Thickening Something

This chapter turns to the nexus of sound, feeling, and sociability to investigate how collective listening and dancing can engender a sense of an emerging, thickening social world—that is, something like a “we” coalescing under the surface of shared musical experience. While the idea that “music brings people together” is a common trope that is especially pervasive in electronic dance music scenes, it is hard to find a clear explanation of how music exerts such socially binding force. Partygoers often use the term “vibe” to describe how they understand music to work in a dancing crowd, bringing fellow partygoers “in sync” through feeling and music. The chapter also explores how partygoers’ theorizations of the “vibe” and music-driven emotional convergence intersect with scholarship on affect, musical entrainment, emotional contagion, ritual, and resonance.