Universe - Tribal Gathering

The first Tribal Gathering festival took place in April 1993, although original promoters Paul Shurey and Ian Jenkinson had been promoting raves since 1989. Tribal Gathering came at time when the huge outdoor raves such as Perception, Vision, Raindance et al had begun to be eclipsed by club-culture. Recognising this change, but still wanting to retain and develop the festival feel, Paul and Ian pioneered the multi-arena dance event concept which, as the name Tribal Gathering name suggested, brought together different dance music cultures and styles under one festival. TG 1993, with over 25 000 in attendance, saw Danny Rampling, Pete Tong and David Morales at the same event as Laurent Garnier, Carl Cox, DJ Rap and The Prodigy. Although this maybe common place nowadays, with events such as Creamfields and Homelands, it was almost unheard of then.

TG 93 was a massive success - Mixmag & Disco Mirror voted it 'Party of the Year'- but the introduction of the Criminal Justice Act a year later meant, in October 1994, Tribal Gathering went on its first international excursion to Munich, Germany with a 20,000 person event and featured future German stars such as Paul Van Dyk, Tom Novy and DJ Dag. Tribal Gathering returned triumphantly to the U.K in 1995 and teamed up with The Mean Fiddler Organisation for another massive UK event.

The following year Tribal Gathering 96 was set to build on the success of the previous year with major sponsorship from Radio One, MTV, Muzik, Sony PlayStation and Red Bull thereby proving its increasing appeal to a far broader market. Despite a monumental battle to obtain a licence for the event, with the attempts by Thames Valley Police to ban it only serving to generate enormous media interest and plenty of welcome publicity, Tribal 96 went ahead on June 29th at Lutton Hoo, Bedfordshire. It was attended by over 30 000 people and featured performances from over 30 live acts, including Black Grape, Leftfield, Chemical Brothers and Goldie as well as sets from around 75 of the World's most renowned DJ's including Carl Cox, Laurent Garnier and Paul Oakenfold. Most of the artists appearing had cancelled other bookings in order to appear at the re-scheduled event. Tribal Gathering 96 proved to the authorities, once and for all, that large-scale dance productions such as this could be run responsibly and with minimal disruption to local residents.

Tribal Gathering 1997 was now the most eagerly anticipated event in the festival calendar and would be the biggest and best to date. Even the legendary pioneers of electronic music Kraftwerk had been persuaded to come out of retirement to play their first live performance in 15 years at the event. Countless previews in the international media prior to the show and the many nationalities travelling from all corners of the globe to attend, demonstrated the truly global position Tribal Gathering had achieved. The event didn't fail to deliver, with over ten arenas of entertainment consisting of over 30 live acts, 100 of the world's finest DJ's, comedy shows from the likes of Eddie Izzard, Circus shows and cutting edge street sports. Tribal Gathering 1997 was also broadcast live over the Internet attracting 1.2 million hits from all over the globe. With large numbers of television crews, journalists and photographers from most of the world's leading publications and TV channels, Tribal Gathering was being hailed as one of the world's fastest growing entertainment phenomenon's and the leading promoters of youth and dance music culture. This status was to be confirmed when Tribal Gathering won the prestigious 'Live' event of the year award for the 97 show.

The magic and central appeal of Tribal Gathering was that it brought people together from across musical, cultural, social and geographical divides for the express purpose of having a brilliant time. It widened people's musical parameters and introduced increasing numbers to dance culture. Following the success of 1997, Tribal Gathering set about planning a series of 15,000 - 20,000 capacity events in Denmark, Belgium, Ibiza and South Africa for 1998 to develop the brand internationally. Tribal had achieved such a significant reputation worldwide, major global companies were now offering substantial amounts of money to associate themselves with the brand. With film offers, a weekly T.V show, magazine and record label in the pipeline, Tribal was going from strength to strength.

Universe Tribal Gathering Profile 2