EDM is a funny beast - you love or hate it.
1995-2002 were my peak clubbing years in San Francisco - I got so addicted sometimes I’d drive myself up to SF (from Mountain View or Sunnyvale) just to dance.
I took on learning percussion when I was 8 and some of my fondest memories are of competitoin marching band from 1987-1991 in High School and 1991-1995 in college.
so much of the way I dance is very much influenced by my percussive background (aka. being in the beat) (I still remember my Eurhythmics class in college - we liked to joke it was the “wake up and stomp class”)
I’ve always enjoyed classical music (I started to play piano when I was 12 but it didn’t last too long)
I would play in concert band from middle school through high school and when I got the SF bay area in 1995, I took up ballroom dancing only to get whisked away by salsa thanks to an amazing salsa teacher I felt I could learn and be challenged by.
pop synth “new wave” bands like New Order and Depeche Mode had a very heavy influence on my taste in music at 16.
I loved chiptune music - so mesmerized by Mega Man music, I would record my Nintendo and create my own “soundtrack” tapes with a friend of mine. This love definitely continued through college when I discovered MOD tracks (made popular by the Amiga).
house and trance music is hypnotic, it’s easy to get immersed and lost in the music and be part of it (it’s quite the spiritual experience)
My appreciation of EDM was very much fueled by alcohol and recreational drugs in the early hey days and ballroom (and later Lindy Hop) were “water scenes” (meaning participants seldom drank alcohol - bars hated us for it) - so it many ways, the human connection took precedence and no alcohol meant the connection was safe, responsible, and consensual (for the most part)
So I had this juxtaposition between a scene that valued it’s electronic vibes, individual self-expression and being in altered states and a scene that valued consensual partnership, being present and connected as human beings.
it’s no surprise I arrived at a place in 1999 where these two worlds would come together very powerfully. I would love the 4 beats on the floor get down nature of house music and I would love the partnership I had inherited through salsa and lindy.
So fusion dance was born for me around 1999 at a celebration of life produced by Raise the Frequency.
I would be so indebted to these experiences, I would assist and help produce these parties and share how different an EDM party could be.
Overlay 5 contiguous years at Burning Man from 1999-2003 and you have a recipe for not only taking a culture lit on fire through EDM but now also bringing things back to the basics - some of my best memories is the tribal experience of dancing naked around the fire (dude when the fire is blazing hot, it’s pretty instinctual to do what’s right and not have your clothes catch on fire! lol)
I continue to enjoy EDM to this day - as I was combing through Spotify curated playlists today, I skipped soooo many songs because many of them admittedly sound the same or don’t bring anything new. I always do manage to find a handful of songs (maybe 5%) I feel would be worth listening in full later.
I definitely miss combing through CDs at the Virgin Megastore. It was great to be super critical about the 10-12 songs a DJ or compilation creator chose and whether it was worth your $15-20 for a CD. These days, someone at Spotify puts a 100 songs in a playlist, slaps a label on it and calls it a day. not quite the same expectation of curation when you don’t have pressing 100s of CDs at stake.
In any case, EDM will always be nostalgic for me, helping me remember my “care free” days during the height of the Internet boom - what an amazing time to be alive - watching the birth of the Internet as we know it today!