Electronica, Dance and Club Music

Discos, clubs and raves have been focal points for the development of new and distinctive musical and cultural practices over the past four decades. This volume presents the rich array of scholarship that has sprung up in response. Cutting-edge perspectives from a broad range of academic disciplines reveal the complex questions provoked by this musical tradition. Issues considered include aesthetics; agency; 'the body' in dance, movement, and space; composition; identity (including gender, sexuality, race, and other constructs); musical design; place; pleasure; policing and moral panics; production techniques such as sampling; spirituality and religion; sub-cultural affiliations and distinctions; and technology. The essays are contributed by an international group of scholars and cover a geographically and culturally diverse array of musical scenes.

Mark J. Butler, Professor, Northwestern University, USA

Contents: Introduction; Part I Production, Performance and Aesthetics: When sound meets movement: performance in electronic dance music, Pedro Peixoto Ferreira; From refrain to rave: the decline of figure and the rise of ground, Philip Tagg; Conceptualizing rhythm and meter in electronic dance music, Mark J. Butler; Producing kwaito: nkosi sikelel' iAfrika after apartheid, Gavin Steingo; The disc jockey as composer, or how I became a composing DJ, Kai Fikentscher; On the process and aesthetics of sampling in electronic music production, Tara Rodgers; The aesthetics of failure: 'post-digital' tendencies in contemporary computer music, Kim Cascone; 'A pixel is a pixel. A club is a club': toward a hermeneutics of Berlin style DJ and VJ culture, Sebastian Klotz. Part II The Body, the Spirit and (the Regulation of ) Pleasure: In defence of disco, Richard Dyer; In the empire of the beat: discipline and disco, Walter Hughes; 'I want to see all my friends at once': Arthur Russell and the queering of gay disco, Tim Lawrence; I feel love: disco and its discontents, Tavia Nyong'o; Sampling sexuality: gender, technology and the body in dance music, Barbara Bradby; Sampling (hetero)sexuality: diva-ness and discipline in electronic dance music, Susana Loza; Dancing with desire: cultural embodiment in Tijuana's nor-tec music and dance, Alejandro L. Madrid; The spiritual economy of nightclubs and raves: osho sannyasins as party promoters in Ibiza and Pune/Goa, Anthony D'Andrea; Electronic dance music culture and religion: an overview, Graham St John; Soundtrack to an uncivil society: rave culture, the Criminal Justice Act and the politics of modernity, Jeremy Gilbert. Part III Identities, Belongings and Distinctions: Genres, subgenres, sub-subgenres and more: musical and social differentiation within electronic/dance music communities, Kembrew McLeod; Exploring the meaning of the mainstream (or why Sharon and Tracy dance around their handbags), Sarah Thornton; Women and the early B