Season 2, Episode 12

How does one come to study a topic that is on the margins of an academic discipline? What does it mean to do ethnographic fieldwork amidst the intimacies of the dance floor––and what are the challenges of doing so in queer spaces? A wide-ranging conversation with ethnomusicologist Luis-Manuel Garcia, on his scholarly journey from early music to rave culture to  gay fetish parties in Berlin.

Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta is Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of Birmingham.

If you’re interested in learning more about Professor Garcia-Mispireta’s work, you can follow him on Twitter at @LMGM and check out:

• The 2020 article “Feeling the vibe: sound, vibration, and affective attunement in electronic dance music scenes,” in Ethnomusicology Forum
• The 2018 article “Agonistic festivities: urban nightlife scenes and the sociability of ‘anti-social’ fun,” in Annals of Leisure Research
• The chapter “Whose Refuge, This House?: The Estrangement of Queers of Color in Electronic Dance Music,” in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness
• The 2016 article “Beats, flesh, and grain: sonic tactility and affect in electronic dance music,” in Sound Studies
• The 2014 article “An alternate history of sexuality in club culture,” in Resident Advisor
• And more, over at his website!
• Also, if you are interested learning more about our conversation towards the end of the episode about racism, colonialism, and the Society for Ethnomusicology, please read this open letter by scholar Danielle Brown; responses to the letter are gathered here

Sound Expertise is hosted by Will Robin (@seatedovation), and produced by D. Edward Davis (@warmsilence). Please subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and/or Spotify. Questions or comments? Email williamlrobin@ gmail

A written transcript of this episode is available here; many thanks to Andrew Dell’Antonio for volunteering to prepare transcripts for the show!