I participated in a symposium entitled "Groove is in the Heart: Researching Dance Music Cultures"
alongside a group of fellow scholars who are also all DJs - a distinguished and interesting crew! Here's the lineup of participants:
- Anna Gavanas runs the Meerkat Recording Label and publishes on European DJ culture. She is a vinyl DJ who specializes in electronica, dub, dancehall, italo disco and global dance music.
- Larisa Kingston Mann is a Communication Research Fellow at Fordham University. As DJ Ripley she uses music to celebrate people’s experiences across race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, highlighting the beauty of interconnecting.
- Hillegonda C. Rietveld is Professor of Arts and Media at London South Bank University. Gonnie has DJed in dives, clubs and festival tents; she produced her first electronic dance music record in 1982, as member of Quando Quango.
- Dr Rupert Till is Reader in Music at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He is UK Chair of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). He produces and performs ambient techno, and publishes on dance music culture, celebrity, and sound archaeology.
- tobias c. van Veen is a writer, sound-artist, technology art curator and turntablist. Tobias has edited special issues of Dancecult focused on Afrofuturism and the dub diaspora; his DJ mixes may be found at djtobias.com.
After this, I spent some time doing research in Detroit for a project with the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, but I also made time to participate in a DJ class organized by the wonderful Mother Cyborg!
And now I am back in New York to write up a draft of my Detroit project to present at the Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in June. New Orleans, here I come!
