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Dance music-for some people, at some times, in some places, perhaps even on some drugs-can be a gateway to utopia. With the help of skilled DJs, dancers can reach euphoric trance states, discard their egos, and feel their gendered and other identities dissolve. In these settings, dance floors are sites of openness, subversion, and even collective acts of political resistance. At its best, dance music offers glimpses of better worlds.

But more often than not, dance music is ordinary. Ranting and Raving shows that such utopian dance floors are the exception, not the rule. Clubbers physically harass other clubbers based on gender and racial prejudices. Booking agents use myths about merit and masculine artistry to justify their under-booking of women, transgender, and nonbinary DJs. And DJ technology corporations contribute to an inequitable labor market by outsourcing their manufacturing to free-trade zones. Grounded in field work and the accounts of dance music participants across the globe, this book argues that dance music-like all culture-is bound up with the realities of everyday life.