Dance music
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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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.