Goa Trance - History

History

The music has its roots in the popularity of Goa in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a hippie capital, and although musical developments were incorporating elements of industrial music and EBM (electronic body music) with the spiritual culture in India throughout the 1980s, the actual Goa trance style did not officially appear until the early 1990s. As the hippie tourist influx tapered off in the 1970s and 1980s, a core group remained in Goa, concentrating on developments in music along with other pursuits such as yoga and recreational drug use. The music that would eventually be known as Goa trance did not evolve from one single genre, but was inspired mainly by EBM-groups like Front Line Assembly, Meat Beat Manifesto, Front 242 and A Split-Second, acid house (The KLF's "What Time Is Love?" in particular), techno, Orbital, and psychedelic rock like Ozric Tentacles, Steve Hillage and Ash Ra Tempel. In addition to those, oriental tribal music/ethnic music also became a source of inspiration. A very early example (1974) of the relation between psychedelic rock and the music that would eventually be known as Goa trance is The Cosmic Jokers' (a collaboration between Ash Ra Tempel and Klaus Schulze) highly experimental and psychedelic album "Galactic Supermarket", which features occasional 4/4 rhythms intertwined with elements from psychedelic rock, analog synthesizers and occasionally tribal-esque drum patterns.

The introduction of techno; in 1999, a group of unknown artists played exclusively Detroit Techno and Chicago House at the venue known as "Laughing Buddha" (formally known as Klinsons) in Baga, Goa. These artists were the first people to play Techno in Goa on a regular basis. The introduction of mixing on turntables using vinyl was a first for Goa at that time. Until that point "DJs" mainly used D.A.T. and CDs, without beatmatching the mixes. The introduction of beatmatching/mixing and the industrial sound of Detroit techno had a lasting effect on the way Electronic music was played in Goa, and the sound of Goa Trance itself.