Boys, Bass And Bother: Popular Dance And Identity In Uk Drum N Bass Club Culture
Tags: Jo Hall

This book uses ethnographic research to examine the role of dance in the construction of identity in the distinctly British electronic dance music club culture of drum n bass. Dancing is revealed as the central way in which drum n bass clubbers construct and perform their identities, which are informed, although not defined, by the club cultures histories. The intertextual and intercultural development of drum n bass musical and clubbing culture is shown to be represented in the dancing body, prompting a challenge to the discourse of cultural appropriation. Popular representations of identities are embodied by drum n bass clubbers through affective transmission via the popular screen, and in this process are re-valued in their embodiment. Using a socially orientated understanding of intertextuality, the popular dancing body is shown to be heterocorporeal: containing traces of prior meaning and logic yet replete with new meaning and significance.