Introduction

Essay Excerpt

The first time ‘dance music’ (re)gained popular appeal was in the ‘70s with disco. While the first generation of ‘discothèques’ had relied strongly on existing Soul and Funk records, musicians like Chic, the Bee Gees and Donna Summer began creating sounds specifically designed to lay down a continuous, unrelenting rhythm which appealed to DJs and dancers alike. While Disco dance music made use of full orchestras, the ‘house’ music which first developed in the early ‘80s in Chicago dispensed with ‘real’ traditional instruments and relied instead on electronic devices for synthesizing, sampling, remixing and sequencing. Not all are agreed but probably this became known as ‘House’ music in association with the Warehouse club which was popular with hip Chicago teens where DJ Frankie Knuckles was to push dance music way beyond what was happening in mainstream disco. Also in Chicago, later in the ‘80s, Phuture, a group of highly experimental and pioneering electronic musicians pulled out all the stops on their Roland TB-303 to produce some mindboggling squelchy sounds which – repetitive, hypnotic and trance-like – came to be known as ‘Acid House’.