UCLA

Electronic dance music (EDM) is a seven billion dollar global industry and its elements are core to mainstream popular music. However, the recognition and earnings elide the queer communities of color from which the genre originates. Therefore, this dissertation builds from Munoz’s (2005) minoritarian knowledge production, to reveal how this queer of color EDM aesthetic allow them to not only reclaim agency through everyday politics, but also create lives of pleasure that decenter oppression through resistance narratives. And in doing so, it reveals how Black DJs from the early days of EDM and younger generations of queer DJs of color make sense of how this genre transitioned from brown and Black queer subgenre in American urban centers to a “supergenre” popular within the significantly whiter and heteronormative audiences throughout the world. Moreover, it addresses how the participation of queer DJs of color is relegated only to source material for creation narratives surrounding EDM genres, at the expense of contemporary queer and of color scenes. This dissertation project builds on their frustration to highlight how underground networks of queer people of color are significant loci for the circulation of talent, cultural norms, music aesthetics, and economic opportunities. This dissertation also traces the formation of inter-musical and inter-texutal aural cultures through the use of various popular Afro- Diasporic musical and cultural aesthetics in EDM production. Therefore, this work is guided by these key questions: (1) what is the relationship over time between the musical and cultural aesthetic of queer of color communities to mainstream dance music industries?; (2) how do the music and production styles within these networks act as expressive extensions of the queer of color identity/experience; and (3) how do networks of underground queer collectives of color engage in “world-making” (Buckland 2002) to create spaces and cultural norms through underground industries and tightly knit networks within and between urban centers?