Summary
Louis Niebur is the interim department chair of Threatre & Dance and a Professor of Musicology at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research areas include avant-garde and popular music of the postwar era, including music in radio, television, and film, and the significance of music to LGBTQ communities as it has shifted between live music, the jukebox, and the disc jockey in the context of queer spaces. He has delivered and published papers on such topics as San Francisco’s proto-queercore and post-disco scenes, the history of Camp Records and other gay recording labels of the 1960s, electronic television and radio music and sound in Britain, the role of women in early electronic music studios, and the queer function of electronic sound production in electronic dance music. His book, Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Oxford University Press, 2010), was the first monograph to situate the BBC’s electronic studio within the context of popular music. His most recent book, Menergy: San Francisco’s Gay Disco Sound (Oxford University Press, 2022), traces the way disco and high energy dance music channeled the spirit of gay liberation through a shared dance-floor experience.
Publications
- Menergy: San Francisco's Gay Disco Sound, by Louis Niebur. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 1, 2022). ISBN: 0197511082
- Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, by Louis Niebur. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 14, 2010). ISBN-10: 019536841X
Education
- Ph.D., Musicology, UCLA
- MM, University of Texas at Austin