Weekend Societies: Electronic Dance Music Festivals and Event-Cultures

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From massive raves sprouting around the London orbital at the turn of the 1990s to events operated under the control of corporate empires, EDM (Electronic Dance Music) festivals have developed into cross-genre, multi-city, transnational mega-events. From free party teknivals proliferating across Europe since the mid-1990s to colossal corporate attractions like Tomorrowland Electric Daisy Carnival and Stereosonic, and from transformational and participatory events like Burning Man and events in the UK outdoor psytrance circuit, to such digital arts and new media showcases as Barcelonas Snar Festival and Montreals MUTEK, dance festivals are platforms for a variety of arts, lifestyles, industries and policies. Growing ubiquitous in contemporary social life, and providing participants with independent sources of belonging, these festivals and their event-cultures are diverse in organization, intent and outcome. From ethically-charged and boutique events with commitments to local regions to subsidiaries of entertainment conglomerates touring multiple nations, EDM festivals are expressions of freedoms revolutionary and recreational. Centres of EDM pop, critical vectors in tourism industries, fields of racial distinction, or experiments in harm reduction, gifting culture, and co-created art, as this volume demonstrates, diversity is evident across management styles, performance legacies and modes of participation. Weekend Societies is a timely interdisciplinary volume from the emergent field of EDM festival and event-culture studies. Echoing an industry trend in world dance music culture from raves and clubs towards festivals, Weekend Societies features contributions from scholars of EDM festivals showcasing a diversity of methodological approaches, theoretical perspectives and representational styles. Organised in four sections: Dance Empires; Underground Networks; Urban Experiments; Global Flows, Weekend Societies illustrates how a complex array of regional, economic, social, cultural and political factors combine to determine the fate of EDM festivals that transpire at the intersections of the local and global.

Reviews

A welcome and valuable contribution to an expanding literature on the alternative festival phenomenon, offering numerous avenues for further investigation given an eager researchers capacity to fend off chain saw-wielding critics, party round-the-clock, and hunt for the most innovative of creative expressions wherever the transformational path may lead. * Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture *
Often hidden from view, music festivals continue to transform the economic logics of the music industries and to challenge the ways popular music scholars think about community. Weekend Societies is an up to date and genuinely international treatment of contemporary musical festivals, rooted in rich field work and sharp observation. At the same time, it invites us to think in new ways about utopian spaces, collective experience and the nature of the musical commodity. Highly recommended. * Will Straw, Professor of Communications, McGill University, Canada *
Weekend Societies is an energising collection of essays that explores the varied cultures associated with contemporary electronic music festivals. Offering up a cross-section of festivals, from Sydney to Spain to Montreal and many other places in-between, this volume critically engages with the multifarious dimensions, and the consequent problems and promises, of the festivalisation of electronic dance music culture. The result is a welcome addition to popular music studies. * Geoff Stahl, Senior Lecturer and Programme Director of Media Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand *
From festival as utopian gift to festival as corporate event, this lively and engaged collection offers us a unique view, often first hand, and for the first time, of the trajectory of EDM gatherings. Starting with secret underground raves and free parties and tracing their development to the mega-event of a massive commercial gathering, we begin to see more of a neglected strand of music festival practice. A significant contribution to our understanding of festival studies. * George McKay, Professor of Media Studies, University of East Anglia, UK *

Author Bio

Graham St John is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Dept of Social Sciences, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia. He is Executive Editor of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture.