(MENAFN- The Conversation) In 1991, just before my 16th birthday, I took an unexpected foray into rave culture. This went against my upbringing in a Ghanaian household and community, where there was emphasis on“good behaviour”, educational excellence, and being a“good Ghanaian kid”. There was great fear that exposure to other external influences, including popular culture that didn't reflect our heritage would ruin us.

Naturally, growing up here in the UK meant that we were exposed to different youth cultures, which greatly concerned our elders. Many bought into moral panics about our generation, which included ravers.

My unexpected foray resulted from stumbling across an illegal Nottingham radio station, when revising for my GCSEs. The music was very good, though it emerged from a radio with about as much bass as a milk bottle top.

Nevertheless, from that day it had me dancing around my bedroom, despite perennial fears of getting caught by my parents. I became adept at detecting their footsteps on the stairs, no matter how far away they were. The second I heard them, off went the music, and back to“studying” I went.

The author all dressed up for her rave nostalgia birthday. Author provided (no reuse)

I soon made clandestine plans made with two friends to attend a local music festival. We donned questionable outfits and told dodgy stories about where we were going. Somehow, we got away with everything.

The rave scene was a huge moment for gen-Xers like me, coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s. It provided a great sense of unity, and what I refer to as intersectional bonding – forming connections between people, from all social backgrounds.

Many people thought that only gen-X attended those raves. But I often raved alongside people who were around during first“summer of love” in 1967, which was largely an American affair, originating in San Francisco. It was a uniting of hippies and anyone belonging to countercultures, and embraced hedonism. It was also a protest against the Vietnam war.

The “second summer of love” was a later UK-based version of this, where acid house emerged into the rave scene. Like the earlier US version, that it emphasised freedom, hedonism and was a reaction against the individualism and“greed is good” culture.

Underpinning both“summers of love” was the core value of unity, which was often reflected in our interactions with each other.

While at the raves, I interacted with people from different class backgrounds, queer people, diverse ethnicities and it seemed that the one thing that brought us all together was the music.

Many ravers were united in some form of resistance. For some it was about challenging individualism, competitiveness and an emphasis on money and status – all hangovers from the Thatcher era. Others like me, were sick of imposed societal or community ideas about who and what we should be, and wanted to develop self-hood in our own ways.

The author sporting rave gear for a nostalgia night. Author provided (no reuse)

Rave culture offered a home to people deemed as misfits. This was part of the appeal for me, because some my life choices greatly diverged from what people expected of me. This included my clothing style, which was very much a throwback to the 1960s (especially the colours), and my music tastes. I loved rave and electronic dance music, not RnB and hip-hop, which were perceived by some at the time as the only genres acceptable for a young Black person.

Lately, there has been much nostalgia about the rave culture. Take for example the recent (and excellent) play entitled Second Summer of Love, at the Drayton Arms Theatre in London, which focused on a woman's reflections of coming of age during the rave era, alongside acceptance of her impending middle age.

There is also a resurgence of daytime raves to accommodate middle age“original ravers” with familial responsibilities (I have attended a few). Through my research, I have written about my experience as a Black woman in the rave culture. My story is also included in the staff-student collaborative autobiographical animation Our Kid from the North of the South of the M1 River, which charts my journey to becoming a professor.

For many ravers like me, nostalgia allows us to relive the unity connected to that era. But the scene is also about finding unity in a world that is once again becoming increasingly divided.

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