Tami Gadir Interview
Tami Gadir is a lecturer in music industry in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Her research “addresses the mechanisms that promote or hinder participation in musical life, on the one hand, and the mechanisms in musical life that promote or hinder political imperatives beyond musical life, on the other.” Her new book is Dance Music: A Feminist Account of an Ordinary Culture.
Can you please briefly describe the book?
The argument is straightforward: global electronic dance music and DJ cultures are part of the wider culture we live in. Even the most alternative/underground scenes do not float above (or below) something called a mainstream of music culture. The book includes an intellectual history of dance music cultures and critically examines how they have been celebrated as emancipatory and radical. It takes all kinds of problems with gender as core examples of where dance music falls short of emancipation, along with other issues such as its in-built neoliberal, entrepreneurial orientations. It is based on years of clubbing, DJing, a little bit of promoting, a lot of observation, and 80 interviews.
It cannot and does not cover every scene, every genre, and every geographical corner. But it is international in its outlook and outreach.