Ayahuasca Helped Inspire a BPM Festival Co-Founder’s New Dance Event Venture

Phil Pulitano was deep into an ayahuasca ceremony when he knew definitively that it was time to move on from his longtime professional post.

In 2008, Pulitano co-founded the BPM festival, a January gathering of dance industry professionals — named for “bartenders, promoters, musicians” — that over the years grew into one of the electronic scene’s premiere indie festivals. During its nine-year tenure in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, the event drew tens of thousands of fans and a perpetually strong collection of techno, minimal and house music producers and DJs.

Then in 2017, a shooting in a club adjacent to the festival left one person dead, made the threat of violence painfully real and effectively forced BPM out of town. A message spray painted in town read in Spanish that “This is to show that we are here, for not falling in line, Phillip-BPM. This is the beginning.” The message was signed by the Zetas drug cartel.

“In 90 seconds, our lives completely changed,” says Pulitano says over Zoom from his home in Ibiza. “We went from being [on the verge of] a 50% buyout for $40 million to having to pick up one of our security guards and dear friends off the ground after he was shot.” While BPM continued its expansion plans, hosting editions in locations including Portugal and Tel Aviv, Israel and eventually finding a new permanent home in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, the 2017 attack was ultimately the first in a series of unfortunate events.

After its 2020 debut Costa Rica edition, the 2021 festival was cancelled due to the pandemic. Then in 2022, BPM was forced to cancel 30 hours before it was set to begin due to emergency covid restrictions put in place by the government that banned large gatherings. BPM organizers got this news after roughly 7,000 people, half of the total attendees, had already arrived to town for the event. While the team was able to host several smaller, renegade parties on nearby private land, Pulitano says the situation was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” creating a financial blow that cost BPM millions.

The situation was compounded when the event’s ticketing company did not make good on its promise to refund the event’s 14,000 would be attendees, forcing Pulitano and his business partner to come up with the money to pay everyone back. Pulitano says his relationship with his partner deteriorated under the strain. But “I couldn’t even walk away if I wanted,” he says. “My name was involved and people hadn’t received their ticket money back.”

BPM 2023 created an opportunity for the company to recoup funds and pay off debts, despite it being the smallest ever edition of the festival, hosting roughly 3,800 people. Pulitano was proud of the festival but felt the brand had lost credibility. He also knew his stress about it all was also stressing out his then pregnant wife. As the dancefloors at this 2023 edition heaved with party people, Pulitano looked on knowing it would be his last time with BPM.

He’d by then participated in a pair of ayahuasca ceremonies — an ancient Indigenous ritual during which participants drink a psychedelic brew made of boiled leaves and vine and which Pulitano refers to by the colloquial term “plant medicine” — and found certainty and inspiration in the experiences. “I needed to do my own thing,” he says. “I had these sketches. I came up with a new idea.”

That idea is The 5th Element, a festival Pulitano is producing this January in the Puerto Rican rainforest. As with BPM, the center of the seven-day event will be techno and minimal music. But the real nexus of The 5th Element Pulitano says, will be deep meaning, spirituality and elevated vibes.

“I knew I needed to figure out a way to create a hybrid experience in dance culture,” Pulitano says. “Not going for a super hippie vibe that plant medicine can be… but doing something that’s in service and creates a bit more awareness and brings more consciousness to what we’re doing.”

In practical terms, this will involve bringing a crowd of roughly 4,000 attendees and 60 or so artists to the currently undisclosed site in the Puerto Rican rainforest. (This site has some infrastructure including a restaurant and ATV and horseback riding facilities, and while in nature, is not in a particularly dense or remote area of the rainforest.) Puerto Rico is in fact where BPM had hoped to relocate to in 2018, although these plans were set aside when a devastating hurricane hit the island in August of that year. With rainforests being sensitive ecosystems, Pulitano says The 5th Element will be strictly leave no trace and also provide opportunities to participate in beach cleanups.

Pulitano says the goal is to book artists who “want to come and experience something more as well, not just come in out and just and make money and leave.” Set times for the event’s two stages will not be publicly announced. “Your journey starts when you arrive,” says Pulitano.

Programming will also include yoga, culinary experiences, art and ritual. (Pulitano advises that The 5th Element “is not a plant medicine event, but it is a consciousness event.”) His staff of nine even includes shaman to advise on spiritual concerns. He foresees rituals like smudging happening on the dancefloor, and altogether hopes to create an experience with greater depth and purpose than escapist partying and revenue. The seven days will be structured with an “opening ceremony ritual” at the beginning before gradually ramping up the music, and then winding down into ritual in the latter part of the week.

The 5th Element is being marketed towards socially conscious, experience hungry, wellness driven and reasonably well-moneyed attendees looking for bespoke experiences hat are more unique than most large-scale corporate events. (Funding for The 5th Element is coming from a private investor.)

Altogether, he says the event “is something that’s giving me the same feeling I had when we created BPM back in 2008 and that [we had] in Mexico.” (He now refers to his onetime business partner as his “ex partner,” says the two are not speaking and that his agreement to be bought out of BPM is currently “in a court situation.” He adds that the BPM brand was “destroyed” after the 2025 event was cancelled last minute due to permitting issues. The festival has to date not announced plans for a 2026 edition.)

But with his ceremonial visions now taking material form, Pulitano says he’s again feeling a passion that he personally partially lost after the 2017 shooting. It’s a concept he hopes will inject some heart into the dance world at large.

“I think that the scene has become this crazy bubble where the fees are too high for artists, which then ultimately fall back on the promoter, then the then the ticket buyer,” he says. “I feel like it’s losing its essence this way. There’s really no soul behind it. What we’re trying to create is something with soul and love and unity, that’s trying to find purpose within the chaos.”