Johannesburg after dark : rhythmanalysis and rave culture at and club

Abstract

This dissertation examines Johannesburg’s underground techno rave culture to understand how rhythm shapes spatial practices, social experience and urban imaginaries at night. Despite growing interest in geographies of the urban night, the nocturnal city and its distinct nightlife practices remain underexplored in South African scholarship. This study addresses that gap by investigating how techno raving emerged as a distinct nightlife subculture and what spatio-temporal rhythms are created through its practice. Centring on And Club in Newtown, the research draws on five months of fieldwork involving participant observation, content analysis and 16 semi-structured interviews with DJs, organisers, producers and ravers. The study adopts rhythmanalysis as both theory and method to examine the spatial and temporal dynamics of techno raving, including embodied experience, affective atmosphere, institutional rhythms and historical urban change. Findings reveal that raving at And Club constitutes a rhythmic spatial practice that generates ephemeral but affectively intense counter-publics, while simultaneously reproducing social, spatial and aesthetic boundaries. And Club emerges as a rhythmic node that is both locally embedded in Johannesburg’s polyrhythmic urban fabric and resonant with global subcultural tastes. By operationalising rhythmanalysis across scales, the study offers a grounded framework for understanding how rhythm organises nocturnal practices and urban identity in Johannesburg. In doing so, it advances rhythmanalysis as a method for tracing the layered, contingent and contested dynamics of urban nightscapes.