Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Folklore And Alternative Masculinities In A Rave Scene, Anthony P. Avery

American Studies ETDs

The rave is a late twentieth-century local and global ritualized entertainment that attracts mainly middle-class white youth and young adults to ecstatic trance dance and electronic music. Throughout the 1990s, raves were known as places of drug use, racial/class mixing, and sexual experimentation. With a DJ booth and a dance floor--sometimes in an abandoned warehouse, beach, or boat--the rave event fosters community and creativity. I argue that there is a transformation from ideal masculinity to alternative masculinities by bodily awareness through ecstatic trance dance facilitated by the ritual aspects of raving--the rave experience.