I'm really not techno-savvy - that's just not my personality.
I grew up around salsa, merengue, bachata, bass music, freestyle, hip-hop, techno, house, rave.
The triumph of economic globalization has inspired a wave of techno-savvy investigative activists who are as globally minded as the corporations they track.
I'm not attached to a certain scene. There was certain music - and techno was a part of it - that really formulated something for me, that really was a direct connection to what I experienced in my life. Going to parties and listening to techno at home helped form my musical identity. And that changed throughout my life.
Now we're dealing with a younger generation of terrorists that are very, very savvy with computer skills, very savvy over the Internet, and very savvy with social media of the likes that we have never seen before.
I've been waiting for techno to die. I was in Germany once and this guy was telling me that techno was dead, and then he proceeded to play me techno for hours.
When I heard We Are the World do a techno version of one of my songs, I didn't know the word techno, but I said, "That percussion is astounding, will you help me do a piece?" Nobody said, "Techno isn't allowed for you."
I was very into tribal techno and used to go and really lose myself in great dance music.
I grew up around salsa, merengue, bachata, bass music, freestyle, hip-hop, techno, house, rave. Miami is special for that. It's a city where you don't know if it's more a part of the US, or of the Caribbean, or of Latin America, or of Europe.
I don't really drink, and I've never been to a rave. I used to cut school to read Shakespeare, not to make out in the park.
When I finally turned 18, I started to wonder if rave was now different to what it was and whether I'd missed out on the golden days of rave. So, I thought I'd talk to some of the legends in the game and get an education on how music was made, listened to and the rave scene from before I was even born.
We don't feel like we changed from rave, because we were never rave, to punk, because we're not punk.
More than anything, rave was an intentionally designed experience. The music, lighting, and ambience were all fine-tuned to elicit and augment altered states of consciousness. The rhythm of the music was precisely 120 beats per minute, the frequency of the fetal heart rate, and the same beat believed to be used by South American shamans to bring their tribes into a trance state. Through dancing together, without prescribed movements, or even partners, rave dancers sought to reach group consciousness on a level they had never experienced before.
I wished that I...had no savvy at all. No savvy to cause me heartache. No savvy to make me hope, and then leave me useless.
There's a widespread cultural barrenness across art and political culture. But there are some pockets of resistance on the extreme margins, like the techno-savvy protest movements, small press, the creator-owned comics, that seem to be getting some signs of hope for the future.
Audiences are savvy. You can never go wrong assuming the best of them.