'Beyond the Dance Floor'? Gendered Publics and Creative Practices in Electronic Dance Music. Issue 1 (2nd January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Stirling, Christabel
• Is Part Of: Contemporary music review. Volume 35:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 130
• Page End: 149
• Publication Date: 2016-01-02
• Subjects: Gender -- Dubstep -- Dub Reggae -- Electronic/Dance Music -- Production -- Grime; Music -- 20th century -- Periodicals; 780.904
• DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2016.1176772
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0749-4467

Abstract

Abstract : This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork in London (2013–2014) to address the reasons why men dominate the crowds in certain spheres of electronic/dance music. Focusing on a group of London-based genres, notably dub, dubstep, grime and 'bass music', I analyse how gender gets attached to musical formations through the qualities and connotations not only of musical sound, but of its material, technological, social and spatial mediations. I show how such connotations 'stick' (Ahmed, S. [2004 ]. The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press) and get transmitted through time, leading to the persistent absence of women from certain musical lineages; and I demonstrate how this process serves to entrench and 'naturalise' associations between musical genres and 'maleness'. I then take this analysis to creative practices. Through my dialogue with DJ/producer Jack Latham—aka Jam City (Night Slugs)—I illuminate how musicians caught up in gendered socio-musical formations can become reflexively engaged with the gendered implications of the sounds they produce, and can therefore experiment with making changes.