Goa. How the Hippies Switched from Guitars to Synthesizers

Gilbert Levey was born in 1951 in San Rafael, California, and as a teenager caught the birth of the hippies and acid rock in San Francisco, hanging around crews like the Family Dog, which put on psychedelic dances. In 1969 he left America, first for Amsterdam, then for India, and settled on the coast of Goa, where hippies from all over the world were gathering at the time. There people started calling him Goa Gil.

The full-moon parties on Anjuna beach began with live rock and stayed guitar-based for many years. In the early eighties some of the local hippies got into Kraftwerk and other electronics, and Gil, together with other DJs, among them the Frenchman Laurent and Fred Disko, began playing electronic music at the beach parties instead of guitars.