The return of the free dial-a-rave
- Text by Gabriela Helfet
- Photography by Phil Clarke Hill
Raves were born out of necessity, like most of dance culture we know and love today. From their beginnings in New York, Chicago and Detroit, before they swept across the Atlantic to Europe and beyond, these illegal disco parties have served as homophobia-free, racism-free, and sexism-free havens from the mainstream.
Unconventional off-the-grid spaces – rent houses, lofts, factories, abandoned underground stations, patches of grass in the middle of nowhere – became audio sanctuaries. Who you fancied or how you looked or where you came from didn’t mean a goddamn thing.
You didn’t know the line-up. You didn’t know whether your best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s sister’s cousin’s mother’s pet turtle was ‘maybe’ attending. You didn’t even know exactly where the party was. Here’s what you did know: a date, a city – possibly a meeting point near a motorway, if you were lucky – and a telephone number.
This year, Red Bull Music Academy are paying homage to those halcyon days, and throwing a free dial-a-rave in London, Saturday April 11, 10pm – 4am. Lineup and venue tba on the day.
And, on a real, this is 2015 not 1992, which means no flyers. Here’s what you do: Tweet #0800R1NG2RAV3. Check your DMs. Follow the instructions. Go to the address. Turn your phone off. Put your hair up. And get down. Sounds like our kinda party.
For more information on the 2015 RBMA UK/NYC tour and to find what’s happening near you, check out Red Bull Music Academy.
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