chakras figure in everyday conversations. Anjuna’s hedonism and spiritualism have
there fore always existed, not side by side, but implicated in each other, thereby
together propelling the scene forward.
By the early 1980s, despite the heroin deaths, smuggling scandals, and widespread
paranoia, Anjuna had become a must-see place for all sorts of punks, New Agers,
musicians, bohemians, Rastafaris, and globetrotters from Europe, North America,
Latin America, and Oceania. Thousands attended full moon and end-of-the-year
parties on the beach and in the forests. By this time, the urban middle classes of
Bombay Poona, Delhi, and Bangalore had heard of not only the naked or semi-
naked white women on the beach, but also the fun to be had at the huge parties,
and domestic tourism to Goa was institutionalized, with much of the marketing
firmly confirming Indian sexist stereotypes of white women. The supply of all sorts
of narcotics was secure, the sound systems were powerful, the Goan cops and
politicians were routinely bribed, the locals made money through selling chai (tea)
and snacks at parties and on the beach, and some of the newest dance music from
Europe and the U.S. was played at the parties, which are traditionally free. It was
this fertile ground that lead to Goa trance.
Between 1982 and 1985, Goa’s DJs were gradually abandoning psychedelic rock
music and reggae and started playing exclusively electronic sets, taking a strong liking
to industrial new wave, electro pop, and proto-techno like Front 242. DJs like Goa
Gil looked for the weirdest bits of the tracks and looped them. Music lovers would
bring back tapes from Goa and try to recreate the exciting LSD-induced atmosphere
of Anjuna’s open-air parties in their studio. The resulting tracks would become Goa
hits during the following season. Thus “Goa trance” was born by the closing of the
decade, in a circuit of tapes, acid, and travelers. Neither techno nor house, Goa
trance meticulously simulates the neurological effects of LSD with the help of a
steady kick drum, swirling layers of staccato sounds often in Eastern scales,
outworldly samples and hypnotic alterations in timbre. By 1994 or so, the distinct
sound and fluorescent Hindu-kitsch-meets-fractals imagery of the genre was
consolidated and available on CD.
Goa trance raves subsequently spread all over the world, not only to Germany,
France, Britain, and Sweden, but also Israel, Thailand, Japan, Australia, Portugal,
South Africa, Brazil, Hungary, and Russia (see Chaishop 2002). Meanwhile in
Anjuna there were regular outbursts in the local press about the decadence and
profound corruption of the trance scene, and often the police would crack down on
the parties (cf. Saldanha 2002a). The season of 1999–2000 saw the definite
commercialization of Anjuna’s party scene, with Rupert Murdoch’s Channel V
hosting the last of a series of cosmopolitan parties for the Indian rich in the tiny
village. Sponsorship, entry charge, magazine and documentary reports, London club
hosts, and growing numbers of charter and domestic tourists are now increasingly
turning Goa into a new sort of Ibiza (see Chapter 12).
GOA TRANCE AND TRANCE IN GOA 273