of day and night are given human meaning through ritual. The emphasis on ritual
expression through space at doofs is quite distinctive and pervasive. Doof organizers
aim to imbue the events with an atmosphere of sacrality and may perform
ceremonial and magickal activities to consecrate their selected site. The remote
places in which these outdoor psychedelic parties are held become transformed into
vast countercultural cathedrals, in which various icons are arranged to create a sacred
landscape in which humans are ‘naturalized’ and ‘nature’ is humanized.^12 There is a
precision also to the temporal trajectory of dance parties. The rituals generally last
for the duration of one full night, and occasionally a few consecutive nights. DJs
play different kinds of music at different stages of the night and these stages may
well correspond to different phases and moods associated with the process of
‘tripping’.
Music and danceAnother common feature of these rituals is their employment of music—especially
sustained percussive sound and sonorous chanting. The Huichol mara’akáme is a
‘singing shaman’ whose chanting transports souls along a ‘journey’. The Huichol
pilgrims circle the ceremonial fire in precisely determined patterns to the
accompaniment of the mara’akáme’s song. The voices of Barasana participants in a
yajé ceremony rise and fall to the croaking of a turtle-shell instrument and to the
thumping of dancing feet and stamping tubes, song and dance becoming ‘fused’.
The Barasana dance becomes precise and highly coordinated. Similarly, the Bwiti
ceremonial dances are ‘of superb quality and highly coordinated’ (Fernandez 1982:
437). Over many hours the music of the various Bwiti instruments reaches a plateau
of aesthetic sensitivity which echoes the attainment of deep solidarity and psychic
interrelatedness.
A great many styles of electronic dance music are associated with psychedelic
parties, including techno, trance, hard house, jungle, trip-hop, electro-funk, speed
bass and ambient. High volume is an essential element in all these musical genres.
Loudspeakers are a source of such esoteric qualities as ‘vibes’, ‘power’ and
‘ambience’; they are not simply the utilitarian medium of transmission, but an
intrinsic instrument for sound production (Bull 1997). Ideally, the DJs direct the
collective trance with insight and dexterity, pleasuring listeners by stretching out
and sustaining enjoyable sonic moments, drawing from a well-honed palette of
pleasurable frequencies, tones and rhythms, but also moving the listener into more
challenging and rewarding sound environments. Because DJs select and present as
well as create music, they have been described as ‘curators’ of ‘galleries of sound’
(Rietveld 1993). DJs also function as guides to an unfamiliar and powerfully
charged synaesthetic realm and in this sense have been described as ‘electronic
shamans’ (Bull 1997).
Psychedelic dance music is imbued with certain para-religious qualities. The
soundscapes of psychedelic dance music are frequently juxtaposed with surreal
mantra-like ‘samples’ that reinforce decategorization and anti-structure. Sometimes
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