Why Kandi keeps the spirit of rave alive in the US

They're much maligned, much mocked and deeply unfashionable, but maybe kandi ravers deserve a bit of credit, writes Carine Bunsci

I'm lost in a sea of coloured beads and hugs. A giant technicolor octopus passes over the fist-pumping onslaught of LEDs and bass at the latest festival-spectacle. The second wave of dance music was not supposed to look like this. Everywhere is kandi. The arts and crafts wing of EDM, kandi is composed of rainbow coloured beads and letters strung together to convey a message, usually woven into necklaces, backpacks and bracelets. The Kandi look has evolved from the 1990s child-like image, with pigtails, pacifiers and plush toys, to a kitschy, sexed-up cyber-vibe.

Some of you will be reading this and fighting back the gag reflex. Certainly the US media seems to be caught up in a sustained and often vitriolic onslaught to kill off this unfashionable by-product of club culture. THUMP's Kandi Kingdom film depicted a cringeworthy representation of the culture while the fashion police at Cosmo can't handle your kandi – unless you're Miley Cyrus in 'vajazzled' bikini bottoms. Even promoters are sticking the boot in. Events company Hard is joining Mad Decent's Block Parties in banning kandi from events.

You can see why so many people hate it. It's earnest and cheerfully unfashionable, a million miles away from the businesslike repackaging of dance music as a brand-friendly, grown-up commodity. There are no dark and sexy warehouse vibes – kandi culture has more in common with the irony-free world of 'Bronies' and Live Action Role Playing than Brodinski and queuing to be rejected at Berghain. In the great social media dance music conversation, as with seemingly all social media, snark and cheap digs dominate, and anything so gosh-darn positive has to be a legitimate target, right?

Yet Kandi culture is alive and thriving in the US. Electric Zoo, EDC, Ultra and TomorrowWorld all have a dedicated army of neon furries. To the frustration of 'cooler' heads, the stereotype of the young US raver who grew up the last time dance music hit the country, and which became a lazy, unjust shorthand for drug indulgence, is back in all its technicolour glory.

But maybe we should be celebrating kandi rather than showering it with scorn. For a start it's active, rather than passive. All those hours of preparation, dancefloors alive with interaction and social ritual, are in stark contrast to the way we're sometimes expected to enjoy dance music in 2014: slack-jawed, all facing the same direction, dazzled into a fist-pumping stupor by an arms race of ever more awe-inspiring stage shows and the manufactured stardust of superstar DJs. Kandi makes the audience a protagonist, rather than a passive subject expected to stand there and be spoon-fed thrills.

Kandi suggests that there's more to dance music than consumerism. There are, no doubt, booming industries turning out plastic accessories, but kandi frames dance music as a subculture rather than a mainstream leisure activity. So many people hark back to the glory days of club culture – New York's disco scene with its sexually transgressive outsiders, say, or the first stirrings of acid house in the UK with its ridiculous baggy fashions and psychedelic imagery – but look beyond the music and perhaps what they really yearn for is the idea of a shared community, outside the mainstream.

And Kandi is the prefect ice-breaker. Safe, positive and welcoming, it's a signifier of shared values that helps strangers connect and brings people together. Most of all, kandi is a great reminder that it's possible to take dance music seriously without taking yourself, or your image, too seriously. Today's rebels don't always wear black. Besides, who can really argue with 'Peace, Love, Unity and Respect'?