Ciaran O’Hagan: British dance culture: Sub-genres and associated drug use

Formerly worked at Release, 388 Old Street, London, EC1U 9LT, UK

Currently works for South Bank University. Phone no: (Mobile) 0956 450 267

E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Background

The research into the dance culture populations was stimulated by the Release 1997 Drugs and Dance Survey. The aim of the 1997 study was to go to quite a few clubs, group everyone together and gain an understanding and an idea of what drugs people were using. The fieldwork highlighted different patterns of drug use in different clubs. For the new survey, I wanted to develop the ideas of Russell Newcombe, who in the early 1990s described the dance scene as an area "where people come together to take drugs, to enjoy themselves and to take part in [collective] group consciousness" (1992: 7-8).

The whole dance scene has diversified. New music has been established and there is a split within the scene. It is like a multi-layered arena in which there is now ‘selective’ group consciousness and you

can choose specific pathways to go to and take drugs with specific groups of people who listen to specific types of music.

Some of the imagery used by Release has been produced by art and design degree students from Buckinghamshire University College. They were actually commissioned to create specific club culture images to use within the club setting. Release have a stall and usually beam the images onto the dance floor so the people can recognise that they are in the club. Some of the images are on the literature. The idea is to stay quite modern and change with the time, which is always hard within drug services because money is short. I would advise any drug service to go to design colleges because they are desperate to have some kind of work that is going to be put out, used and exposed to the populations that they need to work with in the future

British dance culture has had many established relationships with music. In the 1950s, jazz clubs in Soho were linked with the use of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. In the 1960s the ‘mods’ were using stimulants stolen from hospitals. In the 1970s the ‘hippie’ movement and festival-goers took LSD. The Afro-Caribbean communities were having ‘blues parties’. The punks were ‘DIY culture’ people who put on events and had [illegal] parties. Within the free party scene people used to go out and hold events which usually tied in with pagan celebrations of summer and winter solstices, for example they would go to Stonehenge. This is where the classic ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ took place in 1984. The pre-cursors after that in relation to dance music were the influences of the gay club scene in America and European electronic music. Later came acid house and raves.

Modern dance culture

Dance culture is continuously saying "I will have a bit of that, I will take it for myself, mix it in and then push it on". Originally, when ‘house music’ came together there was ‘garage’, ‘house’ and ‘techno’ and they all clustered together and were described as ‘acid house music’. ‘Garage’ itself came from the ‘Paradise Garage’ club in New York and had much more soulful influences and vocals. ‘House’ itself came from the ‘Warehouse club’, which was stimulated by its DJ Frankie Knuckles who developed ‘house music’. ‘Techno’ originated in Detroit and had a faster, more intense and more industrial feel. When these came over from America via the island of Ibiza, they were still quite closely matched together.

By about 1987 there was ‘acid house’ and the BPM (beats per minute) range had started to move up to about 120-130. House music is generally classified as a 4/4 beat – which moves on to another four and continues like that. There are certain genres: ‘garage’ bpm range actually stayed quite consistent and started to speed up later, but ‘techno’ really started to branch out and move into its own range. Populations began to cluster when the genres branched out.

A crucial point for dance culture was between 1990 and 1994 when the Criminal Justice Act started to come in and illegal activity within Britain was pushed aside. When the British illegal scene was undermined, the French illegal scene flourished when ‘Spiral Tribe,’ the illegal rave organisers, moved to Europe. It is essential for us to understand what impressions we made on international dance culture, and where it moves throughout the community in different countries. In Britain after the CJA, there were no more big outdoor raves where a mix of everything was played: ‘hard house’, ‘piano house’, ‘Balearic’ ‘techno’. Once the enforcement agencies within Britain introduced Bills that enabled the police to seize people’s equipment in an attempt to push it out altogether, the raving community decided to go back to clubs instead of having illegal warehouse events. It had always been partly in clubs but there was now a real focus on clubs. In clubs the market seems to be split up. Clubs are not as big as warehouses where you could have lots of different music, so specific scenes started to develop around one form of music.

A selection of crowds is represented here. For example, a branch which grew from the ‘hardcore’ scene is ‘break beat’, which links to ‘jungle’, then branches into ‘hip hop’. So different styles are connected and there are overlaps.

In this study, the ‘garage’ and ‘techno’ populations were looked at. The imagery of trance and techno club flyers are psychedelic, influenced by the early hippie movement. The underground trance and techno movement is very closely linked to the festival movement. The garage imagery and language is totally different. There are sexual overtones; it is a very slick look and the psychedelic image has gone. So there are clear symbols that people within the dance culture can recognise and pick up. They are being advertised and spoken to in different languages, and generally people who are going to pick up flyers in shops know what signs and symbols they are looking for, although there are some crossovers.

The study

8 clubs were visited, 4 garage and 4 techno; 200 respondents took part in the study 100 from each genre. The fieldwork team consisted of 6 people, 3 males and 3 females. There was one person from the Afro-Caribbean community to help with the ethnicity breakdown and any issues that that might cause, such as low response levels. Within the techno events, 90% of the population were white. The garage setting was much more multicultural with a mix of 57% white and the rest made up of ethnic backgrounds. Thus there are some racial divisions within the scenes as well.

The questionnaire asked people what drugs they were using on the night and what they used in general. They were asked whether they would take certain substances at the beginning, during or the end of the night. It is clear that lifetime drug use of the modern British dance club population is excessive and they have had experiences with lots of drugs.

The techno group far out-weighed the lifetime drugs experience of the garage group, who seem to be using or have exposure to fewer drugs than the techno population. No single drug was exclusively used within the club setting, except for ‘poppers’ (amyl nitrate). Everything else had been used before or afterwards, and that should be taken into account when looking at health information and provision of information to young people. There is a considerable amount of drug use before and after clubs and we have to decide how we target that.

Interestingly, cannabis and ecstasy use was high, as usual, but the differences between the populations are clear. The techno population are using far more ecstasy than the garage population. Nicotine and alcohol were consumed equally on both scenes. Amphetamine was not really popular on the garage scene but popular on the techno scene. The only illicit drug used more on the garage scene was cocaine, and slightly more alcohol. LSD was used on the techno scene but was non-existent on the garage scene. It is interesting that 10% were using ketamine at techno events.

Maximum and average doses of drug respondents used

Base: all those that indicated the amount of drug intended to be used

All the clubs in London are open until about 6am so people may well have started partying really early on a Friday and their ‘post-activity’ may move well into Saturday because many go to ‘after-parties’. People were also asked what their maximum and average doses were. The alcohol units were extremely high. Cannabis seemed to be very high, but the average was actually one eighth of an ounce per night. An average of two ecstasy pills; one gram of amphetamine; and LSD ‘trips’ were heavily used on the techno scene. On the garage scene cocaine use was just under a gram, with a very low use of ‘rocks’ and heroin on both scenes.

People were also asked where they got advice and information from. The 1997 Release survey grouped friends and family together; this survey actually split them. It is clear that the family is low priority for advice and information. It is clear that peer education, group work and outreach work are more appropriate. Anywhere that people feel is associated with their culture is a place where they are going to go for immediate access for help and support. Magazines play an important role, which really pushed Release towards writing and helping regularly with youth and music magazine features and articles. Leaflets, dance outreach, doctors, helplines and local services were other possible places of information. Suggestions for future efforts included:

• more people like Release workers coming into clubs. (When conducting the surveys we also gave out information)
• leaflets were very popular among both groups but flyers seemed to be more popular on the garage scene
• people were open to research and ‘ecstasy’ testing because of their use
• the ‘garage’ population are very aware of advertising; signs and symbols that target groups could adopt in future drugs information interventions.

   

Summary

Dance culture continues to attract new drug users from all social boundaries. There are equal amounts of men and women who are using an increasing range of drugs, and drugs availability is increasing while drug prices are going down. Dance culture seems to be showing no sign of slowing down and because of its development it is splitting and moving across. There is much more to choose from, and it is impacting on other scenes like the ‘indie’ scene. Sometimes too much focus is put on the fact that if there is a DJ playing music, there has to be drug use as well, and it is equally likely if there is a live indie band playing that there will be drug use. There are many promoters in Britain on the indie scene that laugh because clubs are being closed down while theirs never get raided, even though there may be a lot of drug taking in their clubs.

An important point is that targeting the information is becoming more complex because of genre differences. To be too broad and reach everyone is not good enough. If there are cultures that have signs and symbols that speak to them we should copy them. That requires more resources, but that is the kind of commitment that is needed in this field.

Question: Regarding the different use of drugs and the different choice of drugs on the scene, do you think it effects the levels of violence in different clubs?

Ciaran: I did not encounter any sort of violence on the club scene. However, London has recently suffered quite a few shootings and incidents in relation to specific scenes (ragga and dancehall music events), and that is worrying. In Manchester there seems to be a high level of violence as well. There were more refusals from the garage scene; the techno scene seemed much more open. This might have been because of the amount of drugs that respondents were using, which may have broken down barriers a bit more so that they were more likely to come and speak to us

References

Newcombe, R. (1992) The Use of Ecstasy and Dance Drugs at Rave Parties and Clubs: Some Problems and Solutions,Liverpool: 3d Research Bureau.