Graham St John
Soulclipse 2006. Photos by dead-dreamer, and Superblasta
Since the early 1990s, what became known as psytrance (or psychedelic trance) has flourished with scenes proliferating around the globe. Global Tribe will be the achievement of over ten years of research experience in the world of psytrance.
Drawing on the author's fieldwork experience at events and within scenes over several continents, the book explores the interfacing of dance culture, religion and technology in the contemporary. An in-depth study of global psytrance culture, the book investigates the reputed religiosity and spirituality perculiar to this "trance-national" dance phenomenon. Part nomadic ethnography and part cultural analysis, the research addresses countercultural and popular musical tensions informing the trajectory of psytrance. In particular, it explores the ecstatic (or expressive) and visionary (reflexive) pathways travelled, amplified and remixed by the global trance community. With chapters addressing experiential spirituality, techno-tribalism, neotrance, extreme and conscious rituals, and technological utopias and revitalization movements, the project affords insights on popular trance, neoshamanism, new music technologies, and alternative cultural movements offering a useful contribution to the anthropology of contemporary religion.
This comprehensive study of psytrance draws upon a multi-sited ethnography to chart the role of new technologies and non-traditional religion in the contemporary. Rooted in dance events held on the beaches of Goa, India, in the 1980s and incubated within Goa trance scenes in London, Hamburg, Berlin, Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Melbourne, Tokyo, Moscow, São Paulo, and other cosmopoles, psytrance (or psychedelic trance) would become a truly global cultural phenomenon by the turn of the millennium. Drawing inheritance from the earlier counterculture and sharing music production technologies, DJ techniques and a dance party culture in common with escalating club and rave scenes, psytrance would develop its own sonic and visual aesthetics, organizations and events, discourse and practice. By 2005, it enjoyed massive international appeal among an alternative, highly mobile and tech-savvy subculture. Networked with the assistance of the Internet, psytrance music, style, fashion and discourse are evident in scenes the world over.
The book provides insights on psytrance as a context expressing the ecstatic and visionary characteristics of the 1960s counterculture, documenting in several chapters: the roots of the Goa/psytrance phenomenon and its global trajectory; the career of experiential spirituality and the technoccult; the variable narratives of transcendence in trance music from Goa to darkpsy to psybient; the self-identified, sophisticated and variable "tribal" character of psytrance; the psytrance festival as a context for the carnivalesque dissolution and performance of freak selves; the rites of transgression/progression and the logics of sacrifice; and psytrance as a conscious catalyst for liberation, freedom and becoming. Emphasising diversity in experience, fluid sociality, multiple narratives, altered states, freak rituals, contested logics and differential outcomes, the book will make a valuable addition to studies of dance and religion in contemporary life, new cultural and spiritual movements, along with the role of technologies and ritual in alternative lifestyles.
Boom 2006. Photo by thehospages.com
About the Author
Dr Graham St John is a cultural anthropologist with an interdisciplinary research interest in contemporary electronic dance music cultures, counterculture, ritual and performance. Graham has published widely in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, Australian studies and studies in religion. He is author of Technomad: Global Raving Counterculture (Equinox 2009) and the collections The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Routledge 2010), Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (Berghahn 2008), Rave Culture and Religion ( Routledge 2004) and FreeNRG: Notes From the Edge of the Dance Floor (Common Ground. Free ebook download available at the previous link)