Carnivalesque Dimension of Electronic Dance Music in Festivals

When we analyze the development of electronic dance music (EDM), which comes from an underground culture, we can say that it has become mainstream in recent years owing to festivals. Despite its late recognition in Turkey, EDM has managed to constitute an active audience over time through Disc Jockeys and producers. It entered our country in the 1990s via radio broadcasts, and has grown and developed through the increasing number of parties and festivals in recent years. In this paper, in the fieldwork carried out in electronic dance music festivals, the explicandum and experiences of the audience and the data obtained on the phenomenon of festival and DJing will be explained within the framework of the concept of carnivalesque. Ethnographic data were obtained from EDM festivals held in İzmir and İstanbul through observation, participant observation and interview. Carnivals, from ancient times to the present day, go beyond being simple entertainment celebrations and symbolize a more collective situation. Medieval carnival understanding, which Bahtin analyzed in his Rebelais and His World, has many aspects similar to today's EDM festivals. Festivals can be considered as pre-modern carnivals as a performance space and counterculture which enables the audience to escape from social life. In this paper, some differences along with the situations in which carnivalesque behavior such as laughing and freedom gain visibility are discussed. The traces of the carnivals which are a medieval tradition, also seen formally in today's EDM festivals. Despite the political and economic effects, these festivals maintain a counterculture and an upside-down state of world.