EDC Has Pride, and That’s Nothing New

It’s hard to get 80,000 people to do anything all at once, especially to STFU. That is, however, exactly what happened at kineticFIELD on the first night of EDC Las Vegas 2016.

Upon the request of DJ and L.A. radio host Jason Bentley, tens of thousands of people—who had seconds before been screaming at high decibel levels to Jauz’s similarly high-decibel set—went into relative silence to commemorate the victims of the recent Orlando shooting. It was perhaps the quietest moment in the history of EDC.

“It was a powerful scene to witness,” Bentley wrote on his Facebook page, “as this massive sea of ravers fell silent all at once and we just hovered in a thoughtful space.”

The mass shooting—the deadliest in United States history—had happened only days earlier at a gay nightclub in Florida. The incident claimed 49 lives, with 53 injured. Some of the victims’ families hadn’t even known their loved ones were gay.

Mass shootings are an ongoing national crisis, and this one hit especially close to home for Headliners, as it specifically targeted the LGBTQ community. This demographic has been part of the rave scene’s DNA since the culture and the music were created—largely by gay men, and especially gay African-American men—at parties in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and beyond in the 1980s and ‘90s. In short, the world of dance music as we know it would not exist without the LGBTQ community.

While the events of Orlando are awful beyond words, the EDC crowd’s response to the situation highlighted that modern dance festival culture is one in which diversity, tolerance, and respect are as foundational as a 4/4 beat. While tremendously scary things such as this happen in other parts of society, EDC remains a place for people to express themselves with a freedom that applies to everyone in attendance.

It was arguably because of Orlando that the Pride presence at EDC was stronger than ever before. In the crowd, hundreds of rainbow-colored flags waved, while Headliners roamed the festival with rainbows painted on their faces, emblazoned on their shirts, and spray-painted into their hair. In the crowd, a woman sported 49 pieces of kandi, each bearing the name of a victim of the Orlando shooting.

In the festival’s wedding chapel, a number of same-sex couples were married, many in front of their rave families, almost exactly a year after same-sex marriage was legalized across the United States. Men held hands with other men. Women held hands with other women. Men held hands with women. Women held hands with men dressed as women. In none of these scenarios did anyone look twice, exemplifying the rave world’s longstanding reputation as a safe space for people of all kinds.

The point here is not to pat ourselves on the back and say that EDC is “accepting” of the LGBTQ community. Rather, it’s that the EDC and LGBTQ communities are the same thing. In the festival space, no one is considered “the other. ” The two cultures have always been intrinsically linked, and the mutual acceptance displayed at EDC is something that can and should give everyone in attendance a little bit of hope during moments when the world feels dark.

This is not to say that everyone at EDC is perfectly accepting. Still, it’s highly likely that anyone who comes to the festival leaves with their mind a bit more expanded. If anyone—gay, straight, bi, trans, queer or questioning—came to the festival and felt more understood, more understanding, and more optimistic about the world at large, well, that’s kind of the point. These festivals are places at which to make strides in our own personal pursuits of pleasure, but they also exist to expose us to new ideas, lifestyles, and ways of being. In the shadow of Orlando, the culture of EDC creates hope.

The opportunity available to each of us is to display the same level of tolerance and openness in our daily lives as so many of us exhibit at festivals. If we all keep showing up each day in the same way so many did in Vegas, there will hopefully never again be the need for a moment of silence at EDC or any other festival.