ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates dancing as a readership strategy, reading beat through the feet. It exposes the weathered surfaces of popular music writing. The chapter clears the floor, cranking up a head-banging critique of masculine rock narratives. It scratches race into the mix, adding loops, anger and dynamism. It is too convenient in the current political and critical environment to dismiss dancing as ephemeral, fragmented and blissful. Dancing to jungle decentres more intense discussions about inequality, slavery, genocide and semiotic theft. With authenticity determined through representation, the politics of sounds and their distribution are ambiguous. Richard Dyer offers important advice for theorists of dance music. In moving beyond the making of revolution to consider the fashioning of revelation, dance music leaves few textual residues of bodily shapes and sensibilities. Dance theorists must remain focused on what Dick Hebdige brilliantly describes as the "knowledge that comes up through the feet".
