EDM and Neurodivergence
I remember the first time I found my tribe. It was 2006 and I was fifteen. I’d just been expelled from school, and I was a confused mess of anxious bones and angry muscles.
‘This is drum and bass,’ my friend said, playing something through a rattling phone speaker. You know the kind I mean from back then? Flip phone, or maybe a tiny slide one, plastic, no touch screen, battery that lasted four days.
It’s hard to describe that moment and the gravity of it all. There was something about this music that said, ‘pay attention,’ and pushed me squarely down into my chair.
I’d spent years in school thinking I must be a rock chick because that’s where all the alternative people floated to. Sure, I enjoyed listening to Nirvana while my friend and I smoked weed, but if I’m honest now, I just wanted to seem cool. I was desperate for acceptance. It’s something all people on the spectrum want but rarely, if ever, find. According to The Conversation up to 70% of people on the spectrum experience depression and anxiety, among other mental health conditions. A participant of a relevant survey said, ‘As the years pass, I suffer increasing anxiety for lack of even casual acceptance by my species.’ To be accepted and belong is one of the most natural human instincts.
The rocker kids sniffed out my desperation to be like anyone else. I just wanted to fit, didn’t care where, someone just take me. I wasn’t alternative in the right way for them.
I was definitely not normal, so I didn’t fit with the cool girls who listened to Cascada and DJ Sammy.
Where was my place? Music seemed like the identifier of who you were as you grew up. I went through a rap stage, again, I wanted to fit in with my new cooler friends. But no, they turned their backs on me too.
And then the day came. A day that pushed me assuredly into deep groaning basslines and thumping kick drums. I was obsessed with drum and bass.
If you don’t know already, autism is a condition that causes an individual to become intensely fixated on specific interests. These are sometimes known as special interests.
If you ask my dad what word I used most when I was sixteen, he will tell you either ‘drum and bass’ or ‘Pendulum’.
I spend my spare time at raves and in drum and bass spaces online, and I am seeing a pattern. I am not the only neurodivergent person so intensely preoccupied with the scene.
What is it about electronic dance music and neurodivergence? Research shows music to be beneficial to people who have difficulties with communication, expressing emotions, organising thoughts and stimuli, and focusing.
Jessica Palmer at Insomniac Mag has a son, Hunter, who is on the spectrum. Jessica says that when she plays dance music to Hunter in their car he responded to the repetitive beats, catchy melodies, and simplicity of the music. Soon Jessica used a specific dance music track as the main way of soothing him during meltdowns and making him able to control his behaviour again. He would bob his head and shake his body in time, and this would relax him.
I have a similar feeling at a rave. The music flows through me like oxygen. It moves my body naturally, as though I was born to do nothing other than dance. I have theorised that dancing at a rave is like one big stim. Stimming is, often involuntary, self-stimulating repetitive movements that autistic people do to self sooth. Movements include hand-flapping, rocking, finger-flicking/fiddling, jumping, spinning, headbanging, and complex body movements. Why do we do it? For many reasons. We enjoy it. It helps us with sensory input, whether we want more input or less input. It also helps us to deal with stress and anxiety. Imagine the thrill, for a person who feels the need to constantly move their body, of jumping around at a rave for eight hours.
The tension I feel all day every day at living in a world that is too much for me dissipates when my body is free to move as it pleases at the rave.
Selena Stack at Freedom Rave Wear says, ‘One of the core principles of rave culture is inclusivity. It’s a culture that has always welcomed people from all walks of life, regardless of their background, gender, age, or identity’. In a world where people on the spectrum feel like they are outsiders, the rave is home to me. I am free to be who I am without judgment. Raves are an adult playground. Anything goes, people let loose, everyone is your friend, you can be weird with strangers, you can dress like a unicorn, you can paint your face, you can do and be whoever you want. It’s an autistic dream.
I never found a space where I felt accepted, or like I belonged, until I walked into my first rave. The loud beat and the grinding bass vibrating through my chest as I approach a rave has been known to reduce me to tears.
People often ask how I can enjoy such a loud place when I am sensitive to noise. I am sensitive to lots of different contrasting sounds all going at the same time. I can’t tune things out. At a rave, all you can hear is that one heavy sound. There is nothing else.
From stimming to acceptance to sensory overload to meltdown avoidance, there seem to be many indicators for why autistic people and other neurodivergent individuals find the rave and its music so attractive. Without it I wouldn’t have achieved the years of sobriety I have under my belt, and I would never have found my tribe. Music is therapy.
