Bryan Meaden wrote an article about his research on trance music culture, the moral panics and the transnational identity in Israel. As Trance music culture has been growing in popularity in Israel over the past fifteen years, this research looks at observations in trance parties, as well as personal interviews with Israeli trance party participants.
Firstly, when we think about evolution, we understand that it is a hereditary change in information transmitted over time. There has always been a 'religious nature' which has been practiced through the millennia, across the world with similar rituals, beliefs, and ways of living, and dressing. This cult is re-enacted within the contexts of our postmodern cultures. In the case of the Israeli’s, as a developing subculture, “through the use of heightening the symbolic value of trance characteristics, primarily the music and the venues and their meanings of styles, trancists have given the music that drives them a spiritual quality. This spiritual meaning, in turn, allows them to develop ritual and raise the meaning of these rituals to almost sacred levels”. This demonstrates how subcultural groups are formed by youth who share this social position, and how these groups construct alternative value systems that allow youth members to measure themselves against the counter class standards. The article notes how the police were a major example that caused trance participants to feel alienated towards both the state and national ideals.
There is no actual meaning that can be found in the trans culture. Pure escape, excitement, and the celebration of life, freedom and love was what was expressed by these participants. The trance party people were the party. The youth reactively and proactively expressed their dissatisfaction by articulating themselves through forms of style and creativity. The global trance community provided this sense of belonging and acceptance. The Israeli’s are part of this community and not just as visitors passing through, instead, “they become a respected member of a particular tribe within the global trance community. As a member of this tribe, he belongs to the greater community, but has distinct cultural, social and local characteristics, which distinguish him from other national groups of the greater community”. Through preferences in various trance music, interpretation of this music and uses of it, demonstrates how youths are simultaneously interpreters and producers of culture reflecting their understanding of global culture, while contributing to this same culture. So for example, the history of club cultures shows how travelers contributed to the transmission of dance music culture. They emerged from travelling to locations around the world within the explicit purpose of experiencing the club culture area. Meaden notes how, “the main place where the trancist experiences his new community is through recollection. The trancist uses the recall of the experience of traveling around the world and attending trance parties prior to identifying with the community as an experience that only later becomes significant”. The experiences with trance music, drug use and international trancists, become the new anchor for identity construction for the trancist. Some of these trancists continue to travel outside of the country for parties, but most rely on either personal experiences of others to provide strength to their romance with the global trance community.
What we therefore have is this subculture that youths look for as an alternative to fit to his newly developing self-image. This self-image is associated with belonging to a transnational community that will accept the trancist as he is, while accepting his choice of social entertainment, his symbols of meaning and social interactions as legitimate and even positive. In the case of the Israelli, Meaden points out how “trance has become their main form of expression, and the Israeli public will not tolerate it. They see the general Israeli public as viewing the trance scene as a foreign, illegal and a threatening subculture to Israeli society. Via moral panics, sending the police to break up parties condoned by the public, the trancist feels that police brutality is simply an expression of society’s will. Therefore, he can no longer view himself as part of a society that cannot accept him, and will place himself in the hands of a more accepting community – the trance community”.
http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_14/256000/256541/3/preview/Abstract_-_Trance_.doc.
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