Data Transmission At ADE

Dance music and drugs – the topic that never goes away

Last year at ADE the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM) was unveiled to the world, a not-for-profit trade association established for the sake of offering a united voice for dance music culture, as well as a platform for sharing knowledge across the industry. On Thursday morning of the conference, the AFEM held their fourth board meeting, and later in the day some of the association’s high-profile members gathered to discuss the big issues.

And again, it was a formidable gathering of industry muscle that spoke on the panel; Duncan Stutterheim from ID&T, Richie McNeil from Australia’s Stereosonic festival, the promoter behind some of India’s biggest festival brands Nikhil Chinapa; in addition, the panel was moderated by Ben Turner, owner and director of Graphite Media in London, the artist management company responsible for representing Richie Hawtin among others.

“I’ve seen the power of talking with a unified voice on key issues,” Turner said. “However, we’ve often also been disparate as an industry. In a time when there’s so much interest in this music from America, investors and big media outlets, after it’s taken us 20 years to get them to take note of this music; it feels like a really important time to try and bring people together”.

Turner said the issue that dominated the AFEM board meeting on Thursday morning was the drug deaths that resulted in Electric Zoo in New York being shut down in back in September; as well as the death that occurred the following month at Warehouse Project in the UK.

“Today’s meeting was 75 percent consumed by that topic,” Turner admitted. “We definitely have an imagine problem around the world”.

Richie McNeil from Stereosonic in Australia revealed that a drug death had also occurred at a recent festival in Australia, not too long after Electric Zoo. However, he emphasised the strong process that exists in Australia to help manage the risks around illegal drug use. This involves a thorough consulting process with councils, police, hospitals and other stakeholders; ultimately, it means the festival promoter can show it has done everything in its power to mitigate the risks.

Nikhil Chinapa from India expressed his concerns that these kind of processes have yet to be implemented amongst his country’s festival organisers.

“I wouldn’t be completely off the mark if I called it a ticking time bomb,” Chinapa said. “Dance music isn’t really looked at closely by the authorities at the moment, in terms of the processes in place before you acquire your permits. Unless we’re able to come up with ourselves, like has been done in Australia… There’s self regulations we need to impose on ourselves”.

Chinapa also championed a closer relationship with the mainstream media, in order to communicate the processes that are put in place to ensure punter safety, and help avoid the demonization that dance culture often suffers.

“If we’re able to bring journalists into our festivals and show them what we are doing, and what systems we are putting into place; if and when an incident does occur, these people will end up becoming the voices of dance music, and they’ll be able to put forward a balanced view.”

Another time the drugs issue surfaced was during the keynote interview of Bob Lefsetz; a American music industry veteran who authors one of the world’s most popular music blogs, an ex-lawyer and record company executive famous for his outspoken, and to-the-point observations on where the industry is going. Lefsetz says the issue is ultimately a result of what happens when a counter-culture breaks through into the mainstream.

“Drugs are a lightning rod, because they hate this music, and they’re saying, ‘we have to stop it’. In America it’s all just the beginning, and people are afraid of the unknown. But what’s dangerous today is commonplace in the future, so you don’t have to worry. 20 years ago Alice Cooper was considered dangerous; these days, he’s a Republican who plays golf”.

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