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Teknivals are a larger scale version of free parties and emerged in the early 1990s, when acid house parties and travellers in Great Britain became the target of political repression, culminating in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Section 63 of the Act gave the police new powers to close down illegal parties.
Sound systems then started travelling to countries in Europe where laws were less restrictive and the authorities were uncertain how to stop the festivals. One of the most famous of these sound systems was Spiral Tribe, which was at the forefront of the free party movement in Europe. Other systems were called Bedlam, Circus Normal, Circus Warp and Vox Populi. Desert Storm sound system organised teknivals in Spain and France and brought raves to the war-torn Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1996. At one party the front-line was 10 kilometres away and they were asked to turn off their lights in case they attracted enemy fire.
While some teknivals are one-off events, most take place every year on or around the same date; the biggest, such as the ones in France or Czechtek in the Czech Republic (which blossomed from a small festival in 1994), can attract up to 80,000 visitors. In France teknivals have often taken place in car parks beside legal festivals such as Printemps de Bourges or Transmusicales in Rennes.
Just as the word 'teknival' was formed by merging together the words 'tekno' and 'festival', teknivals in different countries are referred to by abbreviated names, such as the aforementioned Czechtek, and also Poltek (Poland), Slovtek (Slovakia), Southtek (South Germany), Dutchtek (Netherlands), Easttek (East Germany) and Northtek (Canada). NorthTek was held on Crown Land in Ontario.
Recently in the United Kingdom teknivals have occurred again, despite huge police attention. In 2002 the tenth anniversary of the legendary Castlemorton rave was celebrated at Steart Beach in Somerset (there had also been a smaller teknival at the same location one year previously). In 2005 there was a UKtek in Wales and also a teknival known as Scumtek that happened twice in London. Only the first Scumtek was stopped by the police.
Sound systems gather on the site and play varied types of electronic music. Along with each sound system come friends and travellers so most teknivals have a multicultural atmosphere. The parties can last for several days or even weeks. Teknivals are organised by the sound system community using underground methods such as word of mouth, answerphone messages, flyer (pamphlet) and internet discussion boards. Normally the flyer states that the party is an open invitation, thus any artist who turns up can play music. The emphasis is on a DIY ethic. As well as local sound systems, who might act as the hosts, larger sound systems can spend the summer travelling from one teknival to the next before returning to their home country for the winter.
Since a teknival can last a week or longer, many musical styles will be represented. The music which grew in tandem with teknivals was free tekno, which is characterised by heavy, repetitive kick drums and is normally about 180 bpm. The DJs and party goers are unconcerned by musical boundaries, so a lot of different, mostly electronic, music is played and performed.
Most Sound systems play styles such as acid techno, spiral tekno, terrorcore, electro, drum n bass, breakcore and speedcore. Instead of focusing on genre, the music can be characterised by being more underground than the music heard in clubs and at commercial parties. Some sound systems might specialise in a certain subgenre. The music is played by DJs playing vinyl records and Mp3 files on a computer. Livesets are also frequently played using a variety of equipment: keyboards, drum machines, guitar effects pedals, MIDI controller and computers.
At early teknivals sound systems would play until either no-one was left dancing or the diesel ran out in the generator.
