A rave (or rave party) is the term in use since the 1980s for dance parties (often all-night events) where DJs and other performers play electronic dance music, such as techno, with the accompaniment of laser light shows, projected images, and artificial fog. Popular rave dance styles include breakdancing, popping and locking, shuffling, glowsticking, liquid dancing, and poi. Rave parties are often associated with the use of "club drugs" such as ecstasy, LSD, and, more recently, ketamine.

In the late 1980's the word "rave" was adopted to describe the subculture that grew out of the acid house movement^. Early rave-like dances were drug-free. However, it was not until the mid to late 1980s that a wave of psychedelic and other electronic dance music, most notably acid house and techno emerged and caught on in the clubs, warehouses and free-parties around London and later Manchester. These early raves were called the Acid House Summers. They were mainstream events that attracted thousands of people (up to 25,000 instead of the 4,000 that came to earlier warehouse parties). In the UK, in 1988-89, raves were similar to football matches in that they provided a setting for working-class unification in a time with no unions and few jobs, and many of the attendees of raves were die-hard football fans. The lack of football rivalry at raves was due in large part to the Ecstasy taken by the "thugs" who would otherwise have relied on fighting for an adrenaline rush. Popular songs at raves at the time, such as The Timelords' (KLF's) "Doctorin' the Tardis," still bridge music and sporting events, being sampled at games and matches over a decade later because of their catchy audience participation/cheering moments. Mainstream American politicians responded with hostility to the emerging rave party trend. Politicians spoke out against raves and began to fine anyone who held illegal parties. Police crackdowns on these often-illegal parties drove the scene into the countryside. The word "rave" somehow caught on in the UK to describe common semi-spontaneous weekend parties. The early rave scene also flourished underground in North American cities such as Montreal, Chicago, San Fransisco, and Los Angeles and as word of the budding scene spread, raves quickly caught on in other major urban centers across the North American and European continents.

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Rave culture was becoming part of a new youth movement. DJs and electronic music producers such as Westbaum proclaimed the existence of a "raving society" and promoted electronic music as legitimate competition for rock and roll. Indeed, electronic dance music and rave subculture became mass movements. Raves had tens of thousands of attendees, youth magazines featured styling tips and television networks launched music magazines on house and techno music. The annual Love Parade festivals in Berlin attracted more than one million party goers between 1997 and 2000. In the Netherlands a new, faster and harder form of hardcore techno developed, called gabber or gabba. Meanwhile, the more commercial sound of hardcore, happy hardcore topped the music charts across Europe. 

Some cultural tenets associated with rave culture are: 

• Peace - to make peace with all people around them  
• Love - to stay close to all people and care for them unconditionally Unity - to stand together for the universal cause of peace and love  
• Respect - to understand the diversities of culture  
• Responsibility - to educate oneself on the effects of drugs before ingesting them  

In contrast to many other "youth cultures," older people are often active members of the U.S. scene and are well represented at events. Certain    facets of dance music culture in the UK, Germany and globally, are also welcoming to the older generation (especially the free party/squat party/gay scenes). However, rave and club culture remains on the whole very much a youth-driven movement in terms of its core fan base. Although rave parties are commonly associated with illegal activities (e.g. drug use), it should be noted that raves themselves are (often) legal gatherings. Although drug use tends to be pervasive at many raves

, drug use isn't, strictly speaking, a necessary part of the rave experience. It is a misconception some still believe.

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TheU.S. National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) describes club drugs as a vague term that refers to a wide variety of drugs that grew in popularity along with dance club culture in the 1990s. Older party drugs such as cocaine, popular in the 1980s, are not as widely used since their health risks have become more widely known. Drugs that have become increasingly abused include methamphetamines, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), flunitrazepam (Rohypnol), and ketamine. Each can cause serious health problems, and even death, in spite of a popular misconception that taking them is a safe way to enhance the dance party experience.In the United States, 9.1 percent of college students and 7.2 percent of young adults (ages 19-28) reported in 2000 that they used MDMA at least once in the last year. Similarly, a study of over 3,000 university students in the United Kingdom reported that 13 percent had used MDMA. Winstock et al. reference reports of use and related problems in Denmark, Germany, Spain, Australia, and the Netherlands.