YOUTH DANCE CULTURES, DOOFS & ALTERNATE SPIRITUALITIES:
Short Summary Notes as A Basis for Missional Reflection and Action
Origins
Since the late 1980s various youth sub-cultures have emerged around the world
associated with music, dance, Countercultural lifestyles and alternate forms of
spirituality. One of the more intriguing subcultures is associated with what is called
“rave culture” or “doofing”.
Rave culture involves youth from various socio-economic backgrounds participating
in all-night dance parties characterised by electronic musical styles known as “psi”,
“trance”, “house” and so on. The term “doofing” refers to the repetitive drum-beat
that sounds like doof, doof, doof.
There are two forms of rave culture: commercial and underground. The original form
of doofing began as an underground youth subculture in 1988 in England, which
quickly spread throughout Europe, Australia and North America. As the underground
activities began to attract substantial numbers of youth, some savvy entrepreneurs
developed a commercial partly “mainstream” form of dance parties.
However, the underground style persists and continues to attract large numbers of
youth. For example, the investigative journalist programme “Four Corners” estimated
that every weekend there are at least 100,000 youths participating in doof parties in
Australia. While the annual Burning Man event in America likewise attracts
enormous crowds of people out in to the desert landscape. Other major events have
taken place in Goa in India, and on the famous resort island of Ibiza.
The Ethos
The underground form of doofing is characterised by a slogan PLUR, which is an
acronym for Peace, Love, Unity and Respect. The ethos of a rave party is that anyone,
no matter what their beliefs or socio-economic and educational status, can participate.
One does not need to be a skilled dancer to belong. In fact the notion of “respect”
carries with it the sense that those who dance are not to be judged on the basis of their
appearance or skills on the dance floor.
Parties & Protest
Much of the underground doof events combine dance with activism on a range of
socio-political issues. These issues tend to concentrate on resisting economic
globalisation that stems from the G8 and World Trade Organisation conferences, or
from corporations like Nike, Microsoft and McDonalds. Doof activists have been
prominent in their anti-globalisation rallies in Seattle, Genoa and Melbourne. Other
issues relate to specific road protests, anti-logging of forests, anti-uranium mining,
anti-Iraq war protests and so forth. Ecological issues loom large on the radar screen
for doof activists.
Spirituality
The slogan PLUR might evoke the hippy ethos of the late 1960s, and whilst
comparisons might be made about utopian ideals, the doof culture needs to be
appreciated on its own grounds.
Doof gatherings attract a spectrum of youth that includes advocates of anarchism,
eco-spirituality, neo-paganism and so forth. One of the central players in a doof party
is the disc jockey who plays the music associated with light shows. The DJs are often
highly esteemed figures who lead the partygoers into altered states of consciousness
on the dance floor. While some participants do ingest drugs, like ecstasy, it would be
erroneous to generalise that all participants are simply into chemically induced
trances. Many dancers will express their sense of interconnectedness or oneness or
unity with fellow dancers, or speak of moments of transcendence, of experiencing
divinity, or God.
Some DJs are known as techno-shamans because of the links between the music, the
dancing, the ambience, the drugs and the sense of consciousness evoked in these
events. Some of these techno-shamans are committed to neo-pagan or earth-centred
spiritualities. The link between the party and eco-protests neatly slipstreams into the
spirituality associated with nature divinities, mother goddess icons, new age
consciousness and so on.
The spiritual ethos is also associated with notions derived from the anarchist Hakim
Bey about creating “Temporary Autonomous Zones” or TAZ. The creation of a TAZ
is where a group gathers together in a public zone, be it urban or rural, and
temporarily alters that landscape by their presence, as expressed in the dance. Once
the dance event is over, the place is restored to its pre-event shape. The creation of a
TAZ in the doof scene is associated with the idea of establishing sacred zones, and of
humans re-connecting with the natural environment. Sometimes artistic expressions
are associated with this, such as the use of wrecked cars that are erected in a shape
known as “Car-henge” (mimicking Stonehenge).
In the alternate countercultural centre of Australia, at a place in northern New South
Wales known as Nimbin, neo-pagan shamanism flourishes amongst both sedentary
settlers and nomadic loosely affiliated tribes of people (known as ferals or rainbow
people). The neo-pagan shamans of this region are active in eco-protests as well as
organising doof parties in the bushland.
The Missional Challenge
The above notes are very cursory and incomplete. However it ought to be apparent
that on a global scale there is a significant countercultural ferment amongst many
youth, and doof cultures provide a focal point for many of them. As some are
nomadic, the need for chaplains committed to nomadism is one trajectory requiring
missional reflection and action.
As alternate spiritualities loom large on the horizons of doof cultures, it is clear that
Christians have before them an unreached people group to engage in discipleship
with.
There are a few missional experiments taking place in England and Australia with
Christian DJs operating in the Rave scene. However this is a frontier area that is in
danger of being ignored until the proverbial horse bolts from the barn. These notes do
not propose any missional solutions other than raising the obvious need for contextual
cross-cultural research followed by enculturated efforts at discipleship. I believe that
this is an important issue requiring some case study work in the Lausanne Issue
Group, and that in our position paper this youth subculture needs to be formally
recognised as an unreached people group for contemporary missions.
RELEVANT READING MATTER
Jose Bove & Francois Dufour, The World is Not For Sale: Farmers Against Junk
Food, London: Verso, 2001.
E. Bailey, Implicit Religion in Contemporary Society, Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok
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B. Brewster & F. Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc
Jockey, Cambridge: Grove Press, 2000.
F. Cole & M. Hannan, “Goa Trance” Perfect Beat, Volume 3, number 3 (1997), pp. 114.
M. Corsten, “Ecstasy as ‘this worldly path to salvation’: the techno youth scene as a
proto-religious collective,” in L. Tomasi (ed) Alternative Religions Among European
Youth, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999.
Anthony D’Andrea, “Global nomads: techno and New Age as transnational
countercultures in Ibiza and Goa,” in Graham St. John (ed) Rave Culture and
Religion, London: Routledge, 2004.
Eric Davis, Techngnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information, New
York: Three Rivers Press, 1998.
Eric Davis, “Hedonic Tantra: golden Goa’s trance transmission,” in Graham St. John
(ed) Rave Culture and Religion, London: Routledge, 2004.
Alan Dearling and Brendan Hanley, Alternative Australia: Celebrating Cultural
Diversity, Lyme Regis: Enabler Publications, 2000.
J. Fritz, Rave Culture: An Insider’s Overview, Canada: Smallfry Press, 1999.
J. Gilbert & E. Pearson, Discographies: Dance Music, Culture and the Politics of
Sound, London: Routledge, 1999.
D. Hill, “Mobile Anarchy: the house movement, shamanism and community,” in T.
Lyttle (ed) Psychedelics Reimagined, New York: Autonomedia, 1999.
R. Hollands, “Divisions in the Dark: youth cultures, transitions and segmented
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number 2 (2002), pp. 153-171.
S. Hutson, “Technoshamanism: spiritual healing in the rave subculture,” Popular
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S. Hutson, “The rave: spiritual healing in modern western subcultures,”
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A. Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and
Sedona, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Robert V. Kozinets & John F. Sherry, “Dancing on common ground: exploring the
sacred at Burning Man,” in Graham St. John (ed) Rave Culture and Religion, London:
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George McKay (ed) DiY Culture: Party and Protest in Nineties Britain, London:
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M. Maffesoli, The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society,
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B. Malbon, Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy and Vitality, London: Routledge, 1999.
Michael Niman, People of the Rainbow: A Nomadic Utopia, Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1997.
Ciaran O’Hagan, “Sounds of the London Underground: gospel music and Baptist
Worship in the UK garage scene,” in Graham St. John (ed) Rave Culture and
Religion, London: Routledge, 2004.
Sarah Pike, Earthly Bodies, Magic Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for
Community, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
S. Redhead (ed) Rave Off: Politics and Deviance in Contemporary Youth Culture,
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S. Redhead (ed) The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies,
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Graham St. John (ed) FreeNRG: Notes From The Edge of the Dance Floor,
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Graham St. John (ed) Rave Culture and Religion, London: Routledge, 2004.
Arun Saldanha, “Goa trance and trance in Goa: smooth striations,” in Graham St.
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N. Saunders, A. Saunders and M. Pauli, In Search of the Ultimate High: Spiritual
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S. Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1995.
Des Tramacchi, “Field Tripping: psychedelic communitas and ritual in the Australian
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K. Westerhausen, Beyond the Beach: An Ethnography of Modern Travellers in Asia,
Bangkok: White Lotus, 2002.