Dance Culture and Society’s Image of it, Music or Drugs?

Techno music developed from House Music in the late 1980s. Frankie Knuckles, a Chicago DJ, experimented with beat mixing, allowing him to segue one number imperceptibly into the next, allowing the crowd to dance non-stop all night. In Detroit, via gay clubs, the music became darker and harder until in England, with courtesy partly to the Roland TB303 bass unit and it’s squelches, also used in America, Acid House was born. The early overall term of Techno, used for the harder, faster style, splintered into a myriad different offspring, each with a slightly different rhythm and tempo. Trance, Hardcore, Drum and Bass amongst others still persist and are still splint

“I found it unlike anything I had taken before. It was not a psychedelic in the visual or interpretive sense, but the lightness and warmth of a psychedelic was present and quite remarkable”

ering to keep their freshness and variety. What was originally a few thousand people travelling to parties has become a major part of life for hundreds of thousands of people, travelling to clubs throughout the country.

Creators and promoters of dance music were not unaware of the growing symbiosis between music and drug. The repetitive heavy base beat, together with washing synths and uplifting ‘twiddly bits’ enables the listener to lose themselves in the music on both the ‘speedy’, or amphetamine-like aspect of the drug, and also on the empathic level. The music became written with the drug in mind. Peaks and troughs, present in all music were accented using the methods described above. For those who liked the up-lifting feelings, trance music emphasised the top notes and string washes. For those who liked to dance furiously there was the other end of the spectrum, gabba, which raced along at a speed it seemed only a few young men could keep up with. A popular tabloid criticism of some dance music was that one could only like it if one were ‘on drugs’. However other people such as Sister Bliss a well-known DJ saw Ecstasy as enhancing the enjoyment gained from the music. As she said: “If the music sounds great to me and I’m straight, it must sound amazing if you’re on pills”. The effects of ecstasy on the body may have had something to do with the musical climaxes in dance music. In most music from Bach through Gershwin to Rock and Roll there are regular peaks, places where the music builds up dramatically, climaxes then fades. In dance music the climax is somewhat different. At various intervals the music suddenly becomes quiet and the bass line stops. There is usually a very long slow crescendo with the music rising in pitch as well as volume; the music then holds the listener poised on the edge of a climax, often for some time, but instead of crashing and fading, the bass line cuts in again, harder and faster than before allowing the whole sequence to repeat again later. It is probably no coincidence that it is almost impossible for men to orgasm on ecstasy and that dance music provides the aural equivalent of the female phenomenon of multiple orgasms.

And all these without the fasting, sleep deprivation, and discipline usually required of such an undertaking. Little wonder that Ecstasy use increased so rapidly; the downside was yet to come.

This essay has attempted to show that dance music and Ecstasy have been inextricably linked since the earliest stages. But the drug, with all its attendant thrills and dangers has only been an adjunct to enjoyment. Maybe in the end there is really very little difference between the rock fan getting drunk in the pub or stoned at home and the raver/clubber using their choice of intoxicant to listen to their choice of music.

MDMA was taken up rapidly and avidly in the late 1980s. It has a dual effect: like amphetamines it releases large quantities of dopamine into the brain. This gives a buzz that acts primarily as an insomniac and an appetite suppressant. Combined with this however, it also releases serotonin (5-HT), giving rise to the phrase ‘loved-up’. Simon Reynolds relates how when it was given to combat casualties they expressed a desire for the end to war and 75% of them also expressed love for the enemy. On the dance floor this translated into “…people being swirled together in a promiscuous chaos.” However “Very little sex happened…” as the feeling was one of love and oneness with everybody. Drug dealers however chose not to call the drug ‘Empathy’ as had been suggested, but the more catchy name of ‘Ecstasy’. MDMA is more than an empathogen; one of its qualities is that its effects are extremely context specific. The Texas Group in

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