Dance music
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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.
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. See for more.
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.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.
Modern Dance
The 20th century saw the rise of Modern Dance and also other popular dance forms, sometimes jazz-based or -related, such as the ragtime. As 20th century classical music headed toward more dissonant and non-traditional directions with tonality, frequently dance music provided a cutting edge path for these changes, like Stravinsky's ballet, the Rite of Spring or the work of John Cage for modern dance. Popular genres began to take up the need for social dance music, and produced numerous duple and quadruple dance forms.Nightclubs and raves
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 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 hits on one and three and lets the snare take the lead on two and four (Michaels, 1990).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.
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Radio Stations that use the dance format
Note: many radio stations have alienated dance music. '''WKTU FM - New York CitySee also
- Dance as form of musical composition
- List of ballroom and social dance albums
- List of dance party albums
- VFunk
External links
- [DanceFrontDoor] - Dance music news and reviews site
- [Resident Advisor] - RA is an online dance music magazine.
- [Real Dance Radio] - RDR is a online Dance News Portal.
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