Transatlantic Drift - (Reverb) by Katie Milestone & Simon A Morrison (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A global history of dance music since the 1950s.

Transatlantic Drift explores the emergence and evolution of nightclubs and electronic dance music from the 1950s onward, tracing its rhythmic journey across Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison show how the sounds and vibes of nightclubs emerge from shared cultural experiences. This book uncovers the global story of dance music at venues in New York, Detroit, London, Manchester, Chicago, Düsseldorf, and Ibiza. Transatlantic Drift offers an engaging exploration of how people have come together to share melodies and rhythms, forming a global conversation through electronic music.

Review Quotes

"As Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison argue in Transatlantic Drift: The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music, the early producers of electronic dance music, in the styles of house or Detroit techno, were trying to reproduce the sounds of disco and European electronic music with cheap DIY gadgets. They failed, but they failed into something new and addictive."-- "Wall Street Journal"

"Sociologist Katie Milestone and music journalism lecturer Simon A. Morrison divide between them the period from the birth of rock'n'roll in the late 1950s to the modern day. Their scope is ambitious: where people danced, how they danced and the music that made them move. It's a golden era that takes in the rise of the mod, the birth of Northern Soul, the disco boom and rave culture . . . There is an evanescent quality to the world the book inhabits. Underground scenes form, enter the mainstream, fade away."-- "Financial Times"

"Through its carefully considered form, authorial team and consciously drifting contents, Transatlantic Drift is dedicated to transatlantic musical interchange and, indeed, to the exchange of scholarly and critical ideas concerning not only music but the ways in which we remember and make meaningful. This excellent book unravels the oftentimes knotty and contested musical happenings, people and places through an approach that embraces an open understanding of music histories in the plural. And in sidestepping common pitfalls in popular music scholarship--by attesting to regions as well as capital cities, for example--Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison have created an essential resource for all those interested in transatlantic popular music and subcultural histories."
--Sarah Raine, Research Fellow, School of Music, UCD, and author of Authenticity and Belonging in the Northern Soul Scene

About the Author

Katie Milestone is a senior lecturer in sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her books include Gender and Popular Culture. Simon A. Morrison is a program leader for music journalism at the University of Chester. His books include Dancefloor-Driven Literature: The Rave Scene in Fiction.