The Society's Scapegoat?

Just months ago, I engaged myself in a discussion at one forum particularly designed for Indonesian clubbers networking, and there’s a particular term that resounded over and over again: ‘educate the crowds’. Apparently, some DJs and clubbers are a bit annoyed with how the crowds in clubs are coming to be. The current crowds seemed to have used the club and dance scene as a justification for sexual harassments, overly drug abuse, or ‘pick-up’ spots for illegal transactions of all sorts. Well, that’s nothing new. Still, this discomfort deserves to be taken seriously as one special urban discourse.

Rave and clubbing culture in Indonesian began as underground club culture, taken place at smaller clubs in Jakarta around year 1996, followed by series of warehouse rave parties. On year 2002, Indonesian ravers marks the new era of outdoor and beach raves -- proudly having Cream, Gatecrasher, Godskitchen, and Heineken Thirst as their patrons. The local musical festives also produced yearly rave events, such as Jakarta Movement, Lost Chapter, Aquasonic, etc. Then the numbers of clubs, party organizers, DJ managements, and electronic dance music lovers increased drastically around year 2000 until this very second. Music genres -- mixed or played live -- consisted of trance, progressive, electro, house, tribal, drum n bass, new wave, and other roots subgenres with similar 'rave ambiance' -- of course with a BPM (beat per minute) limit.

For the last years, many international DJs, producers, and musicians had performed in various massive events in Indonesia, such as Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, Prodigy, Sasha, Marco V, Jazzy Jeff, BT, Randy Katana, Sander Van Doorn, John Digweed, Solarstone, Junkie XL, King Unique, Christopher Lawrence, Gareth Emery, Andy Moor, and more names are keep adding up to the list. In addition, when it comes for international DJ performances, Indonesian young ravers are known as one of the most enthusiastic crowds in the world.(http://www.urbannite.net)