The Music of the Counterculture: A new moral panic?
The true meaning of counterculture as we know it today, first manifested itself within the Western world in the late 1960’s. Free love, unity in music and an anti-establishment mindset were all defining values within the so-called “hippie” generation who advocated for power of the people to incite social change during this time.
In an effort to claim their identity and protest against traditional and the corruption of the power structures shaping American society, young people increasingly drew on music, art and freedom of expression as a means of escape. Attached to this newfound freedom was the invention and consumption of psychedelic drugs, which fueled the pre-existing craving to create an alternate society free of religious dogma, gender roles and racial prejudice.
We all know history is famous for repeating itself and it seems to me that these beliefs have been reincarnated during the 21st century in the form of techno music: a new experimental genre with similar roots in drug culture and critical attitude towards the status quo.
The summer of 1967 in San Francisco brought together a historic number of youths and was labelled by the media as the “Summer of Love”. It was the first mainstream acknowledgement of the hippie movement and what their spirit and ideals represent. The popularity of psychedelic rock bands of the time like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Doors and Grateful Dead created a scene in which psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms and other mind-altering substances were regularly consumed by young people to expand their minds and break the molds of society while listening to genre that reflected their ideals and had a similar message.
However, with Nixon serving as US president, parents and adults standing outside this fast-growing subculture quickly began to demonize and contain the movement before all the teenagers could turn into head-banging, pot-smoking, Huxley-reading juvenile delinquents.
A “moral panic”, defined by Stanley Cohen occurs when "a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." and this is exactly how hippies were perceived by mainstream institutions. Many anti-drug propaganda campaigns were broadcast under the “War on Drugs” initiative of President Nixon, claiming that substances such as LSD an Cannabis could cause suicide, mental retardation, death and permanent psychosis.
Instead of spreading informative and helpful data about these substances, the media exaggerated the potential negative side effects to a point of farce, resulting in widespread fear amongst the population and even the association of said substances with other minorities like African-American and Porto Rican immigrants to further oppress and essentially vilify them in the eyes of the public.
2019: Rave culture has now effectively replaced the rock ’n’ roll loving, flower power counterculture movement of the 60s and is ironically faced with almost identical backlash from media. Electronic music festivals and underground techno clubs still attract thousands of young people who feel identically isolated and betrayed by the dominant ideologies of mass consumerism and superficial social connections facilitated by technology.
While the use of psychedelics has diminished, partially due to the residue of historic irrational stigma around altered states of consciousness, MDMA and other synthetic drugs such as 2CB, PCP and Ketamine are still widely popular. We know very little about the long-term effects of these drugs, as they are relevantly new and unlike psychedelics, not found organically in nature. Subsequently, a second moral panic regarding the use and legality of these drugs has been at the forefront of governments, who are scrambling to regulate and classify synthetic drugs as they emerge.
Here at IE, students seem to agree that the real problem is not the overconsumption of drugs but how information about them and the safest way to consume them is restricted, if not nonexistent. They also acknowledge that the values associated with techno are still very much about dissent from social norms and freedom of expression. Even though “watered down” forms of techno like house and tech house are becoming mainstream, according to one student “techno will forever remain on the depths of the underground heaven.”