Together, Somehow

“Together, Somehow takes readers past the velvet rope and onto the dancefloors, into the backrooms and bathrooms, and up to the DJ booths at legendary clubs like Berghain and one-off raves in the Midwest. It is one of those joyous books where passion meets erudition on every page, presenting a compelling portrait of the contemporary electronic dance music scene. Giving us in many ways the prehistory of the racial and gender reckoning that nightlife is going through right now, Together, Somehow will stand as one of the essential works on EDM.” - Tavia Nyong’o, author of Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life

“Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta serves us a much-anticipated, technicolor musicological response to the enveloping, multisensory experiences on the dancefloor that queer studies and performance theorists of color have dominated in analysis for quite some time. From start to finish, Garcia-Mispireta gives us rigorous analysis we can feel in the oft-neglected research on the dynamics of affective connection among electronic dance music enthusiasts both as everyday listeners and music researchers. Undoubtedly, readers will find themselves reclaiming previously contested sonic world utopias.” - Alisha Lola Jones, author of Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance

 "An essential contribution to a limited yet gradually expanding body of ethnomusicological scholarship on electronic dance music cultures. . . . This book offers a novel contribution to ethnomusicological scholarship and will surely lend itself as an important resource for scholars and other readers interested in the global phenomenon of electronic dance music culture or studies on music and affect more generally." - Rory Fewer, Dancecult

"Together, Somehow offers a reflection in how intimacies operate in dancefloor and nightlife cultures, and how cultural geographies of identity and belonging can function in relation to each other. . . . The book provides methodological tools and concepts for cultural geographers, and anyone else interested in examining ideas related to affect and community, especially from a nocturnal perspective." - Norman Ornelas Jr, Cultural Geographies

"This book is a compelling illustration of musicology and sound studies that broadens analytic vocabulary with its more precise language for timbre and sound production and its astute application of these ideas to social phenomena. Researchers who use ethnography will find persuasive articulations of methods relating to cooperative interviewing and autoethnography. Scholars looking to affect theory will also find this book exemplary in understanding how aspects of music production and performance have affective power, and how sonic stimuli can be apprehended by individuals in ways that are both collective and individual." - Katie Graber, Journal of Anthropological Research

"Garcia-Mispireta’s book, with its methodological fusion of ethnomusicology, working along with affective theory, sound and queer studies, and promoting a new area of research — a dance floor, which proves to be an important site to diagnose social life — makes a significant contribution to contemporary dance studies and performance studies." - Agata Chalupnik, European Journal of Theatre and Performance