"The Satyr Procession" 

This paper presents as a starting construct, Nietzsche's conceptualization of the "Dionysian" impulse. According to Nietzsche, there is a fundamental human drive that compels a portion of the general population to periodically leave their quotidian social lives and go "into the forest" where they might encounter  “the paradox that lies at the heart of existence" (Birth of Tragedy: 1872). Nietzsche also claimed that music was the primary art for the manifestation of this impulse. The Dionysian procession is actually a musical procession consisting of instruments, chorus, and banners. The musical component of the Dionysian procession then, is what defines music as “Dionysian”. This powerful experiential impulse, manifested in the procession and it’s music are linked by Nietzsche to the unconscious, and together they manifest what he thought to be the deepest expressions of what is most primal and most deeply human.

After introducing this Nietzschean concept, my paper compares two seemingly opposed ritual pilgrimage events. The first is a centuries old Catholic pilgrimage that takes place each year in Andalusia, Spain, called El Rocio. The second is Burning Man, an annual event that is arguably not a traditional pilgrimage at all as it has no overt religious connotations although many of its participants describe their experiences in terms that, in any other context, would at least fall within the general category of the “spiritual” if not right out religious (and that term, “the spiritual” is also often used, and contested, by participants). The striking similarities between the two events might surprise many. But the paper will also discuss their differences, especially in the musical aspects wherein El Rocio is actually far more sophisticated than Burning Man, another aspect that may surprise many readers. The analysis will strive to point out how both events manifest very similar fundamental human drives, and how these drives once they are expressed communally through ritualized behaviors (formally and informally), generate powerful bottom/up cultural forces. By viewing the two events through this comparative lens, it will be suggested that Burning Man, the younger of the two, might have much to learn from El Rocio in terms of how to deal with the increasingly large numbers of attendees, with the temptations of commercialization, and with how music could play a much more culturally generating role if a shared musical culture were to emerge from within the festival.

The concluding comparisons will explore how Burning Man seems to be pointing the way towards a new technologically based and at least seemingly, secular culture, while at the same time manifesting and ritualizing what, in any other context, would be considered a fundamental religious impulse. The study concludes that any significant parallel between these two pilgrimages; between a traditional religious ritual-based culture, and an emerging ritualizing secular culture, will be determined by whether or not the experiences at Burning Man can be integrated into behaviors and values that are then transmitted as cultural knowledge into the broader society.

Below is an abstract I have prepared for a possible article in an upcoming book on Burning Man. It articulates a few of the ideas I am exploring through Burning Man in relation to Andalusian Catholic ritual in particular, and to the theory of ritual and culture in general that I introduce in my dissertation, El Rocio: A Case Study in Music and Ritual in Andalusia, Spain: Toward a theory of Ritual Systems (2009: VDM)