Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Peter Kaufmann
April 2020
ANTH453: Senior Seminar in Anthropology
American University, Anthropology BA
Faculty Advisor: C. Anne Claus
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Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without the help of a number of my friends,
family, faculty, and of course, my collaborators. As they say, it takes a village, and this was
undoubtedly the case for this research. First and foremost, I would like to thank my two capstone
professors, Dr. Rachel Watkins and Professor Anne Claus, for encouraging me to pursue this
topic, pointing me in novel directions for investigation, and generally providing a wealth of
support, critical feedback, and camaraderie. Your assistance was absolutely invaluable and I am
so grateful I was fortunate enough to have had you two in particular to steer me throughout this
process and help me grow as an anthropologist. Next I would like to thank all who consented to
participate in this research. You were my collaborators at every level and this project is just as
much yours as it is mine. I am grateful for your time, your willingness to share your stories, and
your vast knowledge of this rich community. Finally, I would like to thank my fellow
anthropology classmates who sat along with me for the entirety of this ride. Your feedback in our
Research Methods and Senior Seminar classes these last two semesters was indispensable to my
research and writing process. I drew much inspiration from hearing about your own research
projects, and was comforted by knowing I had a community of peers with whom I could share
Table of Contents
Research Question and Context ................................................................................ 4
Theoretical Framework and Literature Review ........................................................ 8
Methodology ........................................................................................................... 15
Positionality & Ethical Concerns ........................................................................... 17
Findings .................................................................................................................. 20
Analysis & Interpretation ....................................................................................... 31
Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 38
Works Cited............................................................................................................. 40
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Introduction
New York post-disco trio Indeep are best known for their 1983 hit, “Last Night A DJ
Saved My Life”, a club-floor filler in its time with a fat, funky bassline and an earworm of a
chorus. The song takes its name from the repeated refrain sung by vocalists Réjane Magloire and
Rose Marie Ramsey. That phrase in particular has been cut, sampled, and re-used in a plethora of
hits that came years after Indeep’s single. It’s easy to see why — many a clubgoer have left a
dancefloor feeling blissful and revitalized because of the work of the DJ in the booth. For
listeners of dance music in particular, the idea of a DJ “saving their life” is particularly salient.
Dance music vernacular is littered with allusions to the redemptive and spiritually enriching
powers of the dancefloor experience. For this community, being “saved” by the powerful and
encompassing beat of the DJ’s records is less a cute and catchy turn of phrase and more a
mantra, even a guiding principle. For this community, the words “Last night a DJ saved my life”
speak to something incredibly real and potent, and indeed, a phenomenon that continues to drive
Research Question
So it is that my research explores how dance music spaces1 today, particularly those
spaces who purport to provide the experience of “underground”, “real”, or “authentic” electronic
music, operate as arenas of ritual, spiritual significance. How can we see that these sites, be they
more traditional, accessible nightclubs and concert venues or more DIY, nontraditional
1
I define dance music spaces as those spaces wherein it is understood that dance music is
explicitly the focus.
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warehouses and abandoned lots, function as places where communal, transcendent experience
can be had? Further, how does the nature of such spaces define their ability to provide “spiritual
healing” and imprint themselves into the lasting memory of the dancers on the floor? With the
D.C. electronic music scene as my research site, I hope to investigate both why it is people come
to dance music spaces in the year 2020 and what it is they’re looking for.
Context
This research is firmly rooted within the context of the American electronic dance music
culture. In particular, it deals with a subcultural movement and community that is far more
insular and certainly less visible than the more popularly represented features of electronic music
writ large, itself a pervasive and global phenomenon. I struggle to avoid using the loosely
defined and well-worn term “underground” as a descriptor for this music and scene I hold so
dear as, for me, it conveys a sense of self-important smugness and judgmental arrogance; but
there is no doubt that for this project, “the field” as it may be generally conceptualized is far
removed from the setting most conjure up when thrown words like “rave”, “house music”,
“techno”, or “EDM”. Thus, it is essential that I do the work of situating this investigation in its
proper context and provide a brief exposition to foreground this largely misunderstood,
indisputably American-born phenomenon so as to ensure that reader and researcher are all on the
same page. I will invariably and necessarily be blurring together, even skipping over entirely,
some particulars of this history in the interest of time, but what follows is hopefully a functional
Electronic dance music, often simply called “dance music” for short, is a catch-all term
referring to a diverse and abundant variety of electronically produced music with strong
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rhythmic elements. House, techno, drum and bass, dubstep, trance, and hundreds of other genres
that are simultaneously independent of one another and interrelated are all considered a part of
this same family. It’s music generally typified by a 4/4 beat (colloquially known as a “four on the
floor” beat) produced by a drum machine, with additional elements coming from synthesizers
white, European product. It’s a disposable soundtrack to late nights, illegal “raves”, and
excessive partying. It’s also frequently associated with reckless recreational drug use,
particularly substances like LSD and MDMA. For many, it’s a source of surface-level
entertainment, devoid of any real substance or poignancy. These assumptions are tragically and
unfortunately misguided.
House, techno, and its many permutations we collectively call dance music were borne of
hyper-specific contexts. Disco is inarguably their common ancestor. In the wake of the “Disco
Sucks” backlash began in the 1970’s, a community of DJs, producers, and nightlife characters, a
significant portion of whom were black and Latino gay men, began experimenting with and
pushing a new sound that highlighted the mechanical, repetitive beat and bassline of disco and
synth-pop while adding novel elements the result of innovative editing techniques and suddenly
affordable access to a variety of drum machines, synthesizers, and other electronic instruments.
House and techno were and are the most prominent children of this experimentation, two similar
but nonetheless distinct movements pioneered by queer people of color in urban centers like
Detroit, Chicago, and New York during the late 80’s and early 90’s. Those drawn into this
fledgling scene were people who lived and operated at the fringes of society, who endured the
effects of a normative political and social culture that sought to make them illegible, and for
whom this music provided solidarity, community, and refuge. House music, for instance, takes
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its name from the mythical Chicago nightclub “The Warehouse” which was patronized primarily
by black and Latino gay men, as it offered a space in which they were able to openly express
Though the culture around early house and techno was undoubtedly niche, even hyper-
localized to particular American cities, it eventually made its way across the Atlantic2 where
both the music and the Black, American pioneers making it were welcomed far more warmly. It
is because of the cross-country import of songs from legendary acts like Detroit Techno group
Underground Resistance that the UK saw the rise of the so-called “Second Summer of Love”
from 1988 to 1989, where acid-house3 fueled raves and club nights resulted in an explosion of
youth culture that became best known for illicit partying, hedonism, and liberal drug use. As
critical scholar Prasad Bidaye notes in his chapter of Transnationalism, Activism, Art, “history
would have it that this movement would come full circle and criss-cross back to North America,
though redesigned as a British invasion import” (141). It was on the backs of UK and European
super-acts like The Chemical Brothers, 808 State, The Prodigy, and Daft Punk, artists who were
no doubt indebted to the sounds of those early American innovators, that electronic dance music
crawled out of the “underground” and firmly embedded itself into mainstream culture, creating a
multibillion dollar industry (recent reports value it around 7.2 billion USD) in the process. So it
is that electronic music today is commonly associated with the vapid and formulaic fodder
peddled by superstar DJs at high production festivals and nightclubs, a front-facing façade that is
whiter, straighter, and sonically far removed from those first forays into new musical territory in
2
Most notably, this took the form of major label compilations that compiled several of house’s,
and particularly techno’s, best known hits.
3
Acid house is a Chicago-bred permutation of house music defined by the use of a Roland TB-
303 bass line synthesizer.
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the 80’s and 90’s. But make no mistake, the traditions of that original “underground” are kept
alive by less visible, and less marketable, figures all across the country. There is still a side to the
scene wherein the idea of the dancefloor as a special, if not sacred, refuge, a sanctuary space with
the power to heal and reinvigorate, boldly lives on. In the following section, I walk through
much of the past scholarship on this particular topic and outline the theoretical underpinnings of
my research.
experience within the specific context of electronic dance music. Generally speaking,
anthropology’s concern with “ritual” has been explored and picked over as far back as the
1800’s. It is no doubt well-trodden territory. A few scholars are important to note here as being
foundational to not only this study of ritual within anthropology more generally, but also
specifically to recent theoretical and ethnographic ventures that situate it within a dance music
cultural framework. First is Émile Durkheim, who famously asserted that ritual and religion were
processes in which culture itself was enacted. He spoke of religious (which I use interchangeably
with ritual here) experience as a means by which certain mental states, beliefs, and ideas were
socially imposed and imprinted upon a community. His concept of “collective effervescence”, of
a communal, ecstatic ritual experience, is particularly relevant both to my research and many of
the scholars whom I draw into conversation in this project. Victor Turner is another seminal
figure here. His exploration of “liminality”, these spaces, experiences, and personae that exist
“betwixt and between”, continues to hold water in this arena of cultural anthropology. So too
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does his “communitas”, very much related to the idea of liminality. The construction of an
intensely felt, transient cohesion, a step beyond simple “community” that unites a group of
togetherness, is an idea practically universal in its presence within the literature I draw from for
this research. Perhaps Turner puts his continued relevance best himself: “Is there any one of us
who has not known this moment when compatible people—friends, congeners—obtain a flash of
lucid mutual understanding on the existential level, when they feel that all problems, not just
their problems, could be resolved…” (Turner 48). Indeed, both for me, and the work of many
before me that occupy this same territory, the pioneering work of Durkheim and Turner serve as
a theoretical bedrock.
The idea that house and techno spaces can function as sites wherein deeply personal and
significant meaning is generated is not new. It is a particular school of thought that grew
explicitly in response to even older interpretations of the rave experience through a postmodern
lens. According to Sarah Thornton in her Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital,
French sociologist and postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard dismissed the discotheque as “the
lowest form of contemporary entertainment” (Thornton 12). The ideas borne out in his Simulacra
and Simulation helped inform a perspective pushed for years by authoritative figures like British
within the rave experience, maintaining that “the joy of…raves…lies not in their intellectual
stimulation, but in their ability to satisfy, on a purely sensory level, our voracious appetite for
surfaces” (Hutson 38). Researchers at CCCS (Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural
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Studies) in the 70’s and 80’s further contributed to an understanding of dance music as merely an
avenue for escapist, hedonist pleasure-seeking, an “implosion of meaning”, and indeed, nothing
more than an “ecstatic simulacra” (St. John 2). Academia’s sweeping stroke painted raves,
dancefloors, discotheques, and dance music as frivolous, and indeed, unworthy of critical
attention. Beginning in the 90’s and continuing on today, the work of several anthropologists,
ethnomusicologists, and sociologists took direct aim at these assumptions and attempted to link
the rave experience to those famously spiritual, transcendent, and transformative experiences that
have been so well documented in scholarly explorations of ritual and religion. For these
academics, oft-uttered phrases like “last night a DJ saved my life” carry a specific significance;
they are indicators of the power of these spaces to provide, as Hutson terms it, “spiritual
healing”. They contend that the postmodernist lens is inherently limiting in its scope, and that by
focusing on the purported escapism and hedonism of dance music culture, we “neglect to address
the subjective and beneficial aspects of EDM participation” (Redfield and Savard 52).
Even in the context of consumption, as Ben Malbon argues in his Clubbing: Dancing,
Ecstasy, and Vitality, it is the very “experiential consuming” of club culture that makes it so
poignant, and that assuredly keeps dancers coming back for more. Takashi and Olaveson suggest
that raves and club dancefloors are spaces where people traverse through intense, ecstatic states
and join together in a bodily experience, that is “inherently meaningful for some participants”
(74). Even further, they link the very success of the rave movement to its somatic nature, as
illustrated here:
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A major reason for the astronomical growth of the rave phenomenon is its fundamentally
This “embodied nature” of the rave experience is a common feature in the recent literature of
dance music culture. “Textual ‘armchair’ orientations have dominated the scholarly literature”
(26) of the past, Takahashi argues, whereas the work of figures like Hutson, St. John, Malbon,
Fritz, Thornton, Fikentscher, and many others explicitly derives from personal participation in
(and passion for) the scene. These academics have felt firsthand the visceral, transformative
power of the dancefloor. Bryan Rill maintains that “a problem that all theorists face is that our
direct observation and, sometimes, personal experience” (140). Thus, “understanding the [rave]
experience requires immersion in the act of dancing”. One cannot see the substance that lies at
the core of dance music culture from a distant vantage point. Ethnographic authority is
traditionally understood to largely come from field experience itself. Commenting on Brian
Melanie Takahashi suggests the “ethnographer…becomes her own informant and her own
experience should be treated as primary data” (57) when applying this framework, though of
course the distorting effects of their own biases must be always at the front of their mind. For
these scholars, their work in the field has crucially involved being amongst those bodies moving
Neo-tribes
French sociologist Michel Maffesoli coined the term “neo-tribes” in the mid 1990’s as an
extension of postmodern theory that found society to be crumbling evermore rapidly, and whose
then, were transient, flexible communities of interest (as opposed to more rigid groupings based
on say, class or ethnic lines). They are communities marked by a lack of permanence and their
members’ voluntary participation. Maffesoli’s work has been a frequent point of reference in
academic literature concerning dance music culture and the rave experience, and particularly, its
relation to other relevant concepts like Turner’s communitas. Dance music culture is what
Thornton calls a “taste culture”, one based around these less fixed affinities for “taste in
similar tastes to themselves” (15). Nonetheless, as many in the literature are quick to point out,
the rave experience breeds a powerful and perhaps addictive sense of togetherness. Jimi Fritz
describes it aptly in his Rave Culture: An Insider’s Overview: “[Ravers] experience deep feelings
of unlimited compassion and love for every-one around them . . . for a few hours they are able to
leave behind a world full of contradiction, conflict and confusion, and enter a universal realm
where every-one is truly equal, a place where peace, love, unity and respect are the laws of the
land. (43). Critical scholars engaging in this line of thought are near unanimous in their assertion
that these neo-tribes may come to the dancefloor a loosely connected, even fragmented, group of
individual bodies, but their experiences once on the floor are a powerful kind of generative
phenomenon that constructs “communitas in the present” (St. John 16). Some, like
ethnomusicologist Kai Fikentscher, refer to this feeling and its source as “the vibe”. The vibe is
“a collective energy” which “collapses the boundaries between individual and collective” and
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wherein “the music transcends the acoustic realm and becomes physical” (151). How can we
interpret this as anything but communitas? Ben Malbon, along with many of these
aforementioned scholars, asserts that the dancefloor is indeed a liminal space where individuals
are “momentarily displaced, lost between the community and the isolation of the dancing
crowd”, thus becoming “unified and inseparable” (103). He calls this sensation of being betwixt
and between, as Turner might refer to it, “oceanic experience”, but regardless of the terminology
used, it is doubtlessly something the critical literature of today is explicit in highlighting, and that
the literature of the past was either entirely oblivious to or deliberately unconcerned with.
New Contributions
The vast majority of the work I have laid out above came about in the late nineties and
refresher to this still largely underexplored arena of music and subcultural scholarship. Further,
I’m opening up this ongoing conversation into what I see as untraveled territory. The analysis of
space has been glaringly absent from almost all of the literature I have reviewed for this research.
When it does manage to rear its head, it is only for a brief moment. Most distinguish a “rave” as
being popularly understood to involve non-traditional, even illicit spaces. Raves are underground
legitimate club, hotel, or restaurant facilities where alcohol and rave permits have been obtained”
(68). Historically, raves happened in abandoned warehouses or empty lots that were far away
from the prying eyes of the police and secluded enough that noise complaints weren’t a concern.
Surveillance is key to this distinction. Melanie Takahashi’s informants reported “feeling self-
conscious or guarded at clubs” (69), particularly women, who prioritized “the feeling of not
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having to worry about being approached by males who are interested in ‘picking up’” (70). Many
in other dance music communities across the globe relay similar concerns in related studies. Still,
beyond these brief forays into the nature of rave spaces, the vast majority of the literature deals
with the experiential phenomena provided by the dancefloor. Thus, with this project, I’m
explicitly adding a new dimension to this ongoing conversation through a critical investigation of
dance music spaces in the D.C. area. Not only am I interested in seeing how they operate as
arenas of ritual experience, but also in observing to what extent that power is influenced by their
context, one dominated by free-market economics and neoliberal ideology (by which I mean one
in which profit is often the only, and surely the most important, objective of any individual or
joint business venture), how has the incentive to sell drinks and the glitz and glam of a nightclub
(which I take as a given) affected their potential to offer these kinds of transformative
experiences, particularly when juxtaposed with a non-traditional venue? Quite simply, why do
people come to clubs, or a warehouse on city’s fringes, and what exactly are they looking for?
By beginning to do the work of answering these questions and others, I am both reinvigorating
and supplementing a thick description of the rave experience and of electronic dance music
culture that fully reckons with these no doubt powerful and significant phenomena. How I
accomplished this was no small part of my overall design for this project, and so I detail my
Methodology
Interviews
primarily qualitative in nature. I sourced data over a period of four months, beginning in January
of 2020 and continuing on into the following April. I conducted formal and informal interviews
with several members of the DC dance music community. They ranged from veterans of the
scene with years of involvement to younger participants who have only earnestly attended such
events in the past few years. They are all informants who expressed an interest in participating in
this research, and who hold a wealth of knowledge to explore for a variety of reasons. My
interviews were long-form (45 minutes to an hour) and substantive, with descriptive, grand-tour,
native-language, and experience questions that allowed me the opportunity to get at the heart, in
their own words, of how they conceive of dance music spaces and the experiences they have
within them. In total, I recorded three formal interviews with a personal field recorder and then
transcribed them to text. I also drew from a number of more informal interviews and
conversations I have had at dance music events and outside them via social media and text
communication where these topics are also probed. In these cases, nothing was recorded, but I
made notes and observations in a field-note journal either during or immediately following the
conversation. Many were, naturally, held very late at night, but I made a concerted effort to
retain an analytical and observant frame of mind. As these were informal, I did not keep tally of
Participant Observation
I also conducted fieldwork through participant observation at some key DC dance music
sites. Namely, these were a fully legal and liquor-licensed nightclub (hereafter referred to simply
as “the club”) known in the DC community writ large as one of two most prominent venues for
attending underground dance music events in the area, and a semi-legal afterhours warehouse
space (hereafter referred to simply as “the warehouse”) on the outskirts of the city. I say semi-
legal as its exact status as a legal venue for music events specifically is ambiguous at best. There
is no doubt a degree of assumed risk by its proprietors in its use. Attendance at events in these
authentic spaces allowed me to see collaborators in their element, and thus how their behavior
betrays what exactly they deem significant or insignificant, what rules or other norms they
follow or ignore, and how they identify themselves in relationship to other individuals and the
space itself. I visited each of these spaces once on different nights, both on a weekend, and spent
three to four hours there at a minimum. I recorded field-notes and observations primarily on my
Finally, throughout this participant observation, I also used what (little) I know about
proxemics and applied it to my notetaking, paying particular attention to how people moved
throughout the space they inhabited, where people tended to congregate, and how long they
stayed in particular spots. I should make an important note here. This research project
unfortunately coincided with the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. As such, a large part of
the participant observation I had been planning to do had to be called off, as nightclubs,
entertainment venues, and spaces where people socialize and congregate more generally were
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systematically shut-down for the purposes of virus containment and social distancing hygiene.
To make up for this, I also draw from observations made from years of personal experience as a
member of the DC dance music community, both as an eager attendee of events and member of
the dancefloor, as well as a working DJ playing behind the booth. I first ventured out to what I
consider a real dancefloor when I was a junior in high school (10 years ago) and have not
stopped since. I discuss more of my personal involvement in the scene and positionality below.
Personal Background
I come into this research as a Senior Undergraduate Anthropology major with almost no
fieldwork experience. That said, I sincerely believe I have received ample education in
experience is no doubt limited, I also came into this particular research setting with a great deal
of knowledge gained outside the classroom. I have been a dance music aficionado for most of
my young adult life. I am an ardent consumer of this music, as well as a purveyor, and have been
for many years. I play this music as a DJ regularly throughout the DC area, a side-career, if you
could call it that, that I began more than a decade ago. I self-identify as someone hugely
passionate about and committed to the flourishing of underground (which I use to differentiate it
from mass-consumed, mainstream culture) electronic dance music, particularly house and
techno. I have schooled myself, as a consequence of this years-long interest (if not obsession) in
much of the history and rich lore of these relatively young genres. Even further, I have actively
sought and found employment in parts of the music industry directly relating to the American
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dance music scene. Most recently, I worked for perhaps the foremost underground dance music
centered venue in the entire D.C. area as their head of marketing, promotions and PR, as well as
an assistant talent buyer. I worked there for two years, and in the process developed relationships
with a number of the staff that continue to be a part of its operations. Without identifying it too
explicitly, this is hugely important for me to state, as I relied heavily on this space in particular as
a field site for my ethnographic research, given its centrality to the DC dance music scene. I
recognize that I came into that space not as your typical outsider or average customer, but rather
as a privileged guest, and one with pre-established ties to many of those who are actively
employed there.
The dance music community in the DC area is not particularly large, and so throughout
my years of being involved in some form or another with it, I have in fact developed many
relationships with others of its members. I count several as extremely close friends, and many
more as people whom I care about on some level and am always glad to connect with. Again, I
this community that is the explicit focus of my research. That relationship allowed me a high
level of access to people and to space that is simply not afforded to everyone. Underground
communities are perhaps infamously insular and wary of anyone not in the know. In the case of
underground dance music, this is largely a safety mechanism intended to preserve the secrecy of
My positionality extends beyond my personal history with dance music and into how I
gendered, college-educated male, and thus distinctly not a member of those communities who
pioneered these genres, and who created spaces for its consumption that operated as safe havens
and sites of refuge from a society that kept them on its fringes. Though the DC community is
the DC scene that value dance music spaces as particularly sacred places of protection and
personal liberation.
Ethics
address them as completely as I can here. Historically, spaces where dance music is played,
consumed, and otherwise propagated have been at best semi-legal and at worst, actively targeted
by state agents like local and federal police. The reasons for this are many, and I shall not
address them here, but what is important is a recognition that the mere act of being within such
spaces (particularly for historically marginalized communities) can constitute a serious risk in
terms of one’s safety and privacy from the surveilling eyes of state enforcement. In addition,
many who come to these spaces engage in explicitly illegal behavior, most notably, the taking of
drugs or other illicit substances. As a researcher who came to these spaces for the express
purpose of observation, and who then recorded those observations, protection of identity and
anonymity was of paramount significance. It was critical that I do everything in my power to not
harm members of this community or the spaces they value themselves, and thus I refrained from
explicitly identifying any individual or any location in this paper. Everyone is referred to either
by initials I have chosen at random (they do not match their legal names) or simply as
“anonymous”. Informed consent was also critical to this aim. I made a point of establishing a
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reciprocal relationship built upon trust with anyone who became a part of this research. That
involved being direct, clear, and fully transparent about what I saw as potential dangers to them,
and explaining that they could cease their involvement at any point in the research process. I
intended from the outset to make this project one of active collaboration, where all parties
involved were clear about their stakes process, objectives, and outcomes, and one in which all
involved could ultimately look upon with pride. With my methodology laid out and my ethical
concerns addressed, I explore the data this research yielded in the following section.
Findings
I begin with data from my participant observation and subsequent fieldnotes. The club is
a fully licensed, legal music venue. Sitting in the heart of D.C.’s entertainment district, as was
confirmed to me by several of its attendees, it’s well known around and outside of the city for its
impressive soundsystem and strict focus on showcasing “authentic”, “underground” talent. It’s a
three-floored club, each with a bar or two prominently placed in the room. The night I visited, I
noted that patrons seemed anchored to the bar itself, almost hesitant to venture out onto the
dancefloor. This was particularly apparent on the 2nd or main-floor, which houses the club’s
famous soundsystem and in which all headlining acts perform. The crowd on the dancefloor was
diffuse early on in the night (early in this setting meaning before 1:00AM, generally regarded as
any club’s “peaktime”), and nearly everyone sported a drink in their hand. As the night
progressed, more and more people packed into the room, which could hold around two hundred
at a time. Once quite spread, it was quite thick and lively by 1:00 or 1:30AM, and all seemed to
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be locked onto the sounds emanating from the DJ booth. Indeed, the attention of the crowd on
the dancefloor was very much directed at the DJ, who in their elevated booth presented not much
more than a bouncing silhouette. In many ways, as I noted on my phone that night, it was the
kind of focus you’d see at any rock or pop concert, with a definitive focus on the star artist of the
night. Those not on the dancefloor itself leaned into the bar located towards the front of the room
(the booth was located in the back on the opposite end, so you’re greeted with the bar when you
first walk in). Their attention was far less focused on the DJ and seemingly the music itself; most
everyone was facing their neighbor in conversation, looking at a cellphone, or conversing with
the bartender. People here were laughing and talking. On the dancefloor, conversations seemed
to be a feature, but far more sporadic in nature, perhaps due to the increased volume of being
closer to the DJ. My key takeaway from my time spent at the club was the movement I observed
of attendees through the space itself. The dancefloor appeared, even on this main floor where I
spent most of my time, as a transient space that people constantly moved in and out of, many
seemingly in search of a friend to find amongst the throes, and many simply traversing through
to reach the bar for a drink. Though the attention of the dancers seemed largely focused on the
DJ, the act of dancing and listening seemed to me not to be the focus of those in the crowd.
Instead, socializing and drinking were the activity of choice; the music was a pleasurable
background attraction. My findings at the warehouse space, however, were quite different.
The warehouse was located far away from the heart of the city, in a part of town where
large storage facilities seemed to be everywhere. It was very much a non-residential, non-
entertainment neighborhood that the DC metro cut right through, a perfect spot, in other words,
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for a loud party to avoid unwanted attention. You had to walk a little way up a straight, dead-end
road to reach it, whereupon it sat in the middle of a row of seemingly identical such units. It was
totally nondescript and unassuming on the outside; you’d have no idea you were even in the right
spot were it not for people congregating in small groups right outside its front door or for the
muffled sound of music emanating from inside the walls. Within those walls, it was just as
sparsely adorned. This was, as I understood it, purely a functional space. A worn leather couch
sat in the corner for people to fall into if they needed a breather, a set of bathrooms lined one of
the room’s far corners, and the only other door led to a janitor’s closet which had been
appropriated by the bartender for the night to sling alcoholic beverages, energy drinks, and
water. The only features of the room other than these were the DJ booth, constructed of wood, at
floor height, and up against the right side-wall with the DJ facing out onto the concrete
“dancefloor” and the giant, hand-built speaker stacks that bordered it on both sides. The room
was completely dark save for the most minimal of lighting (no effects or LEDs dancing across
the walls) and a single disco ball which hung from the center of the ceiling.
The night I attended, the party started at midnight, and it was made clear to me that that
was very much the norm. Warehouse parties here and elsewhere were explicitly understood to be
all night affairs, going all the way into the post-sunrise hours of the morning. This was a
significant point of departure I observed between the warehouse and the club. Attendees at the
warehouse party stayed for far longer than their club counterparts, some from the moment I got
there at midnight all the way through to the bitter end at 7 or 8 in the morning. Further, people
were rooted to their “spot” on the dancefloor once things got going, moving rhythmically to the
heavy beat of the music for hours on end. Attention was directed at the DJ booth to be sure, but
also seemed to me to be more inwardly focused. I jotted down in my notes that many seemed
Kaufmann 23
“lost in their own little world” with their eyes closed or heads down. That is not to say that
people weren’t socializing, for indeed they were. In fact, everyone seemed to know just about
everyone else, and they would greet each other warmly and spark up the occasional conversation,
particularly on the couch or near the bathroom. People were drinking here too, but far less
uniformly. Many on the dancefloor had nothing in their hand except a bottle of water or a Red
Bull. Though alcohol may not have been a prominent feature, drug use was liberal and
completely out in the open. Surveillance was obviously not a concern, and people snorted,
swallowed, and drank a litany of assuredly illegal substances, normally sharing with a neighbor
in the crowd or a friend on the couch. Still, dancing and consuming the music seemed to be
everyone’s primary focus, and though the crowd was far smaller than the night I had been at the
club, their attention span was far greater and more committed. Whereas at the club, dancers
would regularly cycle in and out of dancing and the dancefloor itself, those at the warehouse
Interviews
My interviews produced a mass of data which would be impossible for me to fit in its
entirety within this paper. They were also the source of the most poignant and compelling pieces
of information this research produced. As a reminder, all individuals quoted or referenced here
are identified via initials I have chosen at random that have no connection to their legal names.
My informants came from a variety of different background and histories of involvement in the
local scene. For example, GR, a scene veteran, first sparked his passion for the music and
surrounding culture after venturing to nightclubs in Japan, where he spent some of his youth
Kaufmann 24
growing up, well over two decades ago. He was drawn in by the sight of Japanese youth
This club called Precious Hall…and it was just a basement with a banging soundsystem,
and dark, and I’d just be down there and like watching all these Japanese kids like heads
down, head-banging almost, to some pounding techno, just like losing it and being able to
express themselves in a way that otherwise they couldn’t, and having this cathartic
Conversely, BM, now in her late 20’s, got her start attending hip hop and bass music events in
Los Angeles, but really got involved when she went to college and joined its radio station. There
she found her love for playing “whatever IDM and glitch hop or house and disco stuff I could get
my hands on”. LM’s interest in dance music was initially piqued online through his visits to the
celebrated Flash website, Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music. A South Carolina native, he
moved to the DC area in 2014 and was eventually drawn into attending events at DC nightclubs
and Baltimore’s legendary Paradox (which has since closed). Though he had been listening and
consuming electronic music casually for several years, it was his time spent on the dancefloor at
Paradox that showed him “that this is what it’s supposed to be…that’s when it began to click”.
Though representing a variety of different age groups, genders, ethnicities, and roles
inhabited within the DC scene, all my informants shared similar tales of being sucked in by the
overriding, visceral power of the dancefloor experience. RK noted that after being frustrated by
“seeing live bands and not really enjoying myself because the shows would be over quickly and
everybody was just kind of standing around”, dance music events offered a space where “you
barely had to even think”, and where “you would just start dancing”. Here, he described a
4
GR, personal communication, March 2020.
Kaufmann 25
particularly powerful moment that came at the tail-end of a marathon set, wherein the DJ
unexpectedly dropped the italo-disco anthem “Dancing Therapy” by International Music System:
At that point almost everybody in the room (me and my partner included) were crying
because we were having the same experience with regard to the lyrics:
“Dancing to beat/Makes me feel so free/In reality/That’s the cure for me/It’s not
heresy/To feel wild and free/Dancing therapy is so good you see/Moving to the
beat/Keeps me up till 3/It’s my therapy for anxiety/Groovin’ in the heat/Feel so good and
high/Fusion to the beat/Really clears my mind”. I was dancing my heart out ‘til she ended
around 10:30 and was so at peace. I had just had the most emotional dancefloor moment
of my life and didn’t want it to end. I seriously felt like I could have danced for another
LM described having an experience so intense that in his first trips to Baltimore’s Paradox club
What stuck with me about that [was that] I remember being overwhelmed by everything
that was going on to the point that I was scared or intimidated I guess. The music was so
loud and like emotionally intense and the crowd was so into it, folks would go and dance
for hours and hours. It felt weird to be there but you couldn’t leave. It was one of those
nights where time ceased to matter, you know we weren’t checking our phone or watch.
We don’t want to leave because the music is so good and people are so into it, this is a
5
RK, personal communication, April 2020.
6
LM, personal communication, April 2020.
Kaufmann 26
responses, particularly when asked to describe a particularly profound personal experience on the
dancefloor. BM noted that indeed, this is the common thread linking such moments for her,
highlighting the importance of “the right sense of community in the air” and “seeing your friends
pull off a really great night”. GR pointed to how he has always been affected by the feeling that
“we’re forming these bonds in non-traditional ways” when joined together on the dancefloor, and
that you’re “creating an environment with them”. Also a common feature of the tales of profound
dancefloor moments was a sense that the experience provided healing, restoration, or
Being on the dancefloor, losing myself, closing my eyes and either moving or not moving
and having both the sound from the stacks reverberating around me as well as these other
people and just letting it kind of cleanse me, invigorate me, wash over me, and you know,
going through a whole range of experience that can be exhausting, can be uplifting,
emotional, but you know, I don’t like talking! I don’t like talking on the dancefloor.7
If any part of the data from my interviews surprised me, it was the distinctions people were clear
in drawing (when asked) between traditional spaces like a nightclub or legal concert venue and
the non-traditional spaces offered by a warehouse. BM, remarked that “while clubs are fun, [she]
prefer[s] if the crowd and space foster some sense of community rather than being the hot spot to
walk into”. For her, that sense of community was something only nontraditional spaces could
offer in earnest. She added that although it “doesn’t always happen”, spaces of this kind that
“foster community tend to been less predatory [or] oozing with sexual tension…in those cases
[she] can really feel safe and free to dance and express [her]self most freely”. GR identified
7
GR, personal communication, March 2020.
Kaufmann 27
several fundamental differences between club and warehouse spaces. First among them was the
accessibility of the venue and event. Here, “going to a party on U Street where anybody can kind
of like ruck up and walk in the door once you pay your 10 dollars” was juxtaposed with
“throwing a warehouse jam in NE down some dark alley, the fortitude it takes for somebody to
get to that as opposed to any major club”. The gap in their accessibility leads to a subsequent gap
You go to a warehouse party, your intention is pretty much to be there all night, and to be
with those people all night, and to be creating an environment with them. You bring your
backpack, and that backpack has some snacks, it may have a flask, it may have some
party favors to get you going, you don’t get to do that at a normal club.8
Accessibility for GR did not just refer to being able to physically navigate oneself to the venue,
but also to the consumption of the music once inside. He insisted that warehouse spaces have the
capacity to provide “a sound that isn’t necessarily for everybody [and that] doesn’t necessarily
have the commercial appeal that club feels beholden to”. Thus, the kinds of dance music being
played within these spaces served as another mechanism of self-selective crowd control. LM too
alluded to this insular sense of community that was the byproduct of the inaccessibility they saw
The element of it being at a weird time sort of….there’s also sort of like a community
element with both like the place and time part because the people who are going to be out
at that place at like 7, 8AM, they’re like supposed to be either weird or cool to be able to
8
GR, personal communication, March 2020.
9
LM, personal communication, April 2020.
Kaufmann 28
Nontraditional spaces, according to these informants, offered the chance to consume deeper,
realer, more “underground” shades of dance music than the nightclubs who relied on mass-
appeal to pay the bills. Further, they provided a sense of belonging to a group of likeminded
people who were, like them, very much “in the know". The intention of the attendees of these
events seemed to be critical to these distinctions. Why were they there, after all? GR noted that
in a club there is “more of a voyeuristic aspect where it’s like ‘ah we’re here!’ and we’re
snapping pics and we’re dancing for 10 or 15 minutes and then…what’s next?”. RK was explicit
in his separating of the two kinds of spaces. Describing the profound dancefloor moments he’s
had in the past, he noted that “he’s never had an experience like [that] at a traditional nightclub
or bar”. LM, however, offered a different perspective on the potential for powerful experiences
in traditional spaces, proclaiming that “there’s nothing that prevents a club from being able to
offer that”. He added that “just being a rave isn’t necessarily going to increase the chance that
has become a nebulous catch-all term with a variety of different meanings and interpretations
depending on the individual, but one that is almost always used to define an event or space an
abstract mainstream. GR, for instance, declared that the term isn’t really applicable in today’s
environment where large, strictly illegal spaces are nowhere near as plentiful as they were in
dance music’s early history. Traditionally, he noted, a rave was understood to be something that
“goes all night, into the morning, and ideally [had] an illegal aspect to it”. It was further typified
by having “a big DIY element to it”. RK echoed the sentiment that the word is no longer
relevant, illustrating how, for him, it carried a very specific historical and cultural connotation
that made him loathe to use it: “I don’t really use the word ‘rave’ that often, to me it has a
Kaufmann 29
connotation of like, ginormous parties in the 90s with crazy light shows, people wearing big
baggy clothes and sucking on pacifiers and stuff”. Still, he differentiated raves from traditional
club experiences by clarifying that “the point of the rave isn’t to sell alcohol or run a business,
but just to enjoy good music” and that a rave always happens “outside of an established [or]
Though he remarked that in a modern climate where “dance music has become so
commercialized” that “you can have a rave that is indistinguishable from a club night”, he was
For me a rave…has to have the following things: first, it can’t be at a dedicated club
space. It needs to be at a location that’s relatively unknown or off the beaten path. It
could be a huge field or warehouse or basically like anywhere [where] a big thing with
loud music and dancing and drugs and all that crap is not supposed to be. You’re doing
something kind of subversive. Space is really critical for what makes a rave a rave.10
I was also surprised by the qualities in a space my informants expressed a preference for when
asked what they, in particular, look for when attending a dance music event. Both GR and RK
listed the need for a “dance floor that’s big enough”, so that there’s “space to be able to move
freely” and not a “sardine environment”, or one where you “have people constantly going
through it to go the bathroom or the bar”. Also an oft-repeated trait was the presence of a proper
soundsystem. GR maintained that it had to be one that could provide a “visceral sound, not
necessarily loud”, but one that you could “feel in your chest”. RK highlighted the importance of
sound similarly, claiming that “there could be a DJ who’s killing it technically but there could be
not enough bass or a lot of distortion or the music could be way too loud, and in those times I
10
LM, personal communication, April 2020.
Kaufmann 30
can’t really enjoy myself”. RK additionally noted that it’s not even the character of the space
itself that he’s most interested in, but rather the environment, as illustrated here:
I look for the environment matters as much as the DJ’s performance. I want there to be
people enjoying themselves and dancing hard, and I want everyone to be in a good mood.
At the best parties I’ve been to I felt like the DJ and the crowd were kind of in sync and
were feeding off of each others’ energies. The DJ will change the music up in terms of
speed, intensity, genre, or whatever when they can tell the crowd is getting bored or tired.
When the DJ does this right people can dance for hours on end without the need for
substances. Basically I want to stay longer than I originally planned because the energy at
LM placed a similar emphasis on the importance of the crowd’s energy and intention. For him,
this was in fact the most critical component to the dancefloor experience, trumping sound and
It doesn’t necessarily need to be people you know, but it should be a crowd that believes
in what’s going on and is you know like, there for, first and foremost, the music, not just
there to hang out, do drugs and hit on girls. That’s what helps the vibe the most.12
As I have shown in this section, the products of my participant observation, informal and formal
interviews, and of my own personal history as a part of the DC dance music community provided
me with a wealth of information. In the following section, I will move on to interpreting and
analyzing my findings.
11
RK, personal communication, April 2020.
12
LM, personal communication, April 2020.
Kaufmann 31
A great deal of my findings ties into the notion explored in recent literature of the rave as
With his research he found that “for many people, the rave is spiritual and highly meaningful”,
and that it was clear based on his data that “raves increase self-esteem, release fears and
anxieties, bring inner peace, and improve consciousness, among other things” (46). It is hard not
to draw a line between Hutson’s conclusions and GR’s description of the “cathartic experience”
he observed Japanese clubbers immersing themselves within or the sensation that through raves
he was “cleanse[d]” and “invigorate[d]”. Takahashi and Olaveson in their 2003 ethnography of
the Canadian rave scene found that 43% of their participants “characterized the rave experience
as religious or spiritual” (84). Though the terminology my informants used did not reference
religion or spirituality specifically, the sensations they described feeling echo the results of these
earlier research projects. Goulding and Shankar, Takahashi, and others ascribe DJs the ancient
role of the shaman or spiritual healer. “In the context of clubbing,” Goulding and Shankar write,
“the DJs are the ‘postmodern’ shamans or pseudo spiritual leaders…the DJ’s role is to whip up
the crowd, heal their anxieties, and exorcise their demons” (1445). This is evident in RK’s
DJ’s control of the dancefloor that he and his partner were reduced to tears, feeling “so at peace”
that they didn’t want and couldn’t imagine the party would ever stop. Indeed, many in the
contemporary literature are clear in underscoring this power to guide the dancefloor as a
communal body through a progression of altered states as one of the most critical functions of
The DJ’s ability to interact with, read, and take the dancers on what is often referred to as
an “ecstatic” journey has also been recognized and his influence has expanded to include
the spiritual sphere. Once an anonymous figure hidden away behind the DJ booth, with
his status being elevated to such monumental heights, the DJ has seen his role expanded
beyond the traditional role of music selector to include technician, performer, artist,
Clearly, the DJ remains a crucial component of the rave experience, and still assumes the
the rave experience seems to be, at its best, a generative phenomenon wherein communities are
actively constructed by the participants. GR’s claim that, when going to a warehouse party,
“your intention is pretty much to be there all night, and to be with those people all night, and to
be creating an environment with them”, or his assertion that the experience provided the
opportunity to “form bonds in non-traditional ways” bears no small resemblance to Graham St.
John’s reference to the rave’s latent ability to construct “communitas in the present” (16). Many
scholars, like Kai Fikentscher, relate such claims to the loosely defined “vibe” of a party. In his
ethnography of UDM (underground dance music) culture in New York, he argued that once
“inside an underground dance venue, it matters less whether the individual dancer is female or
male, gay or straight, as long as the collective spirit, ‘the vibe in the house,’ is one of mutual
tolerance and goodwill” (118). BM observed that the common thread in her most meaningful
Kaufmann 33
experiences on the dancefloor was the “right sense of community in the air”. RK similarly
explained that ideally, “everybody at a rave is really friendly and very open and non-judgmental
in terms of sexuality”. Is this not what Jimi Fritz alludes to when he writes that ravers “for a few
hours [are] able to leave behind a world full of contradiction, conflict and confusion, and enter a
universal realm where every-one is truly equal, a place where peace, love, unity and respect are
the laws of the land” (43)? They are, to my mind, depictions of very much the same
phenomenon. It would seem, then, that the rave continues to hold the power to dissolve
traditionally stratifying social boundaries and join a group of individuals in an, albeit temporary
or “neo-tribal”, intense, ritualized, and communal sense of togetherness that calls Durkheim and
Embodied Nature
A recurring motif in the data I procured through this project is the embodied nature of the
from the [speaker] stacks reverberating around [him]” and allowing them to “wash over [him]”
and the need for “visceral sound”, in the ideal rave space, sound that “you can feel in your
chest”. SN alluded to feeling connected to dancers who were “going as hard as [she] was”, and
the intense feeling of happiness she got from seeing “people dance in a primal manner”. LM
noted how he remembered being completely “overwhelmed by everything that was going on to
the point that I was scared or intimidated” the night he fully “got” dance music on the dancefloor
of the Paradox club. He argued that a memorable rave experience needs to, in fact, “overwhelm
you to the point that you’re kind of scared”. Clearly, active participation on the dancefloor,
stimulation of the senses, and the feeling of the music physically through the body, are
Kaufmann 34
fundamental parts of what make these experiences so meaningful for participants. This is
essential to highlight, as it is here that many of the first critical analyses of the rave experience
and of clubbing culture fell woefully short. As Takahashi notes, the reticence of these early
postmodernists in discussing the actual experience of dance music can only be assumed to result
from the inherent “limitations of [their] “armchair” approach”, and further, that “it is obvious
that many scholars of rave and club culture have never physically participated in the contexts
they are writing about” (7). Any scholarly analysis of dance music culture (or any music
subculture for that matter) must necessarily involve phenomenology and a methodology that
“explores the position of each sense”. After all, “clubbing isn’t just about listening, it’s very
much about doing” (Malbon 11). This has been my personal experience as well. Though I had
been listening to it on my own for years, I didn’t truly “get” dance music until I stood amidst the
crowd at my first concert and allowed the music to erode my overriding feeling of awkwardness
and self-consciously derived anxiety so that I became, to borrow a common refrain, “one with
the beat”. It was then that it all clicked. I continue to maintain that no one truly becomes a
member of this community until you’ve had this critical experience firsthand. Jimi Fritz puts it
aptly in the introduction to his book: “if you want the real thing…you will have to try it for
yourself” (8).
broached in my more informal conversations dealt specifically with the nature of dance music
spaces themselves, and in particular, the differences (if any) between traditional and non-
area of contemporary scholarship in the EDM context that is quite lacking. My participant
observation and discussions with informants both formal and informal reveal the stark divide for
many between the dancefloor experience in the club and warehouse setting. Beginning with my
own fieldwork observations, I noted that the club seemed to be built around the consumption of
alcohol just as much as the consumption of dance music. Every floor had at least one bar, and
few walked amongst the crowd at any moment without a drink in hand. Conversely, though the
warehouse offered alcohol throughout the night (illegally, to be clear), attendees, by in large,
were far less interested in the act of drinking. Takahashi asserted that her study’s informants
“reported that the presence of alcohol destroys the vibe by attracting the wrong type of crowd”.
For them, it was the very “absence of alcohol that separates the rave crowd from the club
crowd”, for “the availability of alcohol tends to attract ‘clubbers” and ‘thugs’ who would
otherwise avoid these events” (69). My observations at the warehouse and club support her
argument, and seem to make the case that the centrality of alcohol is very much a limiting factor
in the ability of traditional, for-profit dance music venues to foster the most compelling possible
environment. I should not that not every one of my informants agreed on this point. LM, who
had recently quit drinking when I interviewed him, maintained that, in fact, “it was easier for
[him] to be at a nightclub than at a rave”, for at a rave “you feel out of place because everyone
Returning to my personal observations, I noted the transient nature of the crowd at the
club as compared to the crowd at the warehouse party. At the club, people moved throughout the
dancefloor freely, always seemingly in search of something. As a result, it felt very much like a
transitional space. Conversely, the warehouse crowd was largely rooted to the dancefloor. Many
stayed in one spot for hours at a time, only leaving for the necessary water, beer, or bathroom
Kaufmann 36
break. This difference in behavior relates very much, I maintain, to my informants’ references to
“a crowd that believes in what’s going on and is…there for, first and foremost, the music, not
just hang out, do drugs, and hit on girls”. DB echoed this sentiment here:
Warehouse events are centered around the music…creating a barrier to entry to casual
partiers who may not discover the event unless they have a friend who is in-the-know or
is part of the community. The niche nature of the music creates a sense of inclusivity
within exclusivity where the people who gather feel closer for their shared appreciation of
The inaccessibility, the result of either its physical location or musical offerings, associated with
(communitas), and certainly a mechanism that generally keeps all attendees on the same page. In
other words, you don’t expend the effort necessary to make it to the warehouse rave unless your
object is that dancefloor experience. The openness of the traditional club (at least by comparison)
results in, as GR put it, a “more of a voyeuristic aspect where it’s like ‘ah we’re here!’ and we’re
snapping pics and we’re dancing for 10 or 15 minutes and then…what’s next?”. In a 1999
analysis of underground dance music culture and rave spaces in Sydney, Australia, Chris Gibson
posits that “the idealized ‘rave’ occupies space momentarily”. Indeed, he argues that “a central
tenet of the ‘mythology’ of rave culture involves fluid, transient appropriations of material
space” (22). The non-traditional, outsider, and ephemeral nature of the prototypical rave space
tucked away in the far reaches of the urban landscape is critical to the rave experience as a
whole. Gibson situates this in the context of a rapidly commercializing, “highly capitalist music
13
DB, personal communication, April 2020.
Kaufmann 37
industry” in Sydney that, at the time of his writing, had produced more regulated, controlled and,
conversely, less radical environments for the broadcasting of dance/techno music to large
audiences”. Continuing this train of thought, he makes an essential point with continued
These nightclubs, often inscribed with different names on different nights to give the
a main dancefloor, lasers, chill-out rooms, facilities and so on, whilst remaining a highly
controlled, legal space-constructed in opposition to, yet being wholly legitimized by,
that takes all the trappings of the non-traditional space, seeks to replicate it, but ultimately
standardizes it, and as a consequence defies the very ephemerality and transitory nature that is
intrinsic to the true “rave” experience and which lies at the root of its appeal. This is very much
the crux of what distinguishes the warehouse from the nightclub, and it’s a major reason why my
informants expressed difficulty in being able to completely “lose themselves” in more traditional
settings. It’s here that I think my research makes the biggest strides in contributing to the
ongoing conversation within critical social fields about the nature of dance music culture and the
dancefloor experience. It became clear early on in this research that members of the DC scene
place a huge emphasis on the nature of the spaces they visit in search of that memorable moment
spent amongst the crowd in front of the DJ’s booth. Though fundamentally more visible,
legitimate, and accessible, it is certainly not a given that traditional venues like nightclubs can
Conclusion
This research opens up a number of potential avenues for further investigation and
analysis. As this study was specific to a hyper-localized community, additional studies of this
kind are warranted in developing a broader comparative understanding of dance music culture
and space. It also underscores the nature of physical space in the context of dance music culture
as a worthy site of critical scholarship. Further, it begs questions relating to the effects of mass-
simplification to divide spaces into a binary of “traditional”, for-profit clubs and “non-
traditional” venues like a warehouse? To what extent are non-traditional spaces where dance
music is consumed influenced by a need to sell alcohol or stay in the green so as to continue on
operating? Are poignant moments on the dancefloor possible in these more accessible and visible
locales, and are they any less meaningful for participants? Can we see that these differences
translate across geographic and cultural boundaries and into other contexts? These are all worthy
questions of further, detailed exploration. I believe this research provides ample material for
Significance, or So What?
myself included, obviously hold quite dearly, this research is significant for several reasons.
Firstly, it supports the work of recent scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, cultural
studies, and ethnomusicology who repudiate the postmodern perspective that first turned its
attention towards dance music culture, and reifies the notion that these lasting moments on the
Kaufmann 39
dancefloor are frequently deeply personal, profound, transformative, and healing experiences for
generally, it adds to an understanding that people everywhere create communities of all kinds in
novel and unique ways to achieve that eternally-salient sense of togetherness. Thirdly, it reveals
the importance for many of dance music spaces as significant cultural sites. These are spaces
which have historically been and remain frequent targets of municipal or federal legislation,
restriction, and state surveillance. They are spaces which, in many parts of the world, face
unprecedented pressure, both legal and economic, to shutter their doors permanently. The
District of Columbia is no different in this respect, and so this project highlights just how
essential a significant number of local residents consider such spaces to be. Along these lines,
this research also helps develop a greater understanding of the differences between dance music
spaces themselves and their impact on the experiences of members of this community. It points
Kaufmann 40
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