Dance music  

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Josephine Baker dancing the charleston at the Folies Bergère in Paris for La Revue nègre in 1926. Notice the art deco background.
(Photo by Walery)

"Buffalo Gals" (c. 1840), covered by Malcolm McLaren on his 1983 album Duck Rock, which mixed up influences from Africa and America, including hip-hop. The album proved to be highly influential in bringing hip-hop to a wider audience in the UK. Two of the singles from the album ("Buffalo Gals" and "Double Dutch") became major chart hits on both sides of the Atlantic.

Generic Salsoul twelve inch sleeve (1970s)

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Dance music is music composed or played specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. From a genre-theoretical point of view, it is a body genre.

Genres

Dance music works often bear the name of the corresponding dance, e.g. waltzes, the tango, the bolero, the can-can, minuets, salsa, various kinds of jigs and the breakdown. Other dance forms include contradance, the merengue (Dominican Republic), and the cha-cha-cha. Often it is difficult to know whether the name of the music came first or the name of the dance.

Ballads are commonly chosen for slow-dance routines. However ballads have been commonly deemed as the opposite of dance music in terms of their tempo. Originally, the ballad was a type of dance as well (hence the name "ballad," from the same root as "ballroom" and "ballet"). Ballads are still danced on the Faeroe Islands.

Folk dance music

Dance music includes various traditional dance music such as Irish traditional music, waltzes, rock and roll, country music and tangos. An example of traditional dance music in the United States is the old-time music played at square dances and contra dances. Brazilian dance music includes Samba, Pagode and Forró.

Historical dance music

While the combination of dance and music is very ancient (for example Ancient Greek vases sometimes show dancers accompanied by musicians) the earliest Western dance music that we can still play with a degree of certainty are the surviving medieval dances such as caroles and the Estampie. The earliest of these surviving dances are almost as old as Western staff-based music notation.

In the Baroque period, the major dance styles were noble court dances (see Baroque dance). Examples of dances include the French courante, sarabande, minuet and gigue. Collections of dances were often collected together as dance suites.

In the Classical music era, the minuet was frequently used as a third movement in four-movement non-vocal works such as sonatas, string quartets, and symphonies, although in this context it would not accompany any dancing. The waltz also arose later in the Classical era, as the minuet evolved into the scherzo (literally, "joke"; a faster-paced minuet).

Both remained part of the Romantic music period, which also saw the rise of various other nationalistic dance forms like the barcarolle, mazurka, and polonaise. Also in the Romantic music era, the growth and development of ballet extended the composition of dance music to a new height. Frequently dance music was a part of Opera.

1920s dance music

Dance music became enormously popular during the 1920s. Night clubs were frequented by large numbers of people at which a form of jazz, which was characterized by fancy orchestras with strings instruments and complex arrangements, became the standard music at clubs. A particularly popular dance was the fox-trot. At the time this music was simply called jazz, although today people refer to it as "white jazz" or big band. The late 1960s saw the rise of soul and R&B music which used lavish orchestral arrangements. These orchestras would gradually develop a new form of dance music, which came to be known as disco.

1970s disco

It was with the rise of disco in the early 1970s that dance music once again became popular with the public. Disco was characterized by the use of real orchestral instruments, such as strings, which had largely been abandoned during the 1950s because of rock music. In contrast to the 1920s, however, the use of live orchestras in night clubs was extremely rare due to its expense. Disc jockeys (commonly known as DJs) played recorded music at these new clubs. The disco craze reached its peaked in the late 1970s when the word disco became synonymous with "dance music" and nightclubs were referred to as discos. The year 1980 was characterized by a lack of dance music as artists rushed on the rock bandwagon in an attempt to continue their careers.

Electronic

electronic dance music

By 1981, a new form of electronic dance music was developing which would gradually take the place of disco. This music, made using electronics, is a style of popular music commonly played in dance music nightclubs, radio stations, shows and raves. During its gradual decline in the late 1970s, disco became influenced by computerization. Looping, sampling and seguing as found in disco continued to be used as creative techniques within techno and house music. The term "dance music" is often used for more commercial forms of electronic music. Styles include Eurobeat, house, Eurodance, drum and bass, hip house, trance, techno, electro, synthpop, and many others. Associated with dance music are usually commercial forms that may not easily be categorized, such as "The Power" by Snap! and "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" by C+C Music Factory.

Electronic dance music experienced a boom after the proliferation of personal computers in the 1980s, manifest in the dance element of Tony Wilson's Haçienda scene (in Manchester), and the Summer Of Love in Ibiza, which became the European capital of house and trance. Clubs like Sundissential and Manumission became household names with British, German and Italian tourists.

Many music genres that made use of electronic instruments developed into contemporary styles mainly due to the MIDI protocol, which enabled computers, synthesizers, sound cards, samplers, and drum machines to interact with each other and achieve the full synchronization of sounds. Electronic dance music is typically composed using computers and synthesizers, and rarely has any physical instruments. Instead, this is replaced by digital or electronic sounds, with a 4/4 beat. Dance music typically ranges from 120bpm, up to 200bpm, with techno, trance, and house being the most widespread. Many producers of this kind of music however, such as Darren Tate and MJ Cole, were trained in classical music before they moved into the electronic medium.

In the new millennium, several new subgenres of electonic dance music have evolved throughout Central and Northern Europe, including uk garage, bassline house (originating in Sheffield (UK), psytrance, Goa trance, minimal techno, grime and reggae-inspired dubstep.

Radio

The Hot Dance Airplay chart tracks the most popular tracks played by radio stations using a "dance music" format. Dance music is also part of the mix of related formats, such as rhythmic adult contemporary and rhythmic contemporary.

Dance clubs

The Hot Dance Club Play chart tracks which songs are currently most popular in nightclubs.

Articles

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