The Right to Rave

• In Event: Sonic Representation from the Street, to the Stage, and the Screen

Abstract

The first rule of a DJ UNIIQU3 show is that Black, femme, and queer clubbers must occupy a central space on the dance floor. Over the last decade, DJ UNIIQU3 has secured a powerful position as one of the few prominent Black women DJs in today’s white-dominated electronic dance music (EDM) industry. However, despite the recent rise of club culture research across the music disciplines, few studies have considered how Black women have contributed to DJ culture beyond their participation as divas, dancers, and vocalists.

This paper considers the role Black women’s resistance politics plays in contemporary club music cultures. Specifically, I explore how Black women DJs use their imagination and technological agency to negotiate inequitable dance floor dynamics and recenter Black, femme, and queer perspectives in the EDM industry. I argue that DJ UNIIQU3 employs a praxis of Black radical feminist imagination to dismantle exploitative power relationships and create space for marginalized people to liberate, heal, and love themselves on the dance floor. Using musicological and ethnographic methods, I analyze the sonic, spatial, and kinesthetic aspects of her live Boiler Room performances and demonstrate how she transforms dance floors into what bell hooks calls a “homeplace,” a restorative site of resistance where marginalized people can feel safe, accepted, and free.

Ultimately, this study reveals the importance of regarding EDM dance floors as serious sites of ethnomusicological inquiry and the crucial role Black women’s creative practices and politics play in making dance scenes across the world more inclusive and liberating.

Author

• Jasmine Henry, University of Pennsylvania