Tami Gadir is Lecturer in Music Industry at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Gadir’s research addresses the social and political mechanisms of musical life.
Amidst a recent wave of books on dance music and club culture, Tami Gadir’s Dance Music stands out. Gadir celebrates the ways in which dance floors may be spaces of self-realization and community, but goes further than most in capturing the ways such spaces are fraught with risk, anxiety, and the violence of oppression. Commonplace ideas about club culture—like those claiming the ‘transcendence’ of dance floor experience—are scrutinized with care and a sharp sense of their political stakes. Well-written and impeccably researched, this is an important contribution to an expanding field. * Will Straw, Professor of Urban Media Studies, McGill University, Canada *