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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20th century dance music, pre-20th century dance music

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.