Abstract
In this chapter, I explore the assignment of particular gender stereotypes to sound and performance in contemporary electronically produced dance music, focusing on the sonic quality of ‘fluffiness’ (cf. Gavanas and Reitsamer 2013, 68). I underscore this exploration with a critique of idealistic theorisations of electronic music, in which machines have the potential to liberate us from the limits of traditional gender frameworks. In order to illustrate the iteration and perpetuation of these stereotypes, I draw upon interview material with DJs, extracts from sources of online journalism, and online (YouTube) dance music fans’ commentaries. These stereotypes, which participants learn and circulate, are complicated by the specificity of links between gender fluidity and queerness and the development of the types of DJ-based dance music practices that are recognisable as dance music culture today. I argue that the flexibility of gender is overlooked or denied by participants through their conflations of terms such as ‘fluffy’ with what they believe to be ‘feminine’ musical sounds. One of my approaches to examining the idea of fluffiness is through a discussion of tracks from three different dance music genres: ‘Friend of the Night’ by Prosper (psytrance), ‘For An Angel’ by Paul van Dyk (trance), and ‘Eivissa’ by Robert M (progressive house).
Last, I consider gender-related prejudices as they pertain to the moving body, including dancing, ‘incidental’ movements unrelated to dance, and communication (verbal and non-verbal) with participants and video cameras. My analysis is centred upon the interactions of dance music fans, commentators, and practitioners with the performances, on- and off-stage, of DJ-producer Nina Kraviz. Using the case of Kraviz, I show how movement can provoke reactions to DJs’ performances, based on the binary conceptions of gender that dictate sexist attitudes in many clubbing communities, regardless of the extent to which the DJ fits these norms. To this end, I discuss two YouTube videos of Kraviz performing in Boiler Room DJ sets – one in Berlin (Kraviz 2013b) and another in Edinburgh (Kraviz 2015) – and a YouTube video documentary about Kraviz made by the online dance music magazine Resident Advisor (2013). The extensive commentaries on Kraviz by journalists, other DJs, producers, and fans, some of which I present alongside the videos, demonstrate the specificity of Kraviz’s position in the wider global (and in particular Western European) techno milieu, and constitute some evidence of the continuing dominance of the idea that DJs are men by default (cf. Farrugia 2012; Gavanas and Reitsamer 2013). Intentionally, I adopt the language of music- and performance-related gender binaries as used by dance music participants, including addressing women DJs as a gender category. In doing so, I do not mean to claim that a homogeneous ‘women’s experience’ exists, or that these gender categorisations are helpful (cf. Sullivan 2003, 190). On the contrary, by employing the language of participants, my goal is to highlight aspects of gender normativity that I argue are implicit in how participants of all genders interact with many women on dance floors and at DJ booths.
This is an accepted version of a chapter published in The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender. © 2017 Routledge