whilst helping to establish it as a key element of British dance culture and a feature
of the international dancescape. Since 1996, UK garage consumers have followed
their favourite DJs and MCs to holiday destinations such as Ayia Napa in Cyprus,
Ibiza and, more recently, Faliraki in Rhodes. This reflects the influence much of
dance culture has had on the UK youth tourism market, which sees young people
organizing their holidays to correspond with their musical interests (Sellars 1998:
611). Although Ayia Napa caters for other dance-music genres, it has nevertheless
become an essential component in the lives of UK garage consumers. Many of
London’s biggest UK garage club nights, such as Twice As Nice, Smoove, Exposure
and La Cosa Nostra, lead the almost quasi-religious pilgrimage to the Cypriot resort
each year. Attending Ayia Napa, whether as a DJ, promoter or participant, enhances
an individual’s cultural capital and is regarded as a defining element of inclusion in
the higher echelons of the UK garage scene.
It’s a spiritual thingMany of the spiritual and religious aspects found within contemporary UK garage
can be traced to key genres instrumental in its development, such as house music,
which influenced many of the early UK garage productions. Hillegonda Rietveld
reveals that African-American musical traditions, including gospel, disco, soul, funk
and Latin salsa, informed the musical structures and sensibilities of house music
developed in Chicago and New York during the 1990s (Rietveld 1998:6). Kai
Fikentscher (2000) adds to this, suggesting that New York underground dance
music, which includes house, shares several features with African-American worship.
He asserts that, as institutions, both the church and underground dance clubs
‘feature ritualised activities centred around music, dance, and worship, in which
there are no set boundaries between secular and sacred domains’ (ibid.: 101).
Fikentscher asserts that both the consumption of underground dance music and
African-American worship are equally intertwined within processes of unification
and self-affirmation. He also points to similarities in the way DJs and preachers each
strategically build pace throughout their respective performances or ceremonies
towards an emotional peak. In addition, Fikentscher sees parallels in the way they
are equally regarded as cultural heroes who are respected and admired by their
followers. He goes on to suggest that many underground dance-music producers
and artists served musical apprenticeships in community church ensembles and
choirs. As a result, the stylistic vocal features of gospel music were incorporated into
underground dance music along with ‘a variety of themes, sacred and secular, social
and political, that have long been associated with the Black church tradition’ (ibid.:
105). Furthermore, he reveals that the use of prominent gospel instruments such as
the organ and acoustic piano became a common feature of house music produced in
New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Chicago.
In Britain, American house productions which featured gospel-like vocals were
generally known as ‘US garage’, referring to the seminal New York Paradise Garage
club, where resident DJ Larry Levan played an eclectic mix of records including
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