Feeling the vibe: sound, vibration, and affective attunement in electronic dance music scenes

This article explores the conceptual and methodological innovations made possible by the encounter between ethnomusicology and affect theory. It draws on fieldwork among a translocal network of electronic dance music practitioners, many of whom employ sonic metaphors of vibration and resonance to link affect to collective experience. In doing so, these musicians and dancers develop emic notions of vibrational affect that converge with developments in sound studies on vibration and resonance. In addition to giving texture to collective musicking, electronic dance music’s tactile sonic-social metaphors lend traction to the task of reconciling affect theory to ethnomusicology. On the one hand, affect theory challenges ethnomusicology to broaden its analytic horizon beyond canonical understandings of culture. On the other hand, ethnomusicology calls affect theory to more clearly trace not only its modes of ‘escape’ and ‘autonomy’ but also its re-articulation, entanglement, and capture into the cultural webs of collective life.