Kayla: You want to do it there when we get, like, to the beach and hear the water?
Chris: Oh, that's a good idea. Well, why don't we do both, just in case? Why don't we do both?
Kayla: Are you recording? You want me to record?
Chris: I just hit record just now. Oh, heading to the beach. Called to just weird.
Kayla: Turn right at that light.
Chris: Is that. What is that?
Kayla: Hey, what's this?
Chris: So don't forget this is gonna go at the beginning of the episode.
Kayla: Yeah, I know.
Chris: So nobody will have heard anything yet.
Kayla: How are you?
Chris: I'm nervous.
Kayla: You feeling?
Chris: I'm nervous. All right, we're going again. This is just a relaxation track at the beach.
Kayla: I'm even more nervous now. There's a bunch of people here.
Chris: Yeah, there's a lot of people here.
Kayla: Beaches here.
Chris: I took some pictures for our instagram.
Kayla: My feet are gonna be cold, but.
Chris: That's because the Pacific Ocean in which we are standing, it is very cold.
Kayla: We're here to dance.
Chris: All right.
Kayla: Should I not say dance?
Chris: I hope you dance.
Kayla: But I always forget to do, like, hey, this is cult or just weird, the podcast. I'm Kayla, and I'm a television writer.
Chris: Let's just start with that.
Kayla: I just did it.
Chris: Okay. Welcome to Culture just weird. I'm Chris. I am a game designer slash data scientist slash journalist, I guess.
Kayla: I think you're a podcaster, not a journalist.
Chris: Podcaster, not a journalist.
Kayla: Don't cross that line. That's asking for trouble.
Chris: Yeah, that's true.
Kayla: I'm Kayla. I'm a tv writer and definitely not a journalist. This is culture. Just weird. We already said that. We're here. This is our second episode of season five. We are still recovering from our outing from episode one. There's been new developments since then. If you want to know more about those developments, you're going to have to check out our patreon@patreon.com. Culturejustweird for our bonus episode one about the source family.
Chris: Yeah, we do a little bit of follow up on that, and it's pretty interesting. Pretty cool.
Kayla: I think so.
Chris: Hooray. I'm crushing it right now.
Kayla: You're doing great. Do you have. I mean, look, I never write an intro, and I never want to do banter because I'm always so excited about what we have to talk about. That is. And I haven't been able to talk to you about it in real life in the extent that I've wanted to talk to you about it so much is like, let's just jump in. Let's just jump in. Let's just jump in. I'll take a breath.
Chris: You are? Yeah, we have.
Kayla: We have a couple things to do before jumping in. First of all, I need to check in with you. How are you? Do you have any banter? Do you have any.
Chris: How am I? I'm good. I'm a little sweaty. Because it finally started getting hot in Los Angeles again, which is very annoying. I did want to mention that we got a bunch of good feedback since our last episode about our new format and that kind of thing. We also reached out specifically on Patreon to poll you guys and had several good comments about that. So I just wanted to say thank you for the feedback about the new format. And again, just to reiterate that we're going from once every two weeks to once every four weeks with the intent that will give us more time to build a more in depth episode, more time to actually do what we want to do this season, which is like, go to places and do the things.
Chris: And honestly, like, some of the, you know, some of the downside, which is like, oh, man, we won't get to hear you guys as much. Personally, I think that's gonna be pretty mitigated by the fact that I think the episodes will be longer.
Kayla: Great.
Chris: Well, no, I think. I mean, that's what I mean. Podcasts are well suited to that.
Kayla: True.
Chris: We sort of touched on this last episode where were talking about Dan Carlin style versus an episode every other day style. I think that the similar thing is going to happen with us, and I think it already has in the first episode. The first episode we did this season was over 2 hours long. Most of our episodes last season were under 2 hours. So I think on the balance of it'll be almost equivalent, like, number of hours per week to listen to. It'll just be released at a different pace, if that makes sense.
Kayla: That does make sense. The other thing we need to do in our episode today is we need to shout out our new Patreon subscribers.
Chris: Oh, yeah, we forgot to do that last time. Cause we had patrons from over the break, over the season break that we didn't shout out. And I feel very badly about that.
Kayla: Me too. So we're doing it here. So the patrons that we are giving us shouting out a special thank you today are.
Chris: Well, we do the new ones. Everybody that signed up new since our. The last time we did this. And the first one is tribe label Panda Austin, who. I'm shouting that one out because that's actually my friend Austin. So thank you for signing up and giving us a boost on Patreon. We really appreciate it.
Kayla: Thank you also to benevolent Loki, wild hunt, Alex and anjuli. Thank you to you guys.
Chris: Yeah, thank you for. For your support. We really appreciate it. And they've already been giving us good feedback on our polls and good comments in our various Patreon posts. So we really appreciate all that. And we really appreciate your support.
Kayla: So, Chris, are we ready to hop in? Hop, hop like a sock hop.
Chris: Gonna sock hop right into this one. Hop on pop. Are we gonna hop on pop?
Kayla: We could, but it's more of a sock hop. Well, are you ready? Are you ready?
Chris: I've never been to a sock hop, but.
Kayla: Yeah, well, I mean, just going off of that when. Chris, if you would be so kind as to tell me and share with me, when was the last time you danced?
Chris: Like, on purpose?
Kayla: Yes. When did you accidentally dance?
Chris: I don't know. I just. I'm not, like, when a bug got.
Kayla: In your shirt or something.
Chris: Yeah. Or like ants in your pants make.
Kayla: You haven't had ants in your pants.
Chris: In a dance, I think. I don't know. Oh, also, another. Here's the thing. When you are in a saloon and somebody starts shooting their revolver at your.
Kayla: Face, it does happen. That does happen often.
Chris: Yeah. So sometimes that happens. And then you have to dance. I don't remember, honestly.
Kayla: Oh, I think I do.
Chris: Really? Okay. Because I don't like dancing. Let's just get this out up front. I know that makes me a shithead, but I'm just. I don't know, honestly. It's probably a shyness thing. I hate to admit it cause I'm like a big, tough dude, but I'm, like, self conscious about something I know I hated. Yeah. But it is like. I just. I don't know. Yeah, self conscious. That's a good word for it. For me, anyway.
Kayla: I think that the last time that you danced was when we did the episode about zumba and I made you do a zumba class.
Chris: Yes. And I was actually not very good at it. Not to, like, because you don't dance.
Kayla: So why would you be good at dance?
Chris: Right. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be like, I'm so bad. Like, as, like, a way to, you know, as a self defense mechanism, but it was difficult to. I don't have that level of brain to muscle coordination because none of those connections are there.
Kayla: Right. The skill has not been cultivated.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Kayla: Well, personally, I know your relationship to dance. And I know I've talked about my relationship to dance because we did zumba on the show, but I'm somebody who loves dancing. I grew up in the world of dancing, and I grew up in traditional ballet. And that can be both helpful and harmful to one's relationship to dance, but that's a different episode. But since then, I've kind of branched into, like, branched out to find a lot of pleasure and healing and enjoyment in things like zumba or pole dancing or even just dancing with my friends.
Chris: Your sister's really into dance too, right? Doesn't she study dance or something? No. What did she study? Yeah, she studied dance.
Kayla: Yeah. That's why we. That's one of the reasons why we interviewed her for the supplemental content for Patreon.
Chris: Right, right. And she did like choreography. See, I like watching dance.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: That's fun.
Kayla: Yeah, I do too. Yeah. You can appreciate the aesthetics of dance and the athleticism of dance and the creativity of dance without necessarily being somebody who's like, I love to dance myself. So as somebody who enjoys dance, I was really intrigued when I came across a Wikipedia article during, you know, a nightly binge and came across something called ecstatic dance.
Chris: That sounds pretty fun.
Kayla: And that little thing happened when, like, when something clicks in and, like, I immediately know it's gonna be a topic for the show. And I was like, this is it.
Chris: You get the scent.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: It's like a wolf on a hunt.
Kayla: Yeah. I've talked to you a little bit about ecstatic dances. I've researched this episode, so try to put anything I've told you out of your mind.
Chris: Oh, okay. I do that usually. I forgot everything you just said, actually.
Kayla: What do you think the phrase ecstatic dance means?
Chris: Well, I mean, like, ecstasy means to me, like, it's. There's a pleasure element to that word. Like a joyful element. There's a, like. There's definitely a not losing one's mind. How do you put it? Getting out of one's head.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: You know, sort of like being. I don't know. I can't. I'm having a hard time articulating.
Kayla: That's okay. Cause I'm gonna tell you what it is.
Chris: Oh, good.
Kayla: That's just an exercise.
Chris: Cut all of that.
Kayla: I mean, yeah, I smell what you're stepping in. Pretty much all of that. I'll just read you from the Wikipedia. The first.
Chris: You smell what I'm dancing?
Kayla: Smell what you're dancing into. The first line of the Wikipedia article is as follows, quote, ecstatic dance is a form of dance in which the dancers, sometimes without the need to follow specific steps, abandon themselves to the rhythm and move freely as the music takes them, leading to trance and a feeling of ecstasy.
Chris: Oh, trance. Cool. Yeah, that word, abandon, that sounds right to me.
Kayla: That's what you were trying to.
Chris: That's what I was trying to communicate. Poorly.
Kayla: It wasn't poorly. It just wasn't accurate.
Chris: It wasn't poor. It was just bad.
Kayla: The term ecstatic dance describes an activity as opposed to a specific group or belief set. So, you know, think of ecstatic dance as appearing everywhere from ancient greek practices to cultural shamanic practices to new age meditation practices to even something a little more modern that we will get to in a little bit.
Chris: Didn't greek mystery cults have a thing where they would go out in the.
Kayla: Woods and dance and dance.
Chris: Dance until they were crazy or whatever? Probably. I am. Literally, I'm not even in front of computer right now, so I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Kayla: They're just making shit up.
Chris: I think I heard that somewhere, but I don't know.
Kayla: Who knows anymore.
Chris: I can't trust my own brain, everything I say.
Kayla: Ecstatic dance often leads to feelings of connectedness to others or to one's own emotions. Is often considered a form of moving meditation. Can result in time passing without, like, proper perception of said time passing. Cool can reduce things like stress and anxiety, especially social anxiety, but it reduces social anxiety.
Chris: Are you sure about that one?
Kayla: Oh, baby, we will get to that.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Kayla: And the ecstatic feelings can allow people to feel things like serenity, proximity to the divine, and even sometimes things like ego death, or becoming a part of a greater whole, becoming a part of a collective.
Chris: Damn, that sounds tripping balls.
Kayla: Let's do what we do best and start at the beginning for the early days.
Chris: Okay. So, like, bacteria. The way the bacteria vibrate.
Kayla: Bacteria get together and vibrate really hard, and then they lose their consciousness because they never had it to begin with. The word ecstasy itself is from the ancient greek ecstasis ek, meaning out, and histemi, meaning I stand. The word was often used in classical greek literature to mean removing the mind and body from its normal place or function. So, like, really that thing you said, but, like, getting out of your head? Yes. That is, like, what that word means, like, truly. From its origins in greek mythology, there were these worshippers of Dionysus, these female worshippers of Dionysus called the maenads, and they were described as ecstatic and frenzied. Dancers.
Chris: That's what I was thinking of.
Kayla: Diana.
Chris: That's what I was thinking of.
Kayla: Yeah. An author named Alain Danielu described in his book gods of love and the traditions of Shiva and Dionysus that the maenads, as well as other female followers of Dionysus, which were called, like, bacchanauts and some other words, these worshippers sought the wild delirium of possession by the gods so they could get out of themselves, get out of their heads, and they called this ecstasis. There were also male ecstatic dancers known as the Corybontes, who worshiped a goddess called. I hate it when people say, like, I'm sorry if I'm butchering this, but then I always say, like, I'm sorry that I'm butchering this. Kybele. A goddess called it's impossible. Cabeli Kybele.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: C y b e l e. Sibyl. I don't know.
Chris: No, I think the hardest is correct. I think we just collectively decide as a society, like, every 20 years, that whatever we've been doing the last 20 years was incorrect.
Kayla: So the Cory bantis, they also included drumming in their practices. And there were other mythical male dancers. These included the cretan koritees. And these were, like, magical dancing youths who guarded infant Zeus. Guarded baby Zeus. He had specifically, like, these dancing guards.
Chris: Talk about a boss baby.
Kayla: These greek myths actually gave rise to irl ecstatic dance practices in Greece, in ancient Greece, particularly in honor of Dionysus. So it was like, oh, we. You know, we have these myths about these, like, these. You know, the maenads are probably nymphs of some kind or, like, these spirits that worship Dionysus in this way. So we will also worship Dionysus.
Chris: So we're gonna, like. Like, mimic that. That behavior.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Are you sure that was chicken and not egg?
Kayla: No.
Chris: Because it could. You know what I mean?
Kayla: Absolutely.
Chris: It could be the type of thing where it's, like, there's this sort of ancient practice that, like, it's codified into.
Kayla: Myth, gets all mixed up.
Chris: Right. That's what I mean. Chicken and egg. Who knows?
Kayla: In her 2003 thesis, the danced space, ancient and modern, the role of transformation in classical, indian and modern dance, Meredith Russell describes the oribasia, or mountain dancing, a ritual in which women engaged in, quote, unrestrained ecstatic dance, where the human personality was temporarily replaced by another. Some theologians have argued that the Old Testament describes pagan practices of ecstatic dancing, specifically used for worship of baal. Like b a a l. I think there's like some quotes from the Bible that are like, oh, you know, will you something. Something limping. And that limping may have described types of dancing. I'll get to that in a second. Let me go back. We're talking about Old Testament, describing pagan practices. Similar practices were also found in third century Phoenicia in second century Syria.
Kayla: Let me just read you some abridged descriptions of these various dances from this theologian, woe ester Lee, and see if they sound like ecstatic dance to you. The prophets of baal limped around the altar. They had made a dance in which the knees were bent one after another, to give a kind of limping step, repeating for each leg. The dance increased to an orgiastic frenzy. The dancers crying aloud and cutting themselves with knives and lances.
Chris: Holy shit.
Kayla: To awaken the God's pity and answer the people's prayers.
Chris: Yes. Damn, that's metal as fuck.
Kayla: Yeah. Dance until you wound.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: How about, quote, priests began to howl all out of tune and hurl themselves hither and thither as though they were mad. They made a thousand gestures with their feet in their heads. They would bend down their necks and spin around so that their hair flew out in a circle. They would bite their own flesh. Finally, everyone took his two edged weapon and wounded his arms in diverse places.
Chris: Holy crap.
Kayla: That I believe is describing a ancient syrian experience.
Chris: Okay, so may or may not have been baal, but different. Different Levant area still.
Kayla: So what does all that sound like to you?
Chris: Definitely sounds like ecstatic dance to the point of self injury, which, like, sounds dangerous, but also, I don't want to, like, encourage that, but also, like, I don't want to judge them. Like, that's the fact that they got to that point. I don't know. That's crazy.
Kayla: Ecstatic dance is also found across the ancient and modern world in shamanistic practices. And shamanism is being used to refer to a system of religious practices found mainly indigenous and tribal societies. And these beliefs involve the belief in a shaman. In shamans who are people that have a special connection to the spirit world or the afterlife. They have healing powers. They can communicate with the dead or with spirits, and they can escort a the dead or escort souls to the afterlife. So they have a special connection to the spirit. And in these practices, ecstatic dance is often paired with rhythmic drumming to enter a state of altered consciousness as part of the spiritual practice. So, like a shaman. A shaman may use ecstatic dance and drumming in order to get in the headspace necessary to communicate with spirit.
Chris: Fascinating. This also reminds me of whirling dervishes. You know, like that dance practice where they spin around until they're ecstatic.
Kayla: What's that from?
Chris: I think it's turkish, but I don't.
Kayla: I briefly talked about that. Yes.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Oh, I'm talking about it right now. I found it referred to as Sufi whirling in Turkey.
Chris: Oh, okay.
Kayla: So as you're alluding to, many other cultures across the world incorporate ecstatic dance in spiritual or religious or cultural practices. And these often have very ancient origins. But these practices also continue to be established in modern day. And even to this day, it's still something that's very much around. So you can find these practices in cultures such as rudra, Shiva india, anistonaria in Greece and Bulgaria, Sufi whirling in Turkey, Santeria in Cuba.
Chris: So this Sufi whirling, that's like the dervish thing?
Kayla: I believe so. I think so. That's Pacific dance, where it involves a lot of spinning and, like, upside down spin, spin.
Chris: And, like, they have, like, the long sort of, like, sort of, like, skirt type things that, like, flare out.
Kayla: I think that's that.
Chris: Is that correct us if we're wrong? It's very cool.
Kayla: Candomble in Brazil incorporates this shaker and pentecostal groups in America.
Chris: Oh, yeah.
Kayla: There's balinese ritual dances in Bali, mariyama worship in Guyana, and there's even practices in modern western witchcraft.
Chris: Bunch of crazy people.
Kayla: Religious historian Murcia aliadi states that shamans use dance, repetitive music, fasting and hallucinogenic drugs to induce ecstasy. And ethnologist Maria Gabriela Wojin identified four degrees of ecstasy that dancers might experience. So these are the warning, the whisper of inspiration, the prophecy, and finally, the gift, the highest grade of inspiration.
Chris: She's missing the first step, which is sitting in the table in the corner, being terrified to go dance, being a.
Kayla: Wallflower, and then being swept away by the music. Actually, before that, we're missing your town. Outlaws dancing, and then you have to save it, and then you're able to get back to. Right, that's the flash dance step in the western world. Star.
Chris: Is that dirty dancing or is it both?
Kayla: What? That's footloose, baby.
Chris: Oh, footloose. Jesus, I can't even. What's the difference between footloose, dirty dancing and flash dance?
Kayla: They've banned dancing in the town. Kevin Bacon's like, I love to dance. And then he comes town and he's like. He moves town and it's like, oh, this town banned dancing. And then he brings it back somehow. Okay, and flash dance is.
Chris: Flash dance is the one where she's on the stage and then, like, the.
Kayla: Water, it's like a welder and.
Kayla: And an exotic dancer. I don't remember the plot. And then dirty dancing is. That's with Patrick Swayze and what's her face, where it's like, don't put baby in a corner. And they dance together. It's not about a town banding, dancing. It's just she learns to dance with Patrick sway. Okay.
Chris: I always get all three of those confused.
Kayla: Different movies.
Chris: Forget one exists in the western world.
Kayla: Starting around the 1920s, musicologists basically believed that ecstatic dance and its associated music were, like, primitive and unrefined activities. And when I say music, very primitive. Yeah. It's like, think about, yeah, snooty white people who were like, it's not like my chamber music, whatever the fuck.
Chris: It's not like more refined music, like the chicken dance.
Kayla: Get out of here. In North America, however, the term ecstatic dance was revived by a dancer named Gabrielle Roth in the 1970s when she developed a practice called the five Rhythms, which is now widely popular in various new age or meditation or western spirituality or western tantra circles. Like, the first place I heard about the five rhythms was I was watching. I forget the name of the show, but go look for it. The Nicole Kidman. I forget the name of the show.
Chris: Look for this mystery show.
Kayla: I remember it now. Was on the show nine perfect strangers.
Chris: I think it was called Perfect Strangers. I love that show.
Kayla: Nine perfect strangers, something like that. It's the Nicole Kidman cult show on Hulu.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Single season. And she runs basically a culty retreat somewhere.
Chris: Oh, I know what you're talking about.
Kayla: She mentioned the five rhythms, and I was like, what the hell is that? It's. I'll describe it to you now so you don't have to go watch an entire television show that doesn't describe it or go watch it. I liked the show. The five rhythms is basically a style of, like, structured ecstatic dance. There are five emotions associated with five different rhythms of dance. So the rhythm, like the flowing rhythm, is associated with expressing fear, staccato for expressing anger, chaos for sadness, lyrical for joy and stillness for compassion. And those are all also associated with various life stages. So, like, flowing for fear is associated with birth and stillness for compassion is associated with death. Those kinds of things. I see five rhythms. Practices often take the form of group classes. Last for there's one near us and they go for about 2 hours.
Kayla: They might involve other forms of meditation, but the purpose is to disconnect from the analytical mind and step into connection with the spiritual self through moving meditation.
Chris: I really got to disconnect my analytical mind. I'm sick of it.
Kayla: Me too. Gabrielle Roth developed this practice at the Issalen Institute, which is an alternative humanist education center, an intentional community on the California coast. I don't remember. Have we talked about the Iselin Institute?
Chris: I don't remember.
Kayla: In the past. I've talked to you about it.
Chris: No way.
Kayla: I have talked to you about it.
Chris: You have? Well, like I said, I don't remember things that happen.
Kayla: We might have talked about it in the past. We'll probably touch better on the future. It is kind of like ground zero or patient zero for a lot of western and north american alternative spiritual or pseudo scientific or pseudo psychological practices.
Chris: Starting to ring a bell.
Kayla: I got good and bad. It's an interesting spot. Lots of things have come from it, so keep that in your back pocket for future topics. Numerous ecstatic dance formats have spun off from or been inspired by Roth's work since then. A couple named Susanna and Yaakov Darling Kahn founded the moving center school in England after learning from Roth in 1989, teaching their own version of the five rhythms. And then they did more research or did more learning, and they founded their own version of ecstatic dance practices called movement in medicine. In the 1990s, barefoot boogies took place twice a week in San Francisco as a good alliteration. I know, I love it. These were drug and alcohol free dance events that mirrored ecstatic dance practices.
Kayla: And since then, more than 80 cities in North America have come to offer ecstatic dance communities, including Austin and Houston, Texas Toronto, Ontario Oakland, California Puna, Hawaii and Los Angeles, California. These are generally paid entry events, kind of like a dance party. They are usually also drug and alcohol free, but also shoe and talking free. Instead, you're relying on, like, agreed upon hand signals so dancers can communicate consent or not to each other when dancing. So it's like if somebody wants to come up to you and dance, you can either, like, give consent or say, like, no, I want to dance by myself right now. Just using like, hand up means stop.
Chris: Or like, they get hand on the.
Kayla: Heart is like, yes. Or like prayer hands is like yes. But like a stop hand is like, no, thanks, man.
Chris: What about a middle finger?
Kayla: It's probably not one of the agreed upon hand signals. Often these events will begin with a sharing circle or opening meditation and close with something similar. Also present at these events might be things like altars or journaling or celebrations of epiphany or just. You kind of get the picture.
Chris: I do, but that's not this. That's not a picture I would have pictured for, like, that sounds very. I don't know, it's like a church session versus, like, getting together to dance.
Kayla: Keep that in mind. These aren't the only.
Chris: Wait. Sorry, Kayla. We'll get to that is the catchphrase. Please.
Kayla: We'll get to that. These are not the only modern instances of ecstatic dance. In fact, in the last couple decades, experts have begun to compare the dance experiences in club culture and at raves to be a form of ecstatic dance. Anthropologist Michael J. Winkelmann has talked about the structural parallels in shamanism in modern raves, such as the use of dance and music for bonding and sharing emotions, as well as the effects one's consciousness and personal healing. And musicologist Rupert Till has written extensively on the placement of club culture and electronic dance music in the framework of ecstatic dance. To read a quote from him, club culture has elements of religion, spirituality, and meaning. Its transgressional nature is partly a reaction to the history of repression of traditions of exetic dancing by Christianity, particularly by puritan and lutheran traditions. End quote. So basically footloose.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, because it seems like there are christian traditions that do incorporate, like.
Kayla: You said, shakers and Pentecostals in some forms, yes.
Chris: But it's like the widely. It's always the fucking Puritans.
Kayla: I mean, I would say that it's not even just the Puritans at this point. Like, we can point to how many branches of Christianity are there, how many forms of Christianity are there? And we're saying, like, one and a half incorporates this.
Chris: Yeah, that's a good point. I've never seen dance a catholic mass.
Kayla: Yeah, it's not a part of the catholic mass.
Chris: I do other weird shit, but not dancing.
Kayla: Doctor Tale has often cited the research of others that describes electronic dance music culture as featuring, quote, trance rituals in ecstatic state.
Chris: Isn't trance like a type of music?
Kayla: It is. It is a type of electronic dance music, yes.
Chris: Oh, well, there you go.
Kayla: I thought this was fascinating to find something with such ancient roots featured in such a hallmark of contemporary culture.
Chris: Right. It even has the word electronic in its name.
Kayla: And, like, club culture is like. That seems very of, you know, our lives, like, of our generation.
Chris: Yeah, it seems new.
Kayla: I had to know more. So I reached out to Doctor Rupert till, and he and I had a conversation about his work in this area.
Chris: Cool.
Kayla: It was a mind blowing conversation, and I am so excited to share it with you.
Chris: Now, do I have to dance while we're listening to it?
Kayla: If you want.
Kayla: Okay, so, first of all, can you please introduce yourself to our listeners? You can say your name, profession, experience, anything you'd like to share about yourself.
Rupert Till: Hi, my name's Rupert Till. I'm a professor of music at the University of Huddersfield. I'm also head of department of Music and Design arts. I'm a. I'm a lecturer, researcher, musician, composer, and I also write and release music under the name Professor Chill and as electric Sufi. So.
Kayla: Oh, I didn't. I didn't know about the. I didn't know about Professor Chill. I was listening to some of your YouTube, some of your music on YouTube the other day, so I'll have to check out. To check out the other name that you said there, but everybody go listen to Professor Chael. It was great. Great. Like, studying, reading, researching music. Have you been in academics longer than you've been a composer, or have you been a composer longer than you've been in academics?
Rupert Till: No, I started off with music, I guess. I mean, I started music very early in life, I guess, aged about five, but studied at school and then at college and university. I started as a composer when I was, I don't know, about 20. So, yeah, early on. And I've been lecturing for about 26, 27 years.
Kayla: Oh, wow. Okay, so this is why we have you on as the authority for a little while. So this episode is exploring. I kind of came into it with learning about the idea of ecstatic dance, and it really brought me to, you know, electronic dance and music culture. And I was hoping that you could kind of explain for our listeners what we mean when we're talking about electronic dance music culture, or EDMC.
Rupert Till: We used to talk a lot about club cultures in the early days of this kind of research and the sort of music that you heard in nightclubs, in clubs. But the trouble is, this music also appears on the radio, and it appears at music festivals and other events. So we started using quite a few years ago, probably 20 years ago, the term electronic dance music cultures or culture. So it's electronic music, but then some electronic music isn't aimed at these kind of dance events and dance audiences. So electronic dance music was a term we started to use and culture, because we're talking not just about the music, not just about the recordings and musicians, but about the whole culture that surrounds it, whether that's clothes people wear, ideas people have or anything else.
Rupert Till: This has started to change a bit because in America in particular, a genre of music emerged called EDM, or electronic dance music, which is a very specific type of electronic music. It's a very specific genre which electronic dance music culture means all electronic music and dance. So we've actually started using. Well, I've started using the phrase electronic music and dance cultures just to make it clear that it includes house and maybe hip hop or techno or drum and bass, or lots of different forms which sometimes are different to EDM. But it means that any music that is electronic and is linked to dancing and generally means those sort of genres like techno and trance and drum and bass and even disco that have been happening in clubs and outside clubs for, well, since the eighties and before.
Kayla: Can you.
Kayla: And I'm going off book now, but I'm just thinking about a paper of yours that we'll get to. But you specifically called out not using the term rave. Is that still the case? Is that still the case? Is that a term that, you know, kind of points this as not really knowing what we're talking about, or is it more accepted?
Rupert Till: Well, I think the term rave has gone almost full circle. It started off as a term that was really used by the music press and not by people involved in the scene. And they talked about ravers. And people who were ravers didn't talk about being ravers. They talked about being clubbers mostly. But there were events that were called raves and that went back to things that happened right back in the sixties and seventies, where there was a sort of moral panic about rock and roll being the end of the moral planet for our young people. And I guess the press used that term consciously to point out that similar things happened in the eighties when people went to these illegal parties where people would dance all night and might take drugs and do all sorts of nefarious things.
Rupert Till: But actually rave has become a term that's used more and more, I think, as time's gone on by people in this kind of scene, people talk about raving to go out partying. And I think, although it was a term that was looked down a bit on a bit, I think nowadays actually, it's become much more accepted and acceptable. And people quite like the term raving because you like going out to have a rave, you know, and it doesn't have to be just techno music. It could be anyone going out for a rave, really. So it's a term that I think has come full circle, and it certainly does say something about those big, euphoric, ecstatic events. Where lots of people are together in a crowded space dancing together. I think it has some value in describing that.
Kayla: I mean, thank you for that answer. That helps me. I felt very old and out of touch. When I read in your paper like, oh, we don't say rave. And I was like, I've been saying rave my whole life. But now I feel like, okay, I can actually say it. And not totally mark myself as. As not knowing what I'm talking about. Not that I'm involved in the culture. But it sounds like you have been involved or in the culture in some way. So how did you kind of first become interested in this. Or get involved in clubbing or raving or EDMC or all of the above?
Rupert Till: Yeah, I started getting involved in electronic music a long time ago. Partly because I was a piano player and playing in bands. So I became a synthesizer player in the 1980s. When electronic music was synth pop. It was the human league or whoever. So I was interested in that kind of music. Before the sort of clubbing music explosion. I used to go to nightclubs and dance to electronic music. And I used to play electronic music in bands. Before kind of computer music existed. And then I went off to university and studied music. And then I decided to do a masters in music technology. Because I became interested in the way that you could use computers to make music. Inspired by my use of samplers. I owned a sampler. And mostly because it made realistic piano sounds.
Rupert Till: But samplers started to be used in this strange electronic clubbing music. So I went off to do a masters in that subject. And met other people who were into kind of club music, electronic dance music. And made a conscious effort to go to clubs to find it. Because it was quite underground and not that easy to find. This was 1990. And so started going to clubs. I bought myself. I was interested in this music. So I bought myself a pair of 1210 technics record players, vinyl decks. And started making early minimal techno music as early as 1990. And going to clubs and dancing to music and djing. And I ran a sound and lighting company. So I was providing sound systems to nightclubs. And staying all night listening to people playing music. So I kind of started to become involved in this.
Rupert Till: In that scene myself. And then I kind of moved into. I moved into academia after my masters. I worked in venues. I worked in the music industry for a while. And then started working in colleges and universities. And I was doing research into music. And I was listening to this club music. And making it. So I started doing research in this area, and not many people were, there weren't many other people researching this kind of music at the time.
Kayla: So you found a. Found a niche kind of thing.
Rupert Till: I found something that interested me. I was also interested in subjects about music and meaning and music and religion and spirituality more broadly.
Kayla: Right.
Rupert Till: But I was starting to do research into that, and I was looking at how pop stars are seen as religious figures or iconic figures. I was looking at prints and people like that, and how they're seen as almost religious icons and stars and why people did that and had treated them like gods. And then I found myself in nightclubs where I saw people behaving as if they were in religious meetings. You know, I'd been to pentecostal christian meetings with hands in the air and people whooping it up. And then I'd seen people at massive concerts, in stadiums, having these ecstatic experiences. And then I went to nightclubs and I saw people having these other ecstatic experiences. And I started asking the question of, how do these all relate? What does this all mean?
Kayla: You know, just to go off of that, I'm going to jump ahead in our questions, because I found your work through your paper, possession trance ritual in electronic dance music culture. So what you just said about drawing that connection between seeing how people are behaving at very religious, spiritual, pentecostal events and how people are behaving at the music, dance, etcetera, events, that seems like some of thesis of that paper. Can you kind of explain how you went about doing your research for that and what your conclusions were from that paper?
Rupert Till: Yeah, I mean, the start of the research was what we call ethnography. I mean, ethnographers and ethnomusicologists are generally thought of as traveling off to Africa and studying the music of some tribe. But I was studying the music of my own tribe. I was studying doing ethnographic study of clubs. And not because I was an outside observer interested in what was happening there, because I was going to them. I was kind of part of that scene, and I wanted to see what was going on about and around me. So I started kind of making notes on some of the experiences I had. I started doing some interviews with some of the people that I met outside of clubbing.
Rupert Till: You know, I kind of get to know important movers and shakers in the scene and go and talk to a promoter or a musician or a djdehehehehehehehe, or a clubber and interview them, ask them what their experiences were and also, of course, reading other publications and talking to other academics who worked in this field.
Kayla: Something specific that stood out to me in that paper was you really clearly underlined how these experiences were similar. You talk about there is religious imagery in club events. There is trance, there are various types of ritual, there's dance, there's things that have very clear religious aesthetics or vibes. And then you would ask that specific question of some clubgoers. And even if they could say, like, yes, this is, you know, I do this, this and this. That all sounds spiritual, I don't feel comfortable necessarily saying that this is a religious experience. Like, can you talk a little bit about that kind of conflict?
Rupert Till: I think in terms of individual experience, a lot of the people who go to clubs or have these kind of ecstatic experiences in electronic music cultures are doing so almost as a conscious rejection of traditional forms of religion. So in some ways, they're kind of doing this as a replacement, because it's like a religion, that it's similar to a religion, but not a religion. And they're having experiences that they see as very much secular, so very much not in the religious world. And they're seeing religion as those things related to religious organizations. And actually, although it's a bad definition of religion, a common definition of religion is those things that are related to religious organizations, like Christianity and I, Islam and Hinduism or whatever. So these people would say, well, this is nothing to do with church or mosque or whatever else.
Rupert Till: So, you know, this is. This is not religious. For that. For that reason, I kind of agree to you that agree with you that these things, they are religious. If you take Durkheim's definite definition of religion, which is those things that are not the everyday, that either sacred at one end or profane at the other, that those things are religious. And that's a better definition of religion. But another way to look at it is there's been some work that's talked about explicit and implicit religion. So explicit religion is religion that knows it's religious and that it states it's religious. So churches, buddhist temples, they're explicitly religious. But there are a lot of things that are implicitly religious. So they show all the markings, all the things that would make them seem to be religions.
Rupert Till: They have the imagery, they have intense belief, they have a lot of commitment. They have all this stuff. And we call that implicit religion. And in some cases, sports can be implicit religions, so can all sorts of different elements of society. And when they occur in kind of popular formats, so in kind of things like popular music or popular culture, they're often not recognized as being religious. But a better definition of religion is those things that have utmost importance to us, those things that we can't live without. And we have a kind of complete level of commitment to which I think if you look at things using that definition, then these sort of electronic music cultures definitely are spiritual, at least if not religious.
Kayla: It's so interesting to hear you talk about explicit and implicit religion, because that's really what we're kind of confronting on this podcast. And granted, we've said we're about cults, which is not an academic word, as we have learned, but that comes up again and again for us that the hallmarks of what might make call things like a charismatic leader or ritual or dogmatically, we have a whole list of what those things are. Those show up in so many different groups that have nothing to do explicitly with spirituality or with even new age thought or anything like that. It's so interesting to see those parallels of like, yes, implicit religion can be a thing.
Kayla: And I feel like, you know, what we're doing on our show is finding where those implicit cult behaviors are, or high control groups or new religious movements, whatever you want to call them. I want to ask, because I want to ask about the, you know, get more into the parallels between traditional spiritual practices, but I kind of want to go back to the history, because I know that you've done a lot of work with sound archaeology, and I've seen a lot of your research on paleolithic music and going really far back. So you talked a little bit about the history of electronic music. It's been around, came up in the eighties, been around roots, sixties and seventies. But how far back do the roots of this genre go? I know soundscapes are a big thing. How far back are we talking?
Kayla: Can we trace this kind of music?
Rupert Till: Well, there's a number of answers to that. So we tend to think of this music beginning with an explosion of rave culture in 1980, 819 89. And they talk about the summer of love, when a group of people came back from Ibiza and started organizing these parties in London. And that was the big explosion of this scene with the smiley faces and was a big beginning. But that music was being played in kind of gay Latino New York Chicago club since about 1980, 619 85, and is really an extension of disco from about 1975. I regard disco starting with the hustle as the first disco record. But you've got there, you've got electronic music. Like, I feel loved Donna Summer.
Rupert Till: You've got sweeping filters, you've got repetitive beats, you've got drum machines, you've got massive sound systems, you've got flashing lights, you've got underground club culture with drug taking, with people staying up all night dancing. All the things you associate with this music exist in disco, but there's. So that's 1975. To go back a stage, you can take things even further back to the 1960s and the club's culture of 1960, where you have underground oppositional culture, mainstreaming of drug taking as kind of achieving altered states of consciousness, and also some quite experimental music that included some electronic sounds and keyboard sounds. So there are definite links too, as well, through to that sort of event, especially since music festivals were a big part of 1960s and seventies culture.
Rupert Till: And you think of the link between something like Woodstock or Monterey Festival or Glastonbury or Stonehenge festivals in the UK and modern dance festivals, electronic music, dance festivals, which you get certainly in Europe, in places like Portugal in particular, or in Amsterdam, there's some very big festivals. And then there's another step back, I suppose, in time you can go to and you can look right through the history of human cultures and you will find that people dance together in order to have a communal experience and to kind of merge themselves into one person, to lose a sense of self and become part of the group. And actually, that is a thing that goes way back. I mean, there's evidence at Stonehenge of echoes at 150 beats per minute, which is the similar tempo to modern techno or fast dance music.
Rupert Till: And you would naturally play music in that space at the echo speed, because otherwise it would be messy. If you play in time to the echoes, it sounds coherent, whereas if you play out of town, it gets messy. So there may be evidence that people did kind of group like celebration rituals with similar tempos at Stonehenge 5000 years ago, 7000 years ago. And then, of course, you go back to the beginning of human music culture. The earliest evidence we have of a musical instrument is 43,000 year old flute made out of a bone found and probably played in a cave from a bird bone. And those are 40, 43, maybe with 45,000 years ago.
Rupert Till: And in fact, it seems like playing music together and dancing together and having these kind of big ecstatic experiences together was one of the things that humans did that Neanderthals and other previous hominids didn't do, which allowed humans to live in bigger groups. So human beings lived in groups back in prehistory of typically at least 40 or 50 in small villages or even bigger, up to 100, 200, whereas, for example, neanderthals lived in smaller groups of kind of eight to 1012. So if you get a group of 810, twelve people, and they get in a fight with 40 people, the Neanderthals were individually stronger, but they were out competed. Out competed for kind of, you know, food, and out competed if sort of driven off. If one group want to do some hunting, they'll push people out of their hunting range.
Rupert Till: So in order to live in those big groups of 40 or 50 people, you need to find a way to bond that group together. And music and dancing is one of the kind of most powerful ways that humans bond together those large groups. Because all the differences that you have when you're getting annoyed with someone, when they're getting in your way or pissing you off or, you know, being annoying, when you then merge into one dancing body of people, it pulls you back together. It's very difficult to fight with someone you've just been singing with or dancing next to. So that seems to be something that helps. I mean, religion and meaning and these kind of things link very closely with music and dance.
Rupert Till: And music and dance seem to be some of the things that allow people to live comfortably and closely together, harmoniously together. In fact, as I've gone on in this kind of research, I've come to see music and religion the opposite way around to how I started. When I started, I kind of thought, well, people have beliefs in spirituality and religion, and music comes out of that. Increasingly, as I look at the past, I start to think, well, religions. Religions and spirituality are the sorts of things we develop in order to understand and make sense of the experiences we have when we're making music and dancing together.
Rupert Till: And in many ways, I think music and dance comes first, and meaning and belief comes as a result of it, as a result of the experiences we have, those transcendental, altered state experiences we have when we dance or make music together, right?
Kayla: It's almost like trying to name organize or make sense of something that inherently is inherently spiritual, is inherently humanist in that way. Like, if what you're saying, which is like I'm sitting here, you know, mind.
Kayla: Blown, thinking about the ways in which.
Kayla: Music and dance culture brought humans cohesively together, allowed us to get as far as we've gotten, I don't even have a question to follow that up. Just that feels. That feels really profound and that feels really true from what you're talking about. A question that I often ask when I'm doing interviews is, you know, for example, last year, we did an episode on Fur fandom and fur culture, and we danced around the idea of, is there something inherent to the human condition that gives rise to fur fandom and other things like that? And I feel like you already answered my question on that. Like, is there something inherent to the human condition that gives rise to electronic music and dance culture? I feel like you said yes already.
Rupert Till: Yeah, I mean, we're communal creatures. I mean, much like lions that are all chimps, that are animals, that live in groups. And in order to do that, you need rituals that hold you together. And we always have done so. People have always danced, and whenever people have tried to shut down dancing or music, it's just reemerged somewhere else. It's kind of squirted out the outside. And I think as culture became more worried, perhaps, about physicality and became a bit more shut down through the 20th century, people started looking for other ways to find those experiences. As religions perhaps became more conservative and more hung up about physicality, people started looking at. Looking for other ways to have ecstatic emotional experiences with groups of other people because they weren't quite sure about.
Rupert Till: As atheism appeared, they perhaps weren't quite so convinced about religion anymore, but they still needed that sense of connection with other people. So I think to dance together, to make music together, is to be human. There's some wonderful research that talks about it as a jungian kind of dissolution of the self as a form of group jungian therapy, that we dissolve our ego and focus on the id, and it helps us be one together and come back to who we fundamentally are as human beings and to focus on the things that we share our common experience, rather than the things that make us different. And I think that's one of the things that's allowed humanity to thrive, because humanity does not thrive through war and conflict. It has thrived through trade and cooperation and music. And dancing helps people to cooperate.
Kayla: Yeah, kind of.
Kayla: It's making me think, you know, you don't really need to share a common language in order to be able to make music together or to dance together. And it makes me think of, like, I'm showing how little I know about the subject, but it makes me think about, like, yeah, clubs in Berlin. You know, it's very popular idea to go to Berghain or go to clubs in Berlin, you know, not necessarily because you speak German and can have very in depth conversations with folks there, but because you can share in that dance culture, and there is no language boundary.
Rupert Till: Yeah, sure. I've been.
Kayla: I want to go do that now.
Kayla: Oh, you have?
Kayla: Please tell me everything about it.
Rupert Till: I've been to Burgundy, and I've danced there. And, of course, the Germans often speak English, but it didn't matter because, you know, as you say, you could walk out, you just, you could dance, and you smile at people on the dance floor, and you can get on with people, and it was. That was kind of what you were doing, so. And I find the same in, I'm speaking at festival in Portugal later in the summer and hopefully in Hungary as well. And. And at those events, you meet people from all over the place and, you know, the dance floors, you don't know where people are from, but you feel connected to all of them at once, which is an intensely powerful experience. And after a weekend of doing that, it's really refreshing. It really reconnects you to humanity, to our global community.
Rupert Till: It's a really powerful thing.
Kayla: Do you think it's also something that can help with things like social anxiety, something that might prevent a. Somebody from wanting to go to a party and have conversations? I'm not the kind of person that feels comfortable going to a party and having conversations. I have social anxiety. But does it feel like something like this might be easier for some people in order to be able to participate in group culture?
Rupert Till: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, so I'm now 55, but this year I got diagnosed with autism, so I have autistic spectrum diagnosis. And I've realized that one of the ways I've managed that, because I don't tend to feel I have great problems in groups, but that's because I talk about music to people, because I've become a specialist in music, and I can just say, I'm a professor of pop music, and people go, wow. And I'm immediately on a podcast with them, you know? Right. And. Or otherwise, you know, I'm a gig or a nightclub, and I can just. I don't have to talk to anyone. I can just dance and just join in when I can still connect people and feel connected. And you're right that it's an easier way in.
Rupert Till: And you might get chatting to people or you might not, and it doesn't really matter. And you don't feel awkward because you're just standing there. Not like if you're at a party, you might just be standing there not talking to anyone. But if you're dancing dance floor and you're not talking to anyone, no problem. So, yeah, that nonverbal communication is. Is very universal. It's very egalitarian. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor or you're autistic or you're the most outgoing, sociable person there is. Everyone can find their place on the dance floor and I think be equal, and that's very powerful.
Kayla: Again, my co host and I are planning on seeking out various events, and we live in LA to supplement our experiences so that we can accurately talk about this when we do the rest of the show. And this is helping me gear up to go to these events. Do you have any advice for what types of events we should look out for to kind of maximize a positive experience?
Rupert Till: Well, there's a term called plur. And that means peace, love, unity and respect. And that's become the kind of code of conduct for people in clubs who have this more conscious clubbing approach. And that's another term that people use, conscious clubbing. And those are the sort of people who go to clubs, club type events, but are interested in events where it goes beyond just going out and either it being a kind of meat market type thing where you're just indulging in, I guess, mating rituals. You say you're trying to attract the same or the opposite sex, you know, and you're also going away from the things where people are just getting hammered for the sake of it and where people are going clubbing in order to kind of raise their consciousness.
Rupert Till: And actually, I mean, I think in LA, there's a group called conscious clubbing on Facebook that are based in LA. So the term conscious clubbing is one to look up. If you want to find a club that has more of that attitude, that's a phrase you can use. Or you can look for terms like peace, love, unity and respect, or pleur. Some people will sign their emails or their advertising with that or put it at the bottom of flyers. So that's a good one to look at. There's an organization, I think, called Ecstatic Dance, Los Angeles, for example, and they organize healthy dance parties. What did they say online? Part rave, part intentional conscious dance experience. So those sort of things sometimes mix that kind of new age experience with an all night techno party.
Rupert Till: And those sort of things are really often very friendly, are designed to be, to have a focus on finding altered states of consciousness or exploring the inner self or the outer self, rather than, you know, just getting hammered on or just having a very straightforward experience.
Kayla: Right, right. It seems like a lot of folks are really searching for that in a lot of ways, of having that intentional experience. And I should have asked this before, but can we talk a little bit about the ways in which this kind of modern, postmodern, ritualistic dance experiences, how they reflect more traditional spiritual practices? So, again, in your work, you talk specifically about the idea of trance. And the word trance comes up over and over again. Can we just touch on that a little bit?
Rupert Till: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so there's a classic book by a guy called Gilbert Rouget, a french guy who writes the book music and trance. And it's, you know, the great work on the subject. And he spent all of his life exploring different trance experiences, mostly in Africa, in the far east, in Bali or wherever, or voodoo cults or those sort of things. So he looked at different kinds of possession trances and ecstatic trances, and he separated the two. So he talked about possession trance. Experiences, which are noisy, loud, involve dance and movement, tend to involve loss of memory, loss of time, a sense of loss of self. Where music inspires dancing, and dancing inspires some sort of loss of track of yourself. And that's called possession trance. But some people are uncomfortable with that word.
Rupert Till: But it's one kind of trance that's kind of more upbeat and often usually group based. So it's usually a number of people. And then there's ecstatic trance, which is separate. And ecstatic trance achieves ecstatic states through often stillness and silence. Or music that's quite still might be chant or not have much rhythm to it. Chill out music, ambient music, actually the sort of thing that you now discover in electronic dance music culture in ambient or chill out music, or in the chill out rooms they sometimes have in clubs or raves or whatever. So you have that kind of two sides. In the classic nightclub of the rave scene of the 1990s, you would have the main dance room, the trance floor or whatever, where people would be dancing to loud music in a big group.
Rupert Till: And then there'd be the chill out room, where people might have sitting just quietly recovering or getting some headspace or having a chat. And I guess those are the different approaches to finding trance. The common theme that I've found in trance is that you tend to lose track of time. So in the most extreme possession trance, where you totally lose yourself, whether that's someone at a nightclub who's perhaps taken various substances and has gone a long way from their self. Or in a sort of classic african possession trance, where a spirit has possessed their body and they're no longer conscious of what they're saying, suddenly they wonder what the time is, and they realize that 4 hours have gone past. So that's one end of that experience.
Rupert Till: I guess the lighter end of the experience is you're listening to a piece of music and you lose track of time and you think two minutes have gone past and actually about ten have gone past. Or even you just think a few seconds have gone past while you've been staring out the window, drifting off, and actually more time has gone past. That's a kind of trance state. So I think that loss of time is a. Is a key theme, a key way that you can tell that you've been involved in trance. Traditionally, those ecstatic states, I mean, they're everywhere, still, small voice of calm. They talk about in Christianity where people, you know, meditation and chants exist in christian culture, Buddhism is full of those sort of ecstatic experiences. Meditation, mindfulness is all the way through Buddhism and lots of contemporary paganisms, alternative spiritualities.
Rupert Till: Then you've got kind of hindu culture with yoga and that kind of meditation. Islam has a lot of this sort of ecstatic meditation type experiences. Then you have the possession trance type thing, or the more upbeat trans rituals at the dance floor of, well, the slain in spirit pentecostal experiences of christian churches. That's a possession trans ritual, according to many cultural studies analysts. So those are the two sort of ways of approaching it. One, through stillness, losing track of time because you're not listening to the tick of the clock anymore and you're not conscious of time passing because everything is still and you're still and your eyes are closed maybe, and you're focusing inwards.
Rupert Till: And the other end of the scale is where you're overloaded with a loud volume so that you've got so much input into your ears that it blasts out your thinking where that what you see might be very intense and again blasts out your thoughts where there's so much overload of input that you lose track of yourself. Where there's a rhythm that's so intense that you lose track of time because you're just focused on the rhythm of the music and of the dancing. And you force your body almost by sort of going bang, bang. By thumping your body and dancing, you force it to synchronize to a time that's outside of your normal sense of time. So I think those are the two ways that you lose track of your connection to the day to day world.
Rupert Till: Lose track of time and connect to something other, something altered and find an altered state of consciousness or some form of ecstatic trance experience.
Kayla: The way you're describing it is making it sound very attractive. Like the idea of being able to lose yourself in this greater thing, you know, something that I think might keep some folks away from, you know, going to a rave or going to. Going to a club, even, is the idea of, am I going to be self conscious? Am I going to, like, I don't.
Kayla: Know how to dance. I don't know how to move my body.
Kayla: And it feels like those things might almost be forced to fall away because you're just going to be consumed by this external stimulus.
Rupert Till: Yeah. And people don't care in clubs. People don't. I mean, we all sometimes think in a club, oh, no, do I look stupid? But the reality, nobody cares what you look like. They're busy dancing. Especially at these clubs. People are busy dancing. They're not really looking. I mean, okay, some clubs, yeah, you get the club kids who care about fashion and what you look like and all of that. And it does happen, but that tends to happen in the more expensive, upbeat clubs where people are dressed up and trying to look fine in these sort of clubs. I mean, a lot of the dress is either quite extreme and almost like fancy dress, or it's very. It's very casual dress code, certainly.
Rupert Till: And the way people dance, often you're so close together, you can't see anyone dancing other than the two or three people around you anyway, because you're dancing quite close to other people. I think it can be intimidating, though. I think the whole idea of losing yourself in that way of letting go is quite scary. If you're used to quite a traditional life where you live according to the ticking of the clock, where you follow a routine that is safe and secure, then it can be difficult to let go, to let the experience take control. And so I think that's why some religious approaches have been afraid of these kind of ecstatic experiences. Because it's about loss of control, it's about loss of self, and it's about trust in the people around you and everybody else.
Rupert Till: I think my experience of these things is that everyone in these experiences, in these events tends to be very encouraging, very, you know, embracing of all sorts of people from different backgrounds, different ages, different walks of life, different cultures, and genuinely interested and welcoming and everyone's encouraging everyone else to have a good time. And the whole vibe. You get carried away sometimes in a. In a swept up sense of emotion. I think the one qualification you need to take part in these sort of things is the willingness to have a go, to let yourself go, to participate, the willingness to join in with other people and see what happens, which can be quite a brave thing to do, I think. But it's a different sort of bravery to self consciousness.
Kayla: Yeah, it's just making me think of, you know, I'm from America. Puritanical culture rears its ugly head from hundreds of years ago. It is still around. And it does feel completely antithetical to what weve talked about today, of the idea of losing control, of being swept up in something, of being part of a greater collective. It feels very antithetical to those more insidious pieces of puritanical culture that are very much about control of the body, control of the cell, individualization, all of those things that I think a lot of us probably the world over, but I can only speak to here, are desperate to get away from. And it feels like this is such a, of course, this is a spiritual outlet. It is in direct opposition to that kind of spiritual tyranny.
Kayla: And so I wanted to ask you have talked about your experiences with all of this. Can you talk about, have you had any particular experiences that you would describe as spiritual? Has that been an experience of yours?
Rupert Till: Well, yes, in many ways. One of the things that first drew me to this whole, to the whole clubbing experience was actually, I was kind of, I was interested in religion, spirituality. I went to churches and I came across a church where they had, where they used club culture for. So they replaced hymns and psalms in a christian church with electronic club music and dancing, and removed all the chairs and had massive video projectors and all of that. And that became a thing. And it's now called. It's a thing. It's certainly in the UK, in the christian world. It's called new expressions, I think.
Rupert Till: So I've experienced in christian churches those experiences of dancing to club music and in a conscious way of attempting to reach God, you know, and a lot of that music has gospel lyrics, so it's very easy to find that sort of source. I've also then, as later on in life, as I became more of a humanist, I guess, or became more broad in my spirituality over time, after the kind of excitement of youth. Anyway, I got involved in the conscious clubbing music and performed and djed in things called the Synergy Connective in London, which was a club with, I guess, a thousand people at it, that was run by a load of people interested in spirituality and interested in running a nightclub that was overtly spiritual.
Rupert Till: Well, at least the people putting it on were trying to provide a space where people could connect with themselves in a deeper way. And so that was enormously powerful, I found. I mean, I've played at the boom festival, and the boom festival in Portugal is called boom because the idea is, over time, more and more people will connect with a new understanding of spirituality and of themselves and each other, and the need to follow joining together instead of fighting each other. And eventually there'd be enough people to form a group and it would go boom. So the whole idea of the boom festival, they talk about liminality and spirituality.
Rupert Till: So I performed there on a chill out stage with 2000 people scattered around this stage at the top of an island, some of them floating in the lake, playing music as the sun came up at kind of four in the morning. And just the most wonderful experience of connection to these other people who were all sort of chilling out in this. I mean, it's a beautiful countryside space in the portuguese mountains. That was quite an amazing and spiritual experience. And many times in clubs, just having been dancing to music for usually takes me a while to get going, maybe after an hour or so. And you're just so connected to the music and you're not thinking about anything. You're just completely in your body and moving and connected to everyone else in the room via the music because you're all moving in time like.
Rupert Till: Like one kind of creature on the dance floor. You're just losing a sense of myself and just being lost in the music and the dancing and just feeling an enormous sense of ecstatic experience inside myself and also in connection to the other people around me who I could kind of tell her having the same sort of experience. So, yes, I found that I started off with music, singing in choirs when I was six or seven years old, in church choirs with the very traditional cassock and surplus. And it was white, rough and all of that. And spent many years, you know, in religious traditions and doing yoga and being interested in meditation. So those kind of. I recognize the same experiences that I've had in those religious, explicitly religious contexts that I've had in implicitly religious context.
Rupert Till: Whether that was watching sting sing free, set them free in Wembley Stadium, you know, all the hairs on my body going up and feeling this immense euphoria there, or a big club event or a festival event or dancing on the dance floor, I recognize that it's the same feeling. And essentially, for me, it's the same experience. Whether it's the same thing. Well, for some people, they may be very different things, but to me, they're part of the same. They're the same thing that's going on, at least in my experience.
Kayla: I was very intimidated to dive into, you know, real life events, but after this conversation, I'm just, I cannot wait. This sounds incredible. It sounds ideal.
Kayla: It sounds incredible.
Kayla: It sounds like what I think a lot of people are looking for in terms of connecting to their spirituality and just.
Kayla: Yeah.
Kayla: Connecting back into their body. I think so many of us don't really live in our bodies in that way or don't get to spend a lot of time being totally in the body. You know, a lot of us are in our heads. I'm very much in my head, so very much looking forward to that. Appreciate all the insight. I do have kind of our last question that we're getting to. So we're a podcast about cults, and when we talk about cults, we have a set of criteria. So we're talking about things like, is.
Kayla: There a presence of a charismatic leader?
Kayla: Is there presence of harm? Is there dogmatic beliefs? Is there a chain of victims? Is it unsafe to exit? Is it niche within its society? Again, it's a colloquial term. It does not have much academic merit. But I do want to ask, in your academic opinion, are there any aspects of anything we've talked about today? So electronic dance music culture, rave culture, electronic music in general, ecstatic dance, anything that might verge on cult, etu or not?
Rupert Till: Yeah, well, I wrote a book called pop cult religion and popular music, where I talk about different cults of popular music. And one of the chapters is called trans cult of electronic music. And so cult is a really interesting word. And cult is a four letter word used by religious people about religions they don't like. So, you know, they use a word that sounds a bit like a swear word, and it doesn't have many letters different from swear words. And a cult is an organization, right, with where it can be damaging or difficult to leave with strong leaders. People give a lot of the time and their money to these organizations, like Christianity, Islam. Any organized religion is absolutely a cult. But there are old cults like Christianity, and then there are new cults, like whatever. Is electronic dance music cult?
Rupert Till: Well, new religious movements is kind of the term that is often used academically. Instead of cult, is electronic dance music culture a cult? I would say it's like a religion, but it's not a religion. Just like Madonna, like a virgin, not a virgin.
Kayla: Right.
Rupert Till: It's like religion, not a religion. Many of the same things go on in clubs that are like a cult and like a religion, but not a religion. I think there are risks to kind of line them up with cults in the way that cults can be seen as bad. Electronic music cultures can take over people's lives, can distract them from, I guess, take them away from their families and their friends because they're doing things that they're not sure that mainstream society would approve of. It can lead people into drug culture, which can be destructive and can lead to addiction and can lead to damage and can lead to all sorts of things. And I think that happens to some people. And then there are other people, I think, that take less addictive drugs or, you know, I don't know. So that's a risk, obviously.
Rupert Till: And because of that, leaving can be difficult if people do get a bit addicted to going, you know, clubbing every weekend or spending every summer, going off to festivals or these events. And it can affect people's lives. I think a lot of drug and alcohol counselors nowadays talk about harm and problems and that, you know, you have a. You have a problem if something is affecting your life in a negative way. So if people are going clubbing and it means that they end up separated from their families and their friends, taking too many drugs, not getting enough sleep, missing work, losing their job, then it's going to do them harm.
Rupert Till: On the other hand, if they go clubbing at the weekend, if they connect with themselves and with other people, if they lose their ego a bit and become a bit more focused on their id and on themselves, if they rediscover themselves, if they connect to communities and re energize themselves, ready to go back and face the day to day world, then it can be a very powerful force for good. So there are cult like elements of electronic dance music. Who's the charismatic leader? Well, it's often the DJ at the front who absolutely controls people. You know, they play a record, it goes bang, and everyone moves their hand or their leg or their arm. You know, people are absolutely behaving almost like, you know, like robots that are being told to move in certain ways, although it's all voluntary, of course.
Rupert Till: So, yeah, there are people you talking for description, just talking about liminal culture tricksters who kind of encourage people to do things they might not ordinarily do. I suppose the point is sometimes it's good to be encouraged to do things you wouldn't normally do to take you out of your comfort zone. If you spend your whole life in that liminal zone, not engaging with the real world, then I think that's not necessarily a healthy thing. So I think it's a really interesting subject. There are certainly things that might verge on culti, but it depends, I suppose, on your perspective and on how people do that. My experience has not been that people have suffered or not been able to leave if they want to.
Rupert Till: My experience is that quite often people get into relationships or move job or they have children in particular and can no longer go out clubbing all night, which is, I suppose, what happened to me. I don't go clubbing very often anymore because, you know, if you've got to get up for eleven year old at six in the morning, you don't want to be out till five in the morning and you get older, your life changes and you move on. So I think it is possible to leave. It's very rare that people are forced to stay in these things. Some people spend a lot of time and money on these things in going out to dance culture.
Rupert Till: And I think people have to be wary because there is a history in this particular music scene of people taking various illegal substances in order to allow them to dance all night and in order to enhance that experience. And I think that's something people need to be maybe not afraid of, but aware of and make intelligent decisions about. I think people are intelligent myself, I don't think people are idiots who will just suddenly start becoming heroin adults or PCP maniacs or because somebody near them was doing that and they smelt it and thought I've got to become a dope friend or that's not my experience. But some of these scenes can be complicated, I guess, but it's just about engaging the normal levels of common sense.
Kayla: Right, right. I mean, it sounds like there's a spectrum to some degree, but overall, you know, we're finding, we're talking about more positives than were talking about negatives. And I think it's really interesting that you started that answer by talking about the word cult and its context in regards to other religions. Like something that Chris, my co host, and I often say, not on the show because it sounds pretentious, but we do say like, oh yeah, well, religions kind of are just the cults that made it. Like you mentioned, Christianity very much started as that, like classic, you know, cult. Literally, literally a cult. So I just, I appreciate you kind of bringing that perspective to it as well, of what that word means in context. And I need to read the pop cult book almost immediately.
Rupert Till: Yeah, I mean the, Christianity was a cult within Judaism originally. And when I had to write, when I was writing that book, I needed a definition of the word religion. And I found that most of the religious studies work is done. Bye. Scholars who are based in places like theological colleges, in other words, they're members of religious movements. And they define religion as those things related to their religions, their religious movements. So those are what I call old religious movements. And they are afraid of the new religious movements because the new religious movements challenge them and challenge their place in hegemonic culture as the dominant forces. So obviously, for those religions to have other people saying, no, we're the truth, they say, no, you're not, we're the truth. We've always been the truth. And those movements have been immensely powerful.
Rupert Till: And yes, I would agree that one of the main differences is the age of those organizations. Individual parts of any religious movement can be a cult if it becomes damaging to people's lives, rather than contributing to lives. And I think pretty much every religion and every spiritual experience, whether it be clubbing or a traditional religion, can make huge contributions to people's lives or be hugely detrimental, depending on the people who organize these things, how much they care about the people participating, and how much it's about them, rather than about the people who are taking part. You have to remember that the early days of club culture in the nineties, there were about half a million people in the UK alone, going out to nightclubs, dancing all night, probably taking drugs, and having a whale of a time, frankly, every Saturday night.
Rupert Till: And that's more than in the Methodist church at the time, which is one of the biggest Christianity groups in the UK. You know, so it's been quite a major movement and it's now global. It's in almost every country, it's spread across the world. It's a significant part of culture, especially with young people. I mean, more so your generation than mine. And it's not something, it's something it's useful to understand no more about. My experience and my study of it has shown it to be something with enormous capability to contribute to people's lives and their experiences. And the people I've seen at these events have generally been enriched by them. And I think that tie in that we started talking about.
Rupert Till: For tens of thousands of years, humans have danced together in order to get to know each other better and share experience and connect with themselves and their attitudes of cosmology or spirituality. And I think that continues to happen in the old religious movements, but also in places like nightclubs and music festivals.
Kayla: I could not be more excited to go and dance this weekend and get involved. You've really given me and I think our listeners. A lot to think about, a lot to chew on and a lot to be excited about. So, doctor till, that brings us to the end of our questions. Is there anything that we missed that you'd like to share or speak on or did we hit it all?
Rupert Till: I was just looking at a picture on my computers. We're talking of a club. And one of the things that we haven't really talked about is the way people kind of behave at these things and what it looks like and the similarities, the obvious similarities with various spiritual practices. I mean, the thing of people putting their hands in the air when you see 2000 people putting their hands in the air when the. When the music kind of lifts up. I mean, it's. It's. There's just an uplifting feeling and that sort of thing. When you get these gospel piano sounds or these big anthemic gospel choir type voices, there's all those cultural tie ins to various human cultures of belief and meaning. You see lights scanning across like, I don't even know where.
Rupert Till: I guess it's similar to the sort of images you always see when you see a picture of heaven, when you see the clouds passing and rays of light coming down from the sky. Clubs use that sort of narrative. They put smoke into the. Into the air so that you see these laser beams or these big light beams coming down and wheeling across you. And it's a very euphoric experience. And it overtly draws upon those images we have of belief in spirituality and gods and deities. And that's not accidental. I think these practices deliberately draw upon many of the images and ideas that we're used to associated with kind of ecstasy, meaning, spirituality and uplifting experiences. So I think that's an exciting thing to look forward to when you go out clubbing.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah, I truly.
Kayla: You're painting a really exciting picture. And I have not been excited to go dance in a giant group of.
Kayla: People in a long time.
Kayla: So I'm very much looking forward to it. And being able to have this kind of shift the context from maybe some preconceived notions of, oh, it's going to be about, like, going and drinking and there's going to be a lot of judgment and I'm. And we're gonna be worried about what I look like. You've really reframed that, those expectations. So I appreciate that and I'm looking forward to it.
Rupert Till: Yeah, I think there's a lot of people go with lots of different backgrounds. The people will go and they'll just drink water because they're just coming out for a couple of hours and they're going back to relieve the babysitter to look after their kids or whatever. There's all sorts of people at these events. I think an important thing is to listen to some of the music, find out what music they play there and listen to some of it and make sure it's somewhere where you will want to dance. It has to be music that you like. You know, it might be not the normal music you listen to, but if, you know, if you hate drum and bass, don't go to a drum and bass club. If you like house music, go to a house.
Rupert Till: If you like more techno y stuff, find stuff that you think, well, I like some tracks like that. So it helps if there's something. If it's the type of music you just are going to like dancing to, I think that's probably more important than anything.
Kayla: All right, I'm going to go listen.
Kayla: To some music, then see what's out there. Doctor till, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for talking with me. And I think our listeners are really going to have a learn a lot from this interview and also just have a really good time.
Rupert Till: Cool. Please do send me a link when it's coming up, when it's going to be on or whatever. That'd be great. And yeah, please do mention Professor Chill and electric Sufi. Then people can check out some of my music as well. I look forward to hearing the program.
Kayla: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Kayla: Doctor Rupert till.
Chris: Doctor Chill.
Kayla: Professor Chill.
Chris: Oh, sorry. Wait, is it Professor Chill or Doctor Chill because doctor till.
Kayla: Doctor Rupert till, yeah. And he makes music under the name Professor Chill as well as electric Sufi.
Chris: Because Doctor Chill sounds like a Batman villain.
Kayla: That does sound like a Batman villain. He instead sounds like a cool club DJ, Professor Chill.
Chris: Mm, I see. Yeah. Okay, so I have thoughts.
Kayla: Let's hear him.
Chris: So the first thing I have to ask is you mentioned in a couple places there that you and I are going somewhere tomorrow.
Kayla: You and I are going to be attending ecstatic dance LA, which is a dance party literally on Venice beach.
Chris: Kick ass.
Kayla: Yeah. They describe it as ecstatic dance LA weaves together world class dj's immersive sound journeys and freeform movement. It's a substance free all ages community celebration where you can simply be yourself and experience rejuvenation and inspiration through connection dance and music.
Chris: Okay, so that sounds. I know I said up at the top of the episode that I don't like dancing, right? And it makes me feel self conscious. But a, that sounds awesome. B, after listening to professor chill talk about ecstatic dance and things like plur and all that stuff, I feel much more excited to go.
Kayla: It feels like there's a little bit of a different expectation here than maybe the preconceived ideas you and I have had about club culture. I think in general, you and I kind of came up at a time when mainstream club culture was more thought of as, like, something you would see on the jersey shore as more like the quote unquote mating rituals that doctor till talked about. If, like, you go to the club and you're going to get drunk and you're going to maybe try and come home with a. With a sexual partner, and there's a lot of pressure to look a certain way and to behave a certain way. Yeah.
Chris: To interact. And then there's, like, the, you know, bouncers only, like, you know, any girls can go in, but, like, no, dude.
Kayla: Right. You might not get let in. Yeah.
Chris: Like somebody saying, do you wanna go to the club? Is just, like, extraordinarily intimidating.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: But this didn't sound that way. This sounded like it's much more about this, like, experience that is halfway between dance and, like, meditation.
Kayla: Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like that's something that was the piece that was maybe missing for you and I when thinking about things like rave or what doctor till defined as electronic dance music culture and certainly what is being presented in conscious clubbing, as he referred to it here, with ecstatic dance la and other things like that.
Chris: Yeah. Okay. And that also answers another question, which is, caitla, how is this gonna go with theme of the season? Because we have to be on theme or else it's just not gonna work. But obviously, us going to the dance.
Kayla: Dance la, we can chat a little bit about our reactions to this conversation with Doctor till, but then, yeah, you and I are gonna head out to the actual physical experience, and then we can come back and talk about what that was like.
Chris: So this is a cult, which is weird. First, where we're like, we've had bifurcated episodes, where we talk about a thing, there's, like, an interview or an experience, and then we talk about that. We react. But this is the first time we've reacted to an interview and then reacted to something else.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: It's a reaction ception. It's another turducken, really.
Kayla: It's just cult duckins are and sees the move this time around.
Chris: So you mentioned conscious clubbing. He had a bevy of interesting ways of putting things.
Kayla: Interesting arsenal of vocab words.
Chris: Yeah, there you go. A dense lexicon, if you will. So another big one for me was explicit versus implicit religion.
Kayla: I was screaming inside when were talking about this because it just is. It's something that is so clear once you have those terms defined.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And it's like it's been there all along.
Chris: Yeah, it's totally like, you know, I was like, should we just name the podcast explicit versus implicit religion? Now, granted that it's not as pithy and catchy as maybe as culture. Just weird. Not to pat myself in the back, but that's totally what the show's about.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Right. That's totally what the show's about. Like, some groups are explicitly like, yes, this is a spiritual thing that is about connecting with a supernatural deity.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And then other things just have those trappings. And I think there's almost another way to, like, kind of sub break that down that I was thinking during the interview, too, of, like, sometimes the implicit religion is actually about the spirituality. You just don't state it. Right. That's the explicit versus implicit. And then it feels like sometimes, at least for groups on the show, I don't know if this applies to dance, but for groups we've covered on the show, sometimes it's more like lab coding. It's more like it has the hallmarks and the characteristics, but isn't actually necessarily about spirituality. So I'm thinking of something like mlms, basically, right now.
Chris: Granted, mlms do leverage spirituality and spiritual sort of terms sometimes, but for the most part, they're using these tools of ritual and I antifaction and whatever else they're using these tools, but it's not for the purpose of spiritual transcendence and ego breakdown and community building, whereas something like ecstatic dance or maybe a lot of new religious movements or whatever are for that. Does that make sense? Kind of feels like there's even still a separate breakdown there a little bit.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah, I think I get it.
Chris: Like, one is, there's explicit religion, which is like, we are religion, and we use the tools of religion, and then there's implicit, which is like, we're totally not a religion, but, like, actually we are. And we use the tools of religion, and then there's just, like, we're using tools of religion. It's not actually for the spiritual part.
Kayla: Yeah. That MLM slots really nicely into that of. But it also, like, I think. I think that MLM does a yemenite similar thing as to what doctor till and I were talking about of, like, it fulfills a need that people have that may not be met by certain aspects of modern society. Like, it still fulfills those. Those holes left behind by, like, the removal of this kind of spirituality. And I don't want to say, like, Christianity is, like, devoid of community building and ba ba. But in some ways it is. And for some people, and for some people it is. For some people, it has been a wasteland to, you know, there is obviously community building when it comes to attending church and the fellowship that comes with that, specifically christian church.
Kayla: And also, especially just speaking to various phenomena in american culture, there are ways in which it can be isolating or individuating or in mainstream christian culture, being in touch with our bodies in certain ways is not okay or is not cultivated.
Chris: Don't get footloosed.
Kayla: I'm getting footloosed. I don't know. That was very rambly.
Chris: No, no, I mean. Okay, so I just.
Kayla: To like, different things fill different holes that are left behind.
Chris: Your mileage may vary. Yeah, certainly. But, like, if you're somebody who is, like, not feeling alienated by the things that church does to alienate certain people, then, yeah, maybe it. It is actually pretty useful in terms of community building. But if you are alienated by one of the many things that it does to alienate certain people, then, oh, shit, where do I get my community building and spiritual in touchness? Yeah, the answer is, you kind of have to go somewhere else. And it certainly seems like a lot of these groups fill that need. And I will also point out, while we're on it, the fulfilling a need is another central theme that we've seen in the show. You know, if the question is, well, if there's no such thing as brainwashing, then how do these people. The answer is because they feel a need.
Chris: We saw that with QAnon. Right? It's not that they're brainwashed. It's that there is a particular need that is not being met elsewhere. And these people have found it via these message boards and this community, and yada, yada. It fills a need. And sometimes that need is hope. Sometimes that need is community. Sometimes it's something else. But that's another common theme.
Kayla: And that's something that is making me even more excited to go and attend this dance event tomorrow. It feels very serendipitous that this episode is falling where it is, because it's falling at a time when I'll just speak to myself, you can jump in if you want. Falling at a time where I am actively trying to cultivate more of a relationship with being in my body and being out of my analytical brain and disconnecting from that to being in that space where it's like I'm present in the body and I am also trying to reinsert myself into society as much as safely to do so in this new post COVID vaccine world. Still not a post Covid world, but a post COVID vaccine world where a lot of people that I talk to.
Kayla: This is a challenge of trying to get back to the level of social interaction. Social interaction. It is a challenge. Difficult. It is. It is a muscle that you have that has atrophied a bit and needs to be worked out. And it.
Chris: And I like to have big muscles.
Kayla: I do like to have big muscles. So there's a lot of needs that this is. I'm excited to see if this meets those needs.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, I also agree same. I'm trying to not be so goddamn analytical all the time. I think that, like, another thing that. So why are we doing this podcast? I don't know. I feel like we question the podcast every episode for some reason.
Kayla: We should be doing interpretive dance about these topics. Yeah, there you go.
Chris: That'll translate real well to an audio format. Okay. So in that vein, though, I do find it hard to do things like just meditating. And I think it's because there's, like. It's like, all. It's, like, still just in my head, you know, like, how am I gonna think my way into not thinking? And I know that's possible. Like, people do get a lot of benefit out of meditation. I just think for me, maybe the. The dance part of this will actually be easier because it's not like, all right, I'm gonna fucking relax now. I'm gonna think really hard about relaxing, and then I'm gonna relax instead. It's gonna be just like, just move your body and, like, let whatever happens.
Kayla: It's the same reason why, like, walking meditation is a thing or it's why moving meditation is a thing. Because some people need that in order to be able to enter that meditative state. And I think that especially folks that are maybe dealing with ADHD, like, specifically reasons why sitting in stillness is just not accessible to the brain. A person with ADHD will sit in stillness and find it more difficult to access said stillness than if they were to do an activity that can get them out of that pattern.
Chris: Switching gears here, I also really thought the historical stuff was super interesting. Obviously, you know that I'm a fan of history. Everybody probably knows that on this podcast. But I thought that him talking about, like, how. How ancient it all was. And, like, I wasn't aware of the. One of the differences between the two hominid groups with homo sapiens and neanderthals. I wasn't aware that part of the difference was the size of groups. I knew that part of the reason why we out competed other things generally was because of our ability to work cooperatively and hunting and stuff. But I didn't know that was also an advantage against other hominids. And the fact that, yeah, dance might contribute to that makes sense. It's interesting to think of it.
Kayla: That's literally the only thing I wanna talk about right now. I know I went into work right after that conversation, and, like, the first thing I said was like, did you know that this is an idea that people have about why homo sapiens were able to out compete?
Chris: Yeah, I mean, like, it makes sense. I don't know. Especially the ego boundary breakdown part of it.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: Like, if part of the reason that you're going to do this is like, whoa, cool, I'm gonna, like, break down my ego boundaries and, like, experience this trippy trance thing, then, yeah. That would make you feel closer to other people, because the ego boundary is the thing that makes you feel separate, and if you remove it, you feel more together.
Kayla: Doctor till described it as feeling. I forget exactly what he said, but just feeling like you're all part of one bigger creature organism.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. So there you go. That'll definitely make it easier to build pyramids or whatever it is that we use to. That's how we beat the neanderthals. Right? We built pyramids. It was like a laser or something.
Kayla: I think there was aliens.
Chris: Alien laser. Okay, so that was super interesting, the idea of it being sort of like a universal language, because, like, you guys were talking about, like, yeah, you just go to Germany and like, you don't have to speak German, you just have to speak the language of dance.
Kayla: There you go.
Chris: That was interesting, too. I thought him talking about how this type of event sort of helps people that are maybe neurodivergent, like himself, recently diagnosed with autism. Going to a place that has these explicit rules kind of helps.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Makes a lot of sense. Right. There's these rules how you can interact here, and this is how it's done that makes it easier to do, less anxiety to do it well.
Kayla: And even since I had that conversation with Doctor till. I've had some other conversations off podcast that. That also made sense in this arena. Like, I talked to somebody who is also autistic and really considers themselves a part of the rave scene or rave culture. And there are parts of going to these events that feel, you know, some things don't mesh well with autism, particularly if you have, like, sensory issues. But some things really do mesh well with autism, like, even those things that cause sensory issues. I talked to somebody who said, I like to feel the music in my bones, so it has a physical sensation that meshed well with her autism.
Kayla: And then having things, like, he talked about having chill out rooms or places where you can go to escape maybe the overwhelming sensory input and, yeah, just not having to talk to people.
Chris: Well, I mean, the other thing that really resonated, that's sort of, like, along those lines is him talking about how the DJ is kind of like the charismatic leader. The DJ is the one that issuing instructions. And part of the value of it, of the event, is that you get to surrender your sort of your autonomy. You get to surrender your executive function. And that's part of what can get you into this trance is that you don't have to think about what to do next, because the DJ is telling you what to do next. And that really did. We've talked about this before, too, with some of these cults where we're like, man, you know, these guys, like, join these cults, and they're just so brainless. And I kind of get it.
Kayla: Somebody else telling you. Exactly. You get up and you do this, and then you don't have to worry about where your money is coming from. You have to worry about where your food's coming from. It's just someone's taking care of it.
Chris: There's, like, this total double edged sword thing there where it's like, man, they're just doing everything. The cult leader says, what the hell? But then there's also this, like, man, that sounds nice. So, in a context. No, no, we're not. But I am drawing the parallel. And I'm saying in a context where there is, like, there are rules in place for, you know, safety, right? Where it won't become, like, a high control, like, destructive situation. You know, the DJ is just gonna, like, help you achieve this trance like state, and then you're all gonna, like, shake hands and go home. That sounds pretty nice.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: I can't believe you didn't mention lo fi, girl.
Kayla: I did not mention lo fi.
Chris: How could you not mention her?
Kayla: New fan. Lo fi boy.
Chris: There's been, like, a whole thing.
Kayla: Yeah, everybody go on TikTok and look up lo fi girl lore, and I don't think we should get into it on the show.
Chris: Everybody's probably already knows what we're talking about.
Kayla: Maybe we can do bonus content on it.
Chris: Yeah, maybe that'll be our bonus.
Kayla: Go check out lo fi girl.
Chris: We listen to a lot of that stupid shit on YouTube. Cause it's nice. I shouldn't call it stupid. I should call it basic. But, like, I mean that in a good way. It's totally basic, Kayla. You watch that stuff, and you're like, that's like the pumpkin spice latte of YouTube channels.
Kayla: I don't know.
Chris: All right. Oh, there was one more thing I wanted to bring up, was because you also had me watch a few of his YouTube videos, and one of them, they went into that old cave and tried to sort of, like.
Kayla: He does a lot of research. Like, I mentioned the sound archaeology. He does a lot of research in paleolithic music and paleolithic music. Making a. Which. Fuck.
Chris: So cool as fuck. And so he and some others went into this cave to, like, basically try to make paleolithic music. And he was, like, one of the parts. It's like he was playing the stalactites as, like, a xylophone.
Kayla: Oh, my God.
Chris: Which, like, I didn't even know. I was like, rocks don't sound like that. And then I looked it up, and actually, stalactites, like, are. Most stalactites are hollow.
Kayla: Had no clue.
Chris: So they totally could sound like that.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So he was, like, playing these stalactites.
Kayla: It was balling, making beautiful music.
Chris: Anyway, good interview, man.
Kayla: It was. Honestly, I was on a high the rest of the day. It was so interesting, so fascinating, and really made me so have such a deeper appreciation for this event that you and I are about to go do, where I was feeling very nervous and anxious, and that's still there, of course. But I'm so much more looking forward to, hopefully, the benefits that will come away with at the end of it.
Chris: All right. I can't wait either. I'd say let's go, but it's tomorrow.
Kayla: So you ready to go dancing?
Chris: For you guys, it'll be one, like, fade out and then fade in, but for me, it's gonna be, I'm tired. I'm tired.
Kayla: What'd you think?
Chris: Tired?
Kayla: When's the last time you danced for 2 hours straight?
Chris: Never. Okay. So, regrettably, I had a good time I must report that was.
Kayla: That's an. That's an understatement. That was a tremendous time.
Chris: I don't even really know, actually. I know where to begin. The best part, for sure, was the fact that there were. Are dolphins dancing with us. Okay, so set the scene. So here we are on the beach in Venice. Bunch of human beings on the beach with headphones on, and the headphones are playing techno dance ed. The type of music we've been talking about on this episode. We're all looking out to the ocean, kind of moving our bodies around. And there's some dolphins out there. Now, that's not uncommon. It's not uncommon for there to be dolphins. But these dolphins, a, they came in real close. So they came in, like, literally, I think, close enough.
Kayla: Could have swam out to you where.
Chris: You could have, like, walked out. And then they started doing. They started jumping out of the water.
Kayla: Like, full on, seaworld style jumps.
Chris: Not like, oh, yeah, you can see their dorsal fins. No, no, full. Like, if there was a hoop out there for them to jump through, they could have gone through the hoop. They were completely out of the water.
Kayla: It was incredible that they could not hear the music, but I think that they could see us all moving our wiggle room bodies all across the sand. And they wanted to join in.
Chris: They wanted to join in. Yeah.
Kayla: And there were dolphins.
Chris: I think there was also a bait ball out there.
Kayla: There was a lot of. I mean, there was also pelicans that were flying through the sky and soaring through the air and diving into the water.
Chris: Seagulls.
Kayla: Yeah, seagulls. It was very like one with nature type of experience. It was quite the scene, man.
Chris: Yeah. Now, I know dolphins have been canceled, and rightly so, but it's still, when you see them in the wild, in nature, it's still quite cool.
Kayla: Oh, it's extremely cool.
Chris: So that was probably the best part. And then the next best part was, okay, so we set the scene, a bunch of us, probably around 200, you'd say?
Kayla: I'd say. I'm estimating about 200 folks.
Chris: Yes, it was about 200 people.
Kayla: All different walks of life, it seemed like all different shapes and sizes, creeps and colors. Just representative from many different demographics.
Chris: There was a lot of diversity there. There was, like, crazy white people, crazy black people, crazy asian people, crazy people of every color and probably creed. There were masculine looking dudes, feminine looking dudes, masculine looking women, feminine looking women. It was just very diverse.
Kayla: Yeah, it was great.
Chris: So you have all these people dancing with these headphones. On, which is. That's the type of thing this was. It was silent disco style, which is all of the music is being pumped through to your headphones. And if you, like, if you take the headphones off, everything's just quiet. Or, you know, the sound of the ocean, but you put the headphones back on and there's the music. So the second best part was how there were people walking by, like, regular.
Kayla: People going on their, like, beach walks.
Chris: Yeah, because this was just out on the beach. Like, there was. It wasn't like Cordon Dawson public Beach. Public beach. And so, you know, people just were walking on the beach, and then sometimes people would walk by that don't have the headphones on, so, you know, they're not part of the thing. And it was just like, you could.
Kayla: See the awkwardness and the, like, what the hell are these people doing?
Chris: Because, like, imagine that you are that person. You don't have this music playing in your head. You don't have any context. You haven't done all of the research and bought the tickets and gone all that stuff. And then you just walk by a bunch of people just, like, kind of flipping out on the beach. Like, that would be quite strange. Okay, so that was the second best.
Kayla: And I will say the style of dancing that was predominant isn't, again, it's not the, like, what you'd expect to see if you're watching an episode of the Jersey Shore. That's my point of reference for this, of folks that are specifically going to the club to try and look sexy or to try and link up for the purposes of hooking up. Like, this was very expressive, flowy, hippy dippy. Like what you would picture. You might see it like Woodstock or, like, really swirling arms and that kind of thing. So, again, it doesn't look like people just, like, grinding their sweaty bodies together. It's like people that look like they're on drugs. Even though it was a very explicitly a sober experience, and they reiterated that a number of times to keep the space safe for everybody and to really be a present experience.
Kayla: No drugs, no alcohol were a part of this.
Chris: Yeah, I think. Yeah.
Kayla: Even though it looked like it was.
Chris: Yeah. The intent is for the dance to be the thing that gets you out of your head, not some other, like, mediative type thing like drugs or alcohol. Not. There's anything wrong with that. This was just not different experience. It was a different experience. I mean, I did. I think I did get out of my head a little.
Kayla: Yeah, that's. I wanted to ask you as somebody who is not into dancing and finds themselves not really interested in dancing and even maybe finds themselves a little afraid of dancing. Yeah. What was your enjoyment level of the actual physical movement part of the experience?
Chris: Still terrified.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: That didn't, like, maybe it diminished. It didn't go away. I definitely, like, super enjoyed myself, and I think that would be true even if there weren't dolphins. Not everything can have dolphins jumping out of the sea. I think I would have had a fun time dancing and just sort of being in that environment, that experience, and listening to that music. I think it would have been fun regardless. So that was enjoyable. But I would say I was maybe at any given time between 20 and 40% out of my head. That's a lot, you know?
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Like, like, peaking at 40% out of my head, maybe, but most, because, like, most of the time, I was still, like, I was still kind of in there. And granted, 20 is low, but it's a lot higher than my normal, like, zero.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So just being a little bit out of my head at some. At some points was nice. Right. But, yeah, I mean, I still definitely, like, I feel like it's also kind of like a muscle.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: You know, like, I'm not used to using that sort of, like, physicality to get out of my head. Aside from actually, I guess, weightlifting maybe does that to some degree.
Kayla: That's still very, like, regimented and you know exactly what to do. And there's not, like, a creative or flowing kind of component.
Chris: It's also very punctuated. Right. Like, when I do, like, a set of five squats, like, during each squat, I'm out of my head, but, like, each squat takes, like, 3 seconds. So it's just very, it's a, like, boom, boom. So, yeah, I did get a little bit out of my head, but I also was still, like, I was still pretty self conscious, most of it.
Kayla: Sure, sure. I think that where we kind of positioned ourselves was helpful. You and I, when it first started, we walked right up to the shore's edge, so there's nobody in front of us that can turn and look at us and make us feel embarrassed. And then eventually the kind of the crowd did move around us more. So then it was like, okay, we're in the middle, and also there's the safety of looking out at the water. It was kind of like the perfect position to be in, I think, for people who might be a little more self conscious, but I think that once people kind of came around us more, like once the entire dance floor moved more towards the actual shoreline, towards the water.
Kayla: That was when it was even easier for me and probably for you to get out of my head because that's where you saw everybody else doing that. That's where we saw people doing improvisational dance with each other, people who'd never met before that were all of a sudden in a dance flow together. Or, you know, you look over and you see somebody who is doing dance moves that you'd go, like, I would feel goofy doing that. Yeah, they don't look goofy doing that, but I would feel goofy doing that. So if, like, if they feel comfortable doing that, then, you know, that opens up what I can do.
Chris: Like, I'm not judging that person, so I guess nobody would be judging me either.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: So. But even still, it's like, it's a little bit hard. I actually want to comment, too, on the, like, the non. Like, the hey, this isn't about hooking up thing because I think that. I think Professor Chill mentioned that. And they also sort of, like, you know, reiterated that once here as well. I was thinking about it. Like, that's actually, I think, a real helpful piece of not being as self conscious, because, like, trying to find a mate is, like, tremendously stressful. And, like, you're all about, like, how do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? Do I look okay? Do I look? Am I making a fool of myself? Am I making a fool of myself? Oh, my God. It's, like, tremendously in your head. Self conscious, stressful. And then when you throw.
Chris: Dance on top of that.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: It's like throwing lighter fluid, like, into a furnace. So removing that lighter. Or actually, I don't know which. I'm losing my metaphor here. Something about fire, but removing a piece of that. Removing the, like, oh, yeah. This isn't about me getting laid. This is just here. And this is not about that for anybody here. We're all just, like. Like, kind of being in the place and doing the dance.
Kayla: I think that allows for, like, an even more, like, a. For the experience to be more about, like, connecting with everybody as humans and not that connecting sexually isn't. Obviously, that's also a very human animal thing to do, but it just kind of, like, evens the playing field a little bit or, like, gets you down to, like, a core soul level of, like, I am just with other people.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Kayla: And it kind of breaks down any sort of othering.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: It's just we are all people here to dance, and I can. Maybe. I can dance with men. I can dance with women. I can. Non binary people.
Chris: Right? That's the other thing.
Kayla: Gender people. I can.
Chris: I didn't feel at all, like, awkward about potentially dancing with a dude here. Whereas, like, at the club, right. I think that would maybe feel weird, or I would be like, oh, I don't want to, like, lead this person on or.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: This is awkward or whatever. But, yeah, there's just so much less pressure. Right. When you go to, like. That's one of the words I think of. When I think of, like, actually going to, like, the club, it's like, oh, my God, there's so much pressure. There's so much pressure, right? Going to the club.
Kayla: There's also a lot of pressure to have a good time in that kind of environment. It's kind of like New Year's Eve, where it's like, there's so much pressure to have a good time that it becomes impossible to have a good time.
Kayla: Right.
Kayla: It's just like, how can I have a good time when I'm having to put on uncomfortable clothes and have to go wait in a line and I have to go be self conscious and I have to leave with somebody or else I'm a failure? And it's like this. Washington, comfy clothes. Everyone's wearing comfy clothes. Your shoes are off. It was very much like, don't have your phone out. Like, try to disconnect from your phone. It was also explicitly, like, no talking on the dance floor. Like, if you want to chat, step off the dance floor. But while you're on the dance floor, try to maintain nonverbal communication. Like, really be in your body and see how that feels. So it was like, dance floor, by.
Chris: The way, is metaphor here was actually. It was just sand.
Kayla: It was just the beach.
Chris: There was no, like, floral. It was just the.
Kayla: It was the space in front of the. Djdehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe I feel like even with the rules, they were taking away some of the things that add pressure in other dancing scenarios.
Chris: Totally.
Kayla: And this, even if you were self conscious, at least you could go, like, at least I'm not going to end up in the back of someone's fucking Instagram photo. You're not having to worry about somebody's going to be videoing this, or somebody's going to be taking pictures of this, or I have to pose for pictures, or it was cameras off the dance floor. Leave this a sacred space. Yeah. I have no desire to go dance at a club where I'm expected to go home with somebody that sounds like, too much pressure. But this was, like, ideal embodiment practice in that way.
Chris: I also had a hard time getting out of my head early on because there was a little girl that was dancing next to us with a four foot long pointed stick.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Probably eight. So she didn't know any better kind of thing. But it was just like, she's, like, swinging this stick around. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm gonna get impaled here. What the fuck? Eventually, like, after a few minutes, she sort of moseyed over somewhere else, but I was like, oh, my God, please, someone, please. Caretaker, please come remove this spear from this person's hand.
Kayla: I mean, that was also something cool, though. Yes, don't give your children spears. But there were kids at this event. There were dogs and there were grandmas, and there were, like. It was literally the full gamut of representation.
Chris: Kayla is always fun to have kids until they run you through.
Kayla: How does the experience. Did the experience live up to. I think we've already answered this, but did the experience live up to the picture that doctor till painted?
Chris: Yeah, in our conversation, I think so.
Kayla: Did you feel like.
Chris: I felt very different. Again, I felt very differently about this than I would a. Again, I don't want to say normal. I feel differently about this than I would a stereotypical in my head club experience.
Kayla: Do you feel like you would have had the same level of enjoyment if you hadn't gotten the kind of context and opinion and bias from doctor till beforehand? Professor Chill?
Chris: Doctor Chill till? No, of course not. Like, I think having you needed that context. I don't think. No, I think that I would have gotten enjoyment. I would have gotten the same type of enjoyment, but for sure, having the context enhanced it.
Kayla: So I do feel affected by this event. Like, I feel like I'm still coming back into myself in some ways. So if we're a little all over the place, forgive me, we just had.
Chris: I do not.
Kayla: We had an embodiment experience. It started with collecting your headphones and stretching and whatever. And again, we're literally, people are just setting up blankets on the beach and sitting on the beach and watching the waves come in. And then everybody, all 200 people, get in a giant circle and are led through some stretching and breath work exercises before we begin the dance. And that really kind of helped set the expectation and bring you into this thing, even if you're feeling uncomfortable or feeling awkward, as you and I both.
Chris: Were, gets everybody on the same page.
Kayla: And then the dance commenced where the DJ, wonderful DJ. We'll be sure to link to ecstatic dance la and the specific dj that played this event in our show notes and on our instagram. And that was 2 hours. Like, it was 2 hours straight of nonstop music.
Chris: I didn't make it the whole 2 hours.
Kayla: But you only rested for like 20 minutes.
Chris: That's true.
Kayla: Maybe 30.
Chris: That's true.
Kayla: Still a long time.
Chris: And now I am very tired.
Kayla: And lots of people were resting. Lots of people were coming on and off the dance floor, going in. I mean, there were some people who didn't really dance, who stood on the dance floor just watching other people hearing.
Chris: That was another like pressure thing.
Kayla: Yeah. Looking out at the ocean. A lot of people sat on their blankets periodically. Just. There was one person we saw who was dancing for a long time and then for the last like 45 minutes of the thing literally just stood. I don't even think they were looking out at the ocean. I think they were eyes closed. Just stood like experiencing stillness. You saw that person?
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: They had flowers and seaweed in their hands and just like bed.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: So that was 2 hours of nonstop music. And then it ended with a, like a specific 15 minutes segment that you were just about to talk about.
Chris: Oh, yeah. So it ended with pretty smooth transition as far as I recall, from the more dancy music into more relaxing music. And that. What was it called? Medicine. Like sound healing was sound healing. Did I get it right?
Kayla: Yeah, it was called. Yeah.
Chris: Oh, yeah. Okay. Sound healing. I don't know.
Kayla: They ended with sound healing.
Chris: Sound healing. So that was like peaceful, relaxing music. Like the type you'd hear at a spa when you're getting a massage. And then there was another. This wasn't the DJ. This was a vocal liberationist.
Kayla: Dragon priestess, sound healer. We're not making these things up. These are self identified labels.
Chris: As always on the show, this had our favorite combination of this is fucking weird. But also it was really cool. Totally cool. Totally weird. And yeah, I mean, like her vocal performance, whatever you group, ASMr I called. It was definitely relaxing. I mean, she was doing.
Kayla: It brought us down some sort of vocal, like, vocal performance, I guess is the way you'd say it into the microphones that it was transmitted to all of her headphones so that like everybody stopped dancing and kind of sat down where they were. Stood where they were on the ocean front and just basked in the sound healing, I guess, winded down and it was real nice. And she walked through kind of something, guided meditation, breath work stuff that just really put a cap on the whole experience and made the experience feel very special and discreet and singular. And this was intentional and purposeful at the top of the circle, if it felt appropriate. They talked about, you can bring an intention into this. What do you want to feel? What do you want to bring to it?
Kayla: What do you want to get from it? And then revisited that again at the end of, what did you get out of it? What gifts were given to you through this? And, like, dolphins. I was. At the end of it, I was super blissed out. It was really nice. It was just nice to kind of, like, hug you and sit on the beach and, like, see all these people that are strangers to me that are having a similar experience and really appreciate the fact that we live in a place where we have access to something like this and where we can go and have this kind of a nice time on a Sunday afternoon.
Chris: Pretty neat.
Kayla: It's pretty neat. And I think I agree with you. Like, I would not have appreciated it in the same way without the conversation with doctor till beforehand. Kind of not even setting the expectations, but just, like, providing the context of what other people are getting out of it and what I can look to be getting out of it, because again, in my head, and I'm saying, this is somebody who enjoys dancing. It has lots of different dancing contexts, but group dance to electronic music, I did not have the context for it, that it was something primal and spiritual and community building. I had very much the, like, I don't want to go to the club. I'm afraid that this is the club. I don't want the club.
Chris: Yeah. And I would have. I don't know if I would have had the same level of, like, oh, God, is this gonna be, like, some sexualized thing? Not again. I hate. I don't mean to, like. I'm not like, sex is bad. I'm not saying absolutely not that at all. But, like, there's this, like, pressure. Oh, what if this person thinks that? What if this person thinks that, right. Having that sort of, like, pre removed. And this is just an example of, like, one of the things that I think we benefited from by talking to doctor till. You know what I was just thinking is, like, it's kind of like you're saying, did I need it? It's like whiskey tasting, right? It's like tasting like, yeah, the scotch would be good anyway.
Chris: But if somebody explained to me, like, all the flavors ahead of time, you're like, oh, you're gonna taste like some oak wood and some bourbon aged, you know, horse blanket. And then it's gonna finish with the. But it's, you know, obviously then when you take that shot of whiskey, it enhances the flavor and the experience.
Kayla: Right, right. It did make me this experience. And then also, again, the talking to doctor till. It does make me excited about exploring this world more in the future, just in my own life. Like, not in regards to the podcast.
Chris: But just like, oh, yeah, I'd go again.
Kayla: I would go to this again. I might go again this Sunday. Cause I immediately, like, texted some friends, like, oh, my God, this thing was so cool. And they were like, we wanna go. And I'm like, okay, let's go.
Chris: Wow, you guys have the same voice.
Kayla: Yeah, we all have the same voice. And we talk to each other like that. It's really weird, but it also makes me want to explore other types of events. Like go to a club that plays electronic dance music and see what that experience is like. Or try something scarier. Like, I was talking to a friend of mine who goes to actual real life raves. And I don't mean, like, go to a club. I mean, like, you don't find out about the location until 3 hours beforehand. It's in a seedy warehouse downtown kind.
Chris: Of rave where there's cool enough for.
Kayla: That, where there's definitely lots of drugs and probably lots of sex going on. That makes me interested in trying that experience as well and seeing what that is like. And I don't know, it just feels like something kind of opened up a little bit because we have this new context now and being able to translate it into something that I think a lot of people are looking for. And I know that I am looking for just the being in your body and connecting to spirituality? Hell, yeah. Like, I am here for those things. I need those things. And this feels like a safer environment to explore that. And also knowing that there's a place specifically for neurodivergent people in this community, that automatically makes it more.
Kayla: And that it's also, like, explicitly queer in a lot of ways, that makes it a safer environment to kind of explore these things.
Chris: Okay. But. Oh, fuck, is it a cult?
Kayla: I totally forgot that were just weird.
Chris: You forgot? That's the premise of the show, King.
Kayla: But I thought were. That's the show. Okay, let's get into it. I don't. I didn't write that.
Chris: Okay, hold on. Before we get into it, though, I think we have to, like, narrow down. Like, I don't think I've been giving this some thought. I don't think we can just say, like, is music a call? You know what I mean? Like, that's too broad. Like, that's. No, that's just music. So I think we have to, like, pick something. And I think that it makes sense for us to just say, like. And this is slightly arbitrary, but I think it makes sense to pick ecstatic dance la as the group to analyze here because it can't. Like, again, it has to be like. It has to be a group. There has to be something you can touch.
Kayla: Yeah, right.
Chris: It can't be like, yes. It's the concept of dance.
Kayla: Yeah, you're right. Although I think we've done stuff like that before in the past.
Chris: Well, that we shouldn't. Bad past us. Bad, bad.
Kayla: You're also right, because, you know, this is something that doctor till and I talked about. And he said something like, well, the charismatic leader is the DJ. And I'm like, yeah, but then that makes every individual club a potential cult or every individual party a potential cult, depending on the DJ. So I don't think we can do that because I'm gonna be here forever. So, yes, let's just talk about ecstatic.
Chris: Dance and Thursday, May 7, 1998. Was that an individual night? Was that a cult or just weird?
Kayla: A finite cult?
Chris: Brigadoon jokes on you. There was no way I was going to a club in high school.
Kayla: You were still in high school? Yeah, you were.
Chris: All right, let's get to the criteria.
Kayla: Charismatic leader. We're talking about a static dance la, which I think is part of a larger. We talked about on the show. It's a part of a larger network of loosely affiliated groups that do ecstatic dance in various cities across North America. But for our purposes, we're focusing specifically on ecstatic dance LA and the presence of a charismatic leader, I'm going to say, is high.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: There are two co founders of Ecstatic Dance LA, and their names are Robin Parrish, who is identified on the website as co founder, resident DJ and managing director. And the other gentleman is a man named Acetae. And he is also listed as co founder, movement facilitator and spiritual director.
Chris: Was one of those guys, the MC dude that did the prayer circle.
Kayla: Robin Parrish is the gentleman who kind of introduced, opened up the event, did the grounding circle in the beginning, told us all the guidelines, did breath work with us, and then at the end, also did a little bit of a closing. He closed it out. And he was also dancing with everybody.
Chris: Oh, he was?
Kayla: Yeah, he was going through the crowd and dancing. Yeah, he was.
Chris: Oh, shit. I have no idea which one that is. Cause I can picture all the different dudes that were dancing around, and I have no idea which one he was.
Kayla: So charismatic leader, obviously is very present. And I also just want to say, this is almost an aside, but it will definitely color our opinions. So the other gentleman, Acetae, do you remember where else this gentleman came into our lives tangentially?
Chris: Oh, shit. This just happened on YouTube or something.
Kayla: You and I were scrolling through tiktoks and I sent you a TikTok about, I don't know, some reality show that accidentally created a culture because they, like, I don't remember the premise of the show, but they basically put together a bunch of. I don't know why you'd watch this show. They put together a bunch of traumatized people with a bunch of spiritual healers, quote unquote, and then, like, a cult formed and the. One of the only spiritual healers which.
Chris: You know, that's expected.
Kayla: Yes. One of the only spiritual healers who questioned the methods of the reality show and was going, this is bad, you guys. We should not be doing this. Was.
Chris: It was quite bad. If you look into this, it was very episode. It was pretty bad.
Kayla: The only healer who took issue with.
Chris: It was Asataye, who then, as it turns out, was also this guy, co.
Kayla: Founder of Ecstatic Dance LA. So maybe charismatic leader, but maybe a little more ethical than some other folks that could be running.
Chris: Yeah, I'd say itai, but I actually don't think it's. What's the guy's name?
Kayla: Esatae or Robin.
Chris: Robin.
Kayla: Robin was the gentleman who was there.
Chris: Yeah, I would. But I would say. But he wasn't the DJ. Right. I would say the charismatic leader is the DJ. I agree with. With professor till that the DJ is the charismatic leader here.
Kayla: I disagree. I disagree. Because. No, or you're wrong.
Chris: Wow, you've really presented some compelling evidence for your argument.
Kayla: I feel like that's kind of saying, like, well, if you go to a catholic mass, the charismatic leader is the people singing.
Chris: No. Or if you go to, like, a.
Kayla: Super christian church where they're singing six.
Chris: Songs throughout the entire service, like, going to a concert and the charismatic leader is the conductor.
Kayla: I know.
Chris: Like, that was the whole purpose of what doctor till was talking about.
Kayla: But if we're talking about ecstatic dance LA and not this one event, this one single event, then I'm talking about.
Chris: We're taking issue with the fact that this DJ was, like, a one time thing.
Kayla: Yeah, they have different DJ's I guess.
Chris: There are different DJ's every time.
Kayla: Different DJ's every time. So if we're talking about ecstatic dance lA, the organization, or are we talking about this single moment in time that you and I attended? Because maybe those are different answers.
Chris: I don't know. I just really am attached to the idea that doctor till was talking about that the DJ, especially because we talked about this before the break, how similar it is to other cult leaders, where it's just like, yeah, man, part of the value is just being able to let go. And it's the DJ that gives you that, not the guy that's like.
Kayla: But he is also a djdeh. He probably does DJ sometimes.
Chris: All right, either way, he's a resident DJ. I would say hi, and we can debate later as to who exactly it was. But either way, we're in agreement that it's a DJ of some sort and relatively high because of the things that we've already talked about.
Kayla: Expected harm.
Chris: Okay, so this one seems like it's negative.
Kayla: Yeah, it's like expected goodness. Expected help.
Chris: Expected help. However, I will say that looking through some of the Instagram stuff, some of the people involved, there's a little, you know, you have to be careful. There's a little bit of a potential slippery slope, ecstatic dance, weird stuff, moon juice, goop. And now I'm anti vaxxer. So there's a bit of a slide.
Kayla: There that involves hippies and new age. You have to take with a grain of salt and go in with your eyes wide open. Otherwise you could find yourself on that. That pipeline.
Chris: Yeah. Just beware when there's new age involved.
Kayla: But I think if you just go and dance, which is kind of the expectation, the expected harm is, although I did the sand was. Did kind of twist my ankle a couple times.
Chris: That's true. And then the sand is still in between my toes right now.
Kayla: It's irritating.
Chris: Oh, my God. Yeah.
Kayla: A child almost impaled you.
Chris: Actually, that's true. If I had been impaled, we would be singing a different tone right now. So, okay, let's say low, but, you know, watch out for the children.
Kayla: Presence of ritual.
Chris: Yeah. So very high.
Kayla: Like, some of the highest.
Chris: Very high. But actually, I will say this. When I looked around and I'm like, does this look like. Because I, you know, I did that, I was like, is this a cult I'm in right here? Like, because we're gonna have to answer that. I looked around and I'm like, actually as weird as this looks. A lot of times the things that make us go like, oh, that's a cult. Are, like, the weird uniformity. And that was absent here.
Kayla: I don't agree.
Chris: A lot of times. A lot of times.
Kayla: And flowy pants.
Chris: Everybody's wearing the same white robe and has the same bull haircut and is the same weirdo white person. And this was not that.
Kayla: How did that.
Chris: Everybody was dressed differently. There was diversity.
Kayla: What does this have to do with presence of ritual?
Chris: Because some of the hallmarks I count as ritual things that are indicative that you're in an in group versus a different group.
Kayla: Everybody had the same headphones on.
Chris: Okay, but that's brand also, everybody had.
Kayla: Fucking flowy pants and big capes.
Chris: Everybody had the same types of clothes. But compare this to source family. Source family's walking around or, like heaven's gate. Right. They're all walking around and they're like white ropes.
Kayla: Okay, but those are two, like, actual factual cult.
Chris: Sure.
Kayla: And we're talking about other groups that we've said people in mlms don't, except on, like, fucking Lularoe. Like, Avon ladies aren't wearing the same outfits.
Chris: It's not just the outfits. I'm just saying, if I was just looking at it at a glance, I wouldn't necessarily say this is cult looking. I would say this is more weird looking. The ritual is definitely there, but it's lacking some of the, like, in group out, group, like, signifier ritual stuff that makes sense. Except for the head.
Kayla: It is very like, come one, come all.
Chris: Yeah, that way. Yeah, yeah. Like, it's with the source family. It's like you go to the source restaurant, and even if they weren't, you know, the servers, like, you would know who was who.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah. Niche within society. It's pretty niche.
Chris: It's niche.
Kayla: But this specific thing, there's 200 people there. How many out of 10 million people that live in Los Angeles?
Chris: That's true. If we're going. If we're talking specifically about ecstatic dance la, then, yes, this is niche. But I do want to call out.
Kayla: Listening to electronic music is not niche.
Chris: Yeah. And, yeah, very much so. And also, I think deserves calling out here that, you know, there's a history as old as humanity behind this type of activity.
Kayla: True.
Chris: Which I think drains it of some of its nicheness. Nichiosity.
Kayla: Let's call it medium then.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: Antifactuality.
Chris: I don't even know how that would apply here.
Kayla: Yeah, we danced. We did do that.
Chris: We did dance. They said you were going to dance and then we danced.
Kayla: So I guess the tangential potential pipeline stuff. The DJ is a life coach and the sound healer pedals weird herbs and maybe puts you on a pipeline towards being anti vaxx. There is the potential for getting onto antifactual tracks.
Chris: Yeah. But I feel like I can't dig for that, at least not in this category. I can say like, hey, go do this. Just don't buy the ashwagandha or whatever. But I don't think they deserve to be dinged because people involved also have other hobbies that include going to moon juice.
Kayla: Percentage of life consumed.
Chris: Life consumption, I would say low, but during the event, it's supposed to just consume your brain entirely all encompassing. Yeah, but that's sort of the purpose.
Kayla: But it's for 2 hours once a week.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: So even if you maxed out your time, if you max out your time with static dance la, it's maybe 3 hours on a Sunday.
Chris: And they didn't feel too, like, solicity of my time, you know, like, they.
Kayla: Told me, you can volunteer.
Chris: You can volunteer. And they told us about upcoming events, but I didn't feel like particularly like nobody came up to us and was like, this is your first. Because they asked if you were first timer. So raise your hand if you're first timers. But I didn't get anybody coming up to me going, hey, first timer, I'm gonna love bomb you.
Kayla: Now, this wasn't an onboarding. This wasn't like, do this and then you can learn more about the next level and then come to this workshop and then pay us this money for this thing. It was like, this is the thing. Yeah, this is the thing. And this is the thing.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Very low dogmatic beliefs.
Chris: I did not get the impression at all. Again, this is come one, come all.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: Whatever you want to do, you can come to this dance thing and not dance that says dogma very low to me.
Kayla: And even though they have rules, it wasn't like, and these are the rules that everybody should follow all of the time. It was just like, for this specific space at this specific time, these are our rules. And not every event needs to have these rules. Just, these are our rules for event.
Chris: This is what you need to do to participate.
Kayla: Like, very straightforward chain of victims. Oh, I already broke two friends into doing this.
Chris: Yeah, this is. I don't know, man, I think. But the chain of victims is on you. So when we do, is Kayla a cult? Yes. Is ecstatic dance laden displaying of chain of victims. I don't know. Yeah, we just said that they did. They weren't really, like, heavy into the love bombing. Recruiting, like, go tell your friends.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So I would say no.
Kayla: Last one. Safer, unsafe exit. Exit.
Chris: Okay. Well, it was actually pretty difficult walking on the sand all the way back to the parking lot.
Kayla: Walking on the beach, you might stab on a stick. It might hurt your foot.
Chris: Right. Or that little kid might have fucking come up behind me and just like, stabbed me.
Kayla: It was hard to walk in the sand.
Chris: Poor kidde. Actually, no. This poor kid was swinging a pointy stick around.
Kayla: Neely got offended by this.
Chris: Very upset. So aside from that, I guess pretty safe.
Kayla: It was a very easy exit.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: So definitely not a call because it's.
Chris: Scored lowly on all of the.
Kayla: Pretty much everything except for charismatic leader and ritual.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: So it's just a weird.
Chris: Very weird.
Kayla: Very weird. Very great. Highly recommend. If you're in LA, even for a small amount of time, try to hit a Sunday and you can go to ecstatic dance LA.
Chris: And if you want to experience the maximum amount of weirdness, you don't even have to. You actually probably shouldn't go to ecstatic dance LA. You should go to where they are without having the headphones and just walk through and be like, who the fuck are all these people that are just flipping out?
Kayla: And then maybe you'll see a dolphin.
Chris: And the dolphins are. That's another cult, maybe.
Kayla: Probably not funny.
Chris: That was dumb.
Kayla: I'm really glad we did that.
Chris: Me too.
Kayla: This has been. This is definitely. This is a top ten episode, I think.
Chris: Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right. I need to go take a nap.
Kayla: I'm so thirsty. This is Chris, this is Kayla, and.
Chris: This has been cult or just ecstatic weird dance.