The Religious Side of Electronic Dance Music

The Religious Side of

Electronic Dance Music

Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him
with timbrel and banjo, and with electronic dance music.
Psalm 149:3 (slightly revised)

Top 40 Club Beats
for DJ's in 2017

Panentheism and the Religious Side
of Electronic Dance Music

So what is it anyway?

Electronic Dance Music is "group music" to a "centralized rhythm" created by machines, often choreographed by a DJ, that you can dance to, resulting in "moments of exultation and release" on the dance floor or the music festival. You can also listen to it privately, through headphones, dancing if you wish. I borrow the language from NPR writer Piotr Orlov..

The exultation and release are essential. From the perspective of the dancers at clubs and festivals, the moments are fun in their own right and also (so I suggest) religious. or mystical. They are touches of transcendence: touches of something more to life than the ordinariness of daily life. What is transcended is a sense of being a skin-enclosed self cut off from the world by the boundaries of the skin. In the moment, you become immersed (body, mind, and spirit) in magic and mystery of the group; and in that immersion you sense that, appearances to the contrary, there is a joy for living, and a deep interconnectedness, that has its own claim to being "ultimate." Of course the dancing is fun. But the "fun" has a deeper dimension, acknowledged or not. It is a moment of revelation. OM in rhythmic form.

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Electronic Dance Music has many overlapping genres: House, Techno, Trance, Dubstep, Drum and Bass, Garage, Grime, Trap, Hardstyle, Moombahton, Juke, Breakbeat, Downtempo. (Scroll down for a sample of each. ) These genres appeal to different sub-cultures within the electronic dance community; and they contain many different kinds of exaltation and release: light, heavy, dramatic, subtle, abrupt, gradual - or all of the above. In the house of release and exultation, there are many rooms.

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The religion of Electronic Dance Music is in the touches of transcendence, the sense of community on the dance floor, and the ritual of dancing itself which evokes the transcendence and community. This transcendence need not be romanticized. It may or may not result in a person becoming wiser and more compassionate in daily life. The experience itself can be an irresponsible escape from the nitty gritty of life, or an understandable respite from that nitty gritty. It can be an isolated indulgence of the privileged, or an inclusive gathering of diverse people who are empowered, by the music and dancing itself, to help bring about a better world. Everything depends on the context, the dancers, and the music.

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And what about God? Certainly many of the dancers will not use the word "God" and may not associate their dancing with "dancing in the presence of the Lord." Indeed, they may think of God on the analogy of an authority in the sky, cut off from the world (and the dance floor) by the boundaries of divine transcendence. Nevertheless, for process theologians like me, such an image misses the point about a God who so loves the world that he becomes flesh. I believe in an embodied God: that is, a God whose very body is the whole of the universe. If the universe itself is God’s body, then electronic dance music can provide a moment in which human beings join God in the dancing. In that moment, they are making music for God and making music with God. quite apart from the question of what they believe. In moments where there is exultation and release, however fleeting, there is joy in the very heart of the universe. The hope of God is that these moments provide nourishment for a life of wisdom and compassion, justice and love. Insofar as they do so, the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven, whatever the top beats happen to be. (Jay McDaniel)

Are Moments of Exultation Justified?
Electronic Dance Music in a Troubled Age

Observations by NPR's Piotr Orlov

Our Favorite Dance and Electronic Albums of 2017 by Piotr Orlov of NPR

More by Piotr Orlov

The Right Year for the Ecstatic?

Regardless of how much we acknowledge that group-movement to a centralized rhythm is medicine for the soul, some emotional climates simply aren't conducive to reaching a singular moment of exultation and release on the dance floor. Across much of the world, 2017 sure as heck didn't feel like the right year for the ecstatic. (Piotr Orlov)

International Scenes

House music continues to be locally remade in South Africa and Japan, strengthening its roots in Atlanta, and being perfected, pushed and prodded in Detroit. The decades-long, mutating conversation between technology and folk forms is taking place in and exported from communities of African cities previously untouched by Western hype (Kampala, Dar Es Salaam, Addis Ababa) and from epicenters of it (Lisbon, London, Chicago and D.C.). (Piotr Orlov)

The Need to Till for the Future

Not to say that 2017 didn't have its share of joyful parties or tracks, but even those were laced with a streak of facing up or dancing down Babylon — of trying to right sonic, spiritual or social trespasses. The "scene's" ever-present sense of privilege aside, there is currently widespread recognition that this planet and this community — the one that dances, the one that creates machine music, and the overlap of the two — require tilling for the future. And if you looked closely, you could spot many people putting in that work. (Piotr Orlov)

Emerging Trends

Post-techno artists continue their leaps into contemporary arts spaces by way of accepted and innovative forms, an increased attention to composition and by pushing forward. There were other fusionary wormholes to visit in 2017 as well — and almost to an example, each involved musicians whose communities have long been adept at making culture outside the dominant (read: white male) marketplace. For many, it was almost as though the grip of the breaking news timeline did not affect their creativity. (Piotr Orlov)

An Idiot's Guide to EDM Genres

Click button on the right for the article in Complex website. Below are some of the samples offered in the article.