Global Tribe - Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance - Graham St John
Experience, the Orient and Goatrance
Global Tribe - Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance - Graham St John
Graham St John [+]
Griffith University
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Graham St John is the author of several books including Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance (2012), Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (2009) and the edited collections The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (2010), Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (2008), Rave Culture and Religion (2004) and FreeNRG: Notes From the Edge of the Dance Floor (2001). He is Adjunct Research Fellow at Griffith University and is Executive Editor of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture.
Description
This chapter explores the career of the spiritual experience animating psyculture, from its earliest period in Goa. From the late 1960s, Goa attracted the disenchanted and the decadent, those whose disparate expatriations gave life to a “state of mind”, a mental mosaic which became integral to the evolution of the “trance dance” experience in seasonal Goa, infusing the subsequent psychedelic trance movement. Figures instrumental to psyculture are introduced and benchmark incidents are explained, with the chapter also examining the themes of “authenticity”, “freedom” and “liveness”, as well as the psychedelic Orientalism inhering in the “Goa” sound.