Originating as emancipatory platforms for Black queer and trans counterpublics, electronic dance musics have been sites of constant co-option by white cisheteropatriarchal power. The story of club music-as-undercommons has been one of persistent de- and re-territorialisation, with marginalised groups consistently establishing newly subversive forms of collectivism and aesthetics in response to their almost immediate capture by hegemonic interests.
During the 2010s, a strand of electronic dance music emerged that built this history into a self-consciously decolonial, queer, trans and crip project, responding to and investing in politics and strategies of social justice. Taking the radically disruptive ethos of NYC night GHE20G0TH1K (whose alumni include Venus X, Total Freedom and Shayne Oliver) as their foundation, labels and producers such as Janus, NAAFI, boygirl, Arca, Chuquimamani-Condori and NON Worldwide combined insurrectionist manifestos and sonic fictions with aggressive collagic juxtapositions.
Bolstered by the complementary conceptualisation and intellectualism of post-blog-era outlets such as Fact, Fader, Tiny Mix Tapes and Red Bull Music Academy, and broadly informed by the Post-Internet collapse of boundaries between the online and the offline, these artists and parties sought to elude essentialist genrefication through a volatile and overt rupturing of the relationship between the dancefloor, the art gallery, the fashion show, the university and the digital.
This paper is a relatively objective and archival yarn map joining up a variety of developments and moments to offer an all-too-brief snapshot of this complex, rhizomatic and global ‘scene’.
Dr. Michael Waugh is Degree Programme Director in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies (PQL0) at Newcastle University. He developed and leads the module Popular Culture: Futures & Fictions.
Waugh's research and publications are primarily focused on politics, identity and digitality in club and electronic music, foregrounding decolonial, queer and trans aesthetics and narratives in musical genres/movements such as deconstructed club, hyperpop and trap. Alongside Jennifer Walshe and Adam Harper, Waugh co-organised a monthly series of 2017 talks about digital music titled 'Sound Salon' at Somerset House and was a keynote speaker at Berlin's 3hd Festival. He has written press releases and bios for musicians such as Arca, aya, KUČKA, Du Blonde, Melanie Baker and Derek Piotr and programme notes for the Post-Internet music showcase at 2015's London Contemporary Music Festival.
Currently, Waugh is involved in a number of collaborative impact and engagement projects with North-East musicians, promoters and venues, including producing grassroots gigs and club nights as 'Doxology presents...'
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