Dance Music Spaces: Clubs, Clubbers, and DJs Navigating Authenticity, Branding, and Commercialism

(Hardback)

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Dance Music Spaces: Clubs, Clubbers, and DJs Navigating Authenticity, Branding, and Commercialism is about the production of social, cultural, physical, and digital spaces in dance music, spaces that share features of both rave authenticity and the commercialism of club culture. Using a concept she calls authenticity maneuvering to explain how clubs, clubbers, and DJs navigate authenticity, branding, and commercialism, Danielle Hidalgo argues that the strategic use of a rave ethos bolsters acceptance in dance music spaces while also making commercial practices less visible or problematic. She shows how the presence of both authenticity and commercialism enables and constrains three highly successful women DJs and their colleagues, requiring the ongoing performance of authenticity via branding. This book presents a compelling analysis of the complicated interplay between dancing bodies, digital practices, and spatial offerings in contemporary dance music.

Reviews

Methodologically innovative and theoretically nuanced, this ethnographic project illustrates the ways in which notions of authenticity are undermined by commodifying tendencies. As Hidalgo shows us, authenticity and commodification are dialectical processes enmeshed in the lived experiences and practices of those studied. While most studies of electronic dance music focus on the celebratory aspects, this book examines both the structure and the lived experience of those who participate in this youth phenomenon turned into commodified culture industry. More importantly, this piece adds a refreshingly feminist perspective within a field of study dominated by male writers and subjects.

Hidalgos books takes us on a journey through house music that seamlessly weaves together her own experiences and academic theorizing. She builds on earlier work about club cultures, femininities and masculinities and develops a contemporary take on house music cultures/s. While her own love of music and dancing is evident in Dance Music Spaces, she unflinchingly engages with critiques of house music culture and commercialization, critically exploring the authenticity maneuvering practices of the three women DJs that feature most heavily in her account. The women DJs are shown to both resist and incorporate the commercialization of house music and their delicate (and not so delicate) maneuverings demonstrate their survival strategies in increasingly commercialized and gendered spaces. The book also explores how authenticity is set to work within these commercialized and commodified spaces with aspects of authentic rave culture interwoven with social media branding for those involved in contemporary EDM culture/s. Hidalgos critical exploration of the effects of technology and commercialization on the spaces and places of house music and the meticulous (re)construction of the lives, philosophies, and branding of her central characters makes for a fascinating and compelling read highly recommended!

Author Bio

Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo is associate professor of sociology at California State University, Chico.