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Transatlantic Drift

The Ebb and Flow of Dance Music

A global history of dance music since the 1950s.
 
Transatlantic Drift explores the emergence and evolution of nightclubs and electronic dance music from the 1950s onward, tracing its rhythmic journey across Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison show how the sounds and vibes of nightclubs emerge from shared cultural experiences. This book uncovers the global story of dance music at venues in New York, Detroit, London, Manchester, Chicago, Düsseldorf, and Ibiza. Transatlantic Drift offers an engaging exploration of how people have come together to share melodies and rhythms, forming a global conversation through electronic music.

256 pages | 24 halftones | 5.83 x 8.27 | © 2025

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Music: General Music


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Reviews

"Sociologist Katie Milestone and music journalism lecturer Simon A. Morrison divide between them the period from the birth of rock’n’roll in the late 1950s to the modern day. Their scope is ambitious: where people danced, how they danced and the music that made them move. It’s a golden era that takes in the rise of the mod, the birth of Northern Soul, the disco boom and rave culture . . . There is an evanescent quality to the world the book inhabits. Underground scenes form, enter the mainstream, fade away."

Financial Times

“Through its carefully considered form, authorial team and consciously drifting contents, Transatlantic Drift is dedicated to transatlantic musical interchange and, indeed, to the exchange of scholarly and critical ideas concerning not only music but the ways in which we remember and make meaningful. This excellent book unravels the oftentimes knotty and contested musical happenings, people and places through an approach that embraces an open understanding of music histories in the plural. And in sidestepping common pitfalls in popular music scholarship—by attesting to regions as well as capital cities, for example—Katie Milestone and Simon A. Morrison have created an essential resource for all those interested in transatlantic popular music and subcultural histories.”
 

Sarah Raine, Research Fellow, School of Music, UCD, and author of Authenticity and Belonging in the Northern Soul Scene

Table of Contents

Preface: Mix In Track One Katie Milestone 1 The quest for a new kind of dancefloor in post-war Britain 2 The emergence of youth nightclub spaces in the uk 3 The late 1960s demise of uk mod nightclubs and rise of a new dance underground 4 Rave before rave: The uk in the late 1970s to the mid-1980s Track Two Simon A. Morrison 5 Uptown and Downtown Manhattan in the latter 1970s 6 New York, Chicago and Detroit in late-1980s (ish) usa 7 The beat travels back over the pond: uk and continental Europe, 1985–90 8 TransEurope Express: Europe . . . and the usa . . . to the Millennium Epilogue: Mix Out Chronology References Key Figures Dance Playlist and Key Tracks Further Reading Acknowledgements Photo Acknowledgements Index

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