"A Practical Guide to the Silent Disco" with Max Blansjaar

Biography: Max Blansjaar is a musician and writer from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He holds a BA in Music from St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, where he was awarded the Gibbs Prize by the Faculty of Music in 2024. His work centres around cultural politics in popular music and the negotiation of social identities and relations through music and sound, with recent essays published in Sound Studies, the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and the Journal of Extreme Anthropology, as well as the popular magazines Dirt, The Mortar, and The Story. He currently holds a Clarendon Scholarship at Jesus College, University of Oxford.Show Notes: I am joined by Max Blansjaar, and we will be discussing his article, “A Practical Guide to the Silent Disco,” which was published in a 2026 volume of the Sound Studies journal. We begin by introducing the silent disco phenomenon and examining how it has been discussed in existing literature. From there, we trace a genealogy of the silent disco, situating it historically and culturally while considering the technological and institutional conditions that made it possible. The conversation then turns to the architecture and ecology of the silent disco itself, exploring how multiple channels reshape the relationship between crowd and music. These technological features produce new forms of interaction in which dancers can appear synchronized while inhabiting entirely different sonic worlds. Throughout the episode, we discuss how silent discos stage tensions between individuality and collectivity, revealing subtle dynamics around gender, visibility, and audience awareness. We also examine the role of DJs, whose presence becomes simultaneously central and strangely obscured within this headphone-mediated environment. Finally, we reflect on what silent discos might reveal about broader cultural and economic logics—from fleeting social connections and the production of social capital to the insider–outsider dynamics that structure participation. Taken together, the silent disco offers a surprising entry point into questions about contemporary identity, participation, and the neoliberal organization of social life.Show Notes: Links: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20551940.2025.2534768