to communicate the most...deeply resonating primal understandings. It’s the
re-discovered language of transcendence.... Here is the “coming of age” ritual
which Western culture has long forgotten.
(Kathleen Williamson, at hyperreal.org; italics mine)Within techno-primitivism, it appears, technology is paradoxically embraced in an
attempt to regain the very thing which mechanization is denigrated for taking away
—our basic human-ness. Reynolds asserts that digital music “abandons all the
elements of feel” (1998:44). While all instrumental music makes use of technology
of some kind, electronically produced sound is often viewed as particularly
“artificial,” “lacking warmth,” “emotionless,” or “removed” from the human body.
While revering such a music, could ravers’ concurrent attachment to “the primitive”
be an unconscious effort to resist (or counterbalance) the dehumanizing aspect of
the music being embraced—an effort to reclaim or hold on to the human element
in the face of pervasive, ever-expanding technology while reveling in the hedonistic
aspects of both? This construction within which participants worship both
technology and the primitive perhaps keeps the Vibe in balance. Technology may
have its way, but at the same time identification with the primitive quells anxiety
produced by the threat of ever-increasing mechanization and distancing from the
“authenticating” power of the “natural.”
When viewed from this perspective, the appropriation of the gamelan by the San
Francisco rave scene appears to have its own logic. In addition to proposed formal
musical similarities with techno, the gamelan is successfully integrated into the rave
event, on the basis of its perceived homogenous “ethnic-ness,” “otherness,” or
primitive associations—in other words, for what it represents. This representation is
effected through the “exotic” gamelan instruments—intricately carved and painted,
sitting amongst carefully prepared offerings, burning incense, and other
miscellaneous Balinese ‘paraphernalia’—and the otherworldly sound of an orchestra
of bronze gongs and metallophones. I propose that information such as where this
ensemble comes from, its history, its “authentic” performance practice, who usually
plays it, or even what it’s called is irrelevant in the context of rave. It is not necessary
to possess such in-depth knowledge. What is important is that the presence of the
gamelan affirms the romantic, self-perceived identity of raving as part of something
“primal” and resistant to the mainstream. In this construction, I suggest that the
“exotic” equals the “primitive,” associated with the roots of humankind and the
sacralized lifestyle to which some ravers desire to return. More to the point, through
a conflation of the ethnic/exotic and the primitive, the gamelan serves as an
authenticating agent within the rave event.
While participants may perceive themselves as experiencing “authentic” culture in
the form of the gamelan, the unwitting result of this borrowing process may be the
eliding of cultural particularities, and the subsequent reinforcement of the concept of
a generic ethnic/primitive/Other. It is likely that other “world” musics may be
successfully appropriated by rave.^11
204 GINA ANDREA FATONE