Electronic Dunes and Downtown Vibes. The Social Construction of an Underground Electro Scene in Tunisia

Abstract

The paper explores the making of an electronic music scene in Tunisia, before and after the country’s 2010/2011 revolution. Such a scene developed in the context of a pre-existing “mainstream” club circuit, which embodied many political and social features of pre-revolutionary Tunisia. The electro scene activists managed to react against such a mainstream, but they were obliged to borrow its infrastructures and thus negotiate with its social characteristics. Different sections of the scene accepted or refused different elements of the perceived mainstream. As a result, they produced different and conflicting understandings of the local “underground”.