Once we’d harnessed fire, there could be revelry after dark.
Then, as early cities took shape, the revelry became a commodity, as bars, taverns and gambling dens emerged. At this point, historians say, the idea would have been to offer the non-elite working classes a place where they could eat, drink and unwind from the labours of the day, away from the supervision of the elite. From these early gatherings, a long, restless culture of nightlife slowly emerged, shaped by rebellion, commerce, music, technology, and the many ways people choose to find pleasure after a day’s work. it has been a lot more than that, she points out While that’s not wrong. This craving has worked to push the boundaries of what is considered possible, permissible, desirable. WHEN DID THE PARTY START? People have moved on to other formulas. As boundaries between day and night blur with changing workdays and hybrid work models, people are gathering at dawn to for coffee raves, or dancing to heavy techno or house music while sipping matcha or iced lattes at sober sunrisers. This is an increasingly popular model in cities around the world, from Seoul, Indore and Sydney to Nagpur, London and New York.
The earliest known tavern, unearthed in Iraq, dates to almost 5,000 years ago. The archaeologists who found its remains in 2023 said patrons would have gathered here for beer and snacks of dates and dried fish, as the sun went down. In this way, the nightlife industry has served as a catalyst for… * Jazz: Which emerged in the vibrant dancehalls, saloons and red-light districts of 19th- and 20th-century New Orleans, shattering convention in an era of segregation. * The cancan and cabaret: Which emerged in the 19th century, as the traditional quadrille took a provocative, defiant turn, in the working-class public dance halls of Paris. * Disco: Which started as a safe space for the Black, Latino and queer communities in 1960s New York and grew into a movement that extended to technology (particularly sound and lighting systems), fashion, and a culture of acceptance that revolutionised the queer rights movement. * Dadaism: This avant-garde cultural movement was born in Zurich’s cramped nightclub Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, with a painting whose angular art depicted performers dancing on stage, as the audience laughed and pointed. As it gained momentum, it countered traditional rationalism and aesthetics with absurdism, in response to the horrors of World War 1, paving the way for surrealism by the 1920s. The number of registered nightclubs in the UK dropped from 1,700 in 2013 to 787 in 2024, according to a report by CGA by NIQ and AlixPartners. The number of registered nightclubs in France has fallen by 70% since the 1980s, the Paris-based market research firm Businesscoot reported last year. We’ve been partying in warehouses and factories for over 50 years, and those spaces don’t have the same meaning they had in post-industrial Detroit either, adds Willetts.
“We think of nightlife as popular culture, experienced in a hedonistic way,” says London-based culture historian Imogen Willetts. “In a very practical sense, nightlife has been an engine of cultural innovation, because we crave spectacle and novelty,” Willetts adds. “If millennials gravitated towards the quiet intimacy of Sofar gigs over loud, late-night parties, Gen Z’s coffee raves suggest a desire for nightlife that feels more inclusive and authentic, and less performative,” says Delhi publicist Ruhi Batra, who operates in this space.
Unlike night rituals from across the ancient world, which also involved music and dancing but tended to be religious, these events were secular. Unlike the taverns of Mesopotamia, which likely operated all day and catered to travellers and traders too, the nightspots of Edo-era Japan were designed to offer a variety of leisure activities after the day’s work was done. It started, as it often does, with a kind of prohibition. PICTURE IT NOW… Edo was a grand city built of wood. Open-flame torches posed too much of a risk, so the ruling warrior class, the Tokugawa shogunate, keeps the streets dark at night. Watchmen patrolled to check crime; samurai guarded the wealthy from bandits. This was a flourishing Japan. As its economy grew, young people move to the city (which, incidentally, overlaps with parts of modern-day Tokyo). Under cover of night, illegal teahouses, theatres and brothels began to sprout. The brothels and teahouses flourished, and so did music, art and new ideas of fashion — including elaborate hairstyles and woodcut pamphlets about fashion trends that were almost a kind of early zine. More such complexes would follow. Meanwhile, by the 1730s, entrepreneurs in London were leasing large grounds from the landed gentry to set up pleasure gardens where the non-elite could retreat from the squalors of city life. For a shilling, one could watch dancers, jugglers, acrobats, fireworks, musicians and balladeers. FAST-FORWARD TO… New York, Rome, Florence, Berlin, Paris, Delhi, Mumbai. A city isn’t considered complete without a thrumming nightlife district. These typically include art districts, venues for music and poetry, arenas for food, culture, political debates and fashion shows. So elaborate costumes and new kinds of music, experimental theatre and independent labels, all find room. (Click here for more on how this timeline evolved, and things we wouldn’t have without this world.) WHY THIS OTHER WORLD AT ALL? This is the feeling of euphoria we experience during a peak communal experience such as a football game, a stadium concert or a packed gig. In the ancient world, people likely found it at religious rituals, when they gathered around a fire, beat drums, offered up a sacrifice and danced or feasted. Then that kind of drumming largely stopped. Interests such as sport, fashion and live entertainment expanded to fill a gap. Or so on theory goes. “Nightlife has stepped in to provide this important human sensation at a time when societies, particularly in the West, have become increasingly ambivalent about religion too. CITIES OF LEISURE Back at the dance halls, the US kicked things into high gear, as it tends to do. Casinos and entertainment complexes grew bigger, designed increasingly to keep people in and keep the real world at bay (with endless buffets, unlimited cocktails and lighting that blocked out all sense of what time it was). This was nightlife as the modern world had never seen it. Everything here was open round the clock. Fur coat shops accepted casino chips as payment. (For more on how music movements began to unfold in the US too, click here for disco, here for hip hop, and here for ballroom culture.) Around the same time, the Cuban city of Havana, had emerged as a fierce competitor to Las Vegas, with its ultra-luxurious casino-resorts where regulations were even looser. Young people famously worry about being caught on someone’s phone, looking or sounding so stupid or intoxicated that they’ll either go involuntarily viral or never work again. It is also a time of cosy everything, which sounds good, until one realises we aren’t staying in for quality time with loved ones. We’re staying in to scroll, scroll, scroll, endlessly and somewhat frantically.
The shogunate, wanting to contain such activity, set up a walled, moated compound named Yoshiwara in 1617. Collective effervescence: That’s what sociologist Emile Durkheim called it, in 1912. In the post-World War 2 boom, the nightlife industry began to light up deserts and alter skylines. As early as 1946, a stretch of rustic gambling dens in the Nevada desert started to morph into what is now Las Vegas. Add to this economic downturns, uncertainty over jobs and rising prices, and it isn’t surprising that nightclubs have been shutting in waves since about 2013.
Willetts’s book, Up All Night: A History of Going Out (2026), traces nightlife as “organised rebellion”, all the way back to 17th-century Japan, where a nocturnal world first flourished as an end in itself, isolated from polite society. “Come as you are,” is the theme. “Collective effervescence is the feeling of being part of something bigger than ourselves,” Willetts says. “If the electric light helped people go out, smartphones encourage us to stay in,” says Willetts.
TODAY… The mood is decidedly less boisterous.
“Maybe the future will be decaying shopping malls, or the newly empty office buildings in the centres of our cities. “We do need to get off our phones, though, and get back on the dancefloor! Whatever that means to you.
A rave movement for late-stage capitalism could be the answer,” she says.
