Policy + Campaign Strategist
On Loop is now available
in stores and online.
Chicago has house. Detroit has techno. But Oakland slaps.
On Loop explores the role of Black dance music and sonic politics in recurring struggles over race and space in Oakland, California. Insisting on the centrality of sound in everyday social movements—from the mobilization of funk music and boogaloo dance during Black Power to the policing of the Hyphy Movement in the 2000s—it argues that Black dance music is not merely a soundtrack to or record of resistance. Rather, its very sound waves have animated looping clashes over development, dispossession, and Black freedom. Diving deep into downtown nightclubs, Lake Merritt, and the Eastmont Mall—geographies rarely considered within studies of the city’s contested transformation—it reveals how the liberatory sonic politics of funk, hip-hop, and hyphy rap have been met with a repetitive “war on nuisance.”
As both a means of empowerment and a magnet for policing, Black dance music has transformed not only Oakland's nightlife, but also its streets, parks, and neighborhoods. On Loop is a rousing encounter with the sound that moves urban life.
Coverage of On Loop
Review by Felicia Angeja Viator, California History, Summer 2026
"A worthy addition to any reading list or syllabus exploring movement histories, On Loop provides a resonant takeaway: A nightclub, a party, a car show, or even a picnic is no 'antithesis of politics.' Indeed, it may be the very definition of resistance."
Interview with Davey D, KPFA, December 2025
"[Werth] doesn't separate the music from the politics. The industry often says: 'Just play the music. Leave the politics out of it.' But on every page, the music is political."
Interview with Monte Belmonte and Kaliis Smith, NEPM, November 2025
Review by Gabe Meline, KQED Arts, October 2025
“For those who’ve lived in Oakland, or paid attention to its culture, much of On Loop will be familiar terrain...But Werth...brings a bird’s-eye perspective to these issues while unearthing telling details in decades-old police files and newspaper accounts...Anyone interested in Oakland culture, and the way it has been shaped as well as cauterized, will find his research valuable...With patience, focus, and deep research...Werth has written a book that will last.”
Interview with Azucena Rasilla, Oaklandside, October 2025
“On Loop intellectually smashes racially-motivated overpolicing of Black music and culture while offering an alternative post-pandemic renaissance for The Town.”
Advance Praise
"A pathbreaking exploration of the politics of sound, Alex Werth's On Loop reveals a dimension of power that's as important as it is invisible. Remixing fields and methods, we get to hear the frequencies of the Black freedom struggle emerge from the noise of Oakland's wrenching transformation."
—Alexis Madrigal, author of The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City and cohost of KQED's Forum
"Alex Werth’s On Loop is a formidable and breathtaking look at the intersection of Black sonic culture, spatial politics, and urban governance in an iconic city whose significance in American cultural geography and history has long been ignored. Werth offers us a crucial account of Oakland’s dynamic evolution to foreground the indispensability of Black cultural production in the making of the Town."
—Brandi Thompson Summers, author of Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City
Book Lists
Top 15 most anticipated books "by authors on and of the West" from October 2025, according to Alta Journal.
Top 12 books "of interest to African American scholars" from October 2025, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
"Good reads to close out 2025," according to the Nob Hill Gazette.