One of the most popular forms of dancing today, dance music was created and composed to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can either be a full independent musical piece or a portion of a large musical arrangement. Dance music can be broadly classified into live dance music and recorded dance music. Dance music is not exactly s genre of music, it is any music that has repetitive notes at regular intervals that people can use to dance to. The earliest forms of dance music that people have been able to reproduce with some form of reproducibility are the surviving medieval dances. There was a certain era in human history known as the Baroque period, when dance, literature and art evolved rapidly. It was during this time that noble court dances were set to a seperate set of music. The classical music era saw the rise of the minuet, a sort of third movement that did not accompany any dancing but set the stage for it. The combination of dance and music used for entertainment can be traced back all the way to the time of the ancient Greeks. The waltz accompanied noble court dances in the romantic music period, which also lead to the rise of nationalistic dance forms like mazurka, barcorelle, ballade, polonaise and ecossaise.
However, the evolution of modern pop dance music began in the late 19th century Western ballroom and social dance music. This form of ballroom dance became popular among the working class who attended public dance halls at the time, which was during the early and mid 20th century. Dance music slowly became popular in the 1920s, and then swing music took America by storm. The 1930s, known as the swing era, brought about a large revolution in dance music. The 1950s saw the rise of rock and roll as the most popular form of music of the time. Several artists like The Beatles, Queen, Elvis Presley etc. were among the best of that era. Through the next 2 decades, people were introduced to soul and R&B music, to disco. Disco music greatly led to the popularization of disco music in pop culture with iconic music and dance numbers from movies like ‘Saturday Night Fever’. Disco was also among the first music genres that experimented with electronic music. The 1970s was the time when electronic music really hit the streets. Today, electronic music is played extensively at nightclubs, radio stations, shows and raves. Several sub genres of electronic dance music have since evolved.
Dance music is a very broad division in music that does not fit into a particular genre of music. Dance music changes with each generation, and it is only now that it has reached the electronic music segment. It is quite diverse and prolific among different regions.
