The social construction of dance music: Meanings, uses, and cultural capital within everyday lives

In academic literature on dance music, researchers have given particular attention to examining club cultures consisting mainly of groups of young people. In this work, the focus has been on groups of listeners whose engagement with dance music centres around regularly attending nightclubs and where being ‘in the know’ of niche knowledge about dance music and holding anti-mainstream beliefs help to attain subcultural capital, a means to elevate one’s status within hierarchal groups of dance music fans (Thornton 1996). Through this focus, the importance dance music can have for listeners listening in other settings in their everyday lives is neglected – e.g., whilst showering or cooking. By focusing solely on club cultures consisting mainly of youths, insight into listeners more broadly is missed, including those who engage with club culture to varying degrees and listeners of various ages. Using DeNora’s (2000) conception of music as a functional resource people may draw from, my aim is to examine the kinds of relationships listeners have with dance music in their everyday lives, and their engagement with dance music within the social fields (Bourdieu 1993) they are a part of. Analysing findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with dance music listeners highlights that whilst subcultural capital and aspects of listening perceived as authentic appear to remain influential in progressing socially within dance music fields, more functional listening appears to have greater influence over listeners’ social positionings throughout their everyday lives overall, because it significantly shapes interactions across a greater range of fields, and those in which listeners are in the majority of the time. Overlooked within EDMC studies, I suggest researchers place more emphasis on the functional aspects of listening going forward, if we are to further understand how dance music shapes listeners’ lives in the context of changing cultural and technological trends.