Feel the heat at Sunburn

Picture yourself five years from today. If someone were to ask you how you spent the last week of 2007, would you even remember?\nIf asked this very question, several thousand people from India and all over the world would answer "Sunburn."\nThe first Sunburn Music Festival, held on Dec. 28-29, 2007 in Goa, India, is an enterprise aimed at introducing and popularizing worldwide electronic dance music in that country. It is the first electronic-music festival in the country, and admittance to its spectators is entirely free. \n "The dream started many years ago and, like good wine, did take some time to mature," said the festival Partner/Creative and Content Head Nikhil Chinapa, on the festival's Web site. \nAfter attending a memorable dance party in Ibiza, Spain, she started hosting a small, annual party in Goa. Chinapa then founded her own club in India for those tired of the typical Indian mainstream Bollywood music that dominated the country's clubs. She craved a new and experimental type of music to populate the dance scenes. \nThe club was a place for DJs to play their electronic-dance-music so fans could dance to the music they love. At the same time, Smirnoff Vodka began bringing some of the genre's most famous artists to India, including Sasha and John Digweed, who have also performed at the U.S. festival Bonnaroo. PDM Entertainment, an experimental marketing company in India, later contacted Chinapa to help co-found India's first dance-music festival. It was through the combined efforts of Chinapa, her friends, PDM Entertainment and Smirnoff Vodka that Sunburn was made possible.\nSunburn is not just a group of concerts, but also a revolution within the Indian music industry. Many who were present will state this mission of expanding electronic music in India was taken to new heights. Sunburn 2007 was the perfect cocktail for those electronic-dance-music lovers who like their drinks shaken as well as stirred. Electronic dance music encompasses genres including techno, house and disco. The DJs at Sunburn focus on electronic house music, which is characterized by its rich pumping bass lines, catchy instrumental riffs and quick tempo. \nThe festival featured international DJs who performed from sunrise to sunset, such as Axwell, Carl Cox, John 00 Fleming and Sergio Flores who mixed their music on the spot, creating beats that made the festival goers get up and dance.\nThe 2007 festival performance site was situated on the golden sands of Candolim Beach on Goa's north side. The state of Goa, situated on India's west coast, is a kind of hybrid city -- a dichotomy between Hindu and Christian cultures. Both religions host festivals throughout the year that consist of events to honor everything from a change of season to religious sacred days. \nMusic is also a dominant aspect of the Goan culture, as it has its own folk music and various dances to accompany it. \nIt was also in Goa that Chinapa first began her mission to expand electronic music, and it's the only place she would host the festival. \n"Every time I go there, it feels like coming home, with its friendly people, gorgeous waters, weather, flea markets and now an Electronic Dance Music festival to call our own. It is like a dream come to life for me," Chinapa said on the festival's Web site. \nCarl Cox led the ravers into a cataclysmic finale that extended into a two hour-encore. \nRolf Pederson, who traveled from Denmark for the festival, called Carl Cox's performance "as good as sex!" \nBars and beach shacks decorated with fairy lights added an element of post-Christmas festivity and pre-New Year's debauchery to the environment. Along the beach, welcoming locals lined up to do business. They made the best of this hectic situation by charging a relatively small fee to braid hair and draw henna tattoos on newly acquired golden-brown skin. Aurelia Sonrisa, a Goan tourist from Spain, commended the organizers on bringing together "a united movement of people and positive energy" directed toward music. Sohrab Nicholson, a music student from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was just happy to be under the sun getting a tan, or as he called it "getting his brown on."\nThis festival was an adventurous yet beautiful way to bring in the new year. Positive vibes flourished under the bright Goa sun. New friends were made, and old friends reunited as the world's youth could be seen at their prime.