MUSC 135 DJ Cultures and Dance Environments

This course examines dance music scenes, the spaces in which these communities congregate, and the musical technologies and techniques used to catalyze and inspire listeners. At times, these are spaces of political resistance, where participants defy imposed norms of sexual and gender identity, racial segregation, and class stratification. At other times, they are spaces of control, heavily policed and represented crudely in the media. This course focuses on DJ Cultures in the Americas and Africa, considering it, broadly, as an Afro-Diasporic phenomenon. Students will encounter a wide variety of musical traditions that center around the social institution of the disc jockey, and will be introduced to seminal tracks, club and radio DJs, electronic music producers and important documentary films in the history of electronic dance music.