Canada: Afraid Of Rave? Remember Rock?

Reaction of the press is fuelled by fear of the unknown

Published On: 2000-04-19
Source: National Post (Canada)

Maclean’s magazine has finally discovered raves. This week’s cover shrieks:

“Rave Fever: Kids love those all-night parties, but the drugs can kill— what parents need to know.” The article notes that “ecstasy has been implicated in at least 14 Canadian deaths in the last two years in Canada.” This number has been generating a lot of recent press—including, most likely, this cover story.

Accidental deaths of any kind are a cause for concern, but it’s worth putting this statistic into perspective. According to Health Canada (1997) “1,680 people are killed and 74,000 are injured each year in alcohol-related [car] crashes.” For 2000, Health Canada projects that smoking-attributed deaths will total 46,910. According to the Canadian Council of Snowmobile Organizations, “on average over the last five years in Canada, approximately 95 snowmobilers have lost their lives while snowmobiling.” And snowmobiling is a leisure activity people choose to do for fun—kind of like going to a rave.

Maclean’s has regurgitated the same story that seems to be told in the media every month—kids, partying, drugs, danger—without giving the meat about what keeps driving this important youth movement. This is a culture growing by leaps and bounds and it should be covered with critical, artistic and sociological analysis, not just with alarmist headlines and glossed-over content.

Such coverage is not only myopic, but smacks of the treatment another youth culture movement received in the media.

Those of you old enough to remember rock ‘n’ roll’s unceremonious introduction to the mainstream in the 1950s may recall its being painted as “the devil’s music;” marijuana, a drug closely associated with rock ‘n’ roll throughout its history spawned such histrionic early reactions as the scare film Reefer Madness, which warned—untruthfully—that marijuana would send its users into a psychotic frenzy. Sound familiar?

Rock ‘n’ roll became a mass-audience form of music that developed into a multi-billion-dollar industry.

And every indication is that the rave scene is well on its way to the same profile.

People pay $50 or more to hear DJs like Oakenfold, Hype and Carl Cox, who are, in their own way, their scene’s Madonna, Cher or Bowie. But of course these names, who command tens of thousands of dollars, don’t have the backing of Sony or Universal Music or get gigs in venues like Toronto’s SkyDome. Then there are all the indie streetwear shops and labels, Internet radio stations, independent music labels and numerous other components that go into making this counter-culture function more like a counter industry.

It has infiltrated most of today’s dance club scenes.

But since only a handful of mainstream journalists cover this area on a regular basis, the general public is kept out of the loop and simply served the same surface stories about drugs and danger, again and again.

Most people who party today don’t even use the term “rave” any more. They associate themselves with different genres of music and go to jungle parties, warehouse parties or the gay circuit parties that attract house music afficionados and often an older crowd.

Maclean’s lets its readers know that “there are parties every Saturday night in Toronto, considered by many devotees the rave capital of North America.” In Toronto, there are smaller parties every night of the week. On Monday alone there are two nights catering to jungle music: Chicks Dig It at the Weave; and Jungle Nation at the Comfort Zone. Cities across North America have clubs that cater to a variety of other electronic music genres from techno to speed garage to hardcore and happy hardcore.

But the lack of such details are among the least egregious offenses here. Take, for example, the fact that none of the founders of the rave scene are mentioned or interviewed in this article, nor are any of the major party promoters acknowledged. Granted, many are reluctant to speak to the media these days. But imagine doing a feature about federal cabinet ministers and talking to the guy who mops their floor, a few secretaries, a friend of a friend and an outside “expert” observer or two.

There is a mention of the Toronto Dance Safety Committee, but it fails to acknowledge the ground-breaking protocol it created for safe legal raving which was endorsed “wholeheartedly” by Mel Lastman, the city’s mayor, and the city council.

City councillors, representatives from fire, ambulance and police departments, zoning officials, public health officials, rave promoters, security firms and the Toronto Raver Info Project, which distributes educational harm-reduction information on drug use and safe sex, worked together to reach this agreement.

It’s a remarkable step, assuming city officials can keep up their end of the bargain.

On the drug front, Maclean’s has done us the decency of explaining that ecstasy-related deaths are not necessarily a result of the drug itself, but often from its misuse—not drinking enough water, drinking too much water, not knowing what substances are actually in the pill. Still, in the accompanying “Young and Reckless” story the focus is “23-year-old Jaimie Britten [who] died of an ecstasy overdose at a rave in an industrial park on the outskirts of Halifax.” It’s a tragedy, of course, but what about those 95 snowmobilers?

There are thousands of fascinating stories in the rave scene, some dark, some bright.

Isn’t it time journalists started treating it—from raves to clubs to circuit parties—the same way they do rock concerts and pop acts? How many more trees have to die in the name of newsprint before they get around to it?