No Sex Please, We’re Ravers
Click to buy Ecstasy Reconsidered (Amazon)
European psychologists who examined links between house music and MDMA have concluded that the rise in popularity of both ecstasy and raving resulted from the AIDS epidemic which killed so many nightlife characters in the first half of the 80s.
“Some musical styles seem to depend on drugs for their very right of existence: reggae is invariably associated with marijuana and electronic dance music (rave, house, techno) with ecstasy”, Professor. Dr. Dirk J. Korf and Prof. Dr. Alfred Springer noted in their report ‘Markets, Methods, and Messages: Dynamics in European Drug Research’.
“The new musical style (house music) arose in the era of HIV and AIDS,” they continued, “The driving beat of electronic music, coupled with the drug -induced ecstatic high on the dance floor, resonated perfectly with the quest for bodily pleasure without dangerous sex …” http://bit.ly/yrtVYJ
Their findings matched the conclusions of deceased British MDMA expert Nicholas Saunders who in his seminal 1993 book E is For Ecstasy identified similar forces as popularizing rave culture.
“Behaviour at raves during the first few years, at events where nearly everyone was on E, was very different to that at alcohol-based clubs, and seemed to follow from the lack of male sexual aggression,” he noted.
“Hugging and even caressing strangers was acceptable on a sensual level without implying a sexual advance. Ravers would have a sense of belonging at any club or event where others were on E.”
He also identified earlier research by British scientist Sheila Henderson who writing in 1992 said for many revellers, raves provided a safer environment, particularly for females.
“Women can even enjoy snogging at raves because it is ‘safe’ – not a prelude to having sex. They are less likely to have casual sex following a night raving than after going to an alcohol-based club,” she said.
“As one girl put it, “you don’t go to a rave to cop”. In fact, sexual safety is an attraction at raves in contrast with alcohol-based clubs which are seen as a cattle market.”
E is for Ecstasy: read it here: http://bit.ly/wCbpAI
Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff
Claudia Wonder: Sao Paulo’s First Queen Of Club Culture (R.I.P.) (interview)
Claudia Wonder
Brazilian civil rights campaigner and transsexual performance artist Claudia Wonder started her nightlife career in Sao Paolo in 1975, performing alongside iconic Brazilian drag queens including Andrea May, Thelma Lipp and Brenda Lee.
Running round Sao Paulo’s then tiny after-hours gay scene, she routinely faced arrest from the police controlled by Brazil’s then notoriously brutal military dictatorship and became an ardent activist in the campaign that lead to democracy in 1985.
Also championing gay rights and later on, HIV and AIDS awareness issues, she became a national celebrity around the same time when she fronted Brazilian punk band Dirty Trick. In Sao Paulo meanwhile, she became even more infamous for her show ‘The Vomit of Myth’, which she regularly staged at the Madam Satan club, stripping off naked in a bathtub full of blood.
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Moving to Europe in 1989 (where she worked as a cabaret artist and make-up stylist) she came back to Sao Paulo in 1999, returning to music in 2007 to record on a number of electro albums. She also became a columnist for GQ magazine the same year and in 2008 was the subject of a documentary “My friend Claudia’ directed by filmmaker Dácio Pinheiro.
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My Friend Claudia
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Continuing to fight for gay rights and AIDS issues, Claudia died of an AIDS related illness of November 26, aged 55. She chatted to Jonty Skrufff and Benjamin Ferreira several months before, in her flat in the centre of Sao Paulo close to Avenue Paulista (Benjamin acted as a translator).
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