The hot chocolate that gets called a ceremony

Somebody hands you a mug. In it is a drink made from 100% cacao, no sugar, no milk, roughly the consistency of something you would strip paint with. It is bitter, it is thick, and about twenty minutes after you drink it you feel slightly more awake and slightly more cheerful, in the way you would after a strong coffee if coffee also made you want to hug someone.

That is a cacao event. It has been given a grander name by the people who run them. The title of this piece is the only time I am going to use it. From here on it is what it is, which is a hot chocolate and a dance.

Why I am allowed to take the piss

Because I play them. Some of the sets I do open a room that has just finished a mug of this stuff, and the format on my booking page that covers it is called an opening set for a space that is still arriving. Which is a polite way of saying: a room full of people sitting on the floor holding warm mugs, who need to be got to their feet without anyone feeling ambushed.

So this is not an outsider sneering. It is an insider who thinks the drink is good and the language around it is doing it no favours.

What actually happens

You arrive. You take your shoes off, because you always take your shoes off at these. Somebody has made a very large pot of the drink and pours it into whatever mugs people have brought or been given. There is usually a short talk. Sometimes it is good. Sometimes it is a person explaining the history of a bean at some length. You drink the drink, which takes a while because of the consistency. You sit for a bit.

Then the music starts, and that is my end of it.

The cacao does one useful thing for a DJ: it takes the edge off the awkwardness without taking the edge off the people. A room that has just had a mug of it is warmer, chattier and more willing to be the first one up than a stone-cold sober room, and it is entirely present in a way a room with three drinks in it is not. It is, honestly, the ideal opening crowd. They are not waiting for the real set to start. They are already in it.

What I play

Slow, first. Nobody who has just drunk a pint of bitter chocolate wants to be hit with a peak-time record. Organic house at a walking pace, hand drums, a lot of space, the djembe when the first few are up. The set runs an hour or two and its whole job is to turn a seated room into a standing one without a single person noticing the moment they stood up. Then either the night goes on into something bigger, or it does not and people drift off to bed feeling like they have done something wholesome, which they have.

On the language

The scene around these events talks about the drink as though it were a person, and about the evening as though it were a rite. I understand why. It is trying to describe the fact that a room of strangers can end up genuinely open with one another over a warm drink and some slow music, and that is a real thing, and it is rare, and it deserves a word.

The word is not the one they chose.

Nothing is being consecrated. It is a hot chocolate and a dance, and the fact that a hot chocolate and a dance can do what this does is more remarkable than any of the vocabulary, not less.

Strip the words off and the thing underneath gets more impressive.

So: 100% cacao, no sugar, a room with the shoes off, an hour of slow drums, and a lot of people going home early and happy. If you run one and want the music side done by someone who takes the drink seriously and the language less so, the booking page is where to start.