Culture Dance Music

[Henrietta Naughton]

Jamisonstarted off by distinguishing between cultural assimilation and cultural appropriation. He also discussed cultural syncretism, a phrase new to me, that describes when components of different cultures create something new. He divided his presentation into three sections: dance music, song traditions, and square dance. While I had expected to be drawn most to the square dance segment, it was the history of dance music that I found truly fascinating.

Those who think fiddle playing morphed from the violinists of Europe to Southern Appalachia may be surprised to know that in West Africa, a tradition of fiddling dates back to the 12th century. Jamison explained that those who were enslaved adopted the violin, as it positioned them for a better place in life. As early as 1690, enslaved Blacks played the fiddle at plantation balls in Virginia. Black fiddlers left a lasting legacy, one that influenced Southern music styles, with syncopated bowing, rhythms, slides, and tunes. Several of these Black musicians are known to have mentored white fiddlers and other musicians from 1755 up through 1996.

Prompting (verbal step reminders, used in contra dancing) and calling (same, but in square dancing) are phenomena unique to this genre of dance. Calling is differentiated by improvisation, reflecting the African tradition of call and response, and is chanted in pitch with the music.

Darcy Grabenstein is a freelance writer and poet who has had a lifelong love affair with dance. Her earliest dance memories are of her stereotypical ballet teacher, Mrs. DeMarko, frowning and banging a wooden staff on the dance floor for added emphasis. An avowed ballet school dropout, Darcy later was introduced to the genres of international and Israeli folk dance.

thINKingDANCE gratefully acknowledges support from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from our readers and other individual donors like you! thINKingDANCE is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in cultural critics of color cofounded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation and The Ford Foundation.

Dancecult is a peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal for the study of electronic dance music culture (EDMC). A platform for interdisciplinary scholarship on the shifting terrain of EDMCs worldwide, the journal houses research exploring the sites, technologies, sounds and cultures of electronic music in historical and contemporary perspectives. To get started, register here. Join the Dancecult-l mailing list. Visit the Dancecult Facebook Page.

Dancecult is an activity of the Dancecult Research Network whose webportal features a moderated user-updatable reference archive with EDMC researcher profiles and resource lists. Note. When the DRN webportal was re-launched in June 2018, all profiles and references archived in 2010 were migrated. Please update profiles and submit entries to the People & References lists (under Resources).

Most traditional music and dance developed in family and community settings before modern communication systems like radio, television, home stereos, and computers filled our lives with sound. Music was made by people for people. If you heard music, it was usually performed by someone in the same room or close by, as there were no microphones and amplifiers to project it over great distances.

A lot of traditional music is social. It is meant to be played, sung or danced to with family and friends. Some, traditional music, however, is very personal and enjoyed more privately. Traditional musicians often learn to play "by ear" (without musical notation) and over their lifetime they master a range of complex techniques and a vast repertoire.

MCs have been instrumental to the development and growth of dance music from its very beginnings, and the key figures and their contributions to music and rave culture deserve at least the same respect awarded to exalted DJs and producers.

Navi helms workshops, where he teaches up and comers about the roots of MCing, which he traces back to pioneers like James Brown. His vital work allows him to impart his knowledge, gained across five decades, to a new generation, keeping the lineage intact and ensuring that the history is imbued with clarity and passion.

Dynamite has consistently translated his craft to the studio, successfully shifting into garage, hip hop and other genres, which compounds his stature as one of the greats. Similarly, Navigator has also been prolific in the studio, both men proving that it is possible to utilise skills that are developed and refined in the live environment for recordings. The energy MCing in raves is something that simply cannot be replicated on a record, it has to be experienced first-hand to be truly understood. However, the cache, reach and visibility that an MC can achieve through releasing singles, EPs and albums can be crucial to their growth.

An entire era of MC history, groundbreaking activity, may have been largely neglected in terms of documentation but all the energy and graft that went into igniting the nineties raves still reverberates to this day. Today, we see Stormzy headline Glastonbury, Skepta on the cover of GQ and winning the Mercury Prize, following in the game-changing footsteps of Ms. Dynamite and Speech Debelle, and numerous other UK lyricists celebrated and revered for their work in every facet of the media. All of these MCs are the descendants of artists such as Navigator, the Ragga Twins, Tippa Irie and a whole host of other pioneering mic men and women, who laid the foundations for others to build upon.

"Even if you have no interest in disco music, this is a book that offers a detailed and entertaining analysis of American culture in the 70s that thankfully manages to avoid the predictable tacky stereotypes. . . . Love Saves The Day manages to provide a superb political and social context for one of the most misunderstood and derided musical sub-cultures of recent history."

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Electronic dance music (EDM),[1] also referred to as club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create seamless selections of tracks, called a DJ mix, by segueing from one recording to another.[2] EDM producers also perform their music live in a concert or festival setting in what is sometimes called a live PA. Since its inception EDM has expanded to include a wide range of subgenres.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, following the emergence of raving, pirate radio, Party crews, underground festivals and an upsurge of interest in club culture, EDM achieved mainstream popularity in Europe. However, rave culture was not as broadly popular in the United States; it was not typically seen outside of the regional scenes in New York City, Florida, the Midwest, and California. Although the pioneer genres of electro, Chicago house and Detroit techno were influential both in Europe and the United States, mainstream media outlets and the record industry in the United States remained openly hostile to it until the 1990s and beyond. There was also a perceived association between EDM and drug culture, which led governments at state and city levels to enact laws and policies intended to halt the spread of rave culture.[3]

Subsequently, in the new millennium, the popularity of EDM increased globally, particularly in the United States and Australia. By the early 2010s, the term "electronic dance music" and the initialism "EDM" was being pushed by the American music industry and music press in an effort to rebrand American rave culture.[3] Despite the industry's attempt to create a specific EDM brand, the acronym remains in use as an umbrella term for multiple genres, including dance-pop, house, techno, electro and trance, as well as their respective subgenres, which all predate the acronym.[4][5][6]

Various EDM genres have evolved over the last 40 years, for example; house, techno, drum and bass, dance-pop etc. Stylistic variation within an established EDM genre can lead to the emergence of what is called a subgenre. Hybridization, where elements of two or more genres are combined, can lead to the emergence of an entirely new genre of EDM.[4]

In the late 1960s bands such as Silver Apples created electronic music intended for dancing.[7] Other early examples of music that influenced later electronic dance music include Jamaican dub music during the late 1960s to 1970s,[6] the synthesizer-based disco music of Italian producer Giorgio Moroder in the late 1970s, and the electropop of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra in the mid-to-late 1970s.[5]

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