Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Studies in Popular Music) - Softcover

Graham St John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845536266 ISBN 13: 9781845536268

Publisher: Equinox Publishing, 2009

Synopsis

A cultural history of global electronic dance music countercultures, Technomad charts a course through an emerging network of techno-tribes, exploring their pleasure principles and cultural politics. Documenting sound systems, secret sonic societies, intentional parties, revitalisation movements and counter-colonial interventions, Technomad illustrates how the dance party has been harnessed for transgressive and progressive ends. Using extensive ethnographic, netographic and documentary research, the book covers local sites and global scenes: e.g. Spiral Tribe, teknivals, psytrance, Burning Man, Reclaim the Streets, Earthdream. This cultural history will interest students of cultural, performance, music, media, and new social movement studies, along with enthusiasts of dance culture and popular politics.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures is the most wide-ranging and detailed of all the books on rave. More than the study of a musical movement or genre, Technomad offers an alternate history of cultural politics since the 1960s, from hippies and Acid Tests through the sound systems and 'vibe-tribes' of the 1990s and beyond.... Like Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces, Technomad makes unexpected but entirely convincing connections between people, movements and events. Like Tom Wolfe's The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, St John's book introduces us to unknown heroes, committed geniuses and genuine revolutionaries. Beautifully written, with a genuinely international perspective on electronic dance music culture, Technomad is one of the best books on music I've read in some time."
Professor Will Straw, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University

"A critical utopianism is articulated and celebrated with a textual energy too rare in today's cultural studies. Graham St John is wide-eyed in order to look more closely. I recommend his shining and grubby doofscape to all interested in the radical possibilities and limitations of contemporary culture."
Professor George McKay, University of Salford

"Technomad offers important insights into the meeting points between countercultural discourses and post-rave techno cultures. Optimistic regarding the progressive potential of outdoor techno-trance gatherings, this well-documented study traces the complex genealogy of a global nomadic 'technoccult', with emphasis on Europe, North-America and Australia. Not to be missed by anyone interested in the study of rave cultures, countercultures and festivals."
Dr Hillegonda Rietveld, Reader in Cultural Studies, London South Bank University

About the Author:

Graham St John is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Media Production and Studies at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, a Research Associate at the University of Queensland's Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, and was recently an SAR/SSRC Residential Fellow at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico. His books include the edited collections Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performane (Berghahn 2008), and Rave Culture and Religion (Routledge, 2004). His book Global Trance Culture: Religion, Technology and Psytrance is forthcoming with Blackwell.

About this edition

• Publisher: Equinox Publishing
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1845536266
• ISBN 13: 9781845536268
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 324