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Born from extensive international research, Global Tribe documents a little understood global dance culture that has mushroomed all over the world since its beginnings in diverse psychedelic music scenes flourishing in Goa, India, in the 1970s and 1980s. From small parties to major international events such as Portugal's Boom Festival, the paramount expression of this movement has been the festival. Via first-hand accounts of the scenes, festivals and music of psychedelic trance (psytrance) in Australia, Israel, Italy, the UK, the US, Germany, Turkey and other places, the author explores this transnational movement with attention to its diverse aesthetic roots, national translations and internal controversies. As a thoroughly engaging multi-sited ethnography and an intimate examination of the digital, chemical, cyber and media assemblage of psytrance, Global Tribe studies the integrated role of technology and spirituality in the formation of this visionary arts movement. The book demonstrates how the event-culture of psytrance accommodates rites of risk and consciousness, a complex circumstance demanding revision of existing approaches to ritual, music and culture.
List of contents
Ch 1. Transnational Psytrance Ch 2. Goa Beach: Experience and the Orient Ch 3. The Vibe at the End of the World Ch 4. Spiritual Technology: Transition and its Prosthetics Ch 5. Psychedelic Festivals, Visionary Arts and Cosmic Events Ch 6. Freak Out: The Trance Carnival Ch 7. Psyculture in Israel and Australia Ch 8. Performing Risk and the Arts of Consciousness Ch 9. Riot of Passage: Liminal Culture and the Logics of Sacrifice Ch 10. Nothing Lasts Bibliography Filmography Discography
About the author
Graham St John is a Research Associate at the University of Queensland's Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies. His latest books include Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox, 2009) and the edited collections The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Routledge, 2010) and Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (Berghahn 2008).
Summary
The result of fifteen years of research in over a dozen countries, this book applies a sharp lens on a little understood global dance culture that has mushroomed all over the world since its beginnings in the diverse psychedelic music scenes flourishing in Goa in the 1970s and 1980s.
