- Goa Gil
Goa Gil is an American-born musician, DJ and party organizer. He is one of the founders of the
goa trance and psytrance movement in electronic dance music.Gil was born in 1951 and grew up in
San Francisco ,California . He witnessed the birth of thehippie movement andacid rock , and was involved with the freak collectives Family Dog and Sons of Champlon. Feeling that theSan Francisco musical scene was falling apart, he took off in 1969, going first toAmsterdam and then toIndia , settling in the hippie mecca ofGoa . Here he discovered thesadhu s, wandering holy men living off the forest and covering themselves with ash and drinking the elixir of the gods. Gil became himself aSadhu , Baba Mangalanand, in the order of theJuna Akhara , under the Guru, Mahant Nirmalanand Saraswati Ji Maharaj.During the early 1980s, many Goa hippies were becoming increasingly fascinated with early electronic music such as
Kraftwerk . Gil and his friends soon gathered some equipment and startedDJ ing and playing live music all night long on theGoa beaches. The mix of outdoor electronic dance parties with Eastern mystical and spiritual overtones came to define the aesthetic of the psytrance movement. For Gil, dance is an active form ofmeditation and the use of trance music is a way to "redefine the ancient tribal ritual for the 21st century". During the 1990s, the aesthetic of the Goa trance movement spread by way of European and Israeli backpackers who attended parties inIndia . Nowadays, Gil is still based in Goa for several months of the year, and spends the rest of his time travelling and throwing parties, notably inNorthern California .Gil is married to
Ariane MacAvoy , herself a child of French Goan "freaks". Together they formed the bandthe Nommos with Peter Zigelmeier ofKode IV .External links
* [http://www.goagil.com Goa Gil's website]
* [http://www.tranceamericana.org/brainmachines/interview-goagil.html Trance Americana] Trip Out New York interviews Goa Gil
* [http://www.goagil-openair.de Goa Gil in Germany]References
* [http://www.radiov.com/main/beam/innerviews/goagil/ Radio-V interview with Goa Gil]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
