Together, Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor

by Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta

Overview

In Together, Somehow, Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta examines how people find ways to get along and share a dancefloor, a vibe, and a sound. Drawing on time spent in the minimal techno and house music subscenes in Chicago, Paris, and Berlin as the first decade of the new millennium came to a close, Garcia-Mispireta explains this bonding in terms of what he calls stranger-intimacy: the kind of warmth, sharing, and vulnerability between people that happens surprisingly often at popular electronic dance music parties. He shows how affect lubricates the connections between music and the dancers. Intense shared senses of sound and touch help support a feeling of belonging to a larger social world. However, as Garcia-Mispireta points out, this sense of belonging can be vague, fluid, and may hide exclusions and injustices. By showing how sharing a dancefloor involves feeling, touch, sound, sexuality, and subculture, Garcia-Mispireta rethinks intimacy and belonging through dancing crowds and the utopian vision of throbbing dancefloors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478027058
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	314
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta is Associate Professor in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Table of Contents

Preface  ix
Introduction  1
1. Touch and Intimacy on the Dancefloor  37
2. Sonic Tactility  65
3. Liquidarity  91
4. Thickening Something  124
5. The Sweetness of Coming Undone  151
6. Bouncers, Door Policies, and Embedded Diversity  183
Epilogue  216
Notes  235
Bibliography  267
Index  291

Editorial Reviews

Together, Somehow takes readers past the velvet rope and onto the dancefloors, into the backrooms and bathrooms, and up to the DJ booths at legendary clubs like Berghain and one-off raves in the Midwest. It is one of those joyous books where passion meets erudition on every page, presenting a compelling portrait of the contemporary electronic dance music scene. Giving us in many ways the prehistory of the racial and gender reckoning that nightlife is going through right now, Together, Somehow will stand as one of the essential works on EDM.”—Tavia Nyong’o, author of, Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life

“Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta serves us a much-anticipated, technicolor musicological response to the enveloping, multisensory experiences on the dancefloor that queer studies and performance theorists of color have dominated in analysis for quite some time. From start to finish, Garcia-Mispireta gives us rigorous analysis we can feel in the oft-neglected research on the dynamics of affective connection among electronic dance music enthusiasts both as everyday listeners and music researchers. Undoubtedly, readers will find themselves reclaiming previously contested sonic world utopias.”—Alisha Lola Jones, author of, Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance

 "An essential contribution to a limited yet gradually expanding body of ethnomusicological scholarship on electronic dance music cultures. . . . This book offers a novel contribution to ethnomusicological scholarship and will surely lend itself as an important resource for scholars and other readers interested in the global phenomenon of electronic dance music culture or studies on music and affect more generally."—Rory Fewer, Dancecult

From the Publisher

Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta serves us a much-anticipated, technicolor musicological response to the enveloping, multisensory experiences on the dancefloor that queer studies and performance theorists of color have dominated in analysis for quite some time. From start to finish, Garcia-Mispireta gives us rigorous analysis we can feel in the oft-neglected research on the dynamics of affective connection among electronic dance music enthusiasts both as everyday listeners and music researchers. Undoubtedly, readers will find themselves reclaiming previously contested sonic world utopias.

Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance - Alisha Lola Jones

Together, Somehow takes readers past the velvet rope and onto the dancefloors, into the backrooms and bathrooms, and up to the DJ booths at legendary clubs like Berghain and one-off raves in the Midwest. It is one of those joyous books where passion meets erudition on every page, presenting a compelling portrait of the contemporary electronic dance music scene. Giving us in many ways the prehistory of the racial and gender reckoning that nightlife is going through right now, Together, Somehow will stand as one of the essential works on EDM.

Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life - Tavia Nyong’o

"An essential contribution to a limited yet gradually expanding body of ethnomusicological scholarship on electronic dance music cultures. . . . This book offers a novel contribution to ethnomusicological scholarship and will surely lend itself as an important resource for scholars and other readers interested in the global phenomenon of electronic dance music culture or studies on music and affect more generally."

Dancecult - Rory Fewer