Charles de Ledesma
Until recently it was hard to glean much information about the global party scene. Now the seismic growth of dance music,aided by the internet and abetted by cheap flights, has made access to music events across the globe far easier. The key party season is just beginning, running through to March. The best-known locations - apart from the summer Mediterranean hotspots of Ibiza and Ayia Napa - are Koh Phangan in Thailand and Goa in India. These are still strong, but the freshest energy can be found sprinkled around Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as well as in the Latin countries of Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica. A recent development has seen world music hop on the back of this party circuit. In Morocco, for example, the 2001 New Year's Eve festival in the Atlas mountains pairs Gnawa drummers - traditional ritual percussionists - with trance and techno of the sort that one can hear the world over. As is customary with the Berbers, mint tea will be served all night.
Of course, there is a downside to global party-hopping. Facilities tend to be basic - most sites are loaded with tents and hammocks competing for the shade. And you can get bored of eating felafel. So why bother? Because there's simply nothing to compare with dancing under the stars, followed by the sight of the sun rising to reveal yet another beautiful day in stunning scenery.
INDIA
Despite a clampdown, including a ban on loud music after 10pm, the once celebrated Goa scene has not hung up its chillum quite yet. Small parties regularly occur at Vagator's hill top Nine Bar (5pm- 9pm daily) with locals and guest DJs turning up the beats through the evening. The party continues inland at North Anjuna's Primrose cafe (10pm-3am, daily) which serves excellent food. Most party-seekers will be taking the six-hour bus journey from Goa's capital, Panjim, south to Gokarna, just inside Karnataka state. During March's seven-day Hindu festival Shivaratra - the dark night of Shiva - thousands of pilgrims will descend on the small seaside town. Earlier this year three excellent parties took place on Om beach, 40 minutes' walk from
town. The beach bar there has ice-cold beer and Thai food. Also accessible from Goa - a 10-hour bus ride - is the ancient town of Hampi. Parties occasionally happen here against the stunning backdrop of 16th-century ruins. Information is hard to come by but try Tranceculture and Chaishop
AUSTRALIA
Three areas in Australia are preparing for serious party action in the coming months: Byron Bay in northern New South Wales, around Sydney and around Melbourne in Victoria state.
Byron's regular full-moon parties take place in the forests or on the hills overlooking the stunning coast, while the annual Electronic Music & Arts Festival - which has just finished - brings together music and arts at the Red Devils' rugby-league ground in town. Close to Sydney, January's annual Summer Dreaming Festival is going ahead in picturesque Glenworth Valley one hour north of the city. This is one of the world's top trance events with DJ Tsuyoshi Suzuki and local act Grey Area. Green Ant and Earthcore are pushing the Melbourne region into the lead this season. Earthcore's five-day festival over this New Year's Eve is situated in an extinct volcano in the Grampians region, and Green Ant's Australia Day Long Weekend festival at the end of January adjacent to national forest at Beaufort, near Ballarat, two hours from Melbourne. For information, visit raves.com.au
SOUTH AFRICA
Cape Town has rapidly become the southern hemisphere's capital for outdoor party action, even eclipsing Australia. Earlier this year the two main organisations, Vortex (tel: 00 27 21 531 2173) and Alien Safari used impressive locations including an island on a lake, a network of apple orchards and a park beside a shallow river, all within easy reach of the city. Most events are over-nighters with local DJs and electronic tribal bands like Nagal warming up for guest DJs. Food, beer and tea are plentiful and there are tents if needed. These parties are also breaking down South Africa's still persistent racial divide - in March 5,000 people went to a Vortex party, including large groups of blacks and coloureds from the Cape Flats township. You can rely on there being an outdoor event almost every weekend right up until April, culminating in 2001 with Alien Safari's two-week party safari to Zambia, where a 10-day event is planned over June's total eclipse.
BRAZIL
April's Celebra Brasil festival on the edge of the Mata Atlantica (coastal forest), two hours up the coast from Sao Paulo, was the first extended outdoor dance-music event in Brazil. Organiser Milton Fukui from Daime Tribe, who does a weekly club night in Sao Paulo, wants to take party- goers on a hike next year deeper into the jungle (RAVE ON). The possibilities are limitless in this massive country but, so far, events have tended to hug the coast. North of Rio de Janeiro, in the south of the state of Bahia, lies a little seaside town, Trancoso, where bars and cafes play trance and chillout music, and small weekend parties take place. Head on up the coast and you'll get to the former Brazilian capital,
Salvador. January sees Catholic and Candomble festivals where percussive Batacuda music plays. In March there's carnival when bloco-afro and samba electrify the atmosphere day and night.
MEXICO
Luis Delgado, who runs the Mexican City shop Sound Sorcery , says that trance parties regularly take place in spectacular outdoor locations, including Ajusco and the lush Desierto De Los Leones in the mountains, 30 minutes' drive from the city, and Acolman, near the pyramids of Tehotihuacan, to pick up on "the energy of past cultures".
But Mexico's best-kept secret is the beach town of Playa del Carmen in Yucatan, about two hours by bus from the tourist resort of Cancun. There are two bar/clubs, The Espiral and the Zulu Lounge, which look out at the coast; there's always music there but the full moon usually provides an excuse for a full-on party with most taking place in the jungle. Expect Ibiza-style house music as well as trance.
MOROCCO
La Theiere Electrik (Tea Productions) in Casablanca has accomplished something difficult in a strict Islamic country: it has kept afloat a weekly club night, The Vertigo, at 110 rue Chaouia, playing house and techno. Promoter Saad expects outdoor events to mushroom after the electronic festival playing in Ouarzazate (from 30 December to 2 January) when Gnawa trance dancers and drummers, the Blue People of the Sahara and the Dekka of Marrakesh will mix with modern electronica DJs. Another hotspot is the beach town of Essaouira, where the cafe Chez Moustapha plays reggae and Dar Loubane restaurant has resident Gnawa musicians. For details about June's Gnawa festival in Essaouira, July's festival of sacred music in Fez , and June's arts festival in Marrakesh, visit the sites.
Copyright 2000 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
TRANCOSO
It’s worth arriving in Trancoso, a chic little town on the north-east Brazilian coast about 300 miles south of Salvador, at night-time. A preservation order means the Quadrado, the broad village green that makes up the town’s historic centre, has almost no outdoor electric light. Instead, after sunset, the boutique bars, shops and restaurants that now occupy most of the one-storey artisans’ houses on either side of the grass put out gently flickering coloured candles on their tables and window sills, giving the place a wonderfully fairy-tale feel. Above you a carpet of stars shines down and, perched on top of the cliffs near to where the Portuguese first landed in Brazil 500 years ago, a simple, slightly dilapidated church basks, with just the slightest ecclesiastical aloofness, in its (permitted) electric floodlighting. Starting at the bottom of the cliff, the sand stretches for hundreds of kilometres in either direction and, however busy the town seems to be, you can pretty soon find a quiet spot to yourself. Trancoso is a small historic, Indian village with a serene atmosphere, nice restaurants, shops and lounge bars. It is mentioned as a transcendant place and compared with Ibiza, Goa and Bali. The houses on the Quadrado have, as much as possible, been kept in their original form. With so much outdoor beauty, it's not surprising that in Trancoso you spend very little time indoors ... even when you are indoors.
Softly, softly under a Brazilian sky. By David Baker. Published: November 25 2005, Financial Times.
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