Item Details

Experiential knowledge: Dance as source for popular music historiography

Issue: Vol 12 No. 3 (2019) Special Issue: Listening again to popular music as history (Part 2)

Abstract:

This article is concerned with the retrieval of sources in popular music historiography. It discusses the methodological and conceptual challenges that popular music historians might encounter when faced with cultures or practices that cannot be fully captured through conventional paradigmatic principles of the treatment of sources. Discussing an over-reliance on written documentation and a focus on what is identified as theoretical knowledge, a case is made for the inclusion of experiential knowledge as source for popular music history. Understood to be contextualized knowledge that can only be gained through participation in a music event, the article identifies dance as a form of experiential knowledge, which can be used to describe and explain music events such as raves. Understanding dance as/in memory provides opportunities to establish stronger links between the sociology of everyday life and the historical treatment of events.

Author: Beate Peter

View Original Web Page

References :

Anderson, T. L. 2009. Rave Culture: The Alteration and Decline of a Philadelphia Music Scene. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Belle-Fortune, B. 2005. All Crews: Journeys through Jungle/Drum & Bass Culture. London: Vision Publishing.

Bennett, A. 2001. Cultures of Popular Music. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Broughton, F., and B. Brewster. 2006. How to DJ Properly: The Art and Science of Playing Records. London: Bantam Press.

Carr, J. 2020. ‘Drug Barons are Bankrolling DJs to Organise Illegal Festival-Sized Raves across UK this Summer, Police Say’. MailOnline, 28 June. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8467745/Drug-barons-bankrolling-DJs-organise-illegal-festival-sized-raves.html (accessed 12 August 2020).

Carrington, B., and B. Wilson. 2004. ‘Dance Nation: Rethinking Youth Subcultural Theory’. In After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture, ed. Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris, 65–78. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chester, J. 2017. ‘Castlemorton Common: The Rave that Changed the Law’. BBC News, 28 May. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-39960232 (accessed 12 August 2020).

Collin, M. 2018. Rave on: Global Adventures in Electronic Dance Music. London: Profile Books.

Collins, D. 2020. ‘Manchester Gangsters Bankroll Illegal Raves to Sell Drugs’. The Sunday Times, 28 June. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/manchester-gangsters-bankroll-illegal-raves-to-sell-drugs-vn0gjr2lc (accessed 12 August 2020).

Critcher, C. 2000. ‘“Still Raving”: Social Reaction to Ecstasy’. Leisure Studies 19: 145–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614360050023053

Ehrenreich, B. 2007. Dancing in the Streets: The History of Collective Joy. London: Granta Books.

Frith, S. 1996. ‘Music and Identity’. In Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, 108–27. London: Sage.

Garnier, L., and D. Brun-Lambert. 2003. Electroschock. Höfen: Hannibal.

Goldie, and B. Thompson. 2018. All Things Remembered. London: Faber & Faber.

Goulding, C., A. Shankar and R. Elliott. 2002. ‘Working Weeks, Rave Weekends: Identity Fragmentation and the Emergence of New Communities’. Consumption Markets and Culture 5/4: 261–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/1025386022000001406

Haslam, D. 1999. Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop Cult City. London: Fourth Estate.

—2001. Adventures on the Wheels of Steel: The Rise of the Superstar DJs. London: Fourth Estate.

Istvandity, L. 2019. The Lifetime Soundtrack: Music and Autobiographical Memory. Sheffield: Equinox.

Lexico. 2020. ‘Rave’. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/rave (accessed 15 August 2020).

MacDonald, I. 2008. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties. London: Vintage Books.

Malbon, B. 1999. Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy and Vitality. London: Routledge.

Marsh, C. 2006. ‘“Understand Us Before You End Us”: Regulation, Governmentality, and the Confessional Practices of Raving Bodies’. Popular Music 25/3: 415–30. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143006001000

McKay, G. 1996. Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties. London: Verso.

McNeill, W. H. 1995. Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill and Human History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Melville, C. 2020. It’s a London Thing: How Rave Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Oakenfold, P. 2017. The Wonderful World of Perfecto. New York: Z2 Comics.

Ott, B. L., and B. D. Herman. 2003. ‘Mixed Messages: Resistance and Reappropriation in Rave Culture’. Western Journal of Communication 67/3: 249–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570310309374771

Pini, M. 1997. ‘Women and the Early British Rave Scene’. In Back to Reality: Social Experience and Cultural Studies, ed. Angela McRobbie, 152–69. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Porschardt, U. 1997. DJ Culture: Diskjockeys und Popkultur. Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Redhead, S., ed. 1993. Rave Off: Politics and Deviance in Contemporary Youth Culture. Aldershot: Avebury.

Redhead, S. 1997. Subculture to Clubcultures: An Introduction to Popular Cultural Studies. Oxford: Blackwell.

Reitsamer, R. 2016. ‘Die Praxis des Techno. Zur theoretischen und methodischen Erfassung elektronischer Musikkulturen’. In Techno. Ästhetik und Geschichte elektronischer Tanzmusik, ed. Kim Feser and Matthias Pasdzierny, 29–42. Berlin: b_books.

Reynolds, S. 2007. Bring the Noise. London: Faber & Faber.

—2017. Energy Flash: A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture. London: Faber & Faber.

Rief, S. 2009. Club Cultures: Boundaries, Identities, and Otherness. Abingdon: Routledge.

Rösing, H. 2014. ‘Geschichtsschreibung als Konstruktionshandlung. Anmerkungen zu Gecshichte und Gegenwart der Musikgeschichtsschreibung’. In Geschichte wird gemacht. Zur Historiographie populärer Musik, ed. Dietrich Helms and Thomas Phlebs, 9–24. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Scott, D. B. 2014. ‘Invention and Interpretation in Popular Music Historiography’. In Geschichte wird gemacht. Zur Historiographie populärer Musik, ed. Dietrich Helms and Thomas Phlebs, 41–54. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Sicko, D. 1999. Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk. New York: Billboard Books.

Siegfried, D. 2019. ‘Massenkultur und Distinktion. Zum Legitimationswandel des populären Geschmacks seit den 1950er Jahren’. In “Zeiten des Aufbruchs” – Populäre Musik als Medium gesellschaftlichen Wandels, ed. D. Schrage, H. Schwetter and A.-K. Hoklas, 231–48. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

St John, G. 2009. Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures. London: Equinox.

Stubbs, D. 2018. Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music. London: Faber & Faber.

Sweeney, C., and R. Pocklington. 2020. ‘The Ravers Return: How Criminal Gangs are Organising Illegal Raves and Bankrolling DJs to Sell Drugs in Lockdown’. The Sun, 30 June. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11995603/criminal-gangs-illegal-raves-djs-drugs-lockdown/ (accessed 12 August 2020).

Thornton, S. 1995. Club Cultures. Cambridge: Polity.

Till, R. 2010. Pop Cult: Religion and Popular Music. London: Continuum.

Wald, E. 2014. ‘Forbidden Sounds: Exploring the Silences of Music History’. In Geschichte wird gemacht. Zur Historiographie populärer Musik, ed. Dietrich Helms and Thomas Phlebs, 25–40. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Warren, E. 2007. ‘The Birth of Rave’. The Guardian, 12 August. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/aug/12/electronicmusic (accessed 12 August 2020).