festival. An Australian girl confirms, ‘I feel the energy more than anything. ‘Cause to be really honest, I was never like a big psytrance fan, […] but that dance tent, it’s more the energy that like draws me in’ (The Alchemy of Spirit part I, 16:38). As far as dancing is concerned, those addicted to Boom’s dance floors are easily included into an analysis of musicking. Regarding the other things happening at the festival, even Small himself has provided an extended definition, taking into account all who aid in any way in a musical performance, including those selling tickets to a concert, technicians carrying out soundchecks, or even the cleaners who clean up afterwards. ‘They too’, says Small, ‘are all contributing to the nature of the event that is a musical performance’ (Small 1998: 9). Cook’s use of Relational Musicology builds on this part of the concept. Interesting for the present discussion is the integration of all activities at the festival and considering them as related, as musicking, as taking part in music. Following Small’s extended definition, we may even consider any and all organisers, artists, visitors and others at Boom festival to be musicking, given the fact that it remains principally a (psytrance) music festival around which everything else has been based; recalling Born, the whole festival remains an ensemble.

1.4 Art, Aesthetics and Spirituality The qualities of dance as discussed above, and especially the ‘vibe’, are by no means restricted to music and dance alone. With strong visual displays and sensory stimulation, psytrance culture employs a specifically psychedelic aesthetic that applies extensively to various aspects of the festival. The vivid colours, shapes and designs further the potentiation of the crossroads of consciousness, as St John describes it, and the broader goals of ‘transgression and progression’, ultimately achieving Oneness. It involves, in his terms, the ‘technics’ (a contraction of technologies and techniques) of psytrance, designed to facilitate the ‘ostensibly liberating tendencies’ of dance (St John & Baldini 2012: 524-5). At the festival, smells of sage, incense and palo santo surround you everywhere. Participants can be seen swinging in their hoops, juggling or waving around glowing LED poi. They can be recognised by their tattoos and piercings, bracelets (of various festivals) and other often handmade jewellery, bare feet (if possible), colourful outfits that seem to harmoniously blend

‘natural’ materials and styles with sports clothing and digital devices. Vice reporter Clive Martin somewhat reluctantly admires their flying dreadlocks, interpreted as the appropriation of rasta culture, but in the best case a ‘great post-racial, pancultural aesthetic that made everyone look like a rogue squadron’ (Martin 2013). Interestingly, the difference at the same time holds a somewhat clear preference for a comparable multi-ethnic, but hippie-based style; apparently having already developed over time, the encounter between different elements has become a colourful blend of difference, created into a recognizable visual style, yet preserving singular elements and allowing for experimentation. The layout of the Boomland follows a similar trend, combining into one such natural construction materials as (recycled) wood, bamboo and the ancient building material of adobe with the latest technology in construction and digital printing. It mixes the iconographic elements borrowed from various folklores, dragons, Hindu gods with psychedelic art, referencing Alice in Wonderland (in the magical forest of the Sacred Fire area). Stunning artwork is found everywhere, with the Visionary Art Museum showing a collection of psychedelic paintings and sculptures that display many fractal (art) designs and spectacular multi-media shows. One artist featured there in 2014 was Android Jones, one of whose portraits serving as the cover for the Dharma Dragon of the 2012 edition. He says,

‘Seeing the dynamics of what electronic music is, there’s a particular alchemy, you have this musician that’s kind of like a, some sort of neo-contemporary type of magician or wizard that has the sound that unifies all the people, and the trance is very good at getting everyone into the same rhythm and so I try to put the intention into my visuals to enhance the spell of the music producer to create even a more cohesive experience, so part of the technology of the main dance floor is to create almost a machine that helps people let go of themselves and surrender to this experience they’re having. And the more collective this experience can be the more they let go of their individuality and can enjoin into more of the collective “We are all One” that is part of like the Boom mantra. And if I can do that, I feel that I have succeeded in my intentions.’ (The Alchemy of Spirit part I, 35:05)

Jones is not the only one to want to create a visual—and spiritual—design to accompany the music. As one member of the construction team underscores, the Dance Temple, the main stage featuring only psytrance, is also designed to ‘facilitate the journey of the dancers’. The dazzling eclecticism of the 2012 edition included elements from Egyptian, Mayan,

Polynesian, and alchemist iconography and architecture infused with UV-based light and art, honoring the world of psytrance and psychedelic culture. Indeed, in line with its mystic, spiritual and religious meanings, the reason why Boom’s main stage is named so is because the main architect wished to see it as a temple, because ‘A temple is a sacred architectural form where all forms kind of work together for a common vision to activate the people within, to connect them to the heavens, to the multiple dimensions’ (The Alchemy of Spirit part II, from 13:48). If, then, the Dance Temple symbolically mimics the holy physical structure of the temple, the DJ oversees it all as a priest, or rather, assumes the role of a shaman leading into ecstasy the thriving crowd or tribe, who move their bodies, intoxicated at least by the music, unified by dance. This association of the DJ as a shaman is made more often, not only by artists (see reference), but also by academics, seen as ‘a kind of channeller of frequencies and beats to massage and activate the unconscious and the superconscious via ecstatic, meditative, trance-dance—which becomes a form of euphoric, collective catharsis’ (Ray Castle, quoted in Partridge 2006: 49). The spirito-religious character of psytrance and its followers is another defining feature that is experienced on various levels, as ‘research consistently identifies contemporary dance culture as contexts enabling an immediate and sensational sociality approximating a religious or spiritual experience for its participants’ (St John 2009: 38). Many parties are concentrated around celestial events or annual terrestrial cycles such as equinoxes; Boom itself is situated around full moon. Today, they still remain a source of celebration, while spirituality and religion have become an eclectic mix of beliefs and practices, signs, rites and rituals among participants. Although some of the Indian spiritualities, inherited from Goa, remain in the cultural displays of the festival, the change of location created a shift of balance of spiritual ideas, incorporating more local religious traditions (Partridge 2006: 48). At a festival like Boom, this culminates in widely varied cultural and spiritual displays. The approach of an eclectic, integrated ensemble of variously mixed old and new elements is emblematic of psytrance in that its striving is inclusive in nature. The aesthetics and visual design, in all their eclecticism, form part of the tactics employed to promote ‘the vibe’, and as such serve as a visual rendition of the culture’s philosophy. It appropriates from all cultures and mixes them together into a hybrid, which can be understood as an encounter of several units. Taken together, they form a loose collective improvisation, with each taken as inspiration without expressing a specific preference for any one culture or religion. As St John sees it, what is called a new or alternative spirituality

adheres to a ‘spiritual relativism which sees a profusion of religions and symbol systems adopted in the belief that they offer access to similar divine truths’ (St John 2009: 42). This is also reflected in the personal styles of psytrancers, who effortlessly pair natural styles of clothing with glow-in-the-dark paint and blacklight, demonstrating how the combination of ‘organicism’ and up-to-date technological developments is not necessarily oppositional. In itself, this subdued tension between old and new, and local and global elements thrust Boom into the here and now, its basis for wanting to create an alternative future. It provides one of the levels that, inherently intercultural, as an ensemble make up the festival. It is still, however, the Portuguese context in which the festival was born, and it still owes to that country in that Portuguese politics, i.e. the open Portuguese drug laws in particular, have had a decisive impact on the festival and its own policies. Moreover, for its part the festival provides an influx of visitors and tourism into the country, providing some stimulation for the local economy and contributing in other ways. The location of the festival is rather in the middle of nowhere in the Portuguese countryside, with only a handful of small villages in its vicinity. It makes a stark contrast with the generally urban setting of the élite festivals that are the main focus of Waterman’s research. As with similar festivals, the natural, unspoiled setting of the Boomland contributes to the feeling of reconnecting with nature and the spirit of the earth. Of course, the festival shapes and changes the local topography, but Boom aims to give back to the earth what has been taken from it. It has connections to the local community and works together with it, and the wastes from the festival are to a high degree reused and recycled. At Boom, sustainable initiatives are promoted that have the possibility of being used on a far wider scale, the implications of which are the subject of the next chapter.

1.5 Summary Psytrance evolved in the hippie communities of Goa, and it retains the alternative, underground and open energy that comes best to expression in festivals. Its culture is intrinsic to the genre, and consideration of the cultural context in conjunction with the music is necessary. What music is exactly and, closely related to it, what musicology should study, remains somewhat problematic. Musicology has fallen short for a long time in ignoring the immediate social context of music. Recently, musicological debate has given rise to the widespread view that more varied, inclusive and socially aware approaches to describing, appreciating and indeed perceiving various musics, such as popular music and EDMCs, are

needed, changing the foundations of the discipline itself. With the analysis of Boom festival, such an approach is indeed necessary, as the festival is by definition a complexly layered, multitextual entity. Main influences here come from Cultural and Relational Musicology, and in the same line of thinking, Christopher Small’s idea of musicking contributes to an understanding of music as encompassing all activities surrounding a musical performance. It reminds us how music is not a thing but an act. We are all musicking, and this what binds everyone together. A central element to the idea of musicking is dance, that with its very physical surrender of dancers’ bodies allows individuals for a reconnection to the self, and to the earth. Moving one’s body to the same sounds, unified with others through the same beat allows for a strongly felt physical ecstasy that can creates the connection. The ‘vibe’ that dance engenders, Graham St John argues, potentiates an evolution of the crossroads of consciousness leading from a dissolution of the self, through an immersion in a world/spirit consciousness, towards a new consciousness leading in a new era. The potentiation of this vibe hence also has parallels in other parts of the festival, like arts and aesthetics. Moreover, these shared visions, including those by Terence McKenna, are legitimised through the lyrics, adding to the connection and form a visual and spiritual counterpart to the philosophy that characterises psytrance culture. Through the foundation of modern rave culture, arising from trance and dance from the 1960s onward, psytrance retains its connections to ancient cultures and religions. This ‘mix-and-match’ approach to spiritual and religious elements, ranging from Eastern mythology, paganism and animist beliefs, are included in artworks, music and other elements. At Boom, psytrance lends the festival a harmonious mixture of scattered elements, all seamlessly woven into a multi-layered ensemble, the complexity of which allows for a reading of its constituent elements as such. In it, meaning and identity are constructed rather from the interaction of these elements than that of any single element by itself. And to this identity it adds a variety of principles on other levels as well—the subject of my second chapter.

2. Music and Power: Prefigurating Change When you come to these big events and big festivals it’s kind of this we’re creating this big illusion, you know this sort of fantasy mirage, a vision of what reality could be like or how we’d wish that reality was more like with people being open. It’s kind of like a painting, it’s a collection of shapes, it’s not really a thing. But it illustrates and it kind of points a finger towards something that we would all eventually like to have happened on a greater scale. American man (The Alchemy of Spirit part I, 20:33)

The ideas of Cultural and Critical Musicology and musicking give way to a better understanding of music’s relationship to other social phenomena and culture at large. This chapter continues in this direction, exploring the ways in which Boom festival relates to the social spectrum and how it can contribute to change. The distant origins of Boom festival, as we saw in Chapter 1, lie in the psychedelic community of Goa. Boom itself, however, began as an anarchist psytrance party, a small gathering in the woods numbering around one hundred people. The ecstatic experience of the party and the music, fuelled by psychedelics and coloured by the beauty of the environment, led to a growing consciousness as to the effects they as people had on the environment (also see Partridge 2006: 50). Slowly a vision arose, and subsequently the direction towards greater sustainability apparently ‘just happened’, says Boom’s Nena Alava. As she revealed, the steadily growing popularity of the festival, and thus its growing number of visitors, led the organisers to consider their responsibility by asking themselves if they had the right to bring so many people to a location to party and afterwards leave the site as a dump. The conclusion was that they could not, so from the early 2000s onwards awareness grew, and they started to teach people to dispose of their trash in a better way. It was a first step in what has by now become an intricate plan to extend this policy ever further, and a first sign to remind us that, at least at Boom festival, the ensemble levels of the music and its concurrent behaviours are thus connected so that they, as we will see, can indeed reinforce each other. Boom is not the only festival to have taken this direction—the association of festivals with social change has been mentioned before. Regarding the Hillside Festival Erin Sharpe says, ‘The organizational support for the principles of community, diversity, and social and environmental responsibility began to be viewed much more strongly as not only an enactment of a set of organizational values, but also as an act of cultural resistance’ (Sharpe 2008: 223). When Waterman described the popular festival as enabling ‘the politically marginal to express discontent through ritual,’ he saw it as ‘restricting their revolutionary

impulses to symbolic form’ (1998: 60). This use of the concept of restriction, however, is unsatisfying. As I will argue, it undervalues the far-reaching potential of this symbolic form. ‘Can the “pleasure” of leisure co-exist with the “politics” of social action?’ (Sharpe 2008: 218). To explore just how serious the attention concerning politics and society at a music festival is to be regarded, we have to relate it specifically to Boom, starting with its origins that set the festival somewhat apart from the hippie movement to which it is otherwise indebted (see Chapter 1; for a more detailed discussion see Greener & Hollands 2006: 397). The hippies, who advocated peace and love, seem to have devoted a considerable part of their energy to a political engagement that emphasised what was wrong with the world, urging others (like politicians) to make changes. Transformational festivals nowadays, by comparison, have a more positive view. As I will argue, they also start with peace and love, but when it comes to politics, Boom, amidst other festivals and the psytrance community at large, does not seek direct social confrontations or encourage resistance as such. That may not be as revolutionary, but that does not seem to be its initial goal. Instead, Boom started out as a party that eventually turned into a festival, to which celebration and enjoyment were central, maintaining peace among its participants. These values remain fundamental. Boom wants to change the world starting with itself, and it does so not by creating instant revolution, but by being much more self-reflexive. This attitude may not involve politics or social action directly, but the fact that the connection is made is a defining characteristic of Boom, and decisive for its social stance. In the Healing Area, the spiritual area at Boom (see Chapter 3), peace remains at the core; the key festival elements of enjoyment and celebration remain intact and focus their energy on everything positive, and instead of calling for others to change, it offers change itself, and in a multitude of ways indeed (see below). As the organisation points out, ‘Festivals must provide tools for change. It is Boom’s commitment to create a reality that relates positively with the environment and contributes to the education and knowledge of all’ (http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/ environment/mission-awards/, my italics). This is perhaps its most intriguing quality and exemplary of a prefigurative approach. Coined by sociologist Winifred Breines, Sharpe uses the term to describe ‘a style [of activism] that was decidedly more positive, celebratory, and leisurely than what tends to be associated with the experience of advocating for social change.’ In other words, ‘A prefigurative approach focuses on inspiration rather than opposition’ (Sharpe 2008: 227). Beyond being restricted to symbolic resistance alone, as Waterman dismissed it, this approach can have far-reaching consequences. Just as Hillside ‘prefigured’ the vision of society it

wished to create, Boom uses the prefigurative approach to promote environmental awareness by conspicuously weaving such projects and objectives into the more celebratory aspects of the festival. Bearing in mind the theory of musicking as ‘the entire set of relationships that constitutes a musical experience’, if we continue Born’s metaphor of considering interrelated elements as an ensemble, this prefigurative approach can be explained in terms of several of its levels. They can be divided into education (sharing knowledge), action (the things Boom does by itself), and networking (the establishment of cooperations to combine the previous two), each of which is discussed in more detail below.

2.1 Education: The Liminal Village as Forum If the Dance Temple is the place nurturing mystical states of awareness – which require new answers to fundamental questions: Who are we? What are we doing here? Where are we going? – then Liminal Village is the place where one finds the information needed to start building a new individual and collective identity through a new worldview. http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/program/liminal-village/

Boom’s Liminal Village is a space at the festival where information is shared, spread and where many lectures are held. A place for discussion and transformation, the name of this educational centre is taken from the concept of liminality (from Latin limen, ‘threshold’), the ambiguous middle stage of a ritual. This state of transition is taken as a symbol for the site where the organisation communicates its messages of love and sustainability, tinged with mysticism, hereby creating and sharing new ideas. All lectures and workshops in the Liminal Village are free and accessible to anyone who is interested, and indeed, I noticed them to be frequently visited throughout the festival, both by those who specifically come to visit them and by passersby who are curious to learn and discover more. In line with the prefigurative approach that focuses not only outwards but inwards as well, this personal discovery concerns not only the outside world and what happens there, but also to reinforce the connection participants have with themselves—change within Boom starts with the self. Through its program at the Liminal Village (for the full program, see http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/site/pdf/LiminalVillage_program_BoomFest2014.pd f, page 10), the festival can promote the subjects and values of its own interest, while offering a platform for others to share and promote their ideas. Selecting speakers from all over the world, the semi-covered area hosts a variety of lectures, presentations and interactive

workshops on topics as diverse as psychedelia, politics and spiritual awareness. That is no handful of talks scattered throughout the one-week festival, on the contrary: every day has its own theme and a full program from 9.00 am until midnight, and a range of films and documentaries are shown there during the night. It is an example of how ‘festivals provide a way for groups to gain control of cultural space, challenge dominant ideologies, and move specific issues to the centre, particularly when the event was organised around a culture or identity that is marginalized in dominant culture’ (Sharpe 2008: 219). The Liminal Village provides a powerful forum for researchers, therapists and other visionaries to display their knowledge, views and products. Linked to it, for example, is the Eco Tech Hub, a newly designed space for the 2016 edition of the festival, created to promote technological advance- ments and their integration with humanitarian causes (see https://www.boomfestival.org/ boom2016/program/liminal-village/diy-green-tech/). During the last day of the festival, themed the 4th Futurological Symposium on Free Cultural Spaces, a discussion panel was held called Keeping it real! Sustainability in Large Scale Events. Here Boom’s André Soares explained how the combined efforts of Boom’s initiatives work on a small scale, but to possible great effect. ‘Sometimes a small change in the process can create huge benefits’. As an example, Soares mentioned how the reduced shower times in the Boomland (two times six hours daily) contribute to saving water. In the shower areas, as in many other areas of the festival (especially the compost toilets, see below), the background motivations of these policies are explained to the public, so those who make use of the services eventually learn about them. The educational aspect is obvious, with 50,000 people being reached at once—and through spreading the word, possibly more. As Soares says, the people who come there can contribute to make things better, ‘to make a transition to a different reality. A way to rehearse the future, try to be comfortable with less’ (Soares 2014, my italics). And, perhaps unknowingly, they do so; in my experience, it is easy at Boom to give away and be okay with little, as there is so much you receive in return. Another discussion panel held on the same day was entitled ‘Global Festivals at a Turning Point: Hedonism vs. Activism’. The panel consisted of Nena Alava, who is head of bio-architecture at Boom and involved for many years, and Monica Fernandez, Executive Producer of DoLab, the organisation behind San Francisco’s Lightning in a Bottle festival. They were joined by DJ Isis, a Dutch DJ who was Nightlife Ambassador (‘Nacht- burgemeester’) of Amsterdam from 2010-2012 during which she was the instigator of Magneet Festival, also performing at the festival; and visual artist Android Jones, whose artwork has been used for promotional purposes of the festival on the website, and displayed

in the Visionary Art Museum. The panel was moderated by Charles Shaw, a US American journalist and documentary maker whose Exile Nation: The Plastic People (about drug wars and Mexican kartels) was shown during the festival (Alava et al. 2014). They are mentioned in some detail here to show how they are active at the festival in their own right, each with their own agenda, but also use their creativity for some form of (prefigurative) activism and come together here to work towards shared goals. The discussion above addressed the question, ‘Is it enough in these times of immense change to come and party?’ The responses were striking, and very prefigurative. Here Alava mentioned how greater sustainability at Boom festival just happened, and she called it ‘a sort of informal activism’. Fernandez responded more boldly saying, ‘Why should these topics be opposed? They could be working together in harmony. A person may be dragged along to the festival by a friend, only to find themselves with the possible outcome of a new way of looking at things’—which is pretty much the same way I was introduced. ‘In fact,’ she continued, ‘we may overturn the question altogether, by asking, “Can’t we create a new version, a new experience of celebration?”’ Thinking in this direction, instead of open political discussion, celebration at a festival might in fact be the start of change, retaining its light-heartedness, only to be infused with a more mature awareness after (Alava et al. 2014). The approach of retaining the festival element as a starting point however may have another side to it. A criticism as expressed during the panel discussion questioned whether the ‘good’ things that happen at the festival don’t just happen there at the festival, and stay there, after which everybody returns to their everyday life in the normal world. Similarly, in a discussion I had with a friend who had also been to the festival, he mentioned that people seem to behave differently at Boom, whereas the challenge is to implement the experiences enjoyed there more into daily life, without the easy start, encouragement or safety provided by the character of Boom. Perhaps they are right: however powerful in its messages, however compelling its state of mind, Boom is after all not an everyday reality for most who visit it. With its prefigurative commitment to its party core, the festival cannot but try, and only achieve so much, slowly. The festival itself acknowledges, ‘At Boom our aim is to plant the seeds for change. However, the actual growth and evolution takes place in everyday life’ (https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2016/news/boom-news/boom-broadcast-the-alternative- models-channel/). Nevertheless, at the same time Boom demonstrates that it can be everyday reality, and for some people it is indeed so. Boom is not the only one of its kind, and people visit many similarly themed festivals, sometimes in a row, taking position in ever-changing ensembles.

For them, festival experiences often do not just consist of visiting the festival itself, ending when the festival is over. Instead, for them the festival ways are a way of living. Not only for the many artists and others employed by the organisation, but also for travellers selling jewellery, other (handmade) products, and even drugs, traded for money or food, to make ends meet, the festival provides an essential micro-economy that sustains this type of living (also see Chapter 3). What is more, DJ Isis commented on the audience question, saying ‘this is also reality. There’s just everyday reality, but so is this. There are Free Cultural Spaces, festival-related or not, everywhere around the world, where those principles are lived’ (Alava et al. 2014). Links are maintained between these and similar places, and representatives of both Free Cultural Spaces like Ruigoord (Amsterdam) and Christiania (Copenhagen) and festivals like Burning Man and Fusion have participated in discussions and lectures in the Liminal Village, the extent of which is discussed below (see http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/ program/liminal-village/4th-symposium-on-free-cultural-spaces/). The following section, a minor case study, is to indeed show the far-reaching impact of one feature unique to the festival. Grounded in its history and local politics, the prefigurative ways of change that Boom festival propagates are aptly demonstrated here. In this part, several levels of this ensemble intersect and hereby reinforce each other through both the public education aspects and the experimental possibilities of action.

2.1.1 Drugs and Policies Trance, dance and intoxication make up the Archaic formula for both religious celebration and a guaranteed good time. Terence McKenna (1999: 63)

The theme for the 2016 edition of Boom festival—the shaman—symbolises how the festival interweaves celebration with the different levels of music, spirito-religious experiences and altered consciousness into an ensemble. In this way, rave culture continues the defining characteristics of 1960s free festivals of ‘young people gathering together in large numbers to dance and listen to music, take drugs and make love’ (Shapiro 1999: 23). Nowadays, with festivals dominating the leisure sector, global festival culture likewise consists of music, the culture itself (including style and types of clothing and speaking), and drug use, says Stefanie Jones of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) (Jones 2014b). In a presentation given by Jones at

Boom festival entitled ‘Can Global Festival Culture Change the Way We See Drugs and the People Who Use Them?’ she addresses the specifics of Boom’s local political context and how it may contribute to challenging dominant opinions . The DPA is one of several global organisations working together to reform existing drug policies. The Open Society Foundations’ Global Drug Policy Program (GDPP), headed by Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, ‘supports organisations attempting to shift the paradigm of drug policies around the world from today’s punitive approach to one rooted in human rights and public health’ (Malinowska-Sempruch 2014). Both Jones and Malinowska-Sempruch held their lectures during the day theme of A Borderless World: Political Action for Change, Overcoming Inner and Outer Separations in the Liminal Village. They are at the forefront of a wider tendency of academics, organisations and governments supporting the view that the war on drugs of the previous decades has failed in its goal of exterminating drugs, in fact having devastated people’s lives and economic markets without significant use reduction. These conclusions are backed by several high- profile reports on drugs, including two issued by the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP) and one by the London School of Economics, calling for legalisation and treatment as alternatives to criminalisation (see Quah, Danny et al. 2014 and War on Drugs 2011: 5, 10). They are supported by Nobel prize winners, and such renowned figures as Kofi Annan and Richard Branson. Boom’s role in this story stems from a change in drug policy around the turn of the millennium, when an internal heroin epidemic resulted in public opinion demanding for governmental response to the problem. A relaxation of the drug law ensued, with the instalment in 2001 of a new law that decriminalised all drug possession and use, with considerable success. For the purpose of clarity, the possession and use of drugs are still illegal in Portugal, but criminal prosecution is not the legal result anymore, a first signal of a worldwide growing need for change (see Hughes & Stevens 2007 and 2012, respectively). Because of Portugal’s unique policies, it is no coincidence that Boom offers a platform for discussion on this controversial subject. The DPA’s effort to ‘promote what works: honest education and harm reduction services’ (Jones 2014b) has proven of vital importance in the current political situation of the country; its laws were adapted for that very reason. The new drug policy in Portugal and the priority of harm reduction allowed for a unique feature of Boom festival to come into being: Kosmicare. First installed in the 2002 edition, the service is dedicated to helping people who experience difficulties during their psychedelic trips at the festival. Providing such services as advice on damage prevention, education, risk minimisation, and legal drug testing, Kosmicare is supported by a multilingual team 30

strong, including medics, psychologists and (experienced) volunteers. It works together with local services including a hospital, fire department, and internal and external security. Lying central in the Boomland, near but distinct from First Aid, Kosmicare has been defined as ‘A safe place for grounding the galactic energies and intense experiences’ (http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/boomguide/kosmicare/). In the second phase of its existence, Boom festival founder Diogo Ruivo started to focus this project not solely on the festival itself but also on a wider scale. He worked together with the Portuguese Ministry of Health, the Catholic University of Porto and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) to set up the framework for a global version in 2010 (Soares da Silva 2015). British volunteer in Kosmicare Karin Silenzi de Stagni also recognised the necessity of something similar at other festivals, and already founded a UK version in 2009. The UK-based service provides what according to Silenzi de Stagni is most needed. She offers a ‘very calm and pleasant’ space, stating that ‘Most of the time all that a person in a psychedelic crisis needs is reassurance that they will come back to base line eventually and we will be there to take care of them if something goes wrong.’ As the presence of doctors or security guards may create anxiety, ‘just a friendly face is much more soothing for people in crisis.’ In fact, she continues, ‘We think that if someone is having a “bad trip” it is because he/she may be in need of it, they may be confronting their own fears, and there is potential to find benefit from it’ (PsypressUK 2013). This delicate approach is clearly in line with the principal intention of harm reduction, which in this instance is given precedence over all else. Although absent in most other festivals, Stefanie Jones of the DPA admitted that services similar to Kosmicare do exist in the United States, but that festival organisers are reluctant to invite them to avoid creating the impression that visitors can use drugs freely, which is illegal. Nonetheless, drugs are everywhere and everybody uses them, so to give an answer to Jones’s question from before, I do think that global festival culture can contribute to changing the way we see drugs and the people who use them. Although it may be indirect, in the specific context of the Portuguese drug policy that coincided with the growth of the festival, Boom festival has allowed Kosmicare to flourish. The festival provides a forum in which alternative solutions are invented and openly discussed. Through better services and control, Boom demonstrates both the success of education and harm reduction while putting into practice the very ideals promoted by organisations like the DPA.

2.2 Action: Sustainability and the Environment This double goal of education and action extends even further. Boom festival actively engages its participants by distributing its efforts through various media. The Dharma Dragon is a paper magazine that is distributed freely around the Boomland from which some of the following figures are taken (see http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/site/pdf/ DharmaDragon_boomfest2014.pdf). Boom’s objective is to create joy and happiness, while living with respect for and in harmony with nature and the earth, posing the question, ‘How can the festival awaken a conscious environmental behaviour and call for action using celebration as a tool’ (https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2016/webtvradio/boom-web-tv/ boom-2014-official-doc/boom-2014-official-webdoc-2/). The question is indicative of its prefigurative style of activism, and it already formulates an answer on the very webpage on which it is posed, which features one of several official Boom Webdocs. This one is about permaculture, a natural agricultural system that promotes sustainability through ecological designs that involve planting techniques that are more complex (as opposed to monoculture), imitating and integrating into natural ecosystems. The use and development of permaculture forms part of Boom’s extensive Environmental Program, for which the festival, which doesn’t receive any corporate sponsorship, has teamed up with the Institute of Permaculture and Ecovillage of the Cerrado (IPEC), a Brazilian ecocentre and former ecovillage. The self-sustaining character of ecovillages forms a direct source of inspiration for many of the initiatives undertaken by Boom. In order to create more sustainable ways of living by reducing the footprint it leaves behind, Boom has generated a complex set of eco-friendly and sustainability efforts that share the common aim of reusing, reducing and recycling. For every edition of the festival, an increasing number of construction materials is being reused. More importantly, the water used at the festival is treated in an innovative organic recycling system, reaching 100 % reusability in 2012. So-called grey water, used water that is flushed down showers and sinks, passes through a complex filter system involving plant species and microorganisms before returning to the soil (https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/environment/water/). For the steadily growing number of compost toilets (starting with 20 in 2006, but 348 by 2016, almost the double amount of the 186 of 2012’s edition) spread throughout the Boomland no water is used at all, nor are any chemicals. A natural composting process produces a bio-fertiliser, and Boom’s many gardens are fertilised by the excrements of the previous edition. In this way, no chemicals are necessary at all, and up to 190,000 litres of water were saved from mere flushing purposes in 2012 (Jones 2014a: 341). Moreover, what in other instances would be

considered ‘waste’ is recycled and put to good and organic use, creating copious amounts of organic fertiliser collected in 2014 (https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2016/environment/ composting-toilets/). In short, as it was put near the toilets, ‘Shit is gold!’. Boom also expands its reach by subtly involving others in its projects. The festival had 165 registered Boom Buses in 2014 coming in from various European countries and collectively saving an estimated 800 tons of CO2 emission (Dharma Dragon 2014: 5). Moreover, it promotes people who go to the festival by bicycle, even rewarding those who have done so on one occasion. The principal exception on saving is made during the mere 10- day voracious energy consumption of the festival, in order to have superb music and sound quality. According to André Soares, this is supposed to be made up for by reducing its overall energy use. Various solar power generators keep Boom’s energy maintenance largely ‘off the grid’. They are responsible for most of the energy used for the whole crew and staff during the many months of preparation when the festival itself doesn’t take place. This remarkable exception, in combination with the high cost of world quality DJs, light and sound effects, underscores yet again the importance of music, and the dominance of the festival spirit. Boom also interacts with the local community and its surroundings to further achieve a reduction of its (environmental) impact. Aiming to give back something to the local community by raising money with the Karuna Project, Boom donated €11.000, – of its revenue to various local NGOs operating in the region (see https://www.boomfestival.org/ boom2016/news/boom-karuna-project/). Furthermore, local artists of all kinds are stimulated to contribute sustainable eco-art made of natural materials for display and interaction around the festival. One such art project, in 2012, involved a wish tree, fully made out of recycled or reused materials: seed paper, strings made of burlap sacks, and a rejected batch of pencils gathered from a local factory. The seed paper was, after everyone had written their wish on it, planted back into the earth at the end of the festival ‘as a way of retributing the fun and happiness we experienced on this piece of land’ (The Alchemy of Spirit part I, min. 21:10). The most interesting project for the present paper, initiated in 2008, was the reuse of 46,000 litres of waste vegetable oil, which made another 117 tons of emission reduction possible. It was collected not only within the festival grounds but also in the homes, schools and restaurants of the neighbouring municipality. According to Lucy Legan of Boom’s organisation it was used for powering Boom’s motorised vehicles and power generators, effectively turning waste into energy, and advertised locally as ‘O seu óleo é música’ (‘your oil is music’, for video see http://videos.sapo.pt/Ps23aaHv8FJLurTC588T, in Portuguese, but easy to follow). Using art to recycle materials and eventually give them back to the earth, or

even more interesting, using waste and renewable materials to create new life, or turn them into art and music, is the most astonishing way in which the prefigurative approach operates. Acting partly on a local scale but reaching a global audience, Boom’s efforts do not go unnoticed and are recognised with several awards that have been bestowed upon the festival. International recognition of what Boom achieves has even led to the festival being inducted into the United Nations Music and Environment Initiative, a shared initiative by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and UNESCO. Acknowledging that ‘Music is one of the most powerful mediums to communicate environmental messages to billions of people worldwide – irrespective of race, religion, income, gender or age’, its objective is, among others, to ‘use the popularity of music to promote environmental awareness and respect for the environment among the public, especially young people’ (http://www.unep.org/ music_env/about.asp). The power of music could not be more eloquently described. The popularity of Boom and its name, including the musical lineup, is used by the organisation to be associated with the arts in several ways, using psychedelic imagery in conjunction with top-notch developments in sustainability and similar efforts. The music in this respect is taken, literally even, as a medium in which messages of peace, transformation, and unity are included in lyrics, hereby legitimising the benefits of mind-altering psychedelics and other goals and visions (also see Chapter 1). Seen in terms of musicking, music at Boom has provided the basis around which everything else just happened, intricately interwoven into an ensemble that subtly suggests alternatives while maintaining its ties to the basic premises of celebration. In this way, it functions as the double metaphor of both being at the beginning of things but also that what binds it all together to make Boom what it is today. Writing about it, as I am doing now, by definition includes all these processes, and helps to spread its ideas.

2.3 Networking: Cooperation and Reverberation The Liminal Village at Boom is not only concerned with spreading messages to its visitors, it is also a place for festivals to communicate among themselves. Festivals are organisations, communities, little miniature systems that have great capacities and real happenings. And all these festivals are interconnected, shown by the programs of the Liminal Village. Grouping Boom together with other transformational festivals such as Glastonbury (UK), Burning Man and Lightning in a Bottle (USA), Fusion (Germany), S.U.N. and Ozora (Hungary), and Universo Paralello (Brazil) is no random coincidence. Recognising the context of other transformational festivals, Boom producers also visit them all around the world to learn and

vice versa. That similar festivals share the same ideals and goals of wanting to create change is demonstrated by ‘Boom, Fusion, Burning Man: Leading the way of Global Transformation through the Arts’, a discussion panel held in the Liminal Village comprising representatives from the festivals mentioned. All of them, according to Boom’s Diogo Ruivo, offer different spaces for new experiences. In combining their forces, the motivation is, ‘How can we bring it together and make it even more powerful?’ (Ruivo et al. 2014). The organisation of each follows the other’s styles and organisational tactics, which includes making visits to the other festivals to learn and improve. In the other festivals, Boom organisers see ‘what they are bringing and adapt it into a Boom reality’, says Ruivo. From Fusion, it may take the ‘German efficiency’ as inspiration, in terms of logistics and other practical matters. Conversely, Boom inspires Fusion with its environmental program to incorporate elements into their own festival directly, like improving both the number and quality of its compost toilets. Fusion’s Martin Eulenhaupt (“Eule”) explained how six weeks after Fusion ended still a group of people 40 strong was cleaning the property of its litter full time. By comparison, he said that in general, it was considerably cleaner at Boom. Ruivo himself mentioned that he noticed that in the mornings on the dance floor, people would tell each other to pick up their own trash (Ruivo et al. 2014). ‘Big brother’ Burning Man is the oldest festival of the three and the most experienced. Taking place in the Nevada desert, it provides examples of all kinds, like how to deal with the dangers of overheating by arranging its lands better to create more shades and avoid dehydration—at Boom it can be equally soaring hot. The caustic environment of Burning Man makes that even organic materials are not regenerated; hence extensive policies are in place among which is Leaving No Trace (LNT), adopted to ensure nothing whatsoever is left behind (see also http://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/). Such initiatives are also taken as inspiration by other festivals. Burning Man has sparked a number of daughters and similar festivals around the world, some officially sanctioned. The Amsterdam-based Magneet festival, which promotes sustainability and has ‘No spectators only participators’ (http://www.magneetfestival.nl/info), was initiated by DJ Isis, and adopts similar strategies guided by the principles as set out by the organisation, including an LNT policy, while aiming for higher sustainability. And these festival initiatives can still go further, reaching beyond their own limits. As said before, in some places these ways of living are in fact reality, like the Free Cultural Spaces (FCSs). Boom’s identification with these FCSs can be attested from the themed lectures day in the Liminal Village, the 4th Futurological Symposium on Free Cultural

Spaces. It featured lectures and discussions between representatives of Ruigoord, a squatted small village near Amsterdam, which has been an open community since the 1970s, the Danish Christiania, a freetown in Copenhagen, and Thylejren, a festival-turned-permanent- community—itself inspired by Woodstock and England’s Isle of Wight Festival—which started in 1970 and governs itself rather autonomously to this day. The symbolic connections between all of them are demonstrated by a totem pole in the middle of Boomland that shows the distance and direction towards several of them. Another involvement here is the Project Nuevo Mundo (now NuMundo), an online centre to promote integration between eco-villages festivals throughout Central and South America, asking, ‘What if there were festivals that were held at ecovillages and centers of sustainability?’ (http://www.boomfestival.org/ boom2014/program/liminal-village/4th-symposium-on-free-cultural-spaces/ivan-sawyer- garcia/). Through the Liminal Village and beyond, festivals, FCSs and other initiatives not only have a voice on a platform surrounded by some 50,000 people, it also provides excellent opportunities for establishing and extending social networks between them. As another friend of mine said, ‘You’re teaching 50.000 people at the same time to be more open minded!’ Working together by asking these and similar questions—whether this culture can change the way we judge drugs, or how pleasure and leisure can be combined with more serious political engagement—they raise awareness. They show to many that by offering initiatives in a festival setting, the principles put forth here have the capability to be put into reality, to be in fact maintained on a permanent level, that exists just as the ‘other’, normal everyday reality. Boom supports and promotes positive cultural initiatives and political and social change around the world in various ways. To this end, it teams up with Brazil’s IPEC, promoting the sustainable examples of Ecovillages and all systems of compost toilets and other technological novelties. But it also works together with the Portuguese government to carry out current drug policies in sensible and humanitarian ways. In doing so, Boom in turn provides an example for others. The origin of this consciousness—leading to considerable efforts on a much grander scale—started with the innocent freedom of party and dance, which has the power to lead to or improve research and scientific exploration, and networking, starting with discussion, consciousness, and awareness. The small things give off a clear signal in what ways can be saved, and how things can be done differently. These initiatives are already a reality in a variety of places, expanding every day. Characterised by the positive focus of its prefigurative disposition, Boom festival operates at both local and global levels to show alternatives in

current socio-political issues. At Boom, however, learning is optional, as one always has the choice to seek out new information on varying topics, or just go and dance, if desired, and do little else. That being said, however, everybody takes something home with them from Boom festival. Just how visitors respond individually, and how they relate to one another, is the subject of my last chapter. The cooperation of the participants, the people who go there, is a necessity, for the festival is made as much, if not more, by the public as by its organisation.

2.4 Summary For Boom, music and social awareness are strongly linked. Interestingly, the festival started out as a party, based on celebration. When it grew larger, the organisation, fuelled by psychedelics-induced visionaries, recognised the need to deal with their impact on their surroundings in a more responsible way. Over time, Boom’s organisers developed an extensive sustainable program that focuses on what they support, not what they are against. Can this prefigurative way of leading the way with the joy and happiness of the festival spirit lead to more awareness, and hence to more consideration for nature? It can, and without compromising the light-heartedness of the festival spirit—for some, festival is a way of life. Boom offers environmental and political alternatives at a festival that have the capability to be put into a reality which, far from being reductive symbolism, in fact already exist. The Liminal Village is the theoretical centre, literally and symbolically, where connections are made on several levels. Starting with the small, Boom has created networks around the world, teaming up with both local and global communities, governments and organisations, other festivals and FCSs. Boom, and its prominent place in the psytrance culture, started a chain reaction celebrating, while along the way combining it with a prefigurative activism. With a growing sense of responsibility, the greater emphasis on sustainable projects ‘just happened’. The festival successfully demonstrates that, by acting as a mediator and combining the global with the local, it can by means of its prefigurative approach reduce its footprint and stimulate awareness, creating the world it wants to see. It can, in fact, turn waste into music. Boom’s power to change dominant perceptions lies in its ability to show alternatives that work, and in turn inspire similar projects elsewhere. As such, it provides both an educational function (through the Liminal Village) and a platform for the actual experimentation with those solutions. Backed by the relaxation of Portugal’s drug policy, Boom festival’s Kosmicare is unique at Boom, a feature that remains absent in most other

countries and festivals. Its role in the regulation at Boom festival can show to both what really works: harm reduction and education. In doing so, Boom provides a clear example of how the repercussions of changes in drug policy have contributed to the de-stigmatisation of drugs and their use. Boom shows the complex ways of music’s power to change, combining its efforts by its network of connections and allowing change and growth by planting seeds. All this is still happening because some people wanted to have a party and dance to the music. In fact, the music is the one thing exempt from the saving done on all fronts, preserving the superb sound and music quality and the best DJs. Retaining a focus on the quality and importance of music and without compromising its festival spirit, the prefigurative demonstration of alternatives on many levels is characteristic of Boom’s attitude to the festival, to its guests, and to life itself.

3. Being Together Boom is rooted in freedom, love and sustainability. These are all hallmarks of the empire of life. This is an international meeting place, which is really, really needed at this time, for all of us. And it’s amazing to be able to come here and meet people from all over the world. American man (The Alchemy of Spirit part I: 18:53)

The combination of dance, party and drugs—and the consciousness of how it is all sustained in a good way—is how Boom festival started, as we have seen in the previous chapters, forming part of its origins. The festival’s main motto was ‘We are One,’ a lemma that, somewhat to my surprise, I found to be actively shared by the people there, both from the organisation (lecturers, therapists, DJs) and ordinary participants—their identities may be blurred at times, as will be explained below. In this chapter, I demonstrate how the idea of being there together is created through the physical manifestations of the gathering of the psytribe, with participation accompanying the psytrance experience. A major contribution to this part of my thesis is a visit to Boom festival in the summer of 2014, including my own personal experiences and those of whom I have spoken to, tackling some of its peculiarities and providing a framework for a direct understanding how the festival works first-hand. Key to this experience, and its understanding, will be participation. In accordance with the idea of participation and integration of all people, this chapter includes information by people from various backgrounds, such as authors, scholars and festival organisers, collected from a variety of sources. It includes written texts published via official Boom media, academic articles, internet blogs and documentaries, interviews and comments gathered through personal communication. Indeed, my foremost method of research here was observation while participating. I asked many questions to many people, sometimes revealing my motivations (for writing this article), and at other times not. This seemingly haphazard approach to collecting data is an effort to match the day-to-day experiences of the festival—walking around and finding things, meeting people, and encountering situations, and it was in fact partly done so. This is not to forge my own objectivity, but to assert my relative lack of background knowledge of both the festival (and festivals in general) and psytrance music and its scene. The psytrance is ubiquitously there. Music, albeit sometimes reduced to the background, permeates all and everything at the festival, and as such functions as a dynamic, unifying force. In the first place, as discussed previously, this is achieved through the dance centres of Boom, especially the Dance Temple. Being situated in the middle of the Boomland

(for a map, see https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/hd/22cdb620376741. 562ea4d5f247d.jpg), the Dance Temple can be heard in most places every day of the festival, from 9 pm till 5 pm the next day, and on the last day from midnight onwards 24 hours non- stop. By its sheer omnipresence, it binds all other things at the festival together, as will be explained in further detail below. By association, we have already connected psytrance culture and style to the music; through its connection to aesthetics, the messages and conceptions are underscored and reinforced. The ‘vibe’ as experienced through dance reconnects the crowd, giving the experience of rooting them back into the earth, a feeling shared by many. The ways in which the people are connected, however, are considerably more complex and extensive, providing yet another level to add to the ensemble.

3.1 The Gathering of the Tribe The dance floor, overseen by the DJ-shaman, seems to have its own religious ritual, as discussed in Chapter 1. Seen more broadly, ‘research consistently identifies contemporary dance cultures as contexts enabling an immediate and sensational sociality approximating a religious or spiritual experience for its participants’ (St John 2009: 38). Ben Malbon speaks of ‘playful vitality’, a conceptualisation of the sensation of inner strength and effervescence’ that can be ‘experienced through the practices of ‘play’ and especially through the ‘flow’ achievable through dancing (Malbon 1999: 5). This flow, reminiscent of the ‘vibe’ described in the first chapter in the context of the crossroads of consciousness, recalls Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), which discusses ‘collective effervescence’, the occurrence of a community that is simultaneously experiencing the same emotion, participating in the same experience. Individual identities are released here while unifying the group, not seldom with religious overtones. Durkheim attributes some of this to the gathering of the members of a tribe, which is otherwise occupied with ordinary tasks, such as hunting and gathering (Durkheim 1915 [1912]). The analogy of a ‘tribe’ is used by many to describe the psytrance (dance) gatherings. In fact, several dance cultures have been designated the term tribe, based on the fragmented postmodern cultures in which they appear, to designate smaller communities sharing similar interests and lifestyles. Similarly, ‘neo-tribes’ signify the simultaneous induction of individuals into several tribal communities. The psytrance community is itself fractured, open, and flexible, and it sets itself apart from other EDMCs by its distinct psychedelic spirituality, interpreted as tribal (St John 2009: 38). From within the scene, psytrancers refer to themselves

as a ‘community’, a ‘family’, or a ‘tribe’, and it also features prominently on album covers, in record labels, individual songs and music sets, and as a descriptor for various musical collectives, to which Boom forms no exception (Greener & Hollands 2006: 402, see there for examples). The use of these terms, however, has been disputed, forming part of a set of variously rejected concepts, such as (post-) subcultures, scenes, and lifestyles, that are considered ill- defined in the fluidity of postmodern discourse. Criticism includes a rejection of the ‘mistake’ of the ‘projection of pre-modern symbols on to putatively new phenomena’ (Hesmondhalgh 2005: 24), but also the acknowledgement that, overall, ‘the search for an overarching term is likely to be unsatisfactory’ (Hesmondhalgh 2005: 32; for a larger discussion, also see Greener & Hollands 2006: 398). In my opinion, however, the self-established connection to older cultures, religions, and related phenomena, and mixing them at random without any preference or hierarchy is central to psytrance at large, and to Boom in particular (see Chapter 1). This, and its frequent use for self-identification by participants, the organisation and scholars on the subject alike, is why I will employ these terms here for they conjure some interesting analogies worth considering, some quite useful, regarding tribal behaviour, rituals and convergences (see below). Other authors of psytrance, experts in the field, also persist in using the terms. Resisting claims that ‘cultural membership is superficial and transient’, fragmented and dominated by global media, Greener & Hollands point out how this global online community is indeed made possible by technological developments such as mass communication facilitated through the internet, yet they emphasise how people actively use the media to create their collective identity, marking a characteristic difference with earlier hippies. The authors further assert that ‘identities, beliefs, practices and values’ are maintained not only through online communities, but also through direct, face-to-face contact of the temporal and spatial contexts of psytrance events. In their article, they seek to show ‘how the bonds of such a culture are maintained through the music as well as away from the dance floor’ (Greener & Hollands 2006: 399). Indeed, gathering or being together is described as a main goal of the micro- communities of psytrance that are ‘assembling and reassembling in passionate “neo-tribes” complementary to, or in place of, crumbling traditional institutions (e.g. Church, nuclear- family, clan, etc)’ (St John 2009: 39-40). Undisturbed, psytrance expert St John in particular uses the terms voluntarily, for ‘the being together endogenous to the dance vibe is associated with a desire to be united, a coming together of variant and disparate tribes’, while ‘dance

gatherings are convergences of diverse sonic and stylistic universes, sound alliances, fusions of dance tribes and their variant vibes’ (St John 2009: 40, italics in original). As he sees it, the scene is ‘unique in that its public events are likely the most culturally/nationally diverse dance music events worldwide […] characterised by a diversity of subgenres, scenes, and concomitant aesthetics’ (St John 2009: 42). Perhaps, the psytrance community’s own alternative background is what makes it quite tolerant to new people and things, and any individual with other (musical) preferences and styles. The Boom gathering, then, is not only for psytrance enthusiasts, but indeed open to anyone. At least, the great kindness and openness is something I have experienced at first hand, not only at Boom, but also in other smaller psytrance gatherings. In an online survey conducted by Greener & Hollands, one respondent stated that ‘The people who attend psytrance parties, mostly, are the kindest and most caring people in the world’ (Greener & Hollands 2006: 402). The community makes you feel welcome, even if you are not really into the scene or especially indebted to psytrance, like myself. At Boom, especially, everybody shares everything. People come up to you to give you something, without asking something in return. Some of these small things may prompt reflection the way we interact. It is difficult to say how this will affect the future of the festival. What is the effect of attracting a bigger and broader audience on the basic principles of the event, and will the spiritual hippie goals still be pursued? The difficulty to get a ticket, and thus the commercialisation of the festival, is a criticism I heard several times. But to me that doesn’t seem really fair: in the context of Boom’s contributions to alternative models and with less tickets sold this edition, I consider the possibility for a more general audience to get acquainted with the festival an opportunity to extend the reach of the message. However, seeing Boom as the physical manifestation of the psytribe alone would be to downplay its more complex social structures and possibilities. Boom not only functions as the physical coming together or convergence of the psytrance community, but also as a meeting place for industry professionals. Developers of modern technologies (see Chapter 2) and musicians like DJ Isis, for example, who participate on more than just one level, find a place to meet their peers and share information and ideas. Furthermore, all of the aforementioned people are also taking part in the festival, dancing and partying, gathering information. They gain new experiences, to share with the ‘normal’ people, in their multitude of affiliations, quests, and interests. As Boom festival knows no VIP areas or different treatment, everyone is treated equally. Ordinary visitors also find inspiration in each other, taking some of their interactions to their own everyday communities, one example of the way things at the festival

reach beyond its own limits. A woman from London says, ‘now we’re thinking about how we can make cities ecocities, […] and community gardens is something we’re really interested in looking at, and seeing how we can start growing our own food. Coming here and finding so many other people who were thinking the same thing and feeling the same feeling, and having these conversations just, it’s very inspiring’ (The Alchemy of Spirit part II, 30:50).

3.2 Reconnecting and Healing Intersecting the level of togetherness is the contrasting experience of a focus inside, on the self. Just as the ‘vibe’ can trigger people, often strangers, to (re)connect on a basic human level in an out-of-daily routine that provides dance with its liminal qualities (St John 2009: 38), so too does it allow for attunement on a more personal, individual level. Because the alternatively structured social space of the scene allows people to see things in a different way, ‘virtual psytrancers have been able to create a community in a permanent liminal space where such feelings, normally only expressed in a party environment, remain permanently acceptable’ (Greener & Hollands 2006: 402). In a way they cannot elsewhere, the special occasion of the festival, its liminality if you will, allows people to be themselves or, conversely, whoever they want to be. The paradoxical contrast of focusing on oneself while at the same time trying to let go and become One is described as a particular quality of psytrance. While a context for a sacrifice of the Self, the psytrance festival simultaneously allows for a performance of the self, an Other self, a queering of self. With ‘Boom as a freak theatre’, as St John calls it, here participants ‘become freaks on display’:

The psy-festival, therefore, allows its inhabitants multiple freedoms, [and] Boom affords this commotion of singularity and freakiness, the dissolution and presentation of self-hood. Energised in rare fashion, across this spectrum one shifts between spectacular states of self(less)ness. Evincing the complex character of the “tribal” within this movement, participants may experience fusion with, or autonomy from, others in extraordinary states of altered consciousness. (St John 2009: 47-48)

The area that offers most possibilities for personal grounding at the festival is the Healing Area (from 2016: the Being Fields). As the name suggests, this is a place of healing, a place where spirituality and well-being intersect. This area offers various meditations, yoga, Qi

Gong, different rituals, a whole range of private or group therapies, and more. They are all aimed at healing and (re)connecting, to the earth, the self, and the other. Like dance, the Healing Area offers alternative ways of change on both a personal and a collective level. As the accompanying leaflet explains, ‘the Healing Area offers all boomers an invitation to come and be part of a [collective] healing gathering with the old and new metaphysical health practices.’ At Boom festival, as the Dharma Dragon explains, ‘we are here to help and guide you [through] your healing journey at Boom’ (Dharma Dragon 2014: 12). Situated at the very end of the Boomland, the Healing Area is composed of various tents for group practices and private sessions, a Puja, a Temazcalí, an Amazonian sweat lodge ritual, a tantra tipi, and the Water Tent. Allowing for enough empty space between them, the tents are interspersed with gardens and statues, well suited for reflection, walking, or just being. The relative remoteness of the area lends it a calmness of atmosphere, and the understanding that other people present there have come for the same reasons. In a way, simply being in the Healing Area can by itself have a healing effect. As the organisation acknowledges, ‘The connectedness and consciousness field that has been arising at the Healing Area and that will again be generated at the Being Fields in 2016 reveals how Boomers are taking a [conscious], active step towards the collective evolution of human consciousness’ (https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2016/program/healing-area/). This dia- lectic development is using a strikingly similar vocabulary and shows similar interests, goals, and motivations to the spiritual knowledge that St John advocates through the dissolution, immersion and evolution experienced through dance (see Chapter 1). As Malbon points out, ‘Far from being a mindless form of crass hedonism, as some commentators suggest, clubbing is for many both a source of extraordinary pleasure and a vital context for the development of personal and social identities’ (Malbon 1999: 4-5). With the clubbing mentioned applying equally to the music festival, for some indeed a visit to Boom may entail more than just a frolicsome holiday. Recalling the similar discussion that took place in the Hedonism vs. Activism discussion panel in the Liminal Village described in the previous chapter, there was a remark that the hedonism of the festival could function as a honey trap for other purposes. In response, the audience question arose whether people are not in this way tricked into learning, quite an unexpected answer came from artist Android Jones. In an utterly serious voice, he said, ‘Everybody here’s got trauma. That’s the feeling of connection. There is healing here. Good times is bullshit. You need to meet people face to face. Why we’re here is how to move forward. Let’s get through this together’ (Alava et al. 2014). After which the audience broke into a spontaneous applause. As it turned out, during

the question round following the panel, a girl stood up, visibly emotional, to say how much this experience had meant to her (the panel discussion took place towards the end of the festival), and she thanked all present for sharing it with her. This brave statement (it was visibly difficult for her) also rendered a round of applause. The aforementioned critique, nonetheless, points to the specific agenda of the Boom organisation and shows, given Jones’ very personal response, the different experiences and interpretations the festival allows, and accepts. They all come together, with different possibilities catering to different individuals. The description of the above scenes, then, attests to the impact the whole festival can have on people individually. In a strange way, a visit to Boom can be a soothing experience with healing effects. It certainly has been for me personally. Of course, it may be unclear how sustained or lasting this festival experience really is. As I have mentioned before, there is of course the possibility of just coming there for the week in a relaxing holiday, which is certainly what some people do there. But the fact that the festival has so much to offer, and the previous knowledge that most evidently possess makes that people are at least introduced to its many entangled levels of music, personal development and possibilities for change. A substantial number of people I have spoken to were there because they were looking for something deeper, something personal. For a festival to have a wider effect on the world at large, it has to start with the people coming to the festival themselves. If those people feel they can be who they are (or want to be), feel free, and enjoy themselves, they are arguably more likely to expand that vibe to others. By contrast, if a music festival squanders its basic premises of love and peace and the music culture, grounded in the social and cultural context it operates in, as the 1999 revamped edition of Woodstock demonstrates, things can go very different indeed. In an attempt to emulate the original Woodstock (and following another 1994 edition), in this heavily sponsored event organisers sought to optimise income by further securing the gates and restricting selling of food and water to highly priced vendors on-site. Frustrations rose over these and other shortcomings in organisation, such as the then-high ticket prices, the overcrowding, the inadequate water and sanitation services provided, the extremely high temperatures (including hot asphalt that connected stages). A line-up of rock stars that included Limp Bizkit, who performed Break It, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ rendition of Jimi Hendrix’ Fire, fuelled a venomous cocktail where participants gave heed to the calls of the lyrics, which ultimately resulted in fire, violence, and rape (Kreps 2014). By comparison, as mentioned in the previous chapter Boom aspires to start global change starting from the self, and again it employs the prefigurative mode to do so, including lyrics and texts. ‘Indeed,’

St John makes clear, ‘the spirit of slogans like “think globally, act locally” or “be the change you want to see in the world” was echoed in the principle message of the Healing Area: “Creating inner peace and self-love makes it possible to manifest world peace and universal love.”’ (St John & Baldini 2012: 543). Among the participants, togetherness and group identity are promoted through small gestures of sharing and thus being together. Wherever you go, the people you randomly cross eyes with smile at you benevolently, unpretentiously, with no hidden or deeper motives. Just a graceful recognition of the other person and their shared presence with you, here and now at the festival. Some randomly spray you with their handheld water spray bottles. It may be unexpected at times, but the outcome of some cooling water droplets on your face or body is always enjoyable during the long hot Portuguese day. Such small but frequent interactions with other people leave you with a pleasant, comfortable feeling. In bigger cities, such interaction is scarce, if there is any at all; at Boom, however, it is quite common. By thus creating a strong sense of community, or communitas as another expression of the ‘vibe’, people are united as forming part of the same tribe: ‘Whatever it is we do, we are all doing it together’ (Small 1998: 8). Small’s term musicking is so interesting here because it makes no principal distinction between the actions of those present, rather allowing them to be considered as being part of the same thing, the same (musical) experience. Just like all that are musicking in a specifically musical setting (e.g., a musical performance), people of all kinds come together and act together in the same performance, in a ‘collective improvisation’. Different people and different elements all add something new, something unique to this ensemble, which, in an almost ritualistic way, figuratively plays out together over the same steady bass. It is shared by a group of people who are united in other ways than through music and dance alone. For the messages of awareness and spirituality—messages of acceptance, being free, and immersion into a new cosmic world order, free of selfishness, and becoming One— start with the self. They are, however, also transmitted in other, more subtle ways, from larger (art) projects in which cooperation is essential to casual behaviours and practices at the festival itself. They differ in size and purpose, and interpretation is open to all; what connects them is the invitation to participate. Other than, say, classical music performances, where people ‘have nothing to contribute but [their] attention to the spectacle that has been arranged for [them]’, at Boom ‘other kinds of performance conjure up other kinds of behaviour, other kinds of relationships. Many reveal a complex ambivalence about their ideal relationships that

can tell us much about the nature of musical performances and about the function they serve in human life’ (Small 1998: 44).

3.3 Participation and Musicking The ideas of being together and sharing are not only communicated through dancing in the Dance Temple, by visiting lectures and workshops in the Liminal Village, or even the self- focused therapies of the Healing Area. It is predominantly the consciousness, the profound understanding of actually being there, at the festival, together. In line with the subtle interweaving of the ensemble, many participatory acts share some behaviours and practices and even aesthetic designs, apparently tribal in nature, such as Boom’s opening ceremony, the lighting of the fire in the Sacred Fire area, witnessed by many and accompanied by chanting, music and dance. One ritual-like practice I found particularly charming centred in the peaceful atmosphere around the Healing Area, where people were enjoying the sun while perched on the beach and skinny-dipping in the lake. When the sun would set, sinking behind the hills in the distance, the audience spontaneously started clapping. Although I had not seen this remarkable behaviour before, its purpose became readily clear: to thank the sun for shining upon us every day, to show gratitude for its light and warmth with respect and humbleness. Another, very different behaviour occurred regularly during the festival, especially in the camping areas and on the beaches. A sort of ‘howl’ was somehow initiated, an excited auditory wave that was repeated by many as it shifted over the hills from one location to another. Not entirely clear of its intent or purpose, it must have had a similar goal. Engaging in it, and at one time, with a group of friends, even initiating it myself, made it understood as an expression of freedom, and the happiness of being there in that moment while sharing these feelings with others. They are instances of self-expression, exciting reaction and imitation, especially of the temporary but strongly felt connection with others who share the same experience of musicking together. It brings every individual, by a simple behaviour, back to its equal participant status, with sound forming the basis of interaction. And like other elements of the festival, they are, by me and other participants, associated with psytrance, and ultimately with Boom. These are but some of the rather improvised ways people participate and interact. The festival organisation itself also invites to participate in a number of ways. Apart from the many discussions, workshops, and therapies, individuals are also called upon for participation in various projects, starting with online applications for collaboration. ‘As a transnational,

highly collaborative project, Boom is based on the principles of participation. We Are One: That’s not only the motto during the festival, but also before and after – that’s why we ask you to take part on the co-creation of Boom Festival 2016’ (https://www.boomfestival.org/ boom2016/participate/painters/). Thus it reads on that part of the website where DJs and artists and everyone ranging along the creative spectrum is drafted, from music and art to installation and painting, street performances and shops, building the site and restaurants, workshops and presentations. In addition, the festival also requires a large number of volunteers. All of these functions are open to anyone, and enrolment for each is possible through the site. The appeal to participate is spread through various media: Liminal Village discussions, dealt-out leaflets and newspapers, online accessibility through the site and webcasts. For example, The Dharma Dragon features, among other participation possibilities in joint projects, a call for HD footage that is to be included in the open-source webdocs (Dharma Dragon 2014: 2). Similarly, online participation is encouraged, ‘Become a part of this project yourself: The Boom Broadcast is an open stage for the global psychedelic community. Share your project and your visions, send your video to [us]’ (https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2016/news/boom-news/boom-broadcast-the-alternative- models-channel/). The degree of participation at Boom (and similar festivals) gives rise to a more complex understanding of the interrelation of the behaviour of all involved. Festivals like Boom are ‘cultural artifacts which are not simply bought and “consumed” but which are also accorded meaning through their active incorporation into people’s lives’ (Peter Jackson, quoted in Waterman 1998: 56). The dance floors of these festivals provide central places for the experience and its ‘prosumption’. For EDMCs, St John and Baldini (2012) borrow the term (from Ritzer & Jurgenson) to describe specifically how ‘participants, through the digital revolution, open sourcing, networked interaction, and increased substance awareness, actively participate in their own consumer experience’ (St John & Baldini 2012: 522). To complicate Boom’s many levels, they come together in the same ensemble, yet within it, metaphorically, they exchange parts. More than the strict separation between who are the performers and who are the attendants, Boom and similar festivals transcend the barriers between traditional roles, functioning as a mixture of various roles for different people. Of course, there is a long list of more specific functions like DJs, therapists, and volunteers, but as we saw before, they are also first and foremost participants at the festival. At the same time, overlap also comes from

the other side, as someone told me, by ending up volunteering to broaden their overall experience. And as non-professional visitors sell or trade their (often handmade) goods, as mentioned before, such festivals allow many to make a living and become ‘critical hubs for new micro-industries’ (St John 2009). Many are included in some project in one way or another. Recalling Small, ‘in making no distinction between what the performers are doing and what the rest of those present are doing, it reminds us that musicking […] is an activity in which all those present are involved and for whose nature and quality, success or failure, everyone present bears some responsibility’ (Small 1998: 10). It is not the fact that all participants at the festival have the exact same interests, come there with the same goals, or even share identical experiences. Instead, all are given equal status, and in that rather democratic situation, all have no other choice but to create things for themselves, and while doing so, they share with others. Musicking is by no means a straightforward, one-sided interaction, for more than being simple receptors of influences by others, individuals actively decide what they want to be influenced by. As Cook further specifies, he tries to ‘move musical encounters, of whatever nature, to the centre of musicological explanation, emphasizing how they embody the specific actions, judgements and choices of human agents, and how these are afforded but not determined by the specific circumstances within which people act, judge and choose’ (Cook 2012: 194). Indeed, people do feel actively involved in contributing (personally) to the festival. When I asked some about their motivations for coming, one Dutch man considered Boom one big dynamic system, attracting people with good intentions. ‘We are one,’ he said, ‘you attract what you radiate. I come here to give and to take, to contribute.’ Speaking to one instructor of a workshop, I asked him what had brought him there and what he did besides giving the courses. To my surprise, he confessed that he had come there already in 2006 and 2008, more to party and to use and even deal drugs. During the events, in passing, he took some workshops, and afterwards, he sought more consciousness and spirituality in his life. This time, he said, he was here with friends, and preparing for the workshops for him was psychoactive enough. ‘Did coming here draw you more into the spiritual direction?’ I asked. ‘Coming here was part of wanting to deepen my spiritual consciousness’ was the answer. He added, ‘And I want to give that to the people here. I talked with some artists and musicians, and they want to create consciousness in the people here, too.’ From DJs and workshop givers, from Boom officials to ordinary visitors, many participants seem to radiate Boom’s shared message, and people adopt the policies and behaviours they deem positive or acceptable. Participants are given free ashtrays upon

entering the festival grounds, and they pick up and spread the views of the festival. As it turns out, not cleaning up after oneself is eventually considered socially unacceptable (see Chapter 2). The public is actively encouraged to engage in the Boom spirit, and especially the compost toilets will bear in mind the prefigurative and make a subtle yet lasting impression on all visiting the festival. Naturally, everyone will use them from time to time, and eventually read the notice on the inside of each one. It is the most direct indication of the ways in which the principles prefiguratively set forth by the organisation reverberate and are being taken up by the public. Although the individual things done by Boom may seem small and quite limited to the festival, let us remember André Soares’ commitment to small-scale initiatives that have possible greater effects; in other words, Boom’s intention to plant seeds. Considering all participants at the festival as equal, everyone adds to it, by participating, by musicking. In fact, in a way so do I: this thesis also contributes to the festival in terms of musicking, and participation. One might here argue that, however bonafide all these practices, they might simply be overlooked if you are partying at the festival. But whatever you are doing, you are surrounded by the music. With most camping sites situated on the hills surrounding the flat main festival area by the lake, psytrance is everywhere. Notwithstanding the festival as it is now with its many possibilities, it cannot be imagined without it. Described as creating the basis in a communal sense of belonging (Packer & Ballantyne 2011: 170), it is the music that is at the cradle of Boom’s developments. It is what initially brought like-minded people together who shared similar goals, and it remains the driving force behind the festival. Boom is, first and foremost, a psytrance festival. The omnipresence of psytrance was initially a bit much for the limited psytrance fan that I am. But then again, one gets used to it after a few days; and after a while of being involved in this project, I am starting to like the music more and more. As one friend of mine admitted, she didn’t like it so much initially, but after her first Boom experience, she started listening to it more. As a result, she started liking it more, and effectively looked it up the second time she visited the festival. For psytrance fans, this festival provides a reassurance of core values of psytrance ravers, musicians and social interactions; for others, who enjoy the other aspects of the festival more, and even the countless others forms of music to be found there, perhaps, psytrance might work as a form of acquired listening. For me it does so, as I too am slowly starting to appreciate it, for its ecstatically entrancing repetitive basslines and stimulating sound effects, alongside the happy experiences enjoyed at the festival, and the ‘good causes’ present there, psytrance reminds me of themes of holism, acceptance, and reconnecting.

Clearly, those who do not come there for the music at all, but rather for the workshops and spiritual scene, are still confronted with the music. An Italian girl told me that she mainly came for the yoga, but would check out the psytrance simply because it was there. On the other way around, a Serbian girl was there for the third time and only previously came to party. Now, wanting to follow a more spiritual path with little or no drugs, she mainly came for the Healing Area. Whatever someone’s preference, people meet somewhere in the middle. With the Boom experience to be an integral whole for everyone there, psytrance envelops this experience of being there and all that comes with it, whether you return to your tent late at night, passing there from the magical forest of the Sacred Fire area, or get up early in the morning to go to meditation. On several levels, through dance, workshops and lectures, healing, and just being there meeting people, a positive association is attached to psytrance. The result is that psytrance slowly engulfs the whole experience like a soundtrack, sometimes in the foreground and sometimes in the background, ‘but always a magical presence acting as catalyst for whatever human encounters were desired’ (Small 1998: 45). Whatever goals, ideals, or experiences people seek or find in the Boom festival, and however contradictory they may finally be, one thing is certain here: psytrance. Its presence in several levels of the ensemble makes that all becomes somehow connected to it. The variation in activities, events and experiences offered at Boom festival is so endless and different in character, that one cannot possibly experience them all. These differences certainly create tensions between the different levels of the ensemble, but since there are so many corresponding elements in their various configurations, people still pick up on the same messages of love, unity, and being One. Boom is after all also made by its participants, and it remains very much up to the visitor to create a coherent and meaningful experience out of all that is offered. Remembering Small’s credo that ‘Music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do’ (Small 1998: 2), we have by now come to understand that musicking at Boom comprises many more and extended activities than music alone, as in any festival. The music forms a starting point, and only by understanding what people do with that, what they do as they music, instead of investigating the music itself, we gain insight into the role of music in human life.

3.4 Summary In weaving its various levels together into an ensemble, Boom vows to reconnect people to their ancestral roots, bringing them closer to the earth, the other and, most importantly, themselves. Dance is but one way in which this connection is achieved, yet there are other, quite different but parallel ways that establish the unity that may be felt through dance. The Healing Area exemplifies the personal level in which participants can find peace and healing, and in line with the prefigurative, the idea of change starting with being peace oneself. Simply being in the area gives a feeling of calm and peace, and in fact, just being there, at the festival, may be a healing experience in itself. Being there together is celebrated through art projects and ritual behaviours. People can develop themselves but can also connect to each other by sharing these experiences and ideas and, inspired by the festival and by each other, partake in tribal behaviours becoming part of a community that inspires a psychedelic way of life. Small has made it clear that musicking, what people do in music, is inherently social. The festival is made by its visitors, and it becomes clear that participation is necessary and omnipresent. Blurring the boundaries between various roles, all participants actively share and contribute to the ideas of the festival, repeating the festival’s mantra that ‘We are One’. Visiting Boom festival invites to become part of the culture, share in its beliefs and revaluate dominant ways of living. At Boom, you are not a mere attendant; you are part of it. The openness of the psytrance tribe allows anyone access to the community. With psytrance still at the core of the festival, music becomes the basis for other things to happen. Festivals are varied in what they offer, and so are people’s experiences. Everyone has to choose at all times what to make out of all Boom. Because the participants co-create the festival, meaning is created out of its multitude of experiences. From techniques of the self to the religious ecstasy of collective effervescence, Boom offers and shapes experiences of being together and sharing, offering healing and alternatives on both personal and collective levels. Engulfing it all as a continuous soundtrack is psytrance, which may just as much be in the foreground as in the background. Like everything else at the festival, it does not oblige; it offers. Boom subtly introduces psytrance to the people, weaving it harmoniously together with the other levels of the ensemble they together form. It may even gradually make those who dislike it eventually even learn to appreciate the music, if only for the subliminal association of it with the inspiring atmosphere that always seems to prevail.

Conclusion Boom festival is a complex ensemble of different levels of meaning and experience. Initially a psytrance festival, the music forms the core of a culture that reinforces such hippie values as peace and love, aiming to reconnect to the earth, to oneself, and to each other. The festival offers a multitude of events, performances, and experiences that, through various means, are all interconnected. Its origins in festival and rave culture, which through Goa convey the heritage from the 1960s onwards, have matured the festival’s outlook. With increased awareness gained through maintaining the festival spirit at its core, what was once a youth movement has now become adult. The inspiring ‘vibe’ of psytrance celebration has spread from the dance floor to a set of sustainability practices that are interwoven with the other levels of the festival. In terms of activism and social change, Boom favours a prefigurative approach that tries to focus its energy not on how things should not be, but on that which it can achieve. The Liminal Village at Boom is the educational centre from which ideas are spread, and many of the initiatives originating there the festival itself puts into practice, transforming products normally considered waste, such as vegetable oil and human excrements, into energy, and indeed into music. Conversely, Boom uses the power of music to return these messages to the people, through the Liminal Village but also by advertising, in texts and lyrics, its causes throughout the Boomland and on the website, and through psytrance music sets and dance with its physical reconnection through felt vibrations. Moreover, it is integrated with the visual and artistic design accommodating an aesthetic that combines a distinctly psychedelic outlook with ancient spirituality. All of these levels work together to create a feeling of oneness and being together, integrating music and dance with the self, and the Other, bringing all the tribe together into an ensemble. The consideration of such interrelated levels into an ensemble is made possible by developments in musicology which, strongly related to developments in music, has shifted its point of focus to a more social contextualisations of music, seeing music as culture and allowing for interdisciplinary exploration. Boom offers possibilities for change and experiment, creating connections with other festivals, governments, FCSs and others to join forces, providing an example for many more. This is not to say that Boom has solutions to all the world’s problems. Instead, Boom festival wants to remind us that we are all One and that we are all connected, and it does so on several levels. Not only in the spiritual way, in flowery terms of peace and love, but also by actually bringing into being the reality of an alternative way of life, using materials and ways to take

from the earth without harming it and while giving something back in return. And this knowledge, these practices are revealed to the many people that visit the festival, thus coming in contact with them. For visiting the festival requires active engagement with the principles in practice there. This paper is intended to add and contribute to this passing on of knowledge in academia, for I am, as anyone else at the festival, first and foremost a participant. At Boom, academic research and development are intertwined with celebration into the intricately interwoven levels of an ensemble. The way in which this is done allows for an analogy that continues in the direction chosen by music scholars as Locke, Small and Born and Cook, testifying to the necessity of considering, to use the latter’s words, an interdependent relational concurrence between them.

Participants make the festival, and the community or tribe creates its own experience, sharing it with others. At Boom you can choose what to make of it. Together, the public takes up the principles set forth by the organisation, and the ideals of the festival are gradually carried forth, through the gentleness of its prefigurative approach. The festival is something that transcends the barriers of everyday life and which ultimately has the power to transform it. Because at Boom the world is being changed slowly and consciously, and visionary modes of living and interhuman connection are lived and shared, what happens at the festival has the capacity of being put into reality. Contributing to the world as an international psytrance forum, Boom offers alternatives with the potential of creating another future, directly and practically, to its participants. Recognising that change starts on a small level and comes from within, it has a prefigurative agenda that addresses such urgent current matters as climate change by showing its participants alternatives that work. Among the many initiatives undertaken by Boom is saving on energy use, providing natural toilet facilities, waste separation and recycling. As such, it has invested in what the festival itself can do, afterwards spreading its message and forming networks with other festivals, FCSs, organisations and governments, as well as by healing and creating peace in its visitors both individually and collectively who, simply by being there, are involved in (and encouraged to) work together towards the same goals. Boom’s intentions to see all as One is not the erasing of individual purposes, creating a homogeneous mass, on the contrary; it allows and encourages difference and variation. After all, people have different backgrounds, attitudes and purposes and they respond in varying ways. The invitation to participate, however, promotes togetherness, and belonging. People meet each other and exchange ideas, sharing their experience, connected as a tribe.

Those who come to deepen their spiritual awareness encounter psytrance, those who come to dance share their ecstatic immersion with all the rest Boom has to offer. These encounters create relations among different levels, culminating in an ensemble that receives meaning only when considered together, reconnecting to the self, to the other, and to the earth, through the felt experience of moving to the same rhythm, and by engaging in a series of synchronised events, healings and rituals. These many levels together make up the ensemble in which DJs and audience, organisation and participants seem to blur their identities, performing together in a collective improvisation. And binding it all together is psytrance, always inspiring, visionary, and omnipresent, gluing together the whole experience, guiding it with music. Boom’s increased global and spiritual consciousness, the most necessary first step to change, apparently just happened. Remaining primarily a festival, a place to have fun and celebrate, Boom started small, functioning precisely because it engages without enforcing. Not by imposing, but by starting with positive celebration we take things with us from and add new things to Boom, and with this thesis I want to contribute to that. Through musicking, the diversity of activities at the festival make us understand music as a thoroughly social activity with the power to bind things together and be at the base of new things happening. It feels all the better when you are dancing to know that you can contribute to a better world in doing so.

Bibliography

The Alchemy of Spirit (2012). Documentary. Dir. Droid ID. Prod. Boom Team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTrsenzgJCQ (part I) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_IlHSSIvac (part II)

Alava, Nena et al. (2014). ‘Global Festivals at a Turning Point: Hedonism vs. Activism.’ Discussion panel delivered at Boom festival, August 10.

Bennett, Andy, Jodie Taylor & Ian Woodward, eds (2014). The Festivalization of Culture. Farnham: Ashgate.

Blommaert, Jan & Dong Jie (2006). Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Beginner’s Guide. Bristol (etc.): Multilingual Matters.

Born, Georgina (1993). ‘Understanding Music as Culture: Contributions from Popular Music Studies to a Social semiotics of Music.’ In: Raffaele Pozzi, ed. Tendenze e metodi nella ricerca musicologica. Florence: Olschki, 211-28.

Born, Georgina (2010). ‘For a Relational Musicology: Music and Interdisciplinarity, Beyond the Practice Turn.’ In: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 135 No. 2, 205-43.

Cook, Nicholas (2012). ‘Anatomy of the Encounter: Intercultural Analysis as Relational Musicology’. In: Stan Hawkins, ed. Critical Musicological Reflections: Essays in Honour of Derek B. Scott. Aldershot: Ashgate, 193-208.

Durkheim, Emile (1915) [1912]. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Tr. Joseph Swain. London: Allen & Unwin.

Greener, Tracey & Robert Hollands (2006). ‘Beyond Subculture and Post-subculture? The Case of Virtual Psytrance.’ In: Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 9 No. 4, 393-418.

Hesmondhalgh, David (2005). ‘Subcultures, Scenes or Tribes? None of the Above.’ In: Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 8 No. 1, 21-40.

Hughes, Caitlin & Alex Stevens (2007). ‘The Effects of Decriminalization of Drug Use in Portugal.’ The Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme. http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/bib/doc/bf/2007_Caitlin_211672_1.pdf

Hughes, Caitlin & Alex Stevens (2012). ‘A Resounding Success or a Disastrous Failure: Re- examining the Interpretation of Evidence on the Portuguese Decriminalisation of Illicit Drugs.’ In: Drug and Alcohol Review, Vol. 31 No. 1, 101-13. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/29901/1/Hughes%20%20Stevens%202012.pdf

Jones, Meegan (2014a). Sustainable Event Management: A Practical Guide. 2nd edition. London & New York: Routledge.

Jones, Stefanie (2014b). ‘Can Global Festival Culture Change the Way We See Drugs and the People Who Use Them?’ Drug Policy Alliance. Lecture delivered at Boom festival, August 9.

Kreps, Daniel (2014). ‘19 Worst Things About Woodstock ’99.’ Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/19-worst-things-about-woodstock-99- 20140731

Locke, Ralph (1999). ‘Musicology and/as Social Concern. Imagining the Relevant Musicologist’. In: Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, eds. Rethinking Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 499-530.

Malbon, Ben (1999). Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy and Vitality. London: Routledge.

Malinowska-Sempruch, Kasia (2014). ‘Change in Drug Policy: The International Movement for Reform.’ Global Drug Policy Program, Open Society Foundations. Lecture delivered at Boom festival, August 9.

Martin, Clive (2013). ‘Psytrance Rave in a Forest.’ Big Night Out. http://www.vice.com/video/psytrance-rave-in-a-forest

McKenna, Terence (1991). The Archaic Revival. San Francisco: Harper.

McKenna, Terence (1999). Food of the Gods. London: Rider.

Packer, Jan & Julie Ballantyne. ‘The Impact of Music Festival Attendance on Young People’s Psychological and Social Well-Being.’ In: Psychology of Music, Vol. 39 No. 2, 164- 81.

Partridge, Christopher (2006). ‘The Spiritual and the Revolutionary: Alternative Spirituality, British Free Festivals, and the Emergence of Rave Culture.’ In: Culture and Religion, Vol. 7 No. 1, 41-60.

PsypressUK (2013). ‘Interview with Kosmicare UK founder Karin Silenzi de Stagni.’ Psypressuk.com. http://psypressuk.com/2013/11/19/interview-with-kosmicare-uk-founder-karin- silenzi-de-stagni/

Quah, Danny et al. (2014). John Collins and Luc-André Brunet, eds. Ending the Drug Wars: Report of the LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy. London: LSE Ideas.

Ruivo, Diogo et al. (2014). ‘Boom, Fusion, Burning Man: Leading the way of Global Transformation through the Arts.’ Discussion panel delivered at Boom festival, August 10.

Shapiro, Harry (1999). ‘Dances with Drugs: Pop Music, Drugs, and Youth Culture.’ In: Nigel South, ed. Drugs: Cultures, Controls and Everyday Life. London: Sage, 17-35.

Sharpe, Erin (2008). ‘Festivals and Social Change: Intersections of Pleasure and Politics at a Community Music Festival.’ In: Leisure Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 30 No. 3, 217-34.

Small, Christopher (1998). Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Soares, André (2014). ‘Keeping It Real! Sustainability in Large Scale Events’. Boom organisation. Lecture delivered at Boom festival, August 10.

Soares da Silva, Artur (2015). ‘Boom Festival: The Kosmicare Project.’ In: MAPS Bulletin, Vol. 25 No. 1, 22-25. http://www.maps.org/news/bulletin/articles/387-bulletin-spring-2015/5672-boomfestival-the-kosmicare-project

St John, Graham (2009). ‘Neotrance and the Psychedelic Festival.’ In: Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, Vol. 1 No. 1, 35-64. https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/270/229

St John, Graham & Chiara Baldini (2012). ‘Dancing at the Crossroads of Consciousness: Techno-Mysticism, Visionary Arts and Portugal’s Boom Festival.’ In: Carole Cusack and Alex Norman, eds. Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production. Leiden: Brill, 521-52.

St John, Graham (2014). ‘The Logics of Sacrifice at Visionary Arts Festivals.’ In: Bennett et al., eds. The Festivalization of Culture. Farnham: Ashgate, 49-67.

Van der Meer, Wim & Rebecca Erickson (2014). ‘Resonating Cultural Musicology: Sources, Streams and Issues.’ In: Conference on Cultural Musicology, 24/25 January, Amsterdam University, 116-39.

War on Drugs (2011). The Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Waterman, Stanley (1998). ‘Carnivals for élites? The Cultural Politics of Arts Festivals.’ In: Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 22 No. 1, 54-74. http://www.boomfestival.org/ http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/news/boom-news/download-boom-2014-programs- and-booklets/ All programs and booklets of 2014 http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/site/pdf/DharmaDragon_boomfest2014.pdf The Dharma Dragon of 2014 http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2014/site/pdf/LiminalVillage_program_BoomFest2014.pd f The Liminal Village program of 2014 https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/hd/22cdb620376741.562ea4d5f247d.jpg The map of Boomland 2014

Abstract Portugal’s Boom festival is held every two years to celebrate the full moon of August and the coming together of the psytrance tribe. It is a transformational festival combining the celebratory aspects of the festival with a vision of how it wants to see the world, prefiguratively exploring ways to make a change, starting on a small scale. While retaining the festival spirit at its core, it raises consciousness by intricately weaving interrelated levels of music, culture and art together with possibilities of change and healing into an interesting ensemble. The requirement of participation in the festival makes for an equal treatment of all who are present, sharing similar experiences that are however prone to personal interpretation. Engulfing it all in psytrance, the transformational aspects of the festival become associated with music, demonstrating its power to contribute to change and affect people’s lives.