Goa Trance - Parties

Parties

There have been attempts to formalize parties, such as those held at Bamboo Forest, into commercial events, which was initially met with much resistance. The need to pay the local police baksheesh means that they're now generally staged around a bar, even though this may only be a temporary fixture in the forest or beach.

The parties around the New Year tend to be the most chaotic with bus loads of people coming in from all places such as Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and the world over. Travelers and sadhus from all over India pass by to join in.

Maybe the first "Goa party" in London was an underground TIP party in December 1990. TIP parties are legendary underground events. TIP standing for the band name The Infinity Project, consisting of Raja Ram and Graham Wood. They went on to do special, one off events and set up Tip Records in 1994 which became one of the pioneering labels of the Goa Trance genre. In 1993 a party organization called Return to the Source also brought the sound to London, UK. Starting life at the Rocket in North London with a few hundred followers, the Source went on to a long residency at Brixton's 2,000 capacity Fridge and to host several larger 6,000 capacity parties in Brixton Academy, their New Year's Eve parties gaining reputations for being very special. The club toured across the UK, Europe and Israel throughout the 1990s and went as far as two memorable parties on the slopes of Mount Fuji in Japan and New York's Liberty Science Center. By 2001 the partners Chris Deckker, Mark Allen, Phil Ross and Janice Duncan were worn out and all but gone their separate ways. The last Return to the Source party was at Brixton Academy in 2002.

With the proliferation of Goa trance music across the globe, parties are now being held at locations all over the world. Among the most notable of these parties are Boom Festival in Portugal, O.Z.O.R.A. in Hungary, Full Moon Party held monthly at Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand and several events held in Byron Bay, Australia as well as Israel, Japan, South Africa, Scandinavia and Brazil.

Goa parties have a definitive visual aspect - the use of "fluoro" (fluorescent paint) is common on clothing and on decorations such as tapestries. The graphics on these decorations are usually associated with topics such as aliens, Hinduism, other religious (especially eastern) images, mushrooms (and other psychedelic art), shamanism and technology. Shrines in front of the DJ stands featuring religious items are also common decorations.