Opinion | If there is one music genre that wants to escape consumer culture, it is techno

With some bewilderment we read Jelle Honing’s opinion piece on Wednesday: Escape reality by dancing? You let yourself be paralyzed (10/18). In it he dismisses dance festivals and techno as “suppression of social involvement”. Although his metaphor of the ‘rave cave’ as Plato’s cave is nice, his analysis is incorrect.

To begin with, techno is a particularly poor choice as ‘possibly the pinnacle of the culture industry’. If there is one type of music that has seen attempts to escape commercial consumer culture in recent decades, it is electronic dance music. Think of rave culture in the 1990s and more recently free parties (parties held without a permit in remote places or in squats, for example).

Naturally, the work of Adorno and Horkheimer offers a powerful and subversive perspective to explain the ‘paralyzing’ effect of commercial popular music. But it is also an elitist perspective, with which Adorno and colleagues – just like Honing – theorize from the armchair about what ‘bad’ and ‘good’ music is. In Adorno’s case, good music was complex classical music – which would lead to enlightenment and escape from capitalist oppression. Protest music such as that of Bob Dylan in the 1960s was judged by Adorno to be “not bearable” – the pinnacle of the culture industry, as far as he is concerned.

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Experiences

Such criticisms are based on an assumed ‘false consciousness’: people may think that they are doing something that they enjoy and that benefits them a lot, but actually they are manipulated. Such a false consciousness is a kind of theoretical trick. It masks any underlying, ‘true’ effects of music and then you can imagine what you think those effects are at will. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about the experiences of the music lovers themselves, because they are just the result of deception. To be clear: culture and media can certainly manipulate things by presenting their audience with a biased representation of things, but this is usually done strategically and purposefully by certain people and organizations, not by an entire genre.

Applying Adorno’s vision to techno and dance festivals is not only selective, it also sidetracks the experiences of thousands of people. As if their experience by definition cannot be as intellectually elevated as that of the critical spectator on the sidelines, the ‘true’ individual.

How is culture liberating? Or is every form of culture escapist and therefore dangerous?

Scientists who have worked in recent decades actually conducted research to the experience of this music show a completely different picture. It often turns out that it is not the music itself that determines what people do or think, but what people do with it. So it turns out to be quite possible that in the “extreme rehearsal” of techno – “mechanically different, but ultimately all about the same” – people find themselves, each other and even progressive ideologies.

Subsequently, there is a strange reasoning in Honing’s interpretation of dance parties themselves. In it he states that events such as ADE invite people to dance “alone”, apart from others. That is also at odds with research others in ourselves have done. People appear to seek each other out and go to these events together because togetherness is a core ingredient for achieving collective ecstasy – losing the ‘self’ in the group. They don’t dance alone or in pairs, they dance together. A lot is happening not only on a social level, but also physiologically; people quite literally synchronize in heart rate and breathing, and large amounts of oxytocin (the ‘love hormone’) are released. While that certainly won’t lead to an important experience for everyone, many people consider it meaningful Rite of passage where they discover what they find important. Instead of people leaving the cave blinded, they do so with a renewed sense of meaning, new relationships and a consolidated identity.

How?

Finally, the perspective of manipulation and oppression does not offer a concrete alternative. Even if Honing’s criticism of the paralyzing influence of techno music were correct, what exactly should ravers do to look the social beast in the face? Should they break away from entertainment and the culture industry and, as ‘true’ exalted individuals, look for obscure, complex culture? And how is that liberating? Or is any form of culture escapist and therefore dangerous? If you accuse people of having false consciousness, you must also explain how you arrive at real consciousness. Otherwise, criticizing is rather non-binding.

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