The dance music community has always been the underdog, and with the exception of a couple of years in the late 90's and the recent trend of Las Vegas approved EDM events, this music has never been part of the mainstream. There are many reasons for this. Of note, the origin stories of so many subgenres are connected to the LGBTQ scenes or visible minority groups (e.g. Black, Latino), who fought for decades (and still do) for tolerance and understanding from the mainstream music industry.
Keeping the music alive wasn't always easy. Party locations and permits were not always easy to come by. Local authorities worked tirelessly to shut down raves and clubs, citing security and safety concerns. It was the same story everywhere, in dozens of countries, which helped forge a global unity of purpose that I think was unprecedented in modern music. This constant struggle against authority, the fight to keep the music going, battling for tolerance and acceptance, it was a beautiful thing that transcended borders and cultures.
On October 7, Hamas terrorists murdered hundreds of partygoers at a trance music festival in Israel. The scale of the carnage was several times larger than the largest mass shooting in US history -- the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas in 2017. It came only a year after the Pulse Nightclub shooting, which targeted the Orlando gay community and sent shockwaves through the dance community that have arguably not subsided to this day. The nightclub never reopened and a permanent memorial to the victims is currently planned. The Nova Festival attack, which was also carried out by Islamic extremists, was without exaggeration, the most horrible tragedy in the history of the global electronic music scene. How did the music press react?
The UK-based Mixmag wrote a bland, anti-emotional report stripped of any semblance of anger, sadness, or frustration. It could have appeared on CNN, BBC, or any other MSM site. They approached with the subject with zero sense of traumatic indignation. With its stone faced layout of a scant few relevant facts, they might as well have been reporting on traffic or the weather.
A couple of weeks later, Mixmag reported on an open letter for Palestine, which contained lines such as "queer liberation is inextricable from the ongoing global struggle against imperialism and colonialism". Well, if you can't count on Hamas to bring queer liberation to the world, then who can you count on? Remember you can't spell "gay shame" without "Hamas".
The US-based Fader wrote an even more objectionable piece, categorizing the mass slaughter, rape, and incineration of ravers as "part of a large scale offensive" by Hamas. The death count is simply a number, an exercise in bean counting that represents a few more deaths in an ongoing conflict but nothing to get too worked up about in the grand scheme of things.
The UK's Resident Advisor went into more detail about the horrors of the massacre itself, but felt the need to include some "context" by outlining the Israeli response. It seems that mass murder at a music festival wasn't a big enough story on its own. They couldn't simply report on the story without "all lives matter"ing the killings and inserting their own political biases. Since that time, they have kept a running list of fundraising efforts for Gaza in the electronic music community. They offer no money or even encouraging words for anyone in the Israeli scene, or for Israelis directly affected by the massacre. RA used to be my go-to site for keeping updated with the global scene, but I wasn't too surprised by their takes, because their slow radicalization has been going on for some time.
I can't say that we're at a turning point, where the global reach and togetherness of the dance music community is exposed as a hypocritical sham, but I did expect better. Every music scene has its cliques. Clubs were almost always an island of tolerance -- come as you are, and stay as long as you'd like. Now, it seems as though you need to be fully committed to the causes du jour in order to have a place at the table.
