| Encountering meaning as somehow directly related to the tangible, to our bodies and physical senses has recently begun to be explored in music and dance studies. This theses explores electronic dance music as fundamentally physical, studying how physical characteristics of an experience (sound, light, chemicals, and motion) shape a particular, personal music experience. Drawing on ethnographic research in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, this thesis examines three aspects of a dance experience: sound, physical context, and state. After analyzing a track and a set, both basic musical building blocks of the sounds of dance music, I locate the experience of those sounds in a particular spaces. I then consider how the bodies that experience dance music act (through movement, dancing) and are acted upon (through chemicals). |
