Goa Gil, born ''Gilbert Levey'', is an American-born musician, DJ,

remixer A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...

and party organizer. He is one of the founders of the

goa trance Goa trance is an electronic dance music style that originated in the early 1990s in the Indian state of Goa. Goa trance often has drone-like basslines, similar to the techno minimalism of 21st century psychedelic trance (psytrance). Psychedeli ...

and

psytrance Psychedelic Trance, Psytrance or Psy is a subgenre of trance music characterized by arrangements of rhythms and layered melodies created by high tempo riffs. The genre offers variety in terms of mood, tempo, and style. Some examples include full ...

movement in electronic music.

Biography

Gil was born in 1951 and grew up in San Rafael,

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. He witnessed the birth of the

hippie movement The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world. Its origins may be traced to European social movements in the 19th and early 20th century such as B ...

and

acid rock Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock music that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage punk movement and helped launch the psychedelic subculture. Named after lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), the style is generally defined by heavy, d ...

, and was involved with the freak collectives Family Dog and

Sons of Champlin The Sons of Champlin are an American rock band, from Marin County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, formed in 1965. They are fronted by vocalist-keyboardist-guitarist Bill Champlin, who later joined rock band Chicago, from 1981 to 20 ...

. Feeling that the San Francisco musical scene was falling apart, he took off in 1969, going first to

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

and then to

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, settling in

Goa Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...

. Here he discovered the sadhus, wandering holy men living off the forest, covering themselves with ash, and drinking the "elixir of the gods." Soon, Gil himself became a

Sadhu ''Sadhu'' ( sa, साधु, IAST: ' (male), ''sādhvī'' or ''sādhvīne'' (female)), also spelled ''saddhu'', is a religious ascetic, mendicant or any holy person in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism who has renounced the worldly life. ...

, Baba Mangalanand, in the order of the Juna Akhara, under the Guru, Mahant Nirmalanand Saraswati. Goa Gil LHS

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 started DJing and playing live music all night long on the Goa 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 of

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm ...

and the use of trance music is a way to "redefine the ancient tribal ritual for the 21st century".Michael Gosney
Radio-V interview with mangalanand Gil
, ''Beam Magazine'', accessed Nov 16, 2010. During the 1990s, the aesthetic of the Goa trance movement spread by way of European and Israeli backpackers who attended parties in

. He was interviewed for the 2001 documentary '' Last Hippie Standing'' which explored the scene in Goa. In January 2006 Goa Gil DJ'ed the all-night closing party of the three-day LSD-symposium at Basel, Switzerland, in honor of LSD-inventor

Albert Hofmann Albert Hofmann (11 January 1906 – 29 April 2008) was a Swiss chemist known for being the first to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann's team also isolated, named and synthesi ...

's 100-years birthday January 11, 2006, after Hofmann himself had delivered the closing speech of the symposium. Gil is married to Ariane. Together they formed the band " the Nommos".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gil, Goa Living people American electronic musicians Musicians from California 1951 births Hippies