Comment: conscious clubbing

It’s obvious that among young people there’s a rising fitness culture and awareness of healthy living; perhaps it follows that there’ll be a desire for a healthy mind, too. Ultramajic boss Jimmy Edgar is one of a growing number of artists and DJs who are looking beyond gigs and sales. “Music and spirituality are deeply connected. Unfortunately for most artists these days, including me, it’s a bit discombobulated for many reasons. I’m willing to support anything that makes an effort to bring some positivity – otherwise what else are you doing but chasing money and other notions that don’t really matter in the long term?”

And perhaps nothing matters in the long term more than the planet. While attendees may not take into account what power an event is running on, it’s definitely something a promoter can shout about. Iceland’s Secret Solstice is able to run almost totally on geothermal power and this year aims to be carbon neutral. “While most major events around the world have to rely on fuel burning generators, we tap directly into Reykjavik’s power grid,” says Marketing Director Leon Hill. “We are powered by volcanoes, which is an extremely cool thing to be able to say.”

Meanwhile, more and more festivals are turning vegetarian or vegan. Jennie Sobol of Outline in Moscow says it was an easy decision. “Most of the organisers don’t eat meat. It’s important to show people they can enjoy food without destroying the environment, or their bodies. We had no complaints; as long as you have nice food people can eat when they’re hungry people are happy!” Mexico’s Comunité festival makes a pretty convincing case on their website: ‘Each day, a person who eats a vegan diet saves 1,100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 sq ft of forested land, 20 lbs CO2 equivalent, and one animal’s life. If we control what we serve the guests during the 24 hours of this festival we will save incredible resources!’ Meanwhile, some of the profits from the festival are used to build clean water systems for surrounding villages.

Is there a danger of people selling their event as ‘ethical’ just to shift tickets? “That will surely happen in the future,” say Kim Booth. “It’s going to be the next ‘thing’ – but you can always tell the true people.”

Stathis Lazarides, founder of the TerraFerma organisation which has just launched its The Art Aid Project aimed at promoting undiscovered talent and progress through collaboration, agrees that this is likely due to the increasingly business-minded environment of club culture, and asserts that electronic music needs to “take its own future in its hands and preserve its original values.”

“We want to build on the original foundations that have been destroyed by businessmen and create a safe haven for artists, away from the stresses of today’s environment of bad competition,” says Lazarides, adding that “this youth revolution can be much more than a playground for millionaire DJs.”

Whether everyone going to these festivals really cares about how they’re run is moot: if ethical events like this keep happening and clubbers look for a more spiritual dimension to the way they enjoy themselves, it’s a trend that’ll only become more apparent – not least because of social media (the perfect arena both for ‘virtue signalling’ and for getting across a genuine message). As every promoter knows, as long as the tunes and the vibes are right, people will come. If the tunes and the vibes are right and your event is doing some good, even better.