The Politics of Vibration

“Marcus Boon models the perfect combination of rigor and imagination. In this daring and original book, he approaches vibration through mathematics, physics, and psychoanalysis to articulate an ontology of music based on space over time, frequency over duration, instantaneity over progression. The ease with which Boon pursues his ideas across experimental music, Indian classical singing, and recent hip-hop flashes an exciting glimmer of one future for music studies. With The Politics of Vibration, we are already there.” - Benjamin Piekut, author of Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem

“Vibrations change your life; vibrations make life. Marcus Boon explores the hidden practices of vibrations for an original and fascinating insight into the nature of musical experience. In a uniquely sensitive manner—personal and political and philosophical at the same time—he weaves his way through the pulsating energies of Indian classical singing, drone music, minimalist avant-garde, and chopped and screwed hip hop. Boon gives equal attention to the big names and the little known, as they meet in cosmopolitics between the global South and North.” - Julian Henriques, author of Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing

"The boldest aspect of Boon's argument . . .  is his move to the level of ontology—to the nature of being or reality itself. For him music's social and racial significance operates not at the level of social codes or experience, but as an intervention in how reality itself is organised: 'music does tell us something about being.' His framework certainly allows a place for aspects of music-making that usually get screened out of modern criticism: its religious power, its role in many cultures' sense of the world's structure. . . ." - Dan Barrow, The Wire

"This book is a wonderful contribution to the burgeoning field of vibrational studies and so-called 'esoteric' music. ... It prompts new insights into the relationship of music to time, community, politics, and philosophy, offering new perspectives for those interested in how music can be looped into new knowledges being generated within the field of sound studies."

"The Politics of Vibration is a beautiful meditation on sound and politics. A gesture towards a revolutionary politics of emancipation whose religious sensibility is, in a sense, oriented towards music itself as the clearest." - Joshua Gerhard Paetkau, Antiopia

"For those of us writing about vibration within sound studies, The Politics of Vibration offers exciting new entry points for considering sound’s materiality. In the wave of books addressing vibration in the past decade, it is the most thorough and meticulous. . . . The Politics of Vibration offers us a portal into future configurations in the field." - Christine Capetola, Journal of Popular Music Studies