Description:
A nocturnal journey through local histories of clubbing in Africa and Europe
The image of the DJ dragging his record case through international "non-places" and deejaying in clubs around the globe is a contemporary cliché. But these club scenes have rich, geographically differentiated local histories and cultures. This book expands the focus beyond the North Atlantic clubbing axis of Detroit-Chicago-Manchester-Berlin.
It looks at ten club capitals in Africa and Europe, reporting on different scenes in Bristol, Johannesburg, Cairo, Kyiv, Lagos, Lisbon, Launda, Nairobi and Naples. The local music stories, the scenes, the subcultures and their global networks are reconstructed in 21 essays and photo sequences. The tale they tell is one of clubs as laboratories of otherness, in which people can experiment with new ways of being and assert their claim to the city. Ten Cities is a nocturnal, sound-driven journey through ten social and urban stories from 1960 through to the present.Review Quotes: The need to dance is ultimately one of our most primal urges, and Ten Cities makes the case that, regardless of geography or economy, people will always figure out a way. In the end, the atmosphere and community of any club is always intrinsically tied to liberation--the need to move, the very human desire to be free.--T. Cole Rachel "W Magazine"