Shall We Trance?

By Frederick Noronha

What’s behind the raves? An InSight Team looks at the issues behind the news behind these controversial events of the northern Bardez beach belt, in the former Portuguese colony of Goa.

We are sitting by the holy fire in Anjuna beach, Goa. The good thing about when we did come here and it was untouched, was we created a lifestyle which was the best of the East and the West. We developed the concept of redefining the ancient tribal rituals for the 21st century and tried to use the party situation to uplift people consciousness through the trance-dance experience. It’s nothing new, every tribal group since beginning of time has been practising this thing. You know, use music and dance to evoke the cosmic spirit, and everyone would be rejuvenated and healed by that, and the earth also. We developed a similar idea that would be acceptable to the youth of today.

–”Goa Gill”, one of the big names among party hosts.

Is it just a “disco under the coconut trees”? Or is it a noisy night-long disturbance, as villagers affected by the party scene in Goa see it? Is it an “act of initiation”, as its promoters claim it to be? Or, should we take the view of its critics who see it as a well-oiled game plan put up by drug barons and their couriers?

Maybe it is a mix of all. Many things to different people. Once again the ‘parties’ along the Goa beach belt have made it to the headlines. Call it beach parties, acid parties or raves, these events have led to horror and shock from the average Goan. But despite the blocking of Bombay Dyeing scion Jeh Wadia’s mega- party, other parties along the coastal belt have carried on. Campaigners highlighted the environmental havoc caused by Jeh’s party plans. On the other hand, those in the Jeh camp sought to argue that behind it were rival party organisers. Hints were also dropped about politicians who did not get what they expected in terms of protection money.

What are the ‘parties’ all about?

Much of Goa has long been blissfully unaware, but the full world knows about it. At least youngsters do, whether they come from Israel, Scandinavia, Britain or elsewhere. “Trance Parties” that spawned the music called Goa-Trance since the mid-nineties, if not earlier, have become a big fashion among young foreign tourists in pockets of the North Goa coastal belt. Now elite kids from Mumbai and Delhi or elsewhere are joining the bee-line to these beach events.

Goa Trance, as it was called, was also the latest dance- music craze to sweep Europe’s alternative club world in the mid- nineties. It has been described as “a hypnotic blend of hard electronic rhythms, ancient Indian religious motifs and the return to the ’60s hallucinogen, LSD”. But the use of Ecstasy has also been reported in Goa, though statistics are hard to come by apart from the stray seizure in a couple of cases by the police. Visiting Western journalists and even research scholars from Germany or Sweden — who are better able to merge with the crowd of overwhelmingly-White tourists — have repeatedly come back to report that drug-taking is rampant among the Goa Trance parties. British radio producer Phoebe Collins put together an interesting programme called “World Party” for BBC’s Radio One in recent years. In it, she got to the bottom of which the Goa government had been denying for years together, but which locals had all along been suspecting. Big money, narcotics, and an ambivalent attitude by the state all go into making the parties what they are in Goa.

Increasing numbers of British youth too are travelling to the “most amazing places in the world”, as the Radio One programme put it, to the so-called world party scene. Goa is part of the big circuit — along with places like Ibiza and Majorca in Spain, Portugal, or Thailand.

But there also big money all around. DJs involved are a jet- set group, flying to places like Hong Kong, Spain or Australia from one week to another. “Our DJs were last week in Montreal, the week before that in New Zealand, and in Melbourne, S.Africa. Some 8500 people attended just one techno party in Japan,” boasted one unidentified organiser on the BBC programme. In the village of Anjuna, a local inn-keeper Camilo D’Souza responds strongly: “Our main objection is the parties. If they (ravers) want to kill themselves, they can go ahead. But don’t disturb our peace. They’re disturbing the peace of everybody, including the (other) tourist.”

But, when confronted by this view, party organisers threaten that they are willing to pull out. “Rajaram”, an American with an assumed name, told BBC Radio One: ” The world is our oyster. The world is beautiful. There’s a million beaches. There’s a million wonderful locals. The world is waiting for us, and there is no problem. We’ll always find somewhere beautiful. It’s a free world, and it’s our our money to spend where we like.”

Because the parties are basically for, by and of Western tourists, it’s hard to get entry. In the first place, these acid- parties are held without much publicity. (The situation has been changing now though, with a wider participation of Indians in the ‘parties’.)

Just a couple tourist seasons ago, we walked into one such ‘party’, held in a cluster of homes along the beach in the village of Anjuna, which has been a famous haunt for hippies right from the ’sixties.

Only a steady stream of motorcycles gives an indication that something is on somewhere, and that you’re headed in the right direction. Suddenly, in a cluster of typical Goan houses, the throb of the music hits you. Crowds at the entrance indicate that you’ve arrived.

But if you’re Indian you’d feel quite out of place. The three of us entered, only to begin wondering where we had reached. It was a “small” party. About three hundred Western youth were around the place, as the most outlandish music kept droning on monotonously.

Locals ran a beer-bar nearby, but also doing brisk business were the youth standing at the entrance and openly offering the tourists a range of narcotics. When we entered, a whisper went out among them. They were only wondering, we later realised, whether some new peddlers had entered the market.

If you’re Indian (including Goan), you must be a peddler. Or a ‘chai’ vendor — many of the enterprising villagers, including elderly women from the beachbelt, put up some stalls. Policemen also try to bust parties when they’ve not been paid-off adequately, the tourists allege.

In front of the cluster of homes, by the beachside, the mainly European crowd relaxed aimlessly. Some entertained the crowd by juggling adeptly with sticks with fireballs at their tips. It was a stupor of nothingness, and the air had a strange scent.

Strangely, while the Goa-Trance music form is discussed in the party circuit — and its alternative magazines worldwide — very little has been known of it in Goa itself. Very few here had had a clue as to why it has been named after this small state, or even that it exists in the first place.

Goa built up its reputation as an easy-drugs paradise right from the late ’sixties. Hippies from that era, who have published their memoirs, give the indication that Goa was an “easy” place for drugs as compared to even Bali in Indonesia or Thailand. Large drug seizures, and major operations — like that involving the Birmingham Gang, or “Sam” Biryani who was himself based here for some years — give an indication of the manner in which this state was used as a transit and consumption point for narcotics. Fortunately, the impact of drugs on local youth seems to be declining in the ‘nineties, compared to the immediately earlier decades. But the situation could change again, as the parties attract a domestic audience.

For years in the past, the state authorities simply denied that anything of this sort was going on. But, the fact is that place grew in prominence among the hippy-circuit largely because of the ‘tolerant’ approach to narcotic-abuse. Goa was among the big-capitals worldwide for the hippies, along with Bali (Indonesia), Kathmandu, and Ibiza (Spain).

But despite the ostrich-like official attitude for many years, there are a lot of trails left behind. From fictional works (like Elwyn Chamberlain’s GATES OF FIRE, Fontana/Collins,1979) to comics for children and biographical writings of Dr. Cleo Odzer (GOA FREAKS: MY HIPPY YEARS IN INDIA, Blue Moon Books, NY, published 1995) all give an deep insight into what an over-cautious local press of that time simply forgot to talk about.

Dr Odzer’s work is particular interesting. She spent four years as a hippy in Goa, before returning to the US in 1980, where she earned a PhD in anthropology. When she wrote the book she was working for Daytop, a drug rehabilitation organization. Her book — which is also highlighted on the Internet — tells about the role of drugs in building up Goa as a tourist destination among a section of its young visitors, and those who put this place on the world map in the first place. Where, then, do the drugs come in from? Large hauls and small hints have kept on coming in over the year, even though the government naturally seeks to underplay Goa’s role in the drug trade.

Dr. Odzer, an American Jewess, openly admits to playing the role of drug-runner herself, and highlights that a single “scam” could earn a courier upto eight thousand dollars in those days. This only involved having to carry someone else’s narcotics to the West, often taking the trouble of going through less- suspicious destinations. For taking the risk of carrying one’s own drugs and wholesaling them in the streets of the US, the returns were far higher — $22000 or more per trip! Odzer speaks of meeting in a five-star hotel an important drug-don, whose political connections were well known here. In recent times too, hints of the situation are available. Ecstasy is believed to have been “in” around the early-nineties, particularly 1992. But things may have shifted back to Acid, as the drug LSD is known. Some brands of Acid that surfaced since the early ‘nineties have odd names — including Galactic Joker, Gorbachev and Laughing Buddha.

Some years back, this issue made it to the headlines again. Strangely, while these affairs are a seasonal affair on the beach belt of northern Bardez and Pernem, the issue gets highlighted only sometimes.

In a cover-story in the mid-nineties on the “beach parties” (also called Acid Parties, Full Moon Parties, and Raves more recently), the journal GOA TODAY pointed to political links in organising these parties. Prominent cronies of top state politicians had a clearly visible hand.

GOA TODAY named a one-time election agent of a former tourism minister for co-organising a party. At least two union ministers and a former Goa governor were allegedly guests of the same organiser of beach parties, it reported.

But Western youngsters accuse Goans of sensationalising the drug issue, and not understanding it properly.

For long, it was only a small pocket in the Anjuna-Chapora area of north Goa which is dominated by this culture. In recent years, the Goa government and the tourism sector has been pushing in favour of luxury and up-market tourism, and hence seems keen to shake off this image now. But in a new trend this year, the sub-culture seemed to have got mainstreamised. Prominent multinational companies entered the fray to support some of these parties.

Some years back, in a frank admission of the problem, the then Goa police chief PSR Brar earlier this year went to Anjuna, to the heart of the drug-belt. There, he openly sought to convince tourists to enjoy their holiday but keep off drugs. In a belated sign of admission, the Goa Police also placed bill-boards at prominent points, warning tourists that drug-taking is illegal in Goa and appealing to them to “say no to drugs”.

But by now, Goa has reached the status where even foreign researchers find this a suited place for their studies on fellow Western tourists, and their fads.

One Swedish researcher came back to tell stories of how the young low-budget “alternative” Western tourists of today mixed up a life of night-long parties, sleeping till into the next afternoon, and concepts like that of ‘chakras’ borrowed from Indian philosophy or religion.

Its proponents defend the ‘dance culture’ strongly. One put it thus: “Dance is like an active meditation. You stop thinking. You just become one with your body. If you get a really good guide he takes you beyond thought, beyond mind, beyond individuality into a cosmic onenness with all the people there. It’s like bonding with the spirits beyond the universe. All the people are coming together in a vibration of love.” Says Roland Martins, of the citizens group JGF (Vigilant Goans Army) which has been highlighting tourism-related concerns in Goa for the past ten years: “Many tourists come here and try to imitate the hippies of the sixties. It’s an absolute disaster. They’re arrogant, they’re ordering people around.”

Martins compares the neo-hippies to others like Led Zeppelin, The Who and George Harrison who earlier visited Goa. He says: “We’ve seen (them in) the late ’sixties and seventies. They never imposed themselves. They never organised 5000 people, painted the coconut trees (in psychedelic colours), and held parties”. Many of Goa’s police chiefs have said that “this is no place for dropouts looking for drugs” and warned foreign tourists that the law is very strict. They assured tourists that the law is “very, very severe”. But this has not changed the reality. But as another unclearly identified defender of the parties put it in the recent BBC Radio One programme: “People have been trying to get high and have a good time since eternity. This is nothing new. It’s just that the mind-police have come. And they’re telling us (what to do).”

“Goa” Gill and “Rajaram” are some of the big names among the party hosts and DJs here. Their “parties” draw at times thousands of youths, some clad in day-glo clothes, braids, and tatoos. Other big names among the organisers in recent years here have included Tsuyoshi Suzuki, Mark Allen, Sid Shanti and Hallucinogen, according to MIXMAG, a specialist rave magazine from the UK. This mag describes itself as the “world’s leading dance music and club culture magazine”.

Landmarks in Anjuna which are close to the party scene include Shore Bar, and Paradiso. The latter, incidentally, is a government-owned facility!

Local general practitioner who lives in the North Goa beach- belt Dr. Jawaharlal Henriques said in the BBC Radio programme: “I promote parties first basically because the tourists want it. Secondly, it’s a source of income for the poor people of these villages. Thirdly, it’s a source of income for different charitable causes.”

Henriques argues that dancing the night away is “normal” here due to the influence of colonial Portuguese culture on Goa. “If (local) dances can go on, why make an exception to these dances? Just because most of the dancers are white-skinned?” he argues, making out as if there’s a case of reverse-racism here. “Acid music is completely strange to the Goa culture. But what I say is, we have to allow all cultures to grow together. This acid culture is going to be a part of Goan society,” he defends it strongly.

Any takers for such arguments?

That big money is involved there’s no doubt. Politicians in the area have for long been quick to shy away from taking hard stands. Some grumble that only rival politicians’ supporters (and not theirs) are allowed to organise the parties.

In a strange situation some time back, two Congress (I) legislators from neighbouring areas, embarrassed by media charges about drug-use at the parties, kept arguing that the scene of the parties lay in the other’s constituencies!

Responding to criticism over the parties, Goa’s chief ministers past and present have argued that “normal parties” could go on. But those in which drugs were used would be stopped, they said. This is a dividing line that is both thin, and conveniently ineffectively.

Eyewitnesses talk of the smell of drugs in the air. Goa’s former assembly speaker Tomazinho Cardozo, a long-time sarpanch of a coastal-belt village, has in the past called for a ban on the parties — whether termed “acid parties” or the more innocent sounding “full moon parties” — as he said they are basically a money-making racket for drug-peddlers and had nothing to do with tourism.

Cardozo, a former village of the coastal Candolim village, said he was opposing such parties for 18 years, without effect, but admitted that he was tricked into giving permission for one by a foreigner who claimed he wanted to organise a sports meet. After irregular clampdowns in Goa in recent years, some organisers tried to shift the parties to places like Hampi in Karnataka and the nearby beaches of the South Maharashtra coastline just outside Goa.

Shocking news reports coming in from Sweden quoted Interpol sources as saying that at least three parliamentarians who were part of a sports team visiting Goa also joined a rave party in end-1995.

But the citizens group JGF has claimed that the drug-trade along the Goa coastline was in the past itself worth two crore rupees at beach parties. It however gave no indication of how it arrived at this figure.

Despite the official denials, Goa does play a crucial role in the world party scene. But other places are also catching on in India, among this section of young tourists.

Even when they meet at UK “parties”, some of the party- hoppers often talk about Goa. They’ve been described as the “space-age Goa jetset”. Sometimes, they work out arrangements to meet in Delhi, Pushka, Manali or Goa.

Panjim-based reporters have long been blissfully unaware about the dance scene along the handful of villages in the coastal belt. When they wake up to it, the response is often one of shock and horror.

In 1995-96 for instance, the situation changed dramatically, when a Silo de Beers, reporter with the Hebrew newspaper ‘Yedioth Ahronoth’ visited Goa with other foreign mediapersons and took local journalists along to one party.

Mr. Beers was quoted saying that the news of Israeli youth heading for Goa acid parties had caused concern with some citizens even calling upon the government to charter a special plan to bring back their youth. A few Israeli youth had been treated in mental hospitals after binges in Goa on drugs like Ecstasy, Beers said here.

Interestingly, one stretch of the Anjuna beach has been re- christened the Tel Aviv beach. But Israeli consular quarters have taken pains to argue that the drug-reports about their citizens are grossly played up. They argue that out of the hundreds of visiting Israeli tourists, just a handful are caught on drug- charges.

Some young Israelis, formerly in military service, caught on drug-offenses here have spoken about the need to find ways to cope with the tensions of their stress-filled nation.

Said “Goa Gill”, the big name on the local party scene: “(We created a lifestyle which) was the best of the East because simple village and the stimulating spiritualism traditions of not only India but of all Asia. It was the best of the West because we had our art and our music and our ideals.”

Ending on a philosophical note, BBC Radio One’s programme for young people put it thus: “Are we selling dance culture on those who can afford it, and imposing them on those who can’t? Is our hedonism at the expense of those without our financial clout? And while we’re looking for Nirvana on the dance floor, are there thousands of deeply religious people all over the world who’d wish we’d go to hell?”

From: goanet.com