Dancing music
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dance music is music composed, played, or both, specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either the whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. However, some genres inadvertently facilitate dancing.
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[edit] Genres
Dance music works usually 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), the cha-cha-cha and Soca (Trinidad & Tobago) Often it is difficult to know whether the name of the music came first or the name of the dance. More modern dance (From the late 1980's to the present) is called dance music. See Category:Music genres for more.
[edit] Folk dance music
Dance music includes a huge variety of music, including 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.
[edit] 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.
Before techno, house and electronica music came out; people have danced to older versions of current genres which are now less danceable for newer music. Back when Rock and Roll was a new genre (circa 1950s); people had a hard time dancing to it as it was more upbeat than many ballad-based songs from before than that people slow-danced to. Ironically, Rock and Roll became the ubiquitous dance genre in the 1960s and that slow-dancing rapidly became obsolete. But then, Rock and roll evolved into a less danceable genre in following decades; but New Wave from the 1980s was a major exception to its pattern in declining danceability.
During the aforementioned period prior to Rock and Roll; dancehalls used live bands to orchestrate the music that the people danced to; however, the rise of Disco techs and places where DJs played recorded music have rapidly displaced live bands although a few instances of live band dances have continued on. A notable example of live band dances in pop culture include Back To The Future which takes place in the 50's when the concept was on the verge of being displaced; however, it was used in Idle Hands where it becomes a notable occurrence in modern day where people dance to live punk music which is a relatively rare choice of dancing music.
[edit] Nightclubs and raves
- See main article: Dance music
From the late 1970s, the term dance music has come to also refer more specifically to offshoots of late 1970s rock, disco, Funk and Postpunk, These new styles and genres, altogether referred to as Club music, include house, techno and trance. Generally, the difference between a disco, or any dance song, and a rock or general popular song is that in dance music the bass drum hits "four to the floor" at least once a beat (which in 4/4 time is 4 beats per measure), while in rock the bass drum hits on one and three and lets the snare take the lead on two and four (Michaels, 1990).
[edit] Dansband
- See main article: Dansband
"Dansband" ("Dance band") is a term in Swedish for bands who play a kind of popular music, "dansbandsmusik" ("Dance band music"), to dance partner dance to. These terms came the years around 1970, and before that, many of the bands were classified as "pop groups". This type of music is mostly popular in the Nordic countries.
[edit] Nomenclature criticism
Even though dance music is upbeat, people often slow dance to love ballads which are not referred to as dance music upon popular belief. As a result of this, people often stereotype that slow dancing is no "dance" at all.[citation needed]
[edit] Radio Stations that use the dance format
Note: many radio stations have alienated dance music. WKTU FM - New York City[citation needed]
