Capital and Ritual: Unlikely Partners on the Commercial Dancefloor

How do individuals at million-dollar festivals and in basements find connection and care on their respective dancefloors? This research utilizes dance music culture to analyze how commercialization shapes participants’ spiritual experiences, and their responses to drug usage, violence and perceived erosion of shared values. Current literature focuses on either the spiritual or commercial aspects of dance music culture, but has not combined the two. I qualitatively examine a continuum of dance music venues from the mainstream to the underground through interviews and participant observation, finding continuity, rather than contradiction. I find that mainstream events center commercial activity, relying on spectacle to produce spiritual experience, and utilizing formal authority to police events; however, community members fill in where institutional authority cannot, by appealing to norms of non-violence and responsibility and recapturing the ability to dictate what constitutes “authentic” dance music culture. Underground events deemphasize commercial activity, generating spiritual experience by cultivating shared purpose and constant dance, rather than high production values, and use aforementioned norms as first principles of organizing, creating decentralized authority.