HETEROCORPOREALITIES by Joanna Louise Hall
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HETEROCORPOREALITIES POPULAR DANCE AND CULTURAL HYBRIDITY IN UK DRUM ‘N’ BASS CLUB CULTURE By Joanna Louise Hall Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department o f Dance, Film and Theatre Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences University o f Surrey April 2009 © Joanna Louise Hall 2009 ProQuest Number: 27557450 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 27557450 Published by ProQuest LLO (2019). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLO. ProQuest LLO. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.Q. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract In this thesis I examine popular dance practice within contemporary UK Drum ‘n’ Bass club culture. Despite an active focus by cultural analysts on club and rave events where dancing is the central focus and ‘dance music’ is played, the dancing body is noticeably absent from previous discussion. I provide a discursive framework for the introduction of the dancing body into club cultural research by documenting and examining the dance practices in one specific genre of dance music: Drum ‘n’ Bass. Drum ‘n’ Bass is a sub-genre of electronic dance music that first developed in the UK in the early 1990s with its origins in US Hip Hop, Detroit and European Techno, and Jamaican Reggae and Ragga. In this thesis I argue that the intertextual, inter-generic and inter-cultural development of Drum ‘n’ Bass musical and clubbing culture is represented in the dancing body. I situate dancing as the central way in which Drum ‘n’ Bass club-goers construct, perform and reiterate specific personal and collective identities, which are informed, although not defined, by the musical genre’s history. Empirical research examining the popular dance practices within contemporary Drum ‘n’ Bass club culture reveals complex networks of association with, and dissociation from, other ‘dance music’ and Drum ‘n’ Bass clubbing crowds, which is demonstrated through the ‘appropriation’ and revaluation of specific racial, class-based and gendered identities. My central hypothesis is that the Drum ‘n’ Bass dancing body is heterocorporeal: a hybridized body where knowledge and beliefs about cultural groups, articulated in terms of class, race, gender, age and sexuality, actively intersect to create new meaning and significance through dance. The thesis is structured into two parts; in Part One I examine discourse regarding the construction and performance of identity in contemporary youth cultures and in Part Two I analyse fieldwork data from Drum ‘n’ Bass club culture. CONTENTS Part 1 Frameworks, issues and contexts Introduction 1 Introduction Notes 19 Chapter One Framing the field in subcultural studies 1.1 Introduction 11 1.2 The beginnings of subcultural theory 11 1.3 The development of post-subcultural theories 22 1.4 The postmodernist t^e-over: fluidity, fragmentation 24 and the neo-tribe 1.5 Re-thinking postmodern subcultures 28 1.6 New directions in post-subcultural studies 31 1.7 Conclusions 35 Chapter One Notes 38 Chapter Two Club culture is the new subculture 2.1 Introduction 40 2.2 Postmodern approaches to contemporary ‘dance music’ 41 cultures: trance dance, transcendence and the absent [dancing] body 2.3 Dance in contemporary club culture: writing bodies 49 moving 2.4 Transformation, liminality and the creation of a [lost] 53 / false community 2.5 Taste cultures: affiliations and distinctions within 56 contemporary club cultures 2.6 Identification, belonging and playfiil vitality in 60 contemporary club cultures 2.7 New expressions of femininity 65 2.8 Conclusions 69 Chapter Two Notes 71 Chapter Three Mapping the multifarious: the genrification of dance music cultures 3.1 Introduction 73 3.2 House music 75 3.3 Techno 82 3.4 Breaks 87 3.5 Conclusions 89 Chapter Three Notes 93 Chapter Four Identity and identification 4.1 Introduction 95 4.2 Self and ‘Other’, ‘us’ and ‘them’: identity and 97 identification 4.3 Race, ethnicity and cultural identity 99 4.4 Cosmopolitan alternatives:identity and cultural hybrid 103 III 4.5 Delineating difference; performing ‘blackness’ through 106 ‘whiteness’ 4.6 Alternative ‘black’ identities and their ‘white’ 114 appropriation 4.7 Conclusions 119 Chapter Four Notes 122 Part 2 On the Drum n' Bass dance floor Chapter Five Appropriation, hybridity and intertextuality in contemporary popular culture 5.1 Introduction 1 24 5.2 Issues of cultural ownership / the commercial 127 production of culture 5.3 From the Jungle to Drum ‘n’ Bass 134 5.4 New directions in Drum ‘n’ Bass 142 5.5 Conclusions 146 Chapter Five Notes 149 Chapter Six Fieldwork Issues and Methodologies 6.1 Introduction 152 6.2 Framing and defining the dance event 154 6.3 Research methodologies and reflexive practice 158 6.4 Fieldwork methodologies: participant observation 164 6.5 Fieldwork methodologies: gathering and recording data 171 6.6 Fieldwork methodologies: sourcing and interviewing 174 informants 6.7 Conclusions 179 Chapter Six Notes 180 Chapter Seven Boys, Bass and Bovver 7.1 Introduction 182 7.2 Dancing identities: gendered relations 185 7.3 Boys don’t dance: valuing the corporeal 194 7.4 Class matters 201 7.5 Conclusions 207 Chapter Seven Notes 210 Chapter Eight Ambivalent identities: hybrid appropriations 8.1 Introduction 212 8.2 Traces fi-om Africanist practice 213 8.3 Re-visiting cultural appropriation 220 8.4 The camivalisation of Drum ‘n’ Bass 227 8.5 Conclusions 235 Chapter Eight Notes 237 Final Conclusions Heterocorporealities: the hybridized dancing body 239 Final Conclusions Notes 249 IV Appendices: Appendix A ^50 Appendix B 254 Bibliography Acknowledgements Warmest thanks are extended to my supervisors. Dr Sherril Dodds and Professor Janet Lansdale, who have both provided me with invaluable support and guidance over the last five years. I wish a special thank you to Sherril who has tirelessly challenged me to engage in greater and more expansive thinking, even when I thought that I had given all that I had to give. I must also express my gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the doctoral award that has enabled me to pursue this study to completion. Thank you to my family and friends who, whilst appearing somewhat confused and bemused by my research topic, have always offered their full support and unrelenting encouragement. I extend a special thank you to Dominic who throughout this long journey has always believed that I will make it to the end. Lastly, I cannot miss this opportunity to thank my informants. I have been truly inspired when learning about your experiences in Drum ‘n’ Bass club culture and will remain touched by your vitality and enthusiasm for music and dancing. Whilst my time in club culture has come to an end I know that the dance floor will remain a special place for so many of you. VI Part 1 Frameworks, issues and contexts Introduction Club Supreme, Vauxhall, London 5* November 2004,10.30pm Underneath the brick railway arches I stand looking over the balcony to the crowded dance floor below. It’s dark but the revolving red and blue lights allow me to identify moving bodies through the clouds of cigarette smoke and dry ice that hang in the hot, sweaty space between me and the dancing clubbers. The sides, ceiling and floor of the room reverberate with a sound that is unmistakably electronic and futuristic, yet simultaneously dirty and primitive. Insistent, polyrhythmic drum patterns clatter alongside a low, grinding synthesised horn. The combination of noises initiates a release of adrenalin through my body and I can’t resist the urge to move. I begin to shift my shoulders alternately forward and back, which as the music builds in intensity becomes more forceful. A loud, wobbling bassline that sounds like the large propellers of a helicopter rotating prompts some of the dancers to jump up and down, shout and flick their hand toward the DJ in appreciation of his track selection. There is a strong sense of anticipation and intense excitement for the night ahead. The MC is standing on a small stage to the side of the club space with shoulders tightly raised and one hand gripping the microphone close to his mouth. His other arm gestures into the space, waving up and down in time with bouncing knees. Dressed in baggy tracksuit trousers and hooded top, he reminds me of rappers in American Hip Hop music videos. Next to him the DJ, enclosed by the large stacks of speakers and twin set turntables, bounces up and down with his eyes transfixed on the decks. As I breathe in, an acrid smell of fresh sweat combined with tobacco and stale beer assaults my nostrils. The MC shouts out to the crowd ‘big respect for all you ravers out there....let’s hear it for DJ Hype...coming straight at ya!’ I move to watch the clubbers standing to the side of the dance floor. A lad of about eighteen is wearing white trainers, white tracksuit trousers and has the hood of a blue sports top pulled low over the peak of a white baseball cap. With one hand he clasps a can of lager, whilst the other arm swings heavy and undirected at his side as he shifts 1 from foot to foot. As the music builds in intensity he gathers both arms together and with shoulders raised, bounces through the feet as if building up to action.