Godskitchen’s global reach

Godskitchen. Just the name can send shivers of excitement down the spines of dance aficionados. Godskitchen is one of the pioneering club brands in the UK, with an unparalleled presence, prominence, and influence in the worldwide club scene. The name alone is powerful, conjuring up images of a larger-than-life omnipotent deity who prepares some mystical brew to intoxicate lowly, unknowing masses into submission.  

Okay, that last one is quite a stretch. But although that’s not exactly the case here, Godskitchen still cooks up a mean aural treat. 

One of the elders of the worldwide club scene, Godskitchen has been around since the early ‘90s, at the height of the rave phenomenon in the UK. Promoter Chris Griffin, who already had an impressive background staging massively attended club events, hooked up with another party promoter, Tyrone De Savery, to cook up Godskitchen, and the rest is certified clubbing history.

Chris and Tyrone started the Godskitchen project by setting up a string of highly successful dance parties in the UK and Australia. Once they were ready to hold weekly events, Godskitchen took up residence in huge clubs in the UK and later at dance paradise Ibiza, consistently drawing throngs of thousands every week.

Word about this new player in the club circuit spread like wildfire, and the Godskitchen lads saw the benefits of setting up their own home to welcome all the hungry young clubbers who came knocking at Godskitchen’s door at various night haunts every week. They opened the club Code in 2000, and, like clockwork, clubbers in the tens of thousands came running to the venue.

Not satisfied with their domination over UK’s clubland, Godskitchen’s main men decided to up the ante even higher. To cement the brand as a veritable force to reckon with on the worldwide club scene, they produced the first-ever Godskitchen Global Gathering in 2001, a huge outdoor summer festival where 25,000 music-loving revelers flocked to enjoy their dance fix. You can bet that was one hot UK summer.

Meanwhile, their brainchild Code was expanding not just in audience number, but also in repertoire. To accommodate its ever-expanding musical sensibilities, which now included trance, garage, house, hard dance, and permutations of any or all of the above, Godskitchen added a few more rooms to the massive club and gave the place a brand-spanking new name, Air.

The clearly unstoppable Godskitchen family continued holding Global Gathering each year, even bringing the party over to Cork in Ireland in 2005 and Miami in the USA in 2006. Later Godskitchen forays around the globe include gigs in Ukraine, Turkey, China, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

In fact, the last few years have seen Godskitchen regularly visiting clubbers in the Philippines to serve up their cutting-edge trance/house/electro cuts. The most recent of these visits was in September 15, 2007, when Bigfish brought the famed Godskitchen experience to 1 Esplanade in Pasay City. Superstar DJ John Askew ruled the turntables, spinning trance and techno tunes for the local party folks.

In addition to Global Gathering, Godskitchen also holds Escape into the Park, the largest annual dance party in Swansea, Wales, also a much-attended event in that part of the UK. One of Air’s production nights, Polysexual, is huge on the hard dance scene and has featured some pretty major names in the UK dance community.

And Godskitchen’s massive worldwide reach doesn’t end there. Godskitchen also has an in-house record label which releases numerous dance compilations annually, among them “Global Gathering,” “Electric,” “Trance Anthems,” “Divine,” and “Classics,” some of which you’ll find on Activ8 Records’ roster here in the Philippines.

Then there’s Godskitchen Radio, a two-hour program that takes the Godskitchen vibe even further to clubbers in different locales.

Isn’t globalization just wonderful? All these wonderful cultural forms that originated abroad get to reach us and enrich our knowledge of foreign cultures, mainstream, underground, or otherwise.

Which makes me wonder: If they can do it in the UK, the US, or Ibiza, why can’t we? Dance music is practically a lifestyle in many places around the globe, but here in the Philippines we can’t attain the same level of support for it. We don’t have any huge festivals like Global Gathering to speak of. We don’t have a profusion of club brands that encompass everything from music, events, and promotions to publications, records, and merchandise. We can’t even muster up a crowd of 15,000 to attend a single major dance event, which is a measly number compared to what DJs have achieved in performances abroad. If you think a 15,000 turnout is an irrational number for a dance act to expect in this country, consider this: trance trio Above and Beyond played to an audience of one million in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil at the end of 2007. So who says 15,000 isn’t doable?

Bigfish has hosted events that had thousands of clubbers coming, but we’re still a long way from 15,000, and a long, long way from one million. So how do we start the dance music revolution in this country?

It all starts with proper education by the media. Radio, TV, print, and the new media can all spread the gospel of dance to Filipinos. Dance music has been a staple on radio stations and music channels in the UK since the ‘80s when rave culture began its boom. Here in the Philippines, however, mainstream stations rarely play dance tracks unless they feature the radio-friendly vocals of Bonnie Bailey or Moony.

The UK alone has magazines dedicated to dance music such as DJ Mag, IDJ, and M8, which have all been in circulation for years. Here in the Philippines, we’re lucky to have one newspaper column to promote dance music. And the column didn’t even see daylight until last month.

We’re not alone in this fight. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but even major pop stars like Madonna, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Ashlee Simpson, and Gwen Stefani have started incorporating a club feel to their hits.

It’s clear where this trend is going. Jump on the dance music bandwagon, folks. It’ll only get bigger in the future.

Let’s start showing the media and the world that dance music is here, and it’s here to stay. I will see you all at the Godskitchen bash featuring Scandinavian trance prodigies Super8 and Tab on August 8, 2008 at Makati’s A. Venue.

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For advanced tickets and reservations, you can contact 632-7762 or 634-8238. To find out more info about the event, go to Bigfish’s home on the web, www.bigfishmanila.com.

For comments and suggestions, feel free to e-mail me at bigfish@bigfishmanila.com.