Crave for the Rave

 

 

“Most people are of the opinion that Rave parties are organised by some wayward people to get together for a night of debauchery and drugs. Now, that’s an oversimplification. Rave parties are like any other party; the only difference being that we play trance music. The problem is that people don’t understand trance music. It hardly has any vocals and relies solely on set of constant rhythmic beats to induce a state of altered consciousness. Unable to understand it, people start saying that this must be the effect of drug use.

It was four years ago that we –four of my friends and I – started organising rave parties. We would go to clubs, discs and lounges and hand out fliers with maps to likeminded people. In the next two years we would have organised about 80 rave parties. And I take pride in the fact that not once did there take place any untoward incident in any of my parties. I’ve seen people come for the love of music, and dance the night away without boozing or using drugs.

BRASS TACKS

In certain western countries, the rave party culture has been branded as being totally drug-centric. There are exceptions however; Canada and Australia hold some of the biggest and cleanest rave parties with the parties getting increasingly mainstream.

I don’t promote drug use, and neither would I like drugs in any party organised by me. But you can’t stop people from smuggling in drugs and not just to rave parties. You will find drug use in rock concerts too, so why target rave parties alone? This knee-jerk attitude alone has prevented rave parties from reaching their full business potential. If you think there isn’t a ‘market’ for rave parties in Delhi, you’re wrong! Nearly all my parties (usually held at farmhouses in the outskirts of Delhi) are filled to capacity. We would bring in the top artistes from Europe, Mexico and Israel, bear all their expenses (somewhere close to Rs 1, 00,000) and then organize the event ourselves. Initially the going was slow, some 20 people turned up, we couldn’t even recover our costs. It picked up rapidly however and soon we were organising parties attracting close to a 1,000 people! If you think that’s a small number, remember the whole operation was being run by a bunch of amateurs who were learning as they went along. Moreover, we were also constrained by the choice of venue (farmhouses) and did not have access to conveniently located auditoriums/ stadiums which would have brought in much more number of people.

About two years ago, the inevitable happened. There was a police raid at one of my parties and I was arrested along with a few of my friends. It was with much difficulty (and hefty bribes) that we managed to free ourselves. After the harrowing experience, we decided to stop organising the parties, which resulted in the whole ‘scene’ going ‘underground’. It’s sad; now rave parties are held at clubs and discs covertly. Very few people come, the DJs are pathetic… it’s all a waste. But frankly at this point, I couldn’t care less.”