Truth, nor indicative of a monolithic cultural movement, these are hyper-
millenarian events where hybrid-utopias are (re)constructed from desirable futures
and putative pasts, where multiple ‘truths’ may be accessed and performed, and from
which many outcomes are possible.
Techno salvationThe title of Brewster and Broughton’s history of the disc jockey, Last Night a DJ
Saved My Life, may not be an altogether flippant reference to the liberatory
char acter of the dance experience. Can dancing save your soul? Rescue the damned?
Provide release? For members of contemporary Christian rave groups such as Club
Worship in Philadelphia and Planet Jesus, a collection of DJs from Pennsylvania,
such may not be far from the truth. According to Christian DJ Frankie Vibe, ‘[w]
e’re ministers on turntables... I can’t make you believe, but I can make you dance
yourself closer to God’ (Sanders 2002). The dance-floor objective stated at
http://www.christianraves.com imparts a serious mission: ‘to come together and take back
ground that Satan has stolen and perverted...[and] to win souls through the blood
of Christ and give god praise and glory!’^19 While many examples of radical Christian
discipleship do not share this charismatic evangelism, at Club Worship kids wear
glowing cross-shaped necklaces and DJ Jon Carlson was reported to have read aloud
from Isaiah 40: ‘Even youths grow tired and weary/and young men stumble and fall/
but those who hope in the Lord/will renew their strength’ (Sanders 2002). It is little
wonder that Christian alt.worshippers are assimilating elements of the rave
imaginary. After all, the rave space possesses an ecstatic evangelistic atmosphere—a
theme taken up by Hutson (2000:39–40), who indicates that expressions of raw
emotion, out-of-body experiences, hallucinations drawing the convert closer to
God, and post-conversion healing characterize both rave and evangelical conversion
in North America. Yet, the comparison can only be carried so far: PLUR is hardly
theological scripture, evangelical Christians are not great exponents of cognitive
liberty, and the separation of body and soul, so integral to the Judeo-Christian
tradition, is anathema to rave.
While Hutson points out that with rave ‘eternal Salvation is not at stake’ (2000:
40), our attention should not, however, be diverted from observing the presence of
salvific liberation, a profound sensation of being saved, of being released, within
electronic dance music cultures. In his history of 1970s and 1980s dance clubs in
New York City and Chicago (e.g. the Sanctuary—a converted Baptist church—the
Paradise Garage and the Warehouse) Henry Kielarowski (a.k.a. Apollo) sheds light
on dance culture’s salvation and release through soulful/sensual communality
refracted through house into the sensuous deluge of post-rave techno culture. For the
gay and African-American/Latino community living with the threat of AIDS in the
1980s, dancing to house was a ‘reaffirmation of life in the face of death and Puritan
oppression’ (Apollo 2001: issue 23). The music’s essence can thus ‘only be
understood by telling the story of the creation of ecstasy out of agony.... Most of
the men I danced with in the seventies died terrible deaths. I was one of a handful
LIBERATION AND THE RAVE IMAGINARY 33