Bassnectar Presents a Social Awareness Dance Party at the Fillmore

Posted on May 20th 2008 2:00PM by Benjy Eisen
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When Bassnectar took to the stage at a sold-out Fillmore in San Francisco the other night, it was more than your typical DJ dance-party affair. On his 'Adventures in Bassnectar' tour, the mixmaster invited speakers, spoken-word artists and multimedia presenters onstage for an interactive night of activism, turning what otherwise would've been a marathon dance party into a forum for political change and social networking. "I am thoroughly uninterested in only doing music," Bassnectar tells Spinner. "Music is a form or facet of expression -- as is dialogue, video, color, content, etc."

Three quarters of the way through his set, with a capacity crowd all throwing their arms in the air like they just don't care, Bassnectar literally dropped the beats and passed the mic to a Tibetan freedom fighter who encouraged fans to turn their common beliefs (such as being against the war) into a social movement. Forced to stop dancing, everybody actually listened. Almost all of them applauded enthusiastically, even if at least some of the enthusiasm was chemically induced.