Introduction

Offering a brief overview of electronic dance music formations, this chapter not only addresses readers who are new to the subject but also experienced participants and researchers who wish to engage with the topic from a broad perspective. In doing so, we offer a consolidation of issues in the development and definitions of extant genres and subgenres that constitute electronic dance music cultures. Drawing out common threads across these genres, the introduction locates several theoretical themes that can be found woven through electronic dance music research, such as immersion, liveness, musicking, technological affordances and affect, as well as challenges of various research methodologies and discourses in this area. Finally, we conclude with an overview of the volume in terms of dance settings, global and local contexts, genre aesthetics, production practices, embodied subjectivities and identities.