| December 10,2002 Hi Francine, I'm Jessica's boyfriend from France, my name's Cyrille. Jessica told me about you liking trance and everything, and that you're currently doing a research paper on trance and its origins, culture etc...Since I'm really into it, I thought that it'd be a good idea to email you :) So where to begin..mhh..well it's origins I guess. Btw, I'm no expert at all, but well...anyway :) I started listening to Trance in 1995 when I was 14. I think Trance really started to take off in either 1992 or 1993, primarily in Germany (you must feel proud of that, hehe), with stuff from RMB I think and even Paul van Dyk was already around back then. It became bigger and bigger pretty quickly, because it was the most accessible electronic music genre to people not familiar with any type of electronic music, because of it's rather friendly and uplifting melodies, happy atmosphere and everything else. At the same time, another sub-genre of Trance emerged from India:Goa, what would later come to be known as Goa Trance or Psychedelic Trance. This genre was much faster than "regular" trance, very repetitive, and was often associated with all kinds of heavy drugs, because psy trance is based on old shammanistic stuff I think, music people used to dance to to enter a psychedelic state of trance ...so psy trance was the kind of electronic adaptation of it. Psy trance became pretty popular, and reached its popularity peak in 1995 and 1996, especially in the UK and Israel, even France.Israel has and still has a big trance scene, one of the most famous artists there is Astral Projection. Trance kept spreading across the globe, invading all Euro countries like the UK, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Scandinavian countries and mostly Northern Europe. And then it came to Holland in 1997 with DJ Tiesto, one of the most famous trance DJs of all time (along with PvD of course !). Holland, was basically very much into hardcore techno (gabber) from 1992 to 1997, but it progressively faded away and was replaced by trance. You need to know that Holland is the world's leading country for electronic music in the world, this is where they have the biggest parties of the world, and an incredible scene and clubbers...with only 16 million inhabitants ! Tiesto got almost everyone in Holland excited about trance, and that's how he became famous, and that's about when Trance reached it's greastest climax, in 1998, 1999 and 2000. To me, this is when the best tracks were produced, when the scene was the awesomest, the producers were the most talented and efficient etc... We shouldn't forget about the role of Belgium either though, with the Bonzai trance label, created in 1992, that started off as techno and hardtrance, but grew trancier and trancier, and contributed a lot to the trance scene especially for the past two years. Trance is now present in most European countries and is conquering the world. The #1 ruling scene is still Holland, with DJs like Armin van Buuren (who often plays in the US), Johan Gielen, Tiesto, Ferry Corsten..., with huge events gathering over 40 000 people for a whole night, the most famous raves are Trance Energy (held twice a year, I went there 3 times, hehe), Sensation (held in July in the Amsterdam Arena, in a big-ass soccer stadium !), Mysteryland (during the summer) and Innercity (in December). #2 is Germany, with very big DJs Paul van Dyk, Dumonde, Blank & Jones, Kai Tracid...major events are The Love Parade of course (over a million people !), held each year in July, Mayday (a party event created in 1991, I think the first big rave in Europe), RosenMontagsrave (February) etc... After that the UK although in the #3 position is still very big, with crazy raves as well, like the big Gatecrasher parties, really insane stuff..(wish I could go there someday, hehe, but traveling to the UK is expensive !). Big DJs there are Judge Jules, Sasha, Pete Tong, BT.... And well then there are so many others like Belgium (with Push, Airwave, Yves Deruyter), Switzerland (DJ Energy), Italy with Mauro Picotto (very big and well respected intl DJ ! played in Chicago a couple of weeks ago) and Mario Piu, Spain with the crazy summer parties in Ibiza, Scandinavian countries, Israel, but also Greece, more and more Eastern European countries (Poland, Russia, Romania, Austria...). Much further away (from Europe) countries are Australia and Japan, where many European DJs are booked, some other Southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea) I can mention some other ones as well that we wouldn't normally think about, like South Africa, some South-American ones like Brazil and Argentina, Panama has a very big scene as well, even Iceland is getting into it ! This is simply a worldwide thing, and this is obviously meant to be, music is meant to unite people, a good example is Israel and a couple of years ago ex-Yugoslavia, where techno tribes used to play there to comfort and make people happy.. The last countries that have hopped onto the bandwagon are the US and Canada :) I'm glad it's finally starting to pick up really well there, more and more European DJs play trance there, being that it was totally unknown until maybe 2 years ago. Toronto has the biggest trance scene is North America with its Winter Music Festival (forgot the exact name). 2nd hottest spot is South-Florida, and then probably NYC, LA and the whole Midwest is getting into it (Illinois and Michigan). Well I guess that's it about how trance spread across the world. Now I need to tell you more about the different trance sub-genres. I already told you about psy trance, and a bit about uplifting and epic trance. Uplifting and epic trance were at their peak in 98/99/'00 as I said, but is now fading away, slowing getting replaced by what's called Progressive trance, which is basically a more minimalistic kind of trance, usually slower and less melodic, but it's has its own charm as well, this is what people need to adapt to these days, because it's becoming the next big thing :) There's also hardtrance, created a long time ago as well, and probably in Germany again. Hardtrance is, as its name says, a harder sub-genre, faster with more pounding beats, awesome stuff to dance to in a rave for example :) Whereas Progressive stuff is meant for clubs mainly. Mhh...well I guess this is enough for now, I'm having trouble staying concentrated writing this stuff because it's 3.10am in France right now, hehe. Anyway, just wanted to tell you that I'm also a DJ, well, only bedroom DJ I'd say, I play at some parties from time to time, but mainly for my friends and online as well through an online radio etc. I've recorded quite a few mixes now, so if you ever want me to send you some stuff , it's no problem at all ! As well as the latest stuff and everything, I'd be glad to share what I have with you :) Alright, hope that all what I write was useful to you ! Feel free to ask me some more questions for your research paper. Hope to hear you from soon Francine ! Have a nice week Cyrille |