Techno & co: Chronicles of electronic dance culture

Under the direction of Vincent Chanson

Widely acclaimed by the public, the electronic dance scene remains underinvested by critics. On an unprecedented scale, this collective investigation aims to remedy this. Electronic dance culture is today a major musical form. A global phenomenon, from Berlin to New York, from Kampala to Shanghai, it is one of the essential pop grammars. The aim of this book is to account for the social imaginary deployed by this musical and subcultural continuum, from its origins in Detroit Techno or Chicago House, to its more contemporary reformulations with globalized EDM, including the evocation of certain more underground movements (Bunker Records, English IDM). Analyzing both the geography and ecosystem of electronic dance music and its graphic aesthetics, the politics of queer identities at play there, and the modes of mediatization of emerging scenes, this work explores the power of social and political evocation of the dancefloor. It also shows how this phenomenon can be viewed through the prism of the critique of gentrification and cultural industries. Claiming the heritage of cultural studies and Anglo-Saxon pop criticism, the contributors to this investigation have all set themselves the objective of considering the "dance music form" as a critical object.

ISBN: 978-2354803179