Stop Calling Everything“RAVE”!
words by Fofi Tsesmeli
Why? Because the word actually stands for something important in the history of electronic music, which is heavily shaped by cultural, political, and historical gravity.
Photo by Murilo Bahia
“Rave” has a very specific history, and we distort it when we use it for everything. Raves were created in the late ’80s as a counterculture outside the club industry, rooted in early acid house, breakbeat, techno, and hardcore. They were mostly illegal, DIY gatherings against the establishment, often fueled by political resistance (UK Criminal Justice Act, free party movement). When you call every party, warehouse event, or festival a “rave,” you flatten and warp history. Not every rock event is “punk,” right?
Rave is not a music genre. Genres have distinct musical characteristics. At a rave, you could hear acid house, techno, trance, jungle, gabber, breakbeat hardcore, drum & bass, free tekno, proto-Goa, early house, even ambient. When the British press used “rave music” in the late ’80s, they weren’t naming a genre — they meant any music played at raves. Rave is the container, not the content.
Not all electronic music events share the same politics or purpose. A curated night at a club, a warehouse party, a free party at an abandoned factory, a commercial EDM festival, a trance open-air — these are not interchangeable. Calling all of them “raves” erases the communities and cultural codes that make each of them distinct.
Precise language helps us understand and celebrate the diversity of the scene. Techno culture is not equivalent to rave culture. The same goes for house music culture, experimental club scenes, queer warehouse parties, or hardstyle festivals. These are different worlds with different values, sonic identities, communities, relationships to money, politics, space, safety, and identity.
By calling everything a “rave,” you harm the scenes that still run raves. When the mainstream uses the word for corporate festivals, the true underground loses visibility, and the culture loses its language. Marketing adopts the word to imply “underground credibility” and create FOMO for commercial events. (Ticket prices speak for themselves.)
Even now, the word “rave” reinforces media sensationalism. Mainstream outlets still use it to demonize electronic music and associate it with drug panic, moral judgment, “youth gone wild,” and criminal behavior. It’s time to stop feeding that bias.
“Language is a Virus,” as William S. Burroughs said — and Laurie Anderson echoed through her work. Language shapes how culture is remembered and recognized. By preserving the importance of the word “rave,” we preserve the political context, the communities, and the artistic movements that created it. In the long run, restoring the word gives future generations a platform for free expression, multiplicity, and resistance.
