How Music Changed My Life: Vanessa's Story

December 2, 2013 

My name is Vanessa and I am 19 years old. I am a full-time college student in Texas. I am from Detroit, Michigan. Growing up in a broken household affected my pre-pubescent years more than I would realize during that time. Throughout all of the mostly self-inflicted turmoil, my mother introduced me to a sanctuary that I could always call upon no matter where I was so long as I had access to it--Music. My father and his family lived in Texas while my mother had custody of my younger brother and me in Michigan. We shuttled across the country at least twice a year to visit our dad for the holidays. No matter where we went or how long we were away from home, I always had an MP3 player or an Ipod that I could escape to whenever I felt alone. 

My mother was a raver in the years before I was born, she LOVES House, Techno, and Trance. So growing up, the primary DJs you would find on my MP3 players and eventually Ipods were : DJ Tiesto (before he sold himself out by dropping DJ from his name!), Ferry Corsten, Paul Van Dyk, DJ Irene, Above & Beyond, Paul Oakenfold, Amber, Armand Van Helden, Benassi Bros, Crystal Waters, Moby, and more. The most viable memories I have of my childhood are those that my mother influenced during drives home at night from my grandmother's house in Detroit. 

I vividly remember sitting in the back seat of my mom's Red, 1999 Jeep Cheroke, looking out at the stars in the sky on the ride home from my grandma's house. My mother played DJ Tiesto's and Ferry Corsten's trance/progressive mixes over the stereo. I remember laying my head on the side panel of the door and falling asleep to the deep bass gently vibrating through my small body. 

For many years, I never made the definitive connection between my absolute devotion to EDM, specifically Trance, and the influence my mother played in that until I sat down one day and thought back to my childhood. I realized, in that moment, the reason I would always call upon Trance music when I was feeling down and unaccepted among my peers (for they never understood why I would listen to such "weird" music--until it started mainstreaming in the past few years).  It was because it took me back to a time and place where I felt most content, comfortable, and safe... In my mother's presence<3. It was my sanctuary, it was my connection to my mother, no matter where I went.

My mother knew something about EDM and the rave scene that would take me years to figure out. I went through my delinquent stage but my mother was my rock, she never raised her voice or hand to me, and in time, I realized I needed to change. She always played soothing trance in our apartment when I would come home from school in a bad mood or distraught because I was bullied that day for being "different." I was never a prep, a jock, or a run-of-the-mill little girl. EDM helped me express myself in ways that many children never would. I liked the unique things in life. I liked fantasy books, science fiction, monsters, ghouls, fairies, unicorns. I wrote about mystical worlds in poetry and found myself writing poetry that mimicked the style of lyrics from my favorite songs. 
When I started learning about concerts and music festivals I was more than ecstatic to start attending them. Of course, I was not allowed because my mother knew firsthand of how crazy the drug abuse can be in the scene and because I was under-aged. When I was old enough, I began attending concerts and festivals with a small group of friends who loved EDM as well. At my first show, DJ Bl3nd (not my first choice but it was a free invite!) I felt the grandiose and immeasurable vibes fluctuating throughout the crowd. My next exposure was UME Festival at South Padre Island in South Texas. It was life-changing. I met tons kandikids who introduced me to PLUR (peace, love, unity, and respect) and beautiful souls who gave me the name I now go by at all of my EDM events: Gypsy:). I made a twitter and grew from 100s to 1000s of followers-scratch that- FAMILY in just 3 months. PLUR family. Some accounts I'm finding are followed by hundreds of thousands of what we call on twitter #PLURfam. And this is what my mother was waiting for me to discover on my own, when I asked her if she knew of or had heard of PLUR before, she smiled and said, "Yes, hunny. Yes I have."