The Essence of Raves: A Transfusion of ‘60s Counterculture

Resumen

The counterculture decade of the ‘60s is examined with comparative reference to ‘90s underground rave culture. Based on research specific to New York City, this journal dives into the amorphous fusion of space, sound, bodies, and technologies to discover hidden spectacles of culture inherent to raves. Seen most evidently through the analysis of music, dance, and production design, these movements hold sociocultural implications of mass youth generation credos. The infiltration of underground movements into popular culture, seen today through the commercialized appeal of electronic music, represents a rebirth of classic countercultural ideas. Most notably, the identification with marginality, democratization, and the desire for a social utopia are generational ideas transfused through the Beats and hippies and adapted to a globalized system of interconnected technologies of the new millennium. An interesting product emerges through rave culture, which embodies age-old, anti-establishment, anti-conventional ideas while fulfilling the new social needs of ‘90s raver babies.