Lotus Magazine Archives

On the morning of August 29^th, on their way home from the ski area where Jujubeats was held, five high school-aged dancers drove off the side of the twisty Angels Crest highway. Their deaths stunned Los Angeles, and the tragedy was featured in front page newspaper articles denouncing "rave parties." Amidst the ensuing sensationalism, the LA Times printed one quietly honest article titled "Raves Are a Rite of Passage." The staff of Lotus Magazine had the opportunity to interview the writer of the piece, Reverend James Conn, a former mayor of Santa Monica. Here, we present his original article as printed in the LA Times, and our interview. We found the Reverend both enlightened and enlightening, and we hope that readers are able to use his words and ideas to move our community forward.

Raves Are a Rite of Passage

By James Conn

LA Times, 9/1/99

Raves appear to be Gen Y's version of the '60s love-ins. Several thousand young people gather for an all-night concert of music that has not yet found its way into a mainstream venue. Raves feature loud music spun together in an original way by disc jockeys.

I attended a rave in San Bernadino last year because my son performs this music style. And as a United Methodist minister, I have worked with youth all my life and am intrigued by the culture they create without us--or in spite of us.

The night we attended a rave, 10,000 people were there. We were clearly the only ones over 40. These kids hadn't learned about the rave via the mainstream or even the underground media. They knew about it because they are a part of a musical scene that doesn't even register on the adult public's screen.

No one was selling these kids alcohol. It wasn't a bar or club scene. Yes, like any Rose Bowl event, there were empty beer cans in the parking lot. But the security at this rave was so strict, you couldn't smuggle in a shot, much less a joint. No unopened packs of cigarettes were allowed. Some of the kids appeared to be on some sort of drug high, but I've smelled more marijuana and seen more people out of control at the Hollywood Bowl.

I was reminded of the clergy who shoed up in collars at those '60s events, passing out loaves of bread or reminding the revelers that someone else had taught the message of love centuries earlier. I would caution adults that we cannot eliminate or even contain every avenue of youthful self-expression. Nor should we try. On the contrary, it would make better policy and achieve better social results to participate in helping it evolve.

So why do raves occur in the remote areas? Because more accessible venues are not available to the promoters of these events. A few New Year's ago, a rave near downtown LA was closed down by police, and a mini-riot ensued. Some venue operators won't even talk to promoters. Other venues aren't appropriate for all-night, multi-staged, high volume performance because they are too close to residences. But the more inaccessible the mainstream venues, the more the events are pushed into marginal areas with risky accessibility. The stricter the rules, the farther the drives, and the more likely the tragedy.

Apparently, the road that leads into the ski areas where last Saturday's [9/27/99] rave occurred is a recognized problem whether the event is an all-night concert or an all-weekend ski crowd. At such places and for such events, the California Highway Patrol or the Forest Service could lead a convoy of cars at a safe speed down the narrow road ways. Why not participate in the safety of such events, rather than push them father from where kids live?

At the rave I attended, I was surprised that with 10,000 captive young people, there was not health booth. No one was giving away condoms or talking about safe sex, much less there in case of an overdose. No one was signing up kids to vote. No one was extolling the forest environment where the kids had come to hear music and dance.

As far as I can determine, a rave is simply a way for young people to tell their parents one thing and then do another. They must find a time and a place to prove themselves, to get themselves across some mystical barrier that prevents them from feeling fully adult. Sometimes its dancing all night. Sometimes it's drinking oneself sick. Sometimes it's trying drugs.

Every time a young person dies--regardless of the connection to any activity--it's tragic. But it is also tragic for society if the energy, enthusiasm, and visionary exploration of our young people becomes so contained and repressed that it cannot be expressed.

Lotus: Reverend Conn, do you have any suggestions for how the dance community can better work with the civic community?

Rev. James Conn: Great question. The thing that amazed me about my experience [at a rave,] was the absence of a medical team or a booth where people hand out condoms, talk about legal rights, or try to sign people up to vote. I don’t know if that's the social-service political-folks' problem or if it’s the promoters' problem, but that connection hasn’t happened. In the '60s, the whole free clinic movement was just forming, so frequently at events there were couple nurses for people who overdosed, or fell down and broke an arm or something. [Rave promoters should try] going to free clinics and saying, “Can you spare a nurse? Can you see that this would be in your interest to have some public health education like brochures, condoms, whatever, there for kids? Can you see that that would make sense?” Somebody would respond.

Lotus: What event did you attend?

Rev. James Conn: My son Ethan played at a rave a year ago--Narnia? He’s been DJing in New York for the last four years.

Lotus: So, did lot of the problems that exist at raves now exist in the '60s?

Rev. James Conn: Oh yeah.

Lotus: Everybody makes it seem that because of this generation and raves, suddenly people are overdosing.

Rev. James Conn: [interrupting] No, no, no, no. It goes…forever, you know. I know the '60s because that was my own youth. The parallel is so deep and so strong. Not the same music, not the same event, totally different kind of thing and yet, so much the same. Ten thousand kids meeting each other, talking, having a good time, dancing, grooving on the music. It’s like, where have I been? Deja vu all over again.

Lotus: Is there more police harassment now?

Rev. James Conn: Actually, it seems like there's less police harassment now in the sense that once you're [inside the event] there’s security…and it’s only if there’s some problem outside that the police get involved. [When I went to Narnia,] we were there for six hours and I didn’t see anything that looked like people were doing hard drugs, everybody was really mellow. Nobody was looking like they were going to punch anybody out. It was a very nice event for kids to be part of. But people get upset when you have a whole bunch of kids having a good time. That can be scary [to] adults. Love and peace, these aren’t scary ideas. They have been scary ideas to some people for, as far as I can tell, forever…but I really support kids doing whatever it is they've got to do. They’re going to do it somehow, so there needs to be places where it’s OK.

Lotus: Because cities try to push raves away, some dancers are driving to events 2_ or 3 hours away.

Rev. James Conn: Yeah, Ethan played at Narnia this year, and it was in Northern San Diego County? That’s a long drive! [Events are] further and further out because there are no local venues. The further kids have to drive, the more likely it is that something is going to happen, that they're going to fall asleep or whatever. You stay up all night, then drive three hours? Not a good combination.

Lotus: Isn’t there a way that cities could help?

Rev. James Conn: Well, you would think that something like that would be possible, but it’s really hard. There are so many calls on city money, and [elected officials] are going to back away from anything controversial. I spent eight years on the city council in Santa Monica in the '80s, and we were trying to get a skateboard park, right? Oh man, you would a thought that we had asked them to do something obscene in public! The city didn’t want to have anything to do with it because of the liability, the Boys and Girls Club didn’t want to have anything to do with it because of insurance, and so we couldn’t figure out how to do it because it was twenty years before its time. Now the Boys and Girls Club in Santa Monica has a skateboard park, and it’s their hottest item--everybody wants to do it! Why didn’t we do this right in the first place? Anything that is controversial, anything that looks like it’s new and untried, people are very reluctant to participate.

Lotus: What advice do you have for young dancers dealing with their parents' concerns about raving? How can younger members of our community best express their experiences to their parents?

Rev. James Conn: I think that it’s very difficult for kids and parents to talk to each other. The hardest thing is that adults forget their own youth. They have kids and it’s like their own youth never happened, and they are appalled by what their kids are doing. You would think that [parents'] experiences would be like a reference point to say, “Oh well, we did this, and they’re doing this, and that’s pretty much the same,” right? But no, that’s not the way many parents look at it, and I think that’s really too bad. Perhaps it says something about how unconscious we are, as people, as adults, we are unconscious about our own experience. It seems to me that as a society we are pretty unconscious. So we forget, we sort of have social amnesia about what we did, and we then don’t support what kids need to do in the next generation.

Lotus: Is there a better way for kids to approach their parents? What seems to happen is that kids want to be open with their parents, but then parents get upset, and so kids are just like, “OK, I won’t tell the truth anymore.”

Rev. James Conn: That’s exactly what happens. Kids learn to dissemble, they learn to flat out lie. That’s too bad…that’s too bad. What kids need to try is talking to their parents about the least controversial aspects of what goes on: people are getting together, playing music, dancing and having a good time, and there’s no violence.

I think that [parents] have to walk through life with kids, we have to walk through the passageways together, and then there are passageways that kids have to go through on their own. That is the only way that any of us get from childhood to adulthood is that we go through those places. If kids have to go through passageways alone, there should be an adult there on the other side to hear what the passage was like.

That’s how we move from childhood to adulthood: there are adults who are mentors, guides, and helpers. If the parents are going to freak out, then there needs to be other people in the society who are going to mentor, like ministers, priests, teachers, and youth workers. In the old days, when we lived in tribes or extended families, the uncle or the aunt were like the surrogate parents, so that when things got too tight, kids had somebody else that they could turn to.

Maybe if kids talk with their parents about the safe things, talking about how they need help and support, [kids could explain that] “We go we have fun, but stuff happens, and I’d like to be able to talk to you about it.” If I had a magic wand, parents would have parenting classes and could figure out how to help their kids channel things and figure life out, but that’s not what we do. That’s really unfortunate.

Lotus: Many dancers find their experiences at rave events very spiritual. As a minister, how do think dancers can best learn from these feelings and grow in their understanding of their own spirituality?

Rev. James Conn: I get the sense from talking with kids that [raving] is a very spiritual experience, that there is some way that the music and the movement gets them into someplace that is deeper inside themselves. There’s also the connection kids have with each other that's really interesting to me. There’s a level at which the kids are connecting that is deeper than just sitting around talking, because of the music and the movement and the whole thing--it’s like the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. This experience that the kids are having with each other is really quite remarkable. Kids have a connection as a group, as a crew, or as a tribe, and they have a bond with each other that's hard to find other places in this society.

I think that’s why people go to church: they’re looking for that kind of experience, they’re looking for community. That’s what people are looking for, but I think that there’s something particularly powerful about the combination of music and movement. It's very spiritual.

NOTE: James Conn went on to become a regular contributor to Lotus, writing a column called irREVerence. I'll be posting those columns in the weeks ahead.