South America Uncovered: Part 2

South America Uncovered: Part 2

27 August, 2007 | 1.04PM

• Section: Music News
• Written by: Felipe Javier

In part two of our South America Uncovered series, we wanted to focus on the psy trance scene, which is one of the region’s most popular genres of electronic music. Just like the South American people, psy trance is full of neon colours, crazy rhythms, and has a beautiful nature and spirit. 

Our story begins in the warm country of Brazil, home to soccer, paradise beaches and of course, lots of music and beautiful women.

Now Brazil is also the psy trance capital of South America, and is considered one of the world’s hot spots of electronic music.

This is due to the sound’s popularity, its large scale parties and the high level of coverage that the psy trance scene receives.

Psy trance has expanded throughout Brazil and all the major cities contribute on some level - Sao Paulo, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia all boast happening trance parties.

There are also lots of festivals and events including the famous Earthdance, XXXperience, Universo Paralello, Tribe, Solaris, Tranceformation, Trancendance, Green Rabbit, Fora do Tempo, Cachoeira Alta and many others.

The Experience

In our search to uncover the truth about the South American psy trance scene we spoke to one its main protagonists – the great DJ Feio, who has over 10 years of experience DJing and has played in a lot of places including Japan, Morocco, Israel, Germany and New York.

Feio started out as a surfer, ¨from the waves of the sea, to the waves of music,¨ he explains poignantly.

He started out as one of the main minds behind the prestigious event XXXPerience festival along with Rica Amaral, another big psy trance artist from Brazil.

Feio has a quite critical view about the Brazilian psy trance movement.

¨I think that psy trance is more mainstream in Brazil than in other countries, but the people still have a lot to learn about the music,” he says.

“Psy trance as a lifestyle culture is still relatively new here.

“It’s fashionable at the moment to go to psy parties on the weekends because psy trance music is positive and full of energy, just like the Brazilian people.

“I just hope that in the future, people will also understand the deeper meaning behind psy trance music - that will make the Brazilian scene even stronger.

¨We also need more recognition from the government and the world about the people that put on these types of parties.

“I hope the new generation will bring new views, new styles and different ideas to psy trance that include the protection of ecology, conscience, peace, love, union and respect,” says Feio.

When Beatportal asks Feio to name some of his favourite psy trance DJs and producers he tells us that the Sao Paulo scene is full of great artists like ¨Rica, Audio X, Mad Hatters, Vibra, 2HI, Corejoy, Wrecked Machines, Velcro, Mack, Noronha, Teko, and Marcelo Vor.”

The New Talent

There is a lot of new talent emerging in the psy trance scene.

Rosa Ventura is one such up and coming DJ and is based in Sao Paulo.

She represents the Green Rabbit Festival and Maia Records in Mexico and her vision for psy trance in South America is a pervasive one.

¨Psy trance is really big here in Brazil and this naturally means that we get big crowds at parties, but not all states in South America participate in the movement,¨ she says.

¨Outside of Brazil I can feel a slow but steady growth and this is a good thing.

“As well as Brazil, Mexico has too popularized psy trance, but this has also brought problems such as over saturation,¨ says Rosa.

The good news is that there’s lots of interesting record labels hailing from the continent currently including “Vagalume Records, Tropical Beats and Wajang Records are great and I’m especially proud to talk about Wired Music [check out Wired’s music in the player below] and Carambola Records, the ones that currently have the biggest activities in terms of licensing and new releases,¨ she says, clearly empowered by the enthusiasm of the Brazilian psy trance society.

Indian Soul

Argentinean DJ Moksha, or Dhyan Moksha, knows a lot about the Indian ideals behind psy trance culture having lived in India.

He discovered its positive spirituality after learning Kundalini meditation at the Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune, which is one of the largest spiritual growth centres in the world with over 200,000 visitors annually.

Dhyan Moksha’s name evens has a spiritual meaning – liberation through meditation.

He’s very positive about psy trance.

“I think here in South America we have a great scene, especially in Brazil, which is one of the hot spots of the world for electronic music.

“Mexico is very good too, especially for progressive music.

“After that I’d say that Chile and Argentina have a very strong scene because there’s a lot of people there who went to India and had the unique experience of discovering the music and the dance there.

“You can smell if a person has visited India, you can see it from the way they move, it’s really something very special,” says Moskha.

Moskha has also played at psy trance events in China, an emerging psy trance hotspot.

The end of the World

Ovnimoon from Chile has 10 years of experience dedicated to psy trance, and has released lots of compilations and two artist albums, ‘Camanchaca’ and the recent hit ‘The Human Spirit’.

‘The Human Spirit’ is one of the most rated albums of the year.

“Top Chilean psy trance producers include Psypsic Jicuri, Ital and Zybex.

“The scene here is growing very fast, but that can sometimes mean a double-edged sword,” says Ovnimoon.

“For now though it’s good, there are a lot of new people and there’s still a lot of that Goa trance feeling in the ambience.”

About electronic music in general Ovnimoon tells us that in Brazil it’s crazy.

“There are lots of festival and parties and some of them are as big as rock concerts.

“Mexico has an excellent scene, in Colombia the scene is growing a lot and it’s the same in Argentina.

“The scene is getting better everyday and artists are getting more and more attention.”

Ovnimoon too is a very spiritual man and has a message for the people.

“We have to rethink the way that we are making in music, we need more magic, less commercial stuff, and we need to keep the spirit of peace, love, spiritual health and happiness.

“We have to take care what we have, our nature, and we have to remember that as someone once said about Chile and South America ‘we live at the end of the world, but we live in peace’.

“We have to focus on the real human spirit, not on the ego.”

Latin Spirit

There’s so much happening in South America in terms of electronic music, and there’s so many different scenes.

Some of the biggest festivals take place in Brazil, which also has great clubs.

Argentina hosts very professional events and many excellent producers hail from Chile.

Bolivia too is growing fast and the country has released some great works like the ‘Andes Trip’ album.

Mexico is home to some great producers and Iboga Records, who are about to launch a new compilation called ‘Switch’ which features some of their best artists.

But even though the scenes at first glance seem different, they all share the same South American spirit, joy for life, and happiness and love for music.

Maybe South America doesn’t have the same level of resources that Europe or North America has, but through the spirit of trance, love, respect, art, music and truly unbridled passion, all people who love electronic music around the world should be aware of what the Latin continent can offer.

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