Bringing Flowers to a Rave

“Well, this wall was built years ago. To stop the Protestants on this side fighting with the Catholics on the other. It's there 24 hours a day; the thing is that it divides the two communities. But every Saturday night hundreds of people go out downtown, just go out clubbin'. Forget about the divides between each other”.

This is the opening to Parful by N***hern Irish rap group Kneecap, a Jetron Ticket staff favourite and poignant intro to the history of raves.

Genesis P-Orridge is often credited with first using the word “rave” to describe the acid house parties that swept the UK during the Second Summer of Love. (He supposedly dropped the term during a now-lost TV interview from 1989.) But rave culture had existed for years before it reached Manchester, London, New York, or even Ibiza. (Newell-Hansen, 2017).

“House music is HARD disco. It goes BOOM BOOM BOOM with little variation, subtlety, melody, instrumentation.” SPIN, 1986.

It began with Chicago DJs Jesse Saunders and Frankie Knuckles, and a Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer. “They worship Knuckles as the man who invented house music,” notes the reporter, of the mainly black, gay crowds who jacked their bodies to Knuckles’s mixes in the second half of the 80s. “House is about the loss of decorum and control. From sexual extravagance to dance-floor excess, everything is geared towards losing it,” concluded SPIN.

In 1988, the fanzine Boy’s Own organized the first outdoor rave in the UK. Due to reports of wild drug use and “general debauchery,” raves unleashed a national moral panic. Due to bad press, many reportedly drug-related accidents, and increasing police enforcement, raves went back underground.

• Raves in Nigeria and the Alté community

The underground nature of raves has spread far beyond the UK, down to Nigeria. You may have heard of or been to your first underground rave between the years of 2023 and 2024, but we can assure you, raves had existed long before then in the Mid-2010s. They took a different form then.

Raves were not always the extravagant events we see now with thousands of people in attendance, sponsored by major mainstream brands. They were the underground house parties that circulated through word-of-mouth and secret flyers on the web. Who were the people at these raves, you may ask? In comes the Alté community, the vibrant youth culture built on creative expression.

The role that the Alté community has played in the emergence of raves in Nigeria cannot be disregarded. Inspiring it with their non-conformist style, musical fluidity, and communal expression, the rave scene has spread so far that it inches closer to mainstream by the day.

• The Gentrification of Raves in Lagos

The mainstream impact of raves in Lagos and other states has been discussed over and over since their popularity began to rise. Is this a good thing? Does popularity mean greater acceptance of the community and all it stands for? Does it mean fewer opportunities to experience the community at its core? Should raves be primarily characterized by their covert nature?

Obviously, here at Jetron Ticket, we’re a little biased. More raves, bigger raves, it’s all good news for us, but we’re not talking about us; we’re talking about you - the partygoers, the ravers, the attendees. What effect has it had on the consumers?

Abike LOVES to rave. She has been raving since they were just a couple of house music enthusiasts bumping their heads in small rooms. Now she gets to witness something she loves take a different shape. She mentions a rave to a friend, and they know about it before she has finished her sentence. She gets in her Uber on her way to a rave, and the driver doesn’t give her “over-the-top” dressing a once-over; she even notices some house hits coming from his speakers. Things feel pretty good for Abike; she feels at home on her way to her sanctuary.

As good as this feels, Abike is not able to ignore the other ways her raving experience has changed. She gets to a rave, and the ticket price for that one rave could have covered about five back when raves were smaller. She is not able to consume as much as she’d like because the prices of everything else have increased too. As if that wasn’t enough, she’s dancing, trying to enjoy her already somewhat ruined time, and she notices people staring at her, fewer people dancing, more people who don’t embody the image she has had in the rave scene for the longest. It’s like she can hear her people, but she can’t see them.

This is an experience that many ravers can relate to: inflated prices, a saturated space, and a discomfort with how quickly the rave scene is changing as it inches closer and closer to mainstream space.

• House music and Punk beliefs

Punk at its core is anti-establishment, countercultural, and anti-bigotry. So is being alternative. Alté, formulated as a ‘subculture’ from Nigeria, is none of those things. The movement…is classist, misogynistic and queer-phobic. [Allegedly] Its central figures are children of wealthy Nigerians, whose parents get their money through dubious means (politics), and who control a large swathe of the country’s resources. Wealth and exclusivity are prominent hallmarks of the movement, alongside a penchant for respectability politics and a conformist attitude towards authority. They are the authority.

It is gross capitalism/conspicious consumption masquerading as rebellion; it is a hijacking of anti-establishment aesthetics that keeps the marginalised feeling indebted to their own oppressors. According to this movement, to rebel isn’t to challenge dominant systems of oppression; to rebel means to uncritically be a part of the in-group and about one’s ability to mindlessly consume.

Punk is politically driven and seeks to abolish the constraints and homogeneity found in dominant, mainstream culture. Punk’s refusal to bend a knee to the priorities of the mainstream isn’t reactionary; it’s based on a political philosophy that engages mainstream tendencies as highly patriarchal…and violent towards communities who don’t fit those rigid boundaries. It is communal, it is politically engaged, it favors the majority over the elite, it centres the marginalised and is deeply committed to a just world/social justice.

Talent and creativity that engages radical politics comes not from wealthy Nigerians but from the most marginalised. People whose identities have been sidelined by those hijacking alternative aesthetics to further their brands. (Olatunde Alara, 2026)

• Giving the LGBT community their flowers

Earlier we mentioned how big a role the Alté community played in the discovery of raves in Nigeria. We cannot speak on the community without paying homage to the queer individuals that not only occupy a huge part of it, but have influenced its aesthetics and style. Queer people are the originators of raves, finding communal spaces to express joy and freedom in the face of oppression; they helped build the underground dance spaces that birthed electronic music. The rise of House Music was a direct response to the racist and homophobic backlash against disco. It is constantly represented in queer media and culture, even down to queer pop artists that infuse its elements in their music.

The LGBT community is the one who deserves all the flowers; their influence must never be denied or misrepresented.

• Rave dos and don’ts

Now that we know what raves are about and who to give their flowers to for their emergence and expansion, here are a couple of rave dos and don’ts:

1. Do let loose of your inhibitions and have fun. Feel the rain on your skin if you will *wink wink*
2. Don’t stare at other people letting go of THEIR inhibitions because of your inability to release yours.
3. Do give yourself grace and don’t pressure yourself into a particular experience.
4. Don’t wear uncomfortable shoes; raves do not do “chairs”.
5. Do ask for consent before dancing with or touching anyone.
6. Most of all, Don’t forget the history and real mothers of the rave lore.

We’ll treat you to some recommendations of raves to attend to test your new rave guidelines; just head over to the Jetron Ticket Mobile App, it’s full of it!