Video World Traveller Adventure " Spiral Tribe "

[Raggamuffin]

Feel like this needs to be dropped here, only 30mins and worth a watch - Desert Storm sound system when they took the sound into the war zone, Sarajevo.



Re. recently, I can only speak for the free parties up i've been to up north. Even still, not in a few years as been held up in the south. Definitely prefer smaller crews and rigs because the bigger ones seen people getting stabbed and rather than peaceful vibes I feel like it's one giant excuse for everyone who's on already on hard drugs to get together and feed their addictions, rather than properly celebrate traveler culture and music.

The scene is nothing like it was according to my mates who are a bit older, ran a lot of squat parties in Leeds back in the day. I love soundsystem and yeah definitely feel like I missed the peak era of the 90s. Got some weird nostalgic craving for a scene I was part of but during the proper days! Saying that I've still been to some wicked parties in the peak district and warehouse raves pre covid!

 

[ali]

There's a pretty good long read in the Graun this weekend about the Criminal Justice Bill protests in the early 90s, touching on Spiral Tribe, Castlemorton and how the whole thing linked up travelers with ravers and laid the groundwork for environmentalist movements that continue today: ‘We went from naive, hippyish protesters to hardcore anarchists’: the criminal justice bill protests, 30 years on - https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/apr/20/we-went-from-naive-hippyish-protesters-to-hardcore-anarchists-the-criminal-justice-bill-protests-30-years-on

Nobody planned for tens of thousands of ravers to descend on Castlemorton Common in the Malvern Hills. A convoy of revellers looking for a site for the Avon free festival had been moved on several times when, on 22 May, West Mercia police allowed them on to the common, having no idea how big the party would get. Spiral Tribe were hiding out in a Welsh forest, “battered and bruised” after a savage police raid on a warehouse rave a month earlier. They got the call and headed east. “All these officers in shirt sleeves were waving and smiling,” Mark Harrison recalls. “We were very confused. It felt like a trap. But in all honesty, I don’t think it was intended as such.”

The unprecedented scale of Castlemorton was largely a media-driven phenomenon. The more outraged attention it received (the Daily Telegraph denounced it as a “hippy siege”), the more people came. At its peak, there were between 20,000 and 40,000 people – one of the UK’s largest free gatherings since the last Stonehenge free festival in 1984. Castlemorton was effectively a self-governing, 24-hour pop-up town, with its own power, lighting, catering and accommodation.