1.Prologue
In MUSIC & PARTIES #035, I wrote about the epic trance music that developed in Europe in the 90s. While genres like trance and techno developed in Germany, a separate but related genre of trance, called Goa trance, was developing in the Indian resort of Goa.
Goa is a state located on the central west coast of India that developed as a trading port in the early 11th century. Portuguese merchants first landed in the area in the early 16th century, and the Portuguese Empire conquered it soon thereafter. In the early 19th century, French forces led by Napoleon occupied mainland Portugal. The British Empire, fearing that Goa would fall into the hands of the French, occupied the state for a period of time. Even after the British established direct rule over the Indian subcontinent in 1858, Goa continued to be under Portuguese rule. Goa was finally annexed back into the Indian Union in 1961, after an invasion by the Indian Army to reclaim it.
Goa’s history of Portuguese rule meant that it had a cityscape and culture that was distinct from the rest of India, which had been ruled by the British. Even after it was annexed into India, the state prospered as a resort destination for domestic and international tourists and young backpackers (someone engaged in low-cost, independent, international travel). Music that originated from, or was imported to Europe was also brought into Goa, where it mixed with local organic and ethnic music giving birth to what became known as Goa trance. The music is inseparable from the beach party culture, which would help inspire the spread of outdoor trance raves through out Europe and in Japan.
In this article I will cover Goa trance and its evolution into psychedelic trance.
2.Goa Trance and Paul Oakenfold
In the late 60s, Goa became a sanctuary for American and European hippies and freaks. They were enchanted by the beauty of the land, the indigenous spirituality, and the locals’ easy acceptance of Westerners—they saw Goa as paradise, and settled in the region. Dressed in bright, colorful fashion, these hippies would smoke pot, play music, do yogic exercises, sell art and crafts at flea markets, and generally live free of the trappings of conservative Western societies. Beach parties at the time featured live music, but in between DJs would play cassette tapes of psychedelic rock acts like the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and The Doors.
In the 80s, cassette tapes of electronic music—such as Kraftwerk—started being imported, and by the mid-80s, the music on offer at beach parties was almost entirely electronic. This was partly due to the efforts of DJs such as Goa Gil. Gil was a hippie from the U.S. who had left San Francisco in the late 60s when he sensed that the psychedelic music scene was on the wane. He traveled to Amsterdam and then to India, and finally settled in Goa. There, he became a driving force in the beach party scene in the 80s, bringing his own sound equipment and DJing music all night on DAT tapes. The DJs at the time played Western electronic music with the vocals dubbed out, with samples of acid house and psychedelic rock layered on top, with a generous dose of spirituality. Open-air Goa beach parties were also a place where marijuana, LSD, and other hallucinogenic drugs were widely used—making them essentially predecessors of modern raves.
In the 90s, the world music-inspired techno trance of artists like Sven Väth started to be imported into the Goa scene—the missing ingredient that would complete the Goa trance sound. A classic example of this sound is the track “Ritual of Life” from Väth’s first album Accident in Paradise, which layers sitar and didgeridoo over a thunderous techno beat. When Väth first visited Goa in the early 90s, he was stunned to find that the people were already familiar with his music, and were calling it Goa trance.
In the first half of the 90s, backpackers and DJs from Europe, Israel, and Japan traveled to Goa to experience the beach parties firsthand. As a result, the beach parties would grow in scale from around 500 people to 1,500 people. Many of the visitors took Goa trance and rave culture back home with them—perhaps the most famous convert was English DJ Paul Oakenfold.
Oakenfold had already made a name for himself remixing tracks for English rock groups in the early 90s and even touring with U2. In 1994, he made two two-hour mixes for Pete Tong’s Essential Mix show, both heavily featuring Goa trance. The second mix, known as “The Goa Mix”, became a landmark mix for not only Oakenfold but for the Goa trance genre as a whole. It was voted the best Essential Mix ever by BBC Radio 1 listeners in 2000, and was even released on CD. Oakenfold continued to champion the Goa sound in the second half of the 90s, both through releases on his label Perfecto Records, and in his legendary mix CDs for Global Underground.
3.From Goa Trance to Psychedelic Trance
Goa trance experienced its commercial peak between 1994 and 1996. Many Goa trance labels were founded, releasing music from a plethora of artists. Around this time the names Goa trance and psychedelic trance became interchangeable.
One of the most important names to emerge from this group was Raja Ram. Ram left his native Australia in the 1950s to begin the hippie trail. After returning to Australia, he studied flute at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, and then traveled to New York to study jazz. In 1969 he became one of the founding members of an English psychedelic rock band Quintessence, which would tour and achieve some success in Europe but never break the American market. It disbanded in 1980.
Ram first visited Goa in 1990, and was completely taken with the trance scene. Upon returning to the U.K., he started a Goa trance band called The Infinity Project (often shortened to TIP). He started a label of the same name, and began hosting TIP parties in and around London, and became a central figure of the Goa trance scene.
In 1996, Ram teamed up with English electronic musician Simon Posford to form the duo Shpongle, whose combination of psychedelic trance and ambient music would pioneer the psybient subgenre. The duo’s sound is strongly influenced by psychedelic experiences, and Ram has said in an interview that the name Shpongle is an “umbrella term for feeling positive and euphoric emotions".
Posford himself has also been active since 1993 under his Hallucinogen alias. His first album, Twisted, is a psychedelic trance classic, and is available to listen to in full online.
Infected Mushroom is another important psychedelic trance duo, comprised of Israeli producers Erez Eisen and Amit Duvdevani. Eisen had studied classical music as a child and had begun making electronic music on his computer as a hobby; Duvdevani was a heavy metal fan who had just returned to Israel after spending a year living in Goa. They released their debut album, The Gathering, in 1999, which put Israel psychedelic trance on the map. Their second album, Classical Mushroom, released in 2000, is one of the best-known albums of the genre.
One of the most commercially successful psychedelic trance acts is Juno Reactor. English musician Ben Watkins formed Juno Reactor in 1990 as an art project, wanting to collaborate with other artists and create experimental music for films and art installations. The group’s 1993 debut album Transmissions is one of the classics of the genre. Juno Reactor is also famous for contributing music to films like The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, as well as Brave Story, the animated adaptation of a fantasy adventure novel by Japanese author Miyabe Miyuki.
The most important psychedelic trance artist to come out of Japan is DJ Tsuyoshi. After graduating from Nihon University College of Art, Tsuyoshi initially pursued a career as a video artist, while performing music on the side as a member of a band influenced by YMO and British new wave. His life would change when he saw a Japanese Goa trance DJ named Kudo perform at the club Space Lab Yellow in Nishi-Azabu. Tsuyoshi traveled to Goa to experience the culture firsthand, then moved to the U.K. in 1992, where he started his own Goa trance label, Matsuri Productions. He became one of the genre’s most important evangelists, introducing the genre to legions of clubgoers in Japan, while performing as a DJ at parties and festivals worldwide. In 1997, he DJed at an Issey Miyake fashion show featuring a collection inspired by his own music.
In 1997, DJ Tsuyoshi released a compilation album called Let It Rip. Written in the liner notes is the following: R.I.P: Mother Theresa, Princess Diana, William Burroughs & Goa Trance. Perhaps he felt something in the air—the first wave of psychedelic trance was coming to an end around the world. Dedicated psychedelic trance scenes would live on, however, in certain area of Europe and Japan.
●Psychedelic Trance Album Picks
4.Psychedelic Trance Raves/Art Festivals
As Goa trance spread around the world, promoters and event organizers began holding more and more outdoor raves featuring rosters of mainly electronic dance music acts. These raves were very much inspired by the spirit of Goa beach parties. More than a concert or rock music festival, they involved the creation of a temporary community—people coming together celebrating art, decorations, performances, fashion, food, and more. Psychedelic trance has been at the center of many of these raves.
One such event is the Boom Festival, a biennial rave in Portugal that started in 1997 and is now considered Europe’s largest psychedelic trance festival. In recent years the event has had five main stages featuring not only to psychedelic music but techno, house, world music, and chillout music. In addition to music, the event also features movies, yoga, group meditation, street theater, performance art, and art exhibitions. The central themes are love and peace, sustainability, creativity, alternative culture, and evolution. Based on the thinking that advertisements are visual pollution, the event does not have any corporate sponsors and is completely funded on ticket sales alone.
1997 also saw the start of another major trance rave in Germany, called Fusion Festival. The annual event takes place in an old military airfield over four to six days at the end of June, and draws about 70,000 attendees. Other than trance, Fusion Festival also features techno, hip hop, and reggae music. The festival also holds a film festival and features art installations and exhibitions. Attendees can wear costumes, and are also allowed to bring their own art and instruments. Only vegetarian food is sold on the festival grounds.
Since 2004, Hungary has hosted the Ozora Festival, a transformational and arts festival that draws more than 40,000 attendees a year. Considered one of Europe’s biggest psychedelic music events, it has been dubbed “a 21st-century Woodstock". The festival has held several one-day spin-off events around the world, including in Tokyo; Studio Coast in Shin-Kiba hosted “O.Z.O.R.A. ONE DAY IN TOKYO" in January 2020.
In the Netherlands, the Psy-Fi open-air psychedelic music and arts festival has been held annually since 2013, drawing attendees from around Europe. The first edition was described as a “65-hour meditative trip full of hippie love and Goa trance". For 2018 the theme was “Shamanic Experience", and the event kicked off with an opening ceremony featuring rituals performed by actual shamans from Mexico, Greenland, New Zealand, and North America. Since 2019 all food sold on the festival grounds has been vegetarian, and the sale of single-use items has been prohibited in order to minimize waste.
So-called transformational festivals like these are also all influenced by Burning Man, held at Black Rock City, a temporary city that is erected in the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada, about 100 miles north of Reno. Burning Man started in 1986 as a small function in San Francisco, but attendance has steadily increased over the years, and the nine-day experiment in community and art is now attended by tens of thousands of people (more than 70,000 since 2018). The climax of the event involves the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy referred to as “The Man". Burning Man has ten principles:
・Radical Inclusion
・Gifting
・Decommodification
・Radical Self-reliance
・Radical Self-expression
・Communal Effort
・Civic Responsibility
・Leaving No Trace
・Participation
・Immediacy
5.Epilogue
As I wrote in MUSIC & PARTIES #028, acid house, Balearic beat, and the illegal raves held in the U.K. in the early 90s were all ways for young revelers to vicariously experience Ibiza. For hippies, it was a way to bask in the glow of summer even after the end of the Ibiza season.
Likewise, Goa trance parties and outdoor psychedelic trance raves in the mid-to-late 90s were a way for revelers to vicariously experience the paradise of Goa.
Trance music is, for all intents and purposes, modern hippie music. Back on the beaches of Goa, Goa Gil saw dance as a form of meditation, and dance music as the natural evolution of psychedelic music. Epic trance is also very much new age adjacent; lyrics are by and large about love, peace, and spirituality. The U.K. epic trance group Above & Beyond has even released ambient music meant for meditation, and their weekly radio show is called “Group Therapy". Their label Anjunabeats derives its name from Anjuna beach, where Goa Gil gave birth to a movement.
It’s also important to note that much like the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s was largely comprised of middle-class white people, the majority of trance music fans are also white. Unlike black music, much of which is made to get your body moving, trance music is made to move your emotions and your brain. The music may be too fast to dance to in the traditional sense, but really, anything goes, and the music puts you in a euphoric mood nonetheless. Trance fans dance as if in prayer, as if they are in the process of attaining enlightenment. House and techno rock you from side to side; trance music makes you jump up and down.
As hippie music, the purpose of trance is to make as many people happy as possible. In other words, it lacks an edge for a reason; it’s cheesy by design. It may be uncool from the perspective of American pop music, but there’s no doubt that it’s uplifted millions of people since the 90s.
In my next entry I will cover the Japanese rave scene.
