DISCOGRAPHIES ‘This is a lucid, informative, engagingly written and stimulating work. It admirably covers a variety of different theoretical issues and takes off from dance to raise all sorts of questions about the treatment of music in cultural studies.’ Simon Frith, University of Stirling ‘Discographies is contemporary, committed and compelling. The strengths of the book lie in its ability to combine academic expertise with an obvious immersion in dance music culture.’ Will Straw, McGill University Experiencing disco, hip hop, house, techno, drum ’n’ bass and garage, Discographies plots a course through the transatlantic dance scene of the last twenty-five years. Tracing the history of ideas about music and dance in western culture and the ways in which dance music is produced and received, the authors assess the importance and relevance of dance culture in the 1990s and beyond. Discographies considers the formal, aesthetic and political characteristics of dance music. It discusses the problems posed by contemporary dance culture of both academic and cultural study and finds these origins in the history of opposition to music as a source of sensory pleasure. Discussing such issues as technology, club space, drugs, the musical body, gender, sexuality and pleasure, Discographies explores the ecstatic experiences at the heart of contemporary dance culture. It suggests why politicians and agencies as diverse as the independent music press and public broadcasting should be so hostile to this cultural phenomenon. Jeremy Gilbert teaches Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London. He is a contributor to Living Through Pop and The Moderniser’s Dilemma. Ewan Pearson has been a visiting lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of East London. He is now a full-time musician and has recorded for several UK dance labels, including Glasgow’s Soma Recordings. DISCOGRAPHIES Dance music, culture and the politics of sound Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson London and New York THIS BOOK IS FOR OUR MUMS First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 1999 Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Gilbert, Jeremy Discographies: dance music, culture and the politics of sound/Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson Includes bibliographical references and index 1. Dance music—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Dance music—Social aspects. 3. Music and society. I. Pearson, Ewan. II. Title. III. Title: Dance music, culture and the politics of sound. ML3406.G55 1999 784.18’8–dc21 99–10971 ISBN 0-415-17032-X (hbk) ISBN 0-415-17033-8 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-01206-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20397-6 (Glassbook Format) CONTENTS Preface vii Acknowledgements x 1 The tribal rites of Saturday night: Discos and intellectuals 1 2 Music, meaning and pleasure: From Plato to disco 38 3 The metaphysics of music 54 4 Take your partner by the hand: Dance music, gender and sexuality 83 5 Metal machine musics: Technology, subjectivity and reception 110 6 No music, no dancing: Capitalist modernity and the legacy of Puritanism 146 7 The politics of popular culture 158 Bibliography 187 Index 193 PREFACE Why this book is rubbish This a specific project with a specific agenda, and it can never hope to be all things to all people. There are many things which this book does not do. This is not because we think those things are not either interesting or important. First, Discographies does not attempt to be a coherent account of dance music cultures, either historical or sociological. It does not tell the story of dance culture. Those who are looking for a clear and concise narrative history of British dance culture, from its pre-history in disco to its possible future, should refer to Matthew Collin’s excellent Altered State (1997), a tremendously thorough and insightful work. They should also read Simon Reynolds’ Energy Flash (1998), not only for the wealth of information on the historical events and happenings of dance culture both in the UK and in the United States, but for its brilliant and exhaustive account of dance music forms. Discographies does not attempt to offer any such musicological depth of approach. For an insightful collection of reflections—historical, political and theoretical— on the milieu in which much of the more politically radical developments in UK dance culture have taken place, we refer readers to George McKay (ed.), DiY Culture (1998), a book that engages with many important issues, from Ecstasy to free parties to road protests to the legacy of anarchism. Neither does this book offer a sociology or an anthropology of dance or dance music culture. As we explain in Chapter 1, we are sceptical as to the possibility of producing such a study. ‘Dance cultures’ are fluid, multifarious formations which will always exceed any attempt to map them. Excellent work is produced in the course of trying to do so, however, and we would recommend to anyone looking for such work Sarah Thornton’s Club Cultures (1995), Helen Thomas’ (ed.) Dance in the City (1997) and Mary Anna Wright’s (ed.) Dance Culture, Party Politics and Beyond (Verso, forthcoming). This book does not concern itself greatly with the processes of economic, social or cultural production according to which dance culture is generated and reproduced. Excellent research is being carried out in this area by other people (see, for instance, David Hesmondhalgh’s essay in Soundings 5, Spring 1997) and we look forward to its wider dissemination. We are entirely sympathetic to those who wish to see the study of culture turn its attention to the empirical realities of such processes, but we do not vii PREFACE think that such an approach is sufficient in and of itself, and it is not what we have tried to do here. This book is not directly concerned with the politics of identity. Brilliant work is forthcoming from others on the politics of dance music, conceived primarily as black/ diasporic musics, and on the specific experiences of women in rave and post-rave cultures (see, for instance, the work of Maria Pini as referred to in this book). We hope that our work will prove complementary to theirs. Finally, while this book deploys theoretical and political insights drawn from areas of continental philosophy, its approach (following Foucault) is to treat such bodies of idea as tool kits, to be used as we find useful rather than with an eye to unimpeachable rigour (not that we have not tried always to use the right tool for the job in hand…). The world can undoubtedly look forward to work which will engage with these issues from similar perspectives but with a wider philosophical sweep and with a sharper theoretical edge. The work of Drew Hemment, who has contributed to George McKay’s DiY Culture (1998) and is the organizer of the FUTUREsonic symposium (www.futuresonic.com), may well prove such. Why this book is brilliant What we do try to do in Discographies is respond, from the point of view of ‘cultural studies’ and ‘critical theory’, to some of the effects which dance culture has generated over the last twenty years. These ask a number of essential questions of cultural studies, which needs to respond by developing tools that can begin to address them; we hope to offer some pointers towards such tools and how they might be used. In the process we address a number of themes which we see as indispensable to a proper engagement with the musics and cultures of social dance: the difficulties inherent in mapping and narrating popular culture; the problematic status of sound in general and instrumental music in particular in western culture; the complex significance of technology in post-modern society; the complex relationships between music, meaning, and the body in that culture; issues of individual and communal pleasure and the historical legacy of puritan modernity; and the ambivalent nature of contemporary popular cultural politics. In the process of engaging with these issues, we hope to have provoked at least as many questions as we have answered, suggesting further avenues for research and analysis in the future. At the same time, we hope to have provided a framework within which to consider a range of important and often neglected issues: the theorization of music as sound being one example. Finally, Discographies is written from the point of view of a politics which, while abjuring the grand narratives of earlier moments, remains committed to the ongoing project of democratization in all spheres of life—social, economic, cultural, personal. Like Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), we regard anti-essentialism as the philosophical sine qua non of such a politics. As such, the agenda of this book is not to concern itself so much with a politics of identity (although we recognize that there can ultimately be no politics without identity), as with a politics of experience, addressing viii PREFACE those forms of culture which contain within themselves the potential not just to tell us who we are, but to challenge us with a sense of who we might be.