Burning Man This Year: The Vibe of the Rave

Of all the activities available at Burning Man, the one I certainly indulged in the most this year was dancing. Wow---was that ever fun!

One thing to know about Burning Man, and how music works there. To be blunt, live performance music really doesn't work well. Even the guy playing guitar and narrating his life backstory, on the little stage at Center Camp at ten in the morning, doesn't feel quite right.

The music there is all about techno, and the performers are DJs, using laptops. If you go there, you would agree with me.

I thought about this phenomenon, and why it is so. Somehow a live performance, even when the audience is active on the dance floor, always keep the focus on the performer. The music is idiosyncratic in the way that humans produce it, with real voices and instruments in real time. Usually this is what I like to experience.

But on the playa, keeping the focus on the musician this way is somehow contrary to the vibe. The focus of the "performance" is the dance floors and the dancers. The DJ is not the artist. The dancers are. By coming to any performance at a club or art car on the playa is to volunteer to be part of a dance company, as long as you are there. You are the one creating the vibe. The DJ is there to help you. A good one knows how to keep the beat going, speeding it and slowing it down, without invoking awkward interruptions in the flow of the vibe.  Some of them are very good.

The "temporary dance company" aspect is why at such an event (i.e., what may be called a "rave"), one usually needs to wear some form of colored LED type of light. The bouncing of the light is what is perceived in the peripheral vision of others on the dance floor, and by the DJ. This is how we all experience the communal vibe of the dance that is going on.

You need not make yourself too ostentatious in using lights. A simple glow stick around the neck is sufficient. This is what most of the experienced hard-core ravers do.


Some places we danced:

1. (Tue-Sat afternoon) District -- at 9:00 and G (see my previous map). For a couple years running, this massive courtyard has been the most dynamic daytime club. It keeps rocking until sundown, and then folks go off the places at 2:00 and 10:00 that face the open playa. I was there only once this year, with Okki and Ash. As usual, we filtered our way down near the center stage and mingled with others. It's an incredible feeling. 

2. (Thu-Sat night) White Ocean --- one of the two massive dance clubs set up on the 10:00 road facing the playa. It was the place where the bigtime DJs were to perform. Most right now are from Europe. Germany is the epicenter of electronic music, especially the trance genre. The camp was all abuzz about seeing a DJ named Paul Oakenfeld, who was to perform Thursday night. at 3 a.m (actually early Friday morning, but Burning Man uses a different day of the week calendar).  His performance was the only time I went inside White Ocean, at the end of a very long night, the toughest of my week there. But I figured it was worth it to experience it. I learned I don't really prefer that kind of crowded huge-sound venue, since it puts the focus back on the DJ, about whom I have little interest. 

3. (Wed night) The club on the 2:00 road, about G-ring. The DJ booth was the cockpit of a crashed 747 called "Ocean Airlines." The DJ was up in the crashed cockpit, wearing a pilot hat, and flanked by serveral go-go stewardness (only visible from waist up in this case). It was a small club and we were able to really get the vibe going up.