I thought it was Music (just) - Idiot!

Wow, I’m a slow learner. I had, until a few days ago, thought this (Anjunadeep Open Air London 2026) was (just about!) music. My ignorance was legion - I didn’t even know it was various forms of House. I do now. But more importantly, I’ve learned what it’s for, what its purpose is, and that understanding is tinged with embarrassment. How have I wandered so carelessly through life for almost seven decades without taking the time to ask why this is so embedded in our culture, and in so many places around the world?

Drugs, that’s what I would once have thought this was all about, a place to take recreational drugs and get ‘out of one’s mind’, or as a young (35-ish) lady said to me last week, to get ‘completely off my tits’. I smiled at the time, believing this was the object … and for some very young people, as she was describing her teenage self, that is the point, a place to explore how far one can go in altering one’s mind.

There were 10,000 people at the event, and of the sample I saw, many were drinking alcohol, and some took what I assume was MDMA, both clearly with the intent to alter their mental state. I joined the throng and, after about 4 hours, felt the need to take my pulse. It was exactly entrained with the beat – 120 bpm. I was on my own at this stage, and many people came up to me and asked if I was having a good time, one man with his arm around my shoulders. Everyone was ‘loved-up’ having a fabulous time. The warm summer evening, clear blue sky and the sunset behind the London City skyline added to the atmosphere, but it was all about the people in their state of expanded consciousness.

At one point I laughed at the glorious naked manipulation; the music slowing, quietening and then the rise of electronic percussion gathering pace until the momentary silence and then the thundering bass that pulses across the field and through everyone.

Writing about it now and remembering the atmosphere is making me quite emotional. I had read about this in ancient cultures; repetitive beats synchronising people emotionally and physically, but I had never done the maths, put 2 + 2 together in our world. Or perhaps I did and got 5 – but it’s not about the drugs for most people - for those that take them, they (alcohol, MDMA, mushrooms) are a shortcut, delivering disinhibition and amplification of the experience. People use them to help shed their outer layers, the carapace they wear to get through life relatively unscathed, and then you see how alike we all are when we smile at one another and float in an ocean of trust.

I suspect that if one removed all the chemical support, the end result would be very similar, because the music does the heavy lifting; humans are in thrall to it. Along with countless others, I cannot resist a ‘tune’ (whatever that is) and love the best of anything from Alice Deejay to Bach, but I am never responding to the intellectual complexity; I am not that deep. For a visceral surrender to the elemental power of music to reveal the best in us, this was hard to beat.