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  • Writer's pictureW. Gerard Poole

In the tradition of the American Great Awakenings, "Electronic Awakening"

Updated: Apr 16, 2022


This is an excellent introduction to Electronic Dance Music [EDM} and it's also a good introduction into the history of Festival Culture in general.



I also highly recommend the entire Bloom Series (below) and what they call "Transformational Culture". The Bloom festival producers differ markedly from the Burning Man cultural ethos in that they explicitly encourage commercial entrepreneurship so that people can integrate their lives, their livelihood, into their cultural participation. I personally think this is a better approach to the Festival culture because it allows more cultural differentiation to take place- at least in theory. I will be posting a commentary on the Rootwire Festival I attended a number of years ago and how I thought the commercial aspects of the festival contributed to the event.

But I have to admit that in spite of the ban on commerce enforced at Burning Man, Burning Man has actually culturally proliferated far more than any other Festival event. In fact, only Burning Man seems to have made, so far, any impact on what they call the "Default World"- society outside of the Burning Man experience. In the minds of the "Burners", they must go back to the Default World where they have to make a living. This gives rise to the criticism that Burning Man is just an expensive indulgence of privileged, mostly white (oh, no) affluent people looking for a hip source of entertainment.

I don't agree at all with that assessment , and I'll have more to say on the subject of Burning Man specifically, and Transformational Festival in general.




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