sorry, not detroit specific, but relevant or representational of the
battle being waged in many north american cities right now.
Wednesday, April 19, 2000
Afraid of rave? Remember rock?
Reaction of the press is fuelled by fear of the unknown
Mitchel Raphael
National Post
*Cover of Maclean's magazine on raves.*
Maclean's magazine has finally discovered raves. This week's cover
shrieks: Rave Fever: Kids love those all-night parties, but the drugs can
kill -- what parents need to know. The article notes that ecstasy has
been implicated in at least 14 Canadian deaths in the last two years in
Canada. This number has been generating a lot of recent press --
including, most likely, this cover story.
Accidental deaths of any kind are a cause for concern, but it's worth
putting this statistic into perspective. According to Health Canada (1997)
1,680 people are killed and 74,000 are injured each year in
alcohol-related [car] crashes. For 2000, Health Canada projects that
smoking-attributed deaths will total 46,910. According to the Canadian
Council of Snowmobile Organizations, on average over the last five years
in Canada, approximately 95 snowmobilers have lost their lives while
snowmobiling. And snowmobiling is a leisure activity people choose to do
for fun -- kind of like going to a rave.
Maclean's has regurgitated the same story that seems to be told in the
media every month -- kids, partying, drugs, danger -- without giving the
meat about what keeps driving this important youth movement. This is a
culture growing by leaps and bounds and it should be covered with
critical, artistic and sociological analysis, not just with alarmist
headlines and glossed-over content.
Such coverage is not only myopic, but smacks of the treatment another
youth culture movement received in the media. Those of you old enough to
remember rock 'n' roll's unceremonious introduction to the mainstream in
the 1950s may recall its being painted as the devil's music; marijuana,
a drug closely associated with rock 'n' roll throughout its history
spawned such histrionic early reactions as the scare film Reefer Madness,
which warned -- untruthfully -- that marijuana would send its users into a
psychotic frenzy. Sound familiar?
Rock 'n' roll became a mass-audience form of music that developed into a
multi-billion-dollar industry. And every indication is that the rave scene
is well on its way to the same profile. People pay $50 or more to hear DJs
like Oakenfold, Hype and Carl Cox, who are, in their own way, their
scene's Madonna, Cher or Bowie. But of course these names, who command
tens of thousands of dollars, don't have the backing of Sony or Universal
Music or get gigs in venues like Toronto's SkyDome. Then there are all the
indie streetwear shops and labels, Internet radio stations, independent
music labels and numerous other components that go into making this
counter-culture function more like a counter industry.
It has infiltrated most of today's dance club scenes. But since only a
handful of mainstream journalists cover this area on a regular basis, the
general public is kept out of the loop and simply served the same surface
stories about drugs and danger, again and again.
Most people who party today don't even use the term rave any more. They
associate themselves with different genres of music and go to jungle
parties, warehouse parties or the gay circuit parties that attract house
music afficionados and often an older crowd.
Maclean's lets its readers know that there are parties every Saturday
night in Toronto, considered by many devotees the rave capital of North
America. In Toronto, there are smaller parties every night of the week.
On Monday alone there are two nights catering to jungle music: Chicks Dig
It at the Weave; and Jungle Nation at the Comfort Zone. Cities across
North America have clubs that cater to a variety of other electronic music
genres from techno to speed garage to hardcore and happy hardcore.
But the lack of such details are among the least egregious offenses here.
Take, for example, the fact that none of the founders of the rave scene
are mentioned or interviewed in this article, nor are any of the major
party promoters acknowledged. Granted, many are reluctant to speak to the
media these days. But imagine doing a feature about federal cabinet
ministers and talking to the guy who mops their floor, a few secretaries,
a friend of a friend and an outside expert observer or two.
There is a mention of the Toronto Dance Safety Committee, but it fails to
acknowledge the ground-breaking protocol it created for safe legal raving
which was endorsed wholeheartedly by Mel Lastman, the city's mayor, and
the city council. City councillors, representatives from fire, ambulance
and police departments, zoning officials, public health officials, rave
promoters, security firms and the Toronto Raver Info Project, which
distributes educational harm-reduction information on drug use and safe
sex, worked
