EDM?

These days, house is considered by many to be one of the two “grandparent” genres, alongside breakbeat… house has 4-on-the-floor kicks, breakbeat has a more swingy unusual beat. That said, this is not set in stone, it just seems to be how the consideration breaks down from what I’ve seen.

Looking for new directions in music: this is the first thought I had while considering this subject; 1979 was the final year for disco THE business which saturated an audience longing for new emotions on the floor and there came acid jazz with recycled Deodato, Funk inc., Montana etc. and rare groove became a good excuse to play all sorts of crap, while BBC was cancelling one of the best shows filing under Something else… A lot of experiments, failures bands coming and going at a sad speed and finally a bunch of inspired DJs making the 1990s a legendary decade making us feel at home again, the house of music?
Bootlegs with old disco samples underlined with electronic beats became part of the scenario like Love is the message or Dancing in outer spaces at slower RPMs, The bottle n stuff, some say that’s where it all started and mixing it live was no easy task due to the exact electronic time combined with the unavoidable human imperfection. Others say that Chicago House has its roots in Detroit which became a no go area caused by that urban decay still unfolding and the arrival of DJs from motown, then again, considering the documentary Paris is burning the confusion increases and persists when reading the genre tags á la “soulfuldeepjazzyminimaldutchtriptekhouse” which won’t make any track better; so, instead of defining I’d rather go for a new direction in music, so let’s keep inspired. By the way: I was there in ’86 down Paddington, the east end in abandoned hospitals, police not daring to enter, club 100, upstairs on Oxford st or Pasha in Riccione, Villa delle rose, Cellophane in Rimini and it is still difficult to define the patchwork of styles, but it was boiling all right 😉

@dt17

On the subject of who calls what EDM, you’re forgetting to account for regional differences my friend. Around me when people are over-generalizing, and are talking about anything even remotely electro-sounding, they call it techno (for best effect, imagine that being said with a heavy Quebecois accent, probably while spilling a drink on you) definitely not EDM as you state. That’s the problem with most of these terms people use for music – they are really kind of meaningless when it comes right down to it. Just a way to make whatever style you like seem more exclusive.

And on that note, to your last comment. Here’s a little key to success in life. You personally don’t like Dimitri Vegas and company, that’s fine. Assuming because you don’t like him that he’s “garbage”. That’s small-minded. Know what you like. Know what you hate. Respect it all. Even that stuff you hate had someone toil away at it – cutting down their work doesn’t make you a better DJ. Too much nastiness & negativity in this industry already. Don’t play that game.

EDM aka Event Driven Music, is a culture onto itself. A culture as we all know is when a group of people share similar behaviors, beliefs, and values. In the case of dance, each sub-genre of electronic music has its own culture and sub-culture because there are more people being impacted within each. Back in the day, it was everything under one roof. This is why you rarely have inter-mixing of sounds today and get mostly entire nights of techno, deep house, g-house nights, and EDM. These sub-genres have their own culture where people of like minds get together and enjoy that particular sound in the same place and have the same knowledge of that genre. Afro house is shared by many that are engulfed in that culture. Techno/tech house has its crowd, etc. Latin House has its own culture in South America/Spain and Miami where they all speak the same language and share same cultural values apart from music. Top40 has its and well as country. Now, the most interesting aspect is people can belong to multiple sub-genre cultures because they are so big.

However, another aspect is that people are coming into their cultures at mid-point and attempting to redefine the genres. You ask people to define house and they will send you a link of “pump up the volume” and try to explain house with some metric 4 X 4 system. But what many people don’t realize is that pump of the volume is mostly during the inception and not the fabrication of the culture. Inception is the beginning whereas fabrication is when the culture began to define and branch out. And with that branching out came fashion, clothing, defined sounds, sub-genres, etc. “On and On” by Jesse Saunders is cited as being the first official “house record” by many. However, it isn’t identifiable to the current sound of house that has been a mainstay since the mid-80s up until now. Same with Hip Hop- people can say that djing starting by a disc jockey in Switzerland or that rap started in Jamaica. But the synergistic fabrication of the 5 elements such as breaking, fashion, graffiti- in relation to the hip hop culture, began in New York. Basically, EDM culture started overseas, Chicago, and NYC as individual electro, hard house, big room vocals, tribal progressive R&B/pop remixes. But it wasn’t fabricated as an Event Driven Culture with festivals, radio, commercials, etc., until around 2010 – give or take a few years.

Many people have no idea that Axwell was one of the most charted soulful/lounge house producers in Europe/Ibiza back in the early 2000s. Many people don’t know that Avicci was soulful and that Hardwell used to make soulful/Latin house in the mid-2000s because of the afro influence in Amsterdam. But the music that they produce now is not in any way related to the original and current culture in which they come from. Therefore, since those as part of the rooted house culture can’t identify with the likes of Axwell, Avicci, and Hardwell, they are now EDM- it’s own culture, which is identifiable to the like minded. If it doesn’t register by the original group, it isn’t part of the culture. Now, it doesn’t mean that they will never go back however, the gaps are so wide between underground and commercial today. The leap is too far to jump into the underground where the uber niche lives and they may rebel against anyone not life-time uber underground. The ones that lay in between are the ones that are suffering and have to work harder to gain attention now.

<Removed political content>
<DJ Vintage> Let’s keep this a DJ platform, not a political one please.

EDM to me has always just been a generalized term for masses of sub genres

like “Rock” can be anything from heavy metal to indie (ive heard oasis called a Rock band in the same breath as Slipknot)

If you go to a show labelled “EDM,” then it tends to mean a very specific thing. The words may belie the true meaning, but the audience will typically be expecting something much more specific than “anything that’s electronic and dance.”

You advertise an EDM show and play trance and your audience isn’t going to be very pleased, no matter how much you want the meaning of the abbreviation to allow you to play anything electronic you want.

It is kind of interesting in some of them where you get crossover… I most definitely fit into the “Ghetto Funk” category, but that means I also get to play any other Funk I like, Disco, Blues, Glitch Hop, Neuro and various flavors of Swing – including Electro Swing, which is a house beat as opposed to the breakbeat that epitomizes most of the rest of the styles in the genre.

I’m sure each sub-culture has crossovers like this, but as you say, it’s the members of that group that really have a handle on what that means and how it feels.