Feeling the vibe: sound, vibration, and affective attunement in electronic dance music scenes

ABSTRACT

This article explores the conceptual and methodological innovations made possible by the encounter between ethnomusicology and affect theory. It draws on fieldwork among a translocal network of electronic dance music practitioners, many of whom employ sonic metaphors of vibration and resonance to link affect to collective experience. In doing so, these musicians and dancers develop emic notions of vibrational affect that converge with developments in sound studies on vibration and resonance. In addition to giving texture to collective musicking, electronic dance music’s tactile sonic-social metaphors lend traction to the task of reconciling affect theory to ethnomusicology. On the one hand, affect theory challenges ethnomusicology to broaden its analytic horizon beyond canonical understandings of culture. On the other hand, ethnomusicology calls affect theory to more clearly trace not only its modes of ‘escape’ and ‘autonomy’ but also its re-articulation, entanglement, and capture into the cultural webs of collective life.

KEYWORDS:

• Affect
• electronic dance music
• vibration
• attunement
• resonance

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with a minor change. This change does not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was read as part of a roundtable on affect at the Society for Ethnomusicology in November 2016; I am especially grateful to the organisers of this roundtable, who went on to edit this special issue. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer for their insightful feedback, as well as the editors of this journal for their support and guidance throughout the entire publication process. My most heartfelt thanks go to the friends, fieldwork contacts, and interviewees ‘in the field’ – and especially to the Room 4 Resistance crew.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Luis-Manuel Garcia is a Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of Birmingham, with previous appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin) and the University of Groningen (NL). His research focuses on urban electronic dance music scenes, with a particular focus on affect, intimacy, stranger-sociability, embodiment, sexuality, creative industries and musical migration. He is currently conducting research on ‘techno tourism’ and other forms of musical mobility in Berlin; he has also completed a book manuscript based on earlier research, entitled Together Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor.

Notes

1 Since the autumn of 2018, Room 4 Resistance has moved its events to a new venue, Trauma Bar und Kino, a cultural centre and polyvalent performance space.

2 See Hofman (2015) and the introduction to this special issue for an overview of relevant scholarly debates.

3 As noted in their introductory essay, the editors of this special issue also make use of Shouse’s heuristic to gain theoretical traction in the realm of affect theory.

4 The fields of cognitive science and psychology tend to employ these terms differently, with emotion referring to the ‘basic emotions’ and their evolutionary functions, feeling designating subjective and self-reported states, and affect serving as an umbrella term that includes felt phenomena not included in the first two terms (Juslin and Sloboda 2001). Many thanks to Maria Witek for alerting me to this difference in nomenclature (personal communication, September 2017).

5 In a similar vein, Gatens’s (2014) aforementioned diagnosis of a lingering mind/body dualism in Massumi’s theory of affect can apply as well to Shouse’s definitions.

6 ‘Tu partages ce moment-là … tu vibres au même moment pour la même chose.’

7 ‘Et, arrive la montée, où, effectivement, c’est ce que tu attendais, donc tu commences à exploser, parce que t’es heureux. Et, en fait, c’est une vibration pour moi qui vient du bas du ventre, et que t’as envie de … d’expulser en levant les bras, en criant, en embrassant les amis, en … voilà.’

8 See also Paul Berliner’s (1994) ethnographic work on jazz, particularly the chapter entitled, ‘Vibes and Venues’, where Berliner uses the term ‘vibes’ to reference both the acoustical properties of a space and the general (affective) atmosphere of the performance environment, thus implying a connection between sound and mood/atmosphere. Electronic dance music culture’s use of ‘vibe’ encompasses these connotations while adding an emphasis on materiality and force that intersects with affect theory.

9 It is difficult to specify a resonant frequency for the human body, as it is composed of differently shaped parts as well as tissues, bone, and fluid with varying resonant frequencies – all of which respond non-linearly to vibration depending on its amplitude (in sonic terms: volume). While models of the resonance frequencies of the body’s component parts range from 2 to 100 Hz, empirical studies identify a narrower range of 9–16 Hz for the body as a whole (Randall, Matthews and Stiles 1997).

10 In highlighting the relational aspects of sound, one can find an analogous ethnomusicological approach in Feld’s ‘acoustemology’ (2015), which attends to how sound connects actors (human and otherwise) into sonic ecologies.

Additional information

Funding

The article draws upon fieldwork conducted with support from the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies (Freie Universität, Berlin) as well as the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin).