What is a rave? Meaning, music and history

A rave is a dance party where DJs play electronic music, usually loud and late, in a warehouse, a club, a field or a festival site.¹ The word has meant different things since the late 1980s, from illegal all-night parties in English fields to the licensed festivals that sell hundreds of thousands of tickets today.

What happens at a rave?

A rave is built around the DJ and the sound system. The music runs without breaks, one track mixed into the next, and the room or field is lit with lasers, projections and fog.¹ The original raves were unlicensed parties put on outside the club system, which is why the word still carries a sense of something underground.¹ They often ran all night and sometimes into the following day.¹

What music do they play at raves?

House music is the genre most tied to the first raves. It grew out of the African-American and Latino disco scene in Chicago in the mid-to-late 1980s.¹² Techno came from Detroit in the same years, and the three producers most linked to it, Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, are known as the Belleville Three.³ Rave music has since spread across acid house, hardcore, jungle, drum and bass, trance, dubstep and more.¹

Our genre pages group the festivals we track by sound: techno, house, hard dance, trance and psy, bass and mainstage EDM.

Where did raves start?

The word "rave" was London slang for a wild party back in the late 1950s.¹ It came back in the late 1980s, when acid house crossed from Chicago to the UK, first to Manchester and then London, and spread through clubs, warehouses and free parties.¹ British DJs who had spent the summer of 1987 in Ibiza are often credited with bringing the sound home.⁴

The summer of 1988, and much of 1989, became known in the UK as the Second Summer of Love.⁴ Parties moved into fields and empty warehouses, and promoters ran huge events around the M25, the motorway that rings London.⁴ Water and Lucozade were already standard at these parties because people were dancing for hours and getting dehydrated.⁴

Why were raves made illegal in the UK?

Police set up a national unit in the summer of 1989 to disrupt party organisers.⁴ After the 1992 Castlemorton Common festival, Parliament passed the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which became law on 3 November 1994.⁵ As first written, section 63 gave police powers over open-air gatherings of 100 or more people playing amplified music at night that was likely to cause serious distress to people nearby.⁶ The Act defined music to include "a succession of repetitive beats", the line it is best remembered for.⁶ Section 65 let police turn people back within five miles of a rave.⁷ The headcount in section 63 has since been lowered to 20.⁸

The repetitive beats line was widely mocked, and the electronic duo Autechre released an EP built from tracks designed not to fit the definition.⁵ By 1997, weekly "superclub" nights had largely replaced the old free-party format in the UK.¹

How did raves start in the US?

In the US, DJ Frankie Bones's Storm Raves in New York are credited with starting the first big American raves in the early 1990s.¹ Part of the reason parties went underground was that clubs had to close at 2 a.m.¹ California had its own boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s, centred on San Francisco, and San Diego parties drew thousands of people to reservations and ski resorts.¹

In 2003 Congress passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, first introduced as the RAVE Act, as a rider on the PROTECT Act.⁹ It extended the federal "crackhouse law" to event organisers and added civil penalties of up to $250,000 or twice gross receipts.⁹ Critics say it has discouraged organisers from providing medical help at events.⁹

What's the difference between a rave and a festival?

A rave, in the original sense, was unlicensed and often held at a secret location. A festival is licensed and ticketed, usually much bigger, and run as a business. Many EDM festivals keep the look and sound of a rave on a commercial scale,¹ and by 2010 the largest raves had grown into stadium-sized events.¹ Researchers describe the move into licensed clubs and festival grounds as the way authorities brought raves under nightlife rules, and some use "post-rave" for events that look like raves without the original ethos.¹⁰

Several of today's biggest festivals started small. The first Electric Daisy Carnival ran in Chino, California, in 1991, moved to Las Vegas in 2011, and drew a record 525,000 people over three days in 2023.¹¹¹ Ultra began in Miami in 1999, and the first Tomorrowland was held in Boom, Belgium, on 15 August 2005.¹²¹³¹⁴ See our ranking of the biggest EDM festivals for where they stand now.

Is a rave a club night?

Not in the original meaning. Clubs are licensed venues with closing times and door policies, and the UK superclubs of the late 1990s, such as Cream and Gatecrasher, had dress codes that ran against the open-door idea of a rave.¹¹⁰ In everyday use, though, people now call any big electronic music night a rave.

Are raves safe? What do festivals provide?

Large licensed festivals publish what they provide. EDC Las Vegas, for example, lists free water refill stations, free medical care with "no questions asked", roaming staff who help people stay hydrated, and a statement that you will not get in trouble for seeking medical help. The same page states a zero-tolerance drug policy and recommends a buddy system.¹⁵ Nonprofits such as DanceSafe work at events with drug checking, earplugs and education.¹⁶

Rules differ by festival. Of the 248 festivals we track, 90 publish an age rule, and 56 of those are 18+. Our festival rules guide compares age limits, bags, water bottles and re-entry side by side.

Where to go next

See festivals happening this weekend, every 2027 date announced so far, or, if you'd rather watch from home, the festivals that live stream. 57 of the festivals we track streamed live in 2025 or 2026.

Next: What does PLUR mean, and what is kandi?

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