On Remix Culture: Raving About House Music

Coachella 2024: My ribcage is crushed between a barricade and the crowd behind me, there is no relief from the 100 degree desert heat and I’m running purely on adrenaline and three hours of sleep. I cannot relate to the mob of EDM fanatics behind me — at least, that’s what I thought until the house act steps onstage. And although I went to the festival for Tyler, the Creator, it was John Summit and Dom Dolla’s collaborative set, elusively named Everything Always, that convinced me to stay. I have always found something enigmatic about house music’s allure. Until the months leading up to Coachella, I had sworn off the genre in detest of its repetition.

SWAN | Woodstock Idealism in Coachella

Last semester, I wrote an essay about American consumer culture as it arose from 1960s New Left activism. It began like this:
In the summer of 1999, Mark Puma, 28, a native of upstate New York, would be able to experience the cultural phenomenon that had occurred three decades prior and only a few short years before his birth. “Woodstock ’99,” as it was referred to, was expected to be a close emulation of “Woodstock ’69,” perhaps the only discrepancy being a different location – Rome, New York, as opposed to Bethel, New York. On the surface, Woodstock ’99′ really did appear to match the characteristics of its predecessor. A mix of contemporary rock music was being played for a large body of nude and enthusiastic fans, all synthesizing under the influence of marijuana and psychedelic substances.