So the ancient Christians held raves! "With its emphasis on nocturnal and often secretive gatherings, speaking in tongues, and dance," it sound like raves to me. At least their drug of choice was cheap :-)

I wonder if they had bands playing at their raves, and if anybody was chewing on the vegetation (only for the Glory of God, of course.) This thing has the potential for great satire.

An interesting idea, but clearly written by an extrovert. From an extroverted point of view, "collective effervescence" makes perfect sense. Everybody gets together and dances the night away, or sings, or whatever. Great fun, of course.

Unless you happen to be an introvert - in which case it sounds utterly miserable. To an introvert, prolonged social contact with large numbers of other people is draining, exhausting, and no fun at all. For introverts like me, happiness is either a solitary pleasure or else enjoyed in the company a small number of carefully selected companions. Some introverts (not me, thankfully) actually get depressed, not happy, as a result of prolonged social contact with other people.

Ehrenreich is certainly correct that festivals and carnivals like the ones she describes have been suppressed for a long time, and it's a great shame. Lets bring them back. And NOT make them mandatory. All you extroverts can go out and have a good time, and let us introverts get back to our books.

it's because it might LEAD to dancing!

(Question: Why don't Baptists make love standing up?)

I thought you wrote poop sociology.

Ha. I read the phrase "historical oppression of collective happiness" to mean something more like "the historical oppressiveness of collective happiness."

From a fellow introvert, good post. But perhaps Ehrenreich would counter that our introvertedness is a byproduct of living within the oppressive society? Perhaps that we are so conscious of the oppression and social regimentation of which she speaks that we see it even where others do not. Thus, the instances of collective joy that we see around us appear to be mere deception, a thin veil hastily thrown over the glaring flaws and inequalities, which we feel far too deeply to forget because of a simple thing like music.

Stubborn Marxist that I am, I can't help but see collective joy (especially the religious kind) as an opiate of the masses. Ehrenreich is right to make the link between capitalism and the suppression of joy. But from what I gather here, she seems to posit some kind of active, external oppression, wheras simply living in an unegalitarian capitalist system with an overbearing work day would be enough to quell most collective joy on its own.

Not sure how I feel about rock music being the revival of Dionysian revels. Most rock concerts, even in the heyday of the 60's (from what I've gathered from footage), still seem to be too regimented, and there is still too much of an audience/performer divide, making it a spectacle rather than an immersive experience. I think a case can be made for the original hardcore punk movement of the 80's, where the bands often played on the floor in the middle of the crowd, and vocals were yelled so that the audience could yell along, all of which minimized the difference and distance between performer and spectator. Then again, would it be accurate to describe the feeling of those audiences as 'joy'? The author is right to point out that ravers probably come the closest to approximating that ideal.

"fails to take note of post-rock musical forms such as trance and house, which perhaps conform more readily to her analysis than, say, the music of the Grateful Dead"

More than the music of the Grateful Dead? Someone has obviously never been to a Dead show.

Dude: let me fill you in on what you missed while you were in Bible School. The Dead's music and the dancing at their shows were paradigm examples of Dionysian revelry and ecstatic dancing. Take my word for it. You've never seen anything like it.

So the kids they dance

they shake their bones

And the politicians throwing stones

Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down

Ashes, ashes all fall down

Dear Mr. Amidon,

You fuckedup the punchline.

"Answer: Because people might think they're dancing."

The dang thing's supposed to be "Because it might lead to dancing."

Quite Advisedly yours,

David Terry (Episcopalian; B.A. the University of the South, 1982)

I was watching Frank Zappa on YouTube the other day (appearance on Dick Cavett's show, 1980) and was struck by his statement that the only religion he believes in is music. "It's the only religion that delivers the goods."

Hooray for Barbara Ehrenreich! What a curious mind she has, one minute dissecting Wal-Mart, the next celebrating celebration!

Surely, the African musical sensibility - that porous boundary between performers and audience - must be what make blues, jazz, gospel, and rock so captivating to the uptight European American. Good book touching on this: Music, Society, Education, by Christopher Small.

This article and some of the discussion I find thought-provoking, certainly the link to popular and party music today, which as a composer, I find interesting to think about.

One note on raves though: I'm not sure they're all that collective in a way. Yes, a whole bunch of people comes together and has fun. Yes, it's ecstatic or at least should be. However, I've also found it rather individualistic. The electronic music played at high levels lock everybody up in a very small acoustic space. The noise is the walls around you. Acoustically, you can't be together with somebody further than two feet away. And the acoustic experience, the singing, doesn't contribute anything - you're up against a very powerful machine there. Visually, it's of course somewhat better.

I didn't do too much going to raves, but I do remember also speaking to people who did, some of whom would make the high spiritual claims that the article here seems to imply; some of whom, however, feeling that they were completely drained by this lifestyle into depression - those people felt raving was all about machine life and wasn't very human at all.