Electronic music can trace its roots back to the early 20th century, but its emergence as a counterculture movement began with the inception of house and techno in the late 1970's and early 80's.
We'll begin our discussion of electronic dance music with the phenomenon of house music.
The term "house music" was first coined sometime in the late 70's/early 80's a descriptor for the type of music played at a Chicago club known as "The Warehouse". The resident DJ at the club, Frankie Knuckles, blended a variety of music, including disco, soul, and R&B together, over electronic kick drum patterns provided by an early drum machine.
The kick of the drum machine provided a back bone to the music. This allowed the DJ to blend two records together, playing at the same tempo - one incoming, and one outgoing - using a mixer. This breakthrough allowed DJs to link dozens of songs together, one after another, as one continuous uninterrupted stream of music.
As this new musical style become more popular, it gained the name of "house music", as a nod to the club it originated from.
The Warehouse and clubs that sprung up like it were a haven for gay, black, and other marginalized communities. They provided places where people of all backgrounds could come together and dance without judgment or discrimination. That sense of love and acceptance would be instrumental in house (and electronic music in general) becoming a world wide phenomenon.
As house music began to further take shape, it continued to be defined by its blending of many other genres including disco, soul, funk, jazz, and early electronic music emanating from Europe.
Today, the genre of house music is characterized by a repetitive 4/4 beat, known commonly as a four-to-the-floor beat. This means that the kick or bass drum hits on every beat (1, 2, 3, 4), with 4 beats creating a bar. Bars (also called measures) are usually counted in groups of up to 32 beats. New elements are added to the house track beginning with a new measure, until all elements of the song are in action. As the track begins to wind down, the elements are removed one by one, allowing the DJ to begin mixing in the next track.
House music, in its infancy and through today, tends to have a warm, uplifting vibe to it. House music is known to combine soulful, positive vocals layered over its synthesized bass lines. It often incorporates "organic" instruments as well, such as pianos, saxophones, and strings. It brings a sense of warmth, unity and inclusion to the dance floor, as well as good, old fashioned fun. The never ending beats imbue the crowd with their energy, helping listeners to keep their feet moving for hours on end.
While house music was making waves in Chicago, the origins of techno as a form of electronic dance music began not far away, in nearby Detroit, Michigan. In the early 1980s, a group of young musicians and producers from the Detroit suburb of Belleville, began their own experimentations with electronic music.
The trio of Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson (the Belleville Three, as they became known) are largely credited as the originators of techno. Using second hand synthesizers, like the Roland TR-808, they took their inspiration from the otherworldly electronic sounds emerging from European acts like Kraftwerk and blended it with the funk and soul of Detroit's Motown heritage.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, techno and underground electronic music really began to take hold in the German capital. Young Berliners flocked to the clubs that had recently begun to open their doors, where they found freedom on the dance floors and release in the throbbing bass lines.
For a more in-depth look at the origins of techno, I highly recommend viewing this wonderful short documentary from German outlet Deutsche Welle "How Techno was Born: From Detroit to Berlin and Back".
Today, techno has diverged sonically from house music to become its own distinct genre of music.
Modern techno focuses on faster paced beats, heavy use of synthesizers and percussions, and an overall darker, more futuristic and industrial aesthetic in its musical themes. It's a more raw, aggressively futuristic sound that stands in stark contrast to the warm and bubbly nature of house music.
While its popularity is global, it still remains firmly entrenched as one of the most underground styles of dance music.
The 1990's saw the new art form of electronic dance music soar to new heights, as house and techno entered the cultural zeitgeist. The parties that accompanied the music, often referred to as raves, offered attendees an adventure out of the ordinary with every night out.
Raves differed from the more common nightclub experience, as they typically took place in unsanctioned venues, such as abandoned warehouses, fields, or even out in nature, far away from the cities and the obtrusiveness of authorities.
Following in the footsteps of the punk scene, organizers of these early raves embraced the D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) ethos. There were no permits, liquor licenses or any sort of establishment endorsement of these events. Raves epitomized the rebirth of counterculture. Organizers were not commercially motivated, but instead driven by the desire to bring together communities under the hypnotic spell of dance music. Raves often lasted for hours on end, from late night until dawn... and sometimes well into the next day.
In order to keep event locations secret and hidden from authorities, rave organizers and promoters often utilized hotlines - dedicated phone lines which would play a recorded message with explicit directions on how to find the party. The secretive nature of these events ensured that ravers could enjoy their night out without being disturbed by authorities, who saw raves as little more than an open market for drug distribution.
Despite the misgivings of authority, the growing dance music culture offered young people of all backgrounds, races, and orientations a safe haven to gather.
Though it's nearly impossible to pinpoint its exact origin, an ethos began to develop in the early 90s rave scene around the basic tenets of peace, love, unity, and respect, or P.L.U.R., as it came to be known. While some may be quick to dismiss the hokiness of P.L.U.R., there is no doubt that this concept has had a positive influence on the minds of countless young people.
As the idea of rave culture spread, fear mongering news media and local governments around the US linked the explosion of electronic music with the use of new street drugs, specifically the drug MDMA, or ecstasy, as it became commonly known.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, lawmakers in the US sought to punish rave organizers and destroy the culture that had sprung up around them. One such supporter of destroying the rave scene was none other than Herr Joseph Biden, who would later go on to become the first mummy elected to the office of President of the United States.
Biden helped author and introduce the RAVE Act, which targeted the promoters and venue owners who held raves as complicit in the distribution of illegal drugs like ecstasy.
The UK was no different. Similar legislation, most notably section 63 of the UK’s Criminal Justice Act, attempted to define so-called rave music as “sounds wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.”
Many individual cities and states began to crackdown further on raves and all night parties, shifting the scene from the wild west mindset of the underground rave, to a more controlled and legitimized nightclub environment.
Ostensibly, driving the scene from the DIY, abandoned warehouse parties of the 90s and into sanctioned clubs had several positive effects: stricter laws provided increased security for club-goers, kept underage attendees out, and reduced the impact and availability of club drugs.
However, what these laws really meant was the death of the electronic music scene in the United States, outside of major population hubs like New York, LA, and Chicago.
In less populated regions that lacked a nightclub dedicated to house and techno music, it became incredibly difficult to find places to gather and dance with others. Ultimately, the persecution of the rave culture by the US government led to the near extinction of this burgeoning movement, driving it almost completely underground for years.
With draconian measures in the US and UK all but driving the house and techno scene out of the mainstream, these music styles quickly made their way throughout Europe and other countries around the world.
Despite resistance from the government, the UK maintained it's status hotbed for electronic music, with genres like Acid House and Progressive House becoming increasingly popular.
In Germany, the darker beats of Techno took hold, amid a thriving club scene.
By the early 2000s, house and techno were becoming popular in many Latin American countries, with the record label Global Underground playing a pivotal role in showcasing electronic music to a worldwide audience.
Each release in the Global Underground series was based upon a mix from a featured DJ at special GU events, held in stunning locations around the world. In the days before the internet truly took over our day to day lives, the Global Underground mix series was able to catapult listeners from their homes to front and center at the best parties in the world.
Dance music had officially gone world-wide.
Towards the latter end of the aughts, America finally opened up to the rave culture that it had worked so hard to destroy a decade prior. However this time, there was a catch.
A commercialized form of electronic music and raves was being pushed on the masses. Large promoters like Insomniac, creators of the Electric Daisy Carnival, began pushing the new sound of EDM above the tried and true house and techno sounds.
EDM, which unsurprisingly stands for “Electronic Dance Music”, is what you get when a room of middle aged conservative men decide they can make millions commercializing the old school rave mentality. Today, people use the term "rave" to denote almost any kind of EDM event. But for many of those that came of age in the 90s and early 2000s, EDM comes off as a cheesy and low quality corporate whitewashing of a counterculture movement. Still, one cannot deny that EDM has become supremely popular with younger generations.
Today, while EDM and bass music enjoy mainstream popularity in the States, house and techno music still occupying their place firmly in the global underground.
