Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to hear raving described as ‘revolutionary’ – usually alongside phrases like ‘utopian’ and ‘dancing as an act of resistance’. All too often, however, these descriptions stand in direct contrast to the realities of partying today: dancefloors increasingly policed by the state; events that serve as direct funding streams for global megacorporations like Live Nation and KKR; and local authorities that insist on seeing nightlife only for its economic – rather than social – value. Individual acts of raving might still be powerful, but in the 21st century, dance events have been firmly co-opted by the status quo.

But not too long ago, raving was genuinely revolutionary. Parties existed not just outside traditional venues, but outside society altogether, while convoys of loyal attendees travelled across the European continent, promising a real alternative to the mundanity of modern life. This forgotten chapter in music history is the focus of Milanese photographers Cheyenne Clementi and Valentina Morandi’s new photobook, Never Alone: 1997–2004 Raving in Europe, which offers an intimate window into the lives that made this era so special.

“We first came into contact with the free party scene around 1997,” Clementi and Morandi tell Dazed. “For both of us, it was a life-changing encounter. What struck us immediately was the incredible sense of community – people from completely different backgrounds coming together to share the same space, music and ideas of freedom. The hypnotic music and the creation of ‘temporary autonomous zones’, where abandoned spaces were transformed into places of gathering, self-organisation and collective living, made us realise that another way of being was genuinely possible.” 

They entered the scene at a crucial moment. As depicted in the recent cult documentary Free Party: A Folk History, the free party phenomenon – setting up a rig somewhere in the countryside and welcoming whoever turned up – originated in the UK at the turn of the 1990s. It grew out of a series of collaborations between electronic music pioneers from cities like London and Sheffield and the UK’s longstanding traveller communities. Spurred on by the proliferation of drugs like ecstasy, the next few years saw free parties spring up across the country, first baffling and then infuriating local authorities. This all came to a halt, however, with the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which, with its now-infamous outlawing of “successive, repetitive beats”, effectively criminalised rave culture. Britain’s free party organisers soon scattered across the rest of Europe – and many settled in Italy.

“At the time, Italy had no specific laws regulating or banning free parties, allowing the movement to flourish and cement Italy as one of the leading centres of free party culture in Europe,” Clementi and Morandi explain of how genres like techno, drum ‘n’ bass and jungle came to settle in the country. “In those years, the police often didn’t know how to deal with us. Until the late 1990s, Italian authorities struggled even to define what this phenomenon actually was, let alone understand how to respond to it.” 

For Clementi and Morandi, it was the party-goers who traded their normal lives for one on the road that made this era particularly special. “The scene at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s was very different from what it is today,” they explain. “The free party community was much smaller and, for the most part, everyone knew each other. It was genuinely classless; there were hippies, punks, travellers, factory workers, students, artists and people from completely different walks of life, all dancing side by side in front of the speakers, trying to escape social conventions and the roles that society expected them to play.”

It’s these values that led them to the phrase Never Alone. “It perfectly captures the sense of community that defined those years – the feeling of always being together,” they say of the books’ title. “Travelling was a constant part of our lives. Our trucks, vans and caravans weren’t just vehicles – they were our homes, and symbols of a lifestyle built around movement, sharing and the search for new places to gather. Nobody was ever left behind.” 

Over seven years, Clementi, Morandi and co travelled the full breadth of Europe, setting up parties in abandoned buildings and creating temporary spaces of egalitarian living. Meanwhile, British sound system Desert Storm even held events in wartorn Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Balkan conflict, and Italian collective Sound Conspiracy ventured as far as India in their vans and trucks. Where conflicts with the police and confiscations of sound systems were sporadic in this period – Clementi and Morandi even highlight one case in which police actually helped escort a free party of the unstable shores of Italy’s Lake Bolsena to more suitable grounds in 1999 – by 2004, the law had started to catch up with them. 

“From the early 2000s onwards, the authorities adopted a much more systematic approach, with increasingly targeted controls and crackdowns,” Clementi and Morandi recall. It was a pivotal moment. If societies for centuries had been based on the idea of a social contract in which people exchange certain freedoms in return for protection from the state, then the outlawing of travellers and free parties at the turn of the 21st century dispelled this myth: the social contract was no longer something to be chosen; it was enforced. 

Still, Clementi and Morandi are hopeful that their new photobook can keep these values of communal, nomadic existence alive. “More than anything, we hope the book encourages people to keep believing that another way of living together is possible,” they say, emphasising that free parties continue to be organised on the internet to this day. “It is a celebration of counterculture and of the DIY ethic: the idea that people can create their own events, their own spaces and their own communities without relying on commercial promoters or institutions. It’s like a spiral that never stops expanding.” 

Never Alone: 1997–2004 Raving in Europe is out now, and will be accompanied by a series of events across Europe this August. Check out the gallery above for a closer look at its portraits.