Ultra Music Festival 2010

“13th annual Ultra Music Festival (Miami) sold out for the first time with over 100,000 attendees.”

The biggest rooms in all the clubs play a lot of techno and house music. There aren’t many words to the music, and it seems like just the same repetitive beat playing over and over incessantly. When I was introduced to electronic music, the repetitive thumping never appealed to me, I prefer music that I recognize, have heard before and maybe can sing-a-long. But my recent experiences, have changed my perspective forever.

It isn’t just about the ambience, the lights or the fog machines. Everyone moving in unison to the beat of the music elicits an emotional response from me that is completely unexpected. One is swept with an overwhelming sense of deep connection with everyone there. There is no feeling of judgement, as every individual is just being himself or herself, dancing to the music. There is no sense of self-consciousness or feeling that anyone is dancing to be seen dancing.

The steady wordless electronic beats are the unifying heartbeats that synchronize the crowd, the existence of individual consciousness disappears and is replaced by a single unifying group consciousness, people don’t dance to the music so much as the music seems like it simply moves through everyone.

Recently, a seminar on Pranic Healing in New Delhi had the 2,000-odd audience dancing to shed their inhibitions, and meditating for world peace and for self-healing. The audience opened up their chakras to the lilting beats of Jai Ho! The energy that flowed down the aisles of the auditorium was a happy one, breaking barriers and sparking receptivity, for the last is a key attribute to receiving healing and allowing the ‘ki’ or ‘prana’ to enter your body.

Research from the field of the science of happiness confirm that the combination of physical synchrony with other humans and being part of something bigger than oneself (and thus losing momentarily a sense of self) leads to a greater sense of happiness. I now understand the appeal of techno music, I can’t simply listen to it the way I listen to music on the radio.

Music is an integral part of life, it binds us together across nations and continents. Finally, I understand what music is all about.

“The world’s largest music festival is Summerfest, which is held for eleven days every year in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Each year, it attracts between 800,000 and 1,000,000 spectators.”

Summerfest