MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE History and development of Rave Culture in the United Kingdom Bachelor thesis Brno 2018 Supervisor: Mgr. Zdeněk Janík, M.A., Ph.D. Author: Pavel Bednář Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářskou práci vypracoval samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů. Brno, 30. března 2018 ……………………………. Pavel Bednář 2 Acknowledgment I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Zdeněk Janík, M.A., Ph.D. for his supervision. 3 Abstract The aim of this Bachelor Thesis is to investigate the phenomenon of rave culture, which originated in the 1980s in the US and later established itself as a part of the UK youth cultures. With the use of comparative and contrastive methods, the thesis focuses on the subcultural aspects and on describing the history of the movement. The thesis is composed of following chapters: Introduction; Cultures, subcultures and youth cultures; Into the world of rave; The origins of rave music; New wave of rave; Post-rave era; Drugs in the rave culture; The effects and dangers of MDMA use; and Conclusion. 4 Keywords: culture, subculture, rave, history, acid house, techno, youth, drug use, MDMA 5 Table of contents 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 8 2 CULTURES, SUBCULTURES AND YOUTH CULTURES ............................. 9 2.1 ESTABLISHING THE DEFINITION OF CULTURE ......................................................... 9 2.2 ESTABLISHING THE DEFINITION OF SUBCULTURE ................................................. 10 2.3 ASPECTS OF SUBCULTURE .................................................................................... 10 2.4 YOUTH SUBCULTURES AND THEIR DEVELOPMENT IN POST-WAR BRITAIN ............ 12 3 INTO THE WORLD OF RAVE ......................................................................... 15 3.1 RAVE SUBCULTURE AS A PART OF BRITISH YOUTH CULTURES ............................. 15 3.2 RAVE FASHION, MUSIC AND SYMBOLS.................................................................. 15 3.3 SEXUALITY AND GENDER AT RAVES ..................................................................... 17 4 THE ORIGINS OF RAVE MUSIC .................................................................... 19 4.1 US ORIGINS OF TECHNO, HOUSE AND GARAGE ..................................................... 19 4.2 BRINGING ACID HOUSE TO THE UK ...................................................................... 21 4.3 PRESS ATTENTION AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE SCENE .................................... 24 5 NEW WAVE OF RAVE....................................................................................... 27 5.1 HARDCORE ESCALATES THE SCENE ...................................................................... 27 5.2 CRUSTY RAVERS AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT ............................................. 29 6 POST-RAVE ERA ................................................................................................ 32 6.1 BRAIN DANCE AND AMBIENT ............................................................................... 32 6.2 HARDCORE GOES HAPPY ...................................................................................... 33 6.3 KICK, SNARE ........................................................................................................ 34 6.4 POST-RAVE EXPERIMENTALISM ............................................................................ 35 7 DRUGS IN THE RAVE CULTURE ................................................................... 37 7.1 DRUG USAGE AT RAVES ....................................................................................... 37 7.2 HISTORY OF MDMA ............................................................................................ 37 8 THE EFFECTS AND DANGERS OF MDMA USE ......................................... 40 8.1 MDMA EFFECTS .................................................................................................. 40 8.2 RISKS OF TAKING MDMA ................................................................................... 42 6 8.3 HARM REDUCTION ................................................................................................ 45 9 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 47 10 LIST OF REFERENCES ..................................................................................... 49 7 1 Introduction Rave culture was the last from the series of youth cultures that emerged in post-WWII Britain. The rave movement attracted many young people from different cultural and social backgrounds through its open-access approach, and therefore had impact on many lives in the British society. The aim of this thesis is to establish rave subculture in the context of British youth cultures and analyze its aspects, history, and development. The first chapter will focus on establishing the definitions of culture, subculture and on discussing the previous youth cultures and their aspects. The next part will focus defining rave subculture as a part of British youth cultures and on the aspects of this subculture: its symbols, fashion, and music, in order to describe the nature and the ideology of this particular movement. Additionally, the topic of gender in sexuality in the context or rave subculture will be discussed. The following three chapters will analyze the history of rave subculture, from its inception until the transformation to the mainstream club scene and to the emergence of the post-rave subgenres. The chapter number three focuses on the US origins of house music, the establishment of UK acid house scene, the impact the mass media had on the subculture and on its subsequent transformation. The next chapter will describe the new era of rave, ending with the introduction of the Criminal and Justice Act. Additionally, the following chapter will examine the post-rave subgenres that emerged in the post-rave era. The last two chapters will be focused on the drug use in the subculture. Firstly, the use of drugs and particularly MDMA will be discussed in the context of the subculture. Furthermore, the next chapter will depict the effects and dangers of MDMA use. 8 2 Cultures, subcultures and youth cultures 2.1 Establishing the definition of culture Raymond (1976) wrote that culture belongs among the two or three most complicated words in the English language, partly because of its complex development throughout the history of various European languages, but particularly because of its current use in several different intellectual disciplines and in various specific systems of thought. The Latin root of the word culture is colere, which has a wide spectrum of meanings, including cultivating, inhabiting, worshipping and protecting (Raymond, 1976). Furthermore, Raymond (1976) listed three main active usages of the word that go beyond physical reference such as germ culture, sugar-beet culture. Firstly as an independent and abstract noun that represents the general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic progress. Secondly as an independent noun that can be used to describe a specific way of life of people, period, group or humanity. Lastly, he recognizes culture as an independent and abstract noun used to describe the methods of intellectual and, mainly, artistic activity, which is nowadays its most common use. As Raymond stated: “culture is music, literature, painting and sculpture, theatre and film” (1976, p. 90). The idea that culture is nowadays bound to art could be further supported by a citation from Eagleton’s book The Idea of Culture (2000, p. 20), where he claimed that culture “means a body of artistic and intellectual work of agreed value, along with the institutions which produce, disseminate and regulate it.” 9 2.2 Establishing the definition of subculture Although similar to culture, the word subculture can have various meanings; the Oxford English Dictionary (“Subculture”, n.d.) established it as “a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture.” Gelder (2007, p. 0, para. 1) identified six essential characteristics through which subcultures can be recognized: ➢ their often negative relation to work (as ‘idle’, ‘parasitical’, hedonistic, criminal, etc.) ➢ their negative or ambivalent relation to class ➢ their association with territory (the ‘street’, the ‘hood’, the club, etc.) rather than property ➢ their movement away from home into non-domestic forms of belonging ➢ their ties to excess and exaggeration (as opposed to restraint and moderation) ➢ their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and in particular, of massification 2.3 Aspects of subculture Although Gelder used terms such as parasitical, hedonistic or refusal of ordinary life, which might evoke the image of subcultures as entities that can potentially be dangerous to society, Hebdige (1979) wrote that subcultures can be seen as a threat because of their disposition to criticize the mainstream values. In addition, he argued that subcultures help individuals, often neglected by the societal standards and of the same mind, to acquire their sense of identity.