Candy raver
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A candy raver (sometimes "kandy raver", "kandi raver", "Candee Child", or "candykid") is a rave attendee who exchanges or shares small gifts, primarily beads, necklaces, bracelets, stickers, or candy. "Candy raver".
Candy ravers are most widely known (and sometimes identified by) their brightly coloured, often childish or even cartoony fashions, such as day-glo phat pants, black light reactive or glow-in-the-dark gear, and t-shirts featuring cartoon characters. Almost all can be spotted wearing a number of homemade bracelets of plastic beads, known as "kandy". The bracelets are often given as gifts to remember past raves and commemorate new friendships.
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[edit] Origins of the culture
Candy ravers can primarily trace their style of fashion to the late 1980s acid house culture and the "Summer of Love" in the United Kingdom. Acid house fashion in clubs at the time were primarily day-glo colored attire, smiley face clothing, and whistles. The club Shoom is generally accepted as the originator of the trend:
...the Shoom flyers adopted a smiley face as the club's logo, with dozens of the faces scattered across their front like a hail of Ecstacy pills. The smiley logo had once been a hippie token, and it now provided an identity to a new music and drugs-driven youth revolution.[1]
...Regulars would make each other presents... clothing was functional as well as fun, Day-Glo rather than dour...[1]
Simon Reynolds in his book Generation Ecstacy posits a post Summer of Love timeframe as origin:
...everywhere the trappings of UK rave's 1991-1992 golden era are visible — gas masks, white gloves, floppy hats and jester caps, baby's pacifiers (to ease jaw ache), and flourescent glow-sticks...[2]
Many spelling variants occur throughout the rave scene when referring to this subculture, although the actual origins of the term are unknown. Use of the term on Usenet alt.rave shows earliest reference to the spelling "candee"[3]. With alternates "kandy"[4], "kandi"[5], "candi"[6], "candy" [7], following later.
Several of the Hyperreal mailing lists have posts predating the use on usenet such as this one by Vladimir Katz dated October 21, 1994:
Everyone felt free to be themselves do what they want be free with no fear of being looked down on. People came in costumes people gave out candy people introduced themselves to random others!![8]
[edit] Beadwork
Kandy has two main functions.
[edit] Visual effect
The first is the visual effect that kandy creates. They are usually very bright day-glo colours chosen especially for the purpose of the visual effects created when someone dances wearing them while being illuminated by different types and colours of lights. The sequence of colours chosen will often appear jumbled and somewhat random but the beads are typically chosen to contrast with other beads making them visually jump out. Some beads will also be UV reactive and some will be glow in the dark.
[edit] Community
The second function of kandy is a gift that a raver will give or swap with new friends, and new ravers they have just met. In the rave culture of certain areas, this exchange will be performed by connecting fingers with the recipient of the gift and sliding it from their own arm to the other's.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Bidder, Sean (2001). Pump Up The Volume. London: Channel 4 Books, 95-113. ISBN 0 7522 1986 3.
- ^ Reyonolds, Simon (1999). Generation Ecstacy. New York: Routledge, 283-296. ISBN 0 4159 2373 5.
- ^ Usenet post dated October 4, 1998
- ^ Usenet post dated December 30, 1998
- ^ Usenet post dated March 30, 1999
- ^ Usenet post dated April 1, 1999
- ^ Usenet post dated October 16, 2000
- ^ Email dated October 21, 1994 [1].
