Doc: ElectronicAwakening

Sorry for the silence, my friends. I've been too busy with other dimensions of my life, but here is some good news. My colleague Andrew Johner is about to release his new documentary on electronic dance music spirituality "ElectronicAwakening" and is raising some funds to put it on road of festivals and distribution.

He interviewed and video-taped me during his doc research in 2008 (yes, that's a while ago...). I haven't seen the full documentary yet, so I can only hope that my work and myself are featured in a nice light. :-)   I recall that Andrew's ideas centers on scatological beliefs about global transformation related to 2012 Maya Calendar. Will it happen? I don't know. Let's wait and see. In the meantime, you can sit back and enjoy the trailer of "ElectronicAwakening":

"Nazi Criminal Caught at Trance Party in Goa"

The above headline was widely used by the Indian press last June. The story allegedly involves an 88 year old German man, internationally sought for war crimes, trying to sell a rare piano over the Internet, a lead which finally led to his arrest by authorities flown from Berlin, as he desperately tries to flee the scene on a taxi towards Karnataka.

This was a hoax spread by an Indian blogger who successfully exposed the lousy job being regularly done by several newspapers in India.

Yet, anyone who knows the trance scene in Goa would not be so surprised if the story were true. In this environment, there is a silence by which nobody openly talks about their past - no questions asked. It is not so much that Westerners may be involved with the drug scene, directly or not. The fact is that many have gone to India to forget about who they are in the West. Moreover, note what I wrote about the trance scene in northern Goa a few years back:

A mosaic of diverse peoples interacted closely in the region: villagers, trance freaks, backpackers, Israeli ex-soldiers, Japanese hippies, Osho sannyasins, Nepalese workers, Goan businessmen, beach vendors from Karnataka, Kashmiri traders, European charter tourists, drug dealers, junkies, sadhus etc. Though populated by petit criminals and many other marginal types, the socio-economic order in northern Goa was rather determined by shady deals (…). As freaks pointed out, even though the ‘scene’ is potentially dangerous (due to drugs, strangers, corruption and lawlessness), the situation in the region was exceptionally peaceful.

In this contact zone you can find some marvelous individuals, as well as some shady types – from various nationalities, ages, and walks of life - people who can really give you the creeps. As I mentioned above, it is not easy to find out about who these people actually are. As such, a Nazi criminal in the shadows of a trance party in Goa would not be, after all, too far off reality.

Not only hippies were fascinated with India. Former Nazis were interested in Hindu mythology, to the point of inverting the Hindu swastika, a symbol of peace and good luck that can be traced back to the Neolithic, misused to represent a horrible ideology of hatred and racism.

History of Hippies in Goa (India)

I forwarded my previous post ("The First Hippie in Goa") to a listserv on Goa research. Some subscribers there asked for more details about the history of the hippie scene in Goa, and particularly Colva. This is a beach in southern Goa that no longer belongs to the techno trance scene.

Colva beach was indeed the first place chosen by a handful of hippies upon arrival in Goa by the mid-1960s. But "Eight Finger" Eddie soon moved to South Anjuna, as he heard about the beauty of that unknown place. In his mid-40s, Eddie already was a popular veteran. Consequently, many Western youngsters soon followed suit, also settling down in Anjuna beach, which is where the "Goa scene" actually started.

Local natives recall that hippies chose Anjuna because there was no police station in the area. The closest station was located miles away southwest, beyond Mapusa town. Therefore, hippies could enjoy the necessary peace to do drugs, without having to pay baksheesh (bribe) at every corner.

Moreover, one native family was pivotal in the early Anjuna scene. In a region where most of the population only spoke Konkani, Joe "Banana" Almeida spoke very good English - an important factor for global travelers. Joe and his family have just returned from Kenya. They had opened a simple restaurant which also provided a variety of ancillary services for hippie newcomers. It was logical that hippies would gather around his restaurant (currently run by his son Tony), still located in South Anjuna.

However, with the ongoing modernization of Anjuna since the 1990s, the emerging techno trance scene was gradually pushed north. It moved towards the villages of Chapora, Vagator and Arambol. Original Anjuna followed the steps of Baga-Calangute tourist strip, which caters to charter tourists from India, Russia, UK and Scandinavia. In the meantime, the Goa trance scene is still fleeing farther north and elsewhere...

In any case, it is important to ask: among various suitable places in India, why did hippies choose northern Goa? They could have well settled in Gokarna village located in the coast of Karnataka state (towards the south), or in Pondicherry, former French colony on the east coast of India. Two critical factors must be pointed out:

• Mobility: well-established transportation lines connecting Goa to Pune and Bombay were very important for hippie travelers. They could thus easily travel to the Osho-Rajneesh ashram located in Pune (a pleasant hilltop town), or take advantage of Bombay as a hub towards Rajasthan, Nepal, or back to the West.

• Portuguese-Christian legacy of Goa: in comparison with the rest of India, Goan people were more familiar with Western leisure practices (party, alcohol, smoking). They also grasped Western notions of individuality and privacy. It was thus ironical that hippies running away from Christian Europe/America would decide to settle down in the most Christian state of India!

For anyone devoted to finding causes and origins, I'd say that some of the initial decisions made by hippies and Goans back then were purely incidental, often based on individual whim and preference.

It is the ensuing snowballing effect that has an impact on the collective. The location and culture of a host society, combined with the needs of guest travelers, will define the rise of a subcultural scene at a given time. Feel free to post your comments.

The First Hippie in Goa (Pre-History of Trance)

Goa is a main tourist destination in India. But it also is an important global center for the counterculture, now in the digital stage of techno "trance parties". There is much to say about contemporary Goa, counterculture and globalization. But how did the Goa scene actually start?

In the late 1960s, a handful of beatniks and hippies were traveling, overland, from Western Europe toward Southern Asia. They came on bikes, beetles and "magic buses". They entered India, and almost incidentally reached Goa, a former Portuguese enclave on the west coast of India.

By the Arabian Sea, they gathered on the secluded palm-lined beaches of Anjuna and Vagator. These were modest fishermen villages with no urban infrastructure, let alone tourist facilities. Precarious roads led to the place, linking the state capital Panaji, to Mapusa town, and then to Anjuna. As more Westerners spread out across the continent, the New Year's Eve in Goa began to work as the meeting-point for the countercultural diaspora.

The "first hippie" of that movement is now 84 years old. Eight Finger Eddie, an American expat of Armenian ancestry, still lives in Goa. His friends have set up a website for him. It compiles his autobiographical memories, in text and podcast format. I find the podcast "Anjuna 26 Feb 2007" to be particularly insightful. In typical Goa freak story-telling fashion, Eddie exposes his life trajectory in detail. Recorded at his house, it lasts two hours. As he speaks, you also listen to common background noises of northern Goa...

This is the pre-history of Goa trance counterculture. Forget about big DJ and hearsay stories. Listen carefully to Eddie's firsthand account. It will take you to a fantastic world of travel and self-exploration... (podcast).

Are 1960s hippies the same as 2000s trance freaks? Leave your comment below.