Bloomsbury Dance Music: A Feminist Account of an Ordinary Culture (Alternate Takes: Critical Responses to Popular Music)

Dance music-for some people, at some times, in some places, perhaps even on some drugs-can be a gateway to utopia. With the help of skilled DJs, dancers can reach euphoric trance states, discard their egos, and feel their gendered and other identities dissolve. In these settings, dance floors are sites of openness, subversion, and even collective acts of political resistance. At its best, dance music offers glimpses of better worlds. But more often than not, dance music is ordinary. Ranting and Raving shows that such utopian dance floors are the exception, not the rule. Clubbers physically harass other clubbers based on gender and racial prejudices. Booking agents use myths about merit and masculine artistry to justify their under-booking of women, transgender, and nonbinary DJs. And DJ technology corporations contribute to an inequitable labor market by outsourcing their manufacturing to free-trade zones. Grounded in field work and the accounts of dance music participants across the globe, this book argues that dance music-like all culture-is bound up with the realities of everyday life. About the Author Tami Gadir is a researcher in musicology at the University of Oslo, Norway. Gadir works across the areas of popular music, and music and gender, with a current specialization in the sounds and cultures of contemporary, electronically-produced dance music. Matt Brennan is a Chancellor's Fellow of Music at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He has served as Chair of the UK and Ireland branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). His is the co-author (with Simon Frith, Martin Cloonan, and Emma Webster) of The History of Live Music in Britain.