Ghosts of Sound

While writing the next installment of The Panharmonion Chronicles, I found this joyous, insightful and inspiring book. Dancing is one of the most liberating of all human activities. Perhaps, this is why it has often been suppressed by those in power. I think this book deserves to be read widely, especially by anyone who cares about how our society evolves, now and in the future. It is written by Emma Warren and published by Faber. Emma has been documenting music culture in all its facets, for decades. I love this book because, with a focus on the UK (with forays across the pond), it is very well researched and gives a wide coverage of the dance cultures from recent times.

Essentially, the book invites the reader to think about why do we dance? what does physically communing with other people through music means? Physically and psychologically? What does the act of dancing say about us, individually and as a society?

The book contains 400 pages rich with facts and anecdotes. It is written with a clear, concise and upbeat voice that leads us merrily through key historical moments of the dancefloor cultures.

The book is divided into three main parts, a bit like a song: “before the dance (a kind of long intro), “the dance” (the main act), “after the dance” (a short outro) – each recalling specific moments in music and the body movements that they have contributed to generate.

The author often intertwines her own vivid and poignant experience growing up as a teenager with the musical genres that popped around her and her friends. She is also making broader reflections on how dance music influenced cultures and societies from Folk dancing to Jazz and Reggae, from Disco to House Music and Northern Soul.

Because music and dance are direct, unfiltered human experiences, they are also a mirror reflecting wider societal issues and concerns, such as discriminations, dogmas and underfunding of youth spaces.

There are many insights to take from this book. But if you were to choose just one, it may be that dancing might be the most levelling, inclusive social activity that humans can partake and share. In today’s world, with its increasingly strident divisive discourse, especially from what was not so long ago, perceived as a beacon of tolerance and pop culture, the message is urgent. In the UK, dance clubs and music venues are fast disappearing. If they all go, we all lose.

Everyone who moves to music is a dancer, from slow feet shuffle to throwing shapes, from energetic jazz to acrobatic breakdancing. Whatever the beats that move you, dancing is good for everyone. Dancing is an act of defiance, self-affirmation, self-actualisation – an act of communion and liberation.

Dancing is freedom. This book reminds us why we should not lose it.

Dance your way home is widely available. First, support your local bookstore. Failing that, there is Amazon.