The Electronic Dance Music Culture

When I was four years old I was introduced to a tall, petite, beautiful ballerina who spun around the room with elegance, and effortlessly captured the crowd with her stunning abilities. As a little girl, I sparkled with admiration and was inspired to be all she was, it was from that point on, that I ventured into an unknown world of art, strength and expression. Now being eighteen years old with about fourteen years of experience in the dance world, I have learned and developed the norms, values and practices of the culture, and the conflicting theory within it.

Culture itself can be broken into further components. One of them would be material culture. According to the course content powerpoint, this kind of culture is basically the physical objects of a society, and what kind of meaning they are given based on the context it is in. There are a few examples of this. One would be clothing. In hip hop culture, its material culture would consist of clothing that if it was in the early 2000’s, people apart of it would be wearing baggy clothing. The meaning of baggy clothing was a revolt against of what was considered more normal and safe attire, which does relate to the music since hip-hop can get very explicit. Another example of material culture could be an art piece. If a bunch of artwork is

Hip Hop music been around for about thirty years in United Sates, but it would be heard at block parties and discos where DJs would circumnavigate breakbeats and MCs would adjoin live vocals. Finally, this paper will explain the history of hip hop, from the beginning to now. There will be an explanation about hip hop the lyrics used within and also the images. Moreover, it will also zero in on the unacceptance of hip hop and also a sample of lyrics that is used in hip hop music.

In the early 70's, a Jamaican, DJ known as Kool Herc attempted to combine his Jamaican style of disk jockey, that involved reciting improvised rhymes over the dub versions of his reggae records (Davey 1). He also invented turntables, which kept the music going, with the occasional voice on the top of records, which started the roots of rap music. Over time, the culture broke into mainstream, spread around the world, and young people who did not have much to do, created not only multi-million industry, but have also created a way we can speak to each other all around the world. Hip hop is linked to other music such as rap which is embraced by urban black population. It is raw self-expression, sometimes features expletive lyrics, and violence. “Hip hop artists spoke to despair and pain of urban youth and the poor who were often without a voice. The rappers themselves were, the product of that reality, and it was conveyed through their lyrics” (Muhammad 1).

Hip-Hop Culture and race have had a complicated relationship in the past two decades. It has been commonly referred to as “black music” and a reflection of black culture. However, recent studies done by the Mediamark Research Inc. showed that 60% of rap music buyers are white. With the emergence of white, Latino, Asian, and other rappers with diverse backgrounds on the Hip Hop scene it is important recognize the changing color of the genre and the stereotype it holds as “black music”. Black culture has also been subject to appropriation because of the popularization of Hip-hop music. However, much of the discourse on the topic confuses cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation, and states that hip-hop music is strictly for African Americans or that it doesn’t belong to anyone at all. Hip-Hop is a black art form that transcends cultural boundaries and can be appreciated through the lenses of different cultures as long as those who enjoy it acknowledge its roots. The genre’s growing number of non-black rappers is not due to the appropriation of the genre by other cultures but as an expansion of it due to it’s growing popularity across the world.

The change tearing through America in the 1950’s persists to this day. 2010 has brought a busier, more materialistic, culture than ever before. The trends of women working outside of the home and increasing teenage autonomy persists. American teenagers are given more discretionary time than ever before in history. Reed Larson studied this continuing trend and explains, “If we look back over the past 200 years, the most striking historic change in young people’s use of time is that youths spend much less time on labor activities today than they did in America’s agrarian past” (160). Some teenagers use

The Golden Era of Hip Hop was a period in the 80s and early 90s characterized by its diversity, innovation, and cultural influence. Hip Hop is considered to have been born in 1973, in South Bronx, New York by Jamaican-born Kool DJ Herc (Blanchard, B, 1999). He used a turntable technique at a Halloween party, which eventually became extremely popular at every party scene. The term “breakdancing” came to life shortly after. Rhymes over hip hop music, also known as rap, began first as a commentary of the ability of the DJ. MCs introduced DJs and their songs. This rhythmic music produced by DJs at parties combined with an increase of break dancers, graffiti artists, and importance of MCs, created what we know today as the culture of hip hop.

It was a Tuesday morning in the Information Technology class at State College. An older student was doing his best to ignore the loud, obscene disruption occurring next to him, the result of two younger students ignoring the lesson at hand. Finally, he gave in and spoke up against their sanctimonious display, and was quickly bullied and threatened with violence in front of the entire class. Both aggressors exemplified and embodied every aspect of the hip-hop culture: Ebonics spewing out of their mouths, expensive and baggy clothing draped and sagging from their bodies complete with headphones around their neck blaring expletive laden song lyrics. The dynamic duo mentioned here certainly aren’t the only members of this ilk, nor are they

The hip-hop culture began in the streets of New York City during the 1970’s and has gone through tremendous changes up until now. Hip-Hop consists of four elements: rap, graffiti, break-dancing, and the disc jockey. In this paper, I intend to fully explain the evolution of rap music, from its infancy to the giant industry it is today.

There has always been one style of music that has interested me greatly-hip-hop. Hip-hop has four different elements to it: rap music (vocal), turntablism (DJ-ing), b-boying (dance/physical) and graffiti art; out of the four I think rap music has had the greatest impact on the world for it has influenced us socially, culturally and politically. However, over the years I realize that hip-hop music hasn’t had the same impact on the world, becoming main stream. So I am going to explore how it has influenced us throughout the years and how it has changed recently.

In this essay, I will be examining the musical genre of Afrobeat which was created by Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Afrobeat first came to be in the late 1960’s during the Civil Rights Movement in America. Fela Kuti a Nigerian, was able to create a genre that has change the way we view music today. Afrobeat is made up of two different words, “Afro” and “Beat”. “Afro” correlates with “African organized sound while beat is a rhythmic counting pattern in relation to such music” (Oikelome, 2013). Therefore, the meaning of Afrobeat is the unique African rhythmic patterns of such music. The coming of this genre is very interesting since the man behind it has quite a story.

Introduction: (Play YouTube video from 1:38 – 1:58). What you just heard were the sounds of EDM. EDM stands for electronic dance music. Also you saw first-hand the inside of a rave called Electric Daisy Carnival (a Las Vegas event famous for ‘finding yourself under the electric sky’). What rave culture means to me is a place I can be myself and express my creativity in a judgment-free environment. Today, I am going to explain the history behind the top 3 most popular genres of EDM, and the meaning behind rave culture.

Hip- hop has become a phenomenon throughout youth culture. Many believed hip-hop was only a phase of music like disco, but as the genre continued to expand and evolve, it became clear that hip-hop was here to stay. (History of hip- hop: past, present, future) Hip- hop is made up of 2 main elements, DJing and rapping. DJ is short for disc jockey, which is a person who usually uses turntables to make music, and rapping is talking and chanting in an easy and familiar manner. (Hip-Hop: A Short History) In writing this research paper, I will explain the most impactful years of hip-hop, and the events surrounding them, starting from 1979, when Sugarhill Gang released “Rappers Delight”.

Electronic dance music (EDM) festivals around the world bring hundreds of thousands of fans together for enormous multi-day parties. New York Ranger (2014) points out that ‘DJs are the new rock stars’.

There is an increasing mutual exchange as the synthetic and the human-made equally invades what we once thought of as natural. In electronic music, the human element that people input in their work is crucial to say the least. People provide the unpredictable pieces in their work to make it stand out from the rest. Most robotic or technologic generated music often is in the form of a pattern. Without human interface, electronic music, for the most part, is predictable. When electronic music is played without the human element, a sense of something that is missing usually occurs. Today, technological advances allow electronics to replace most of the human interactions. Now technology can mimic the sounds of non-electronic instruments. Instruments such as the flute, violin, and guitar are just some of these mimicked sounds that could be replaced. In this “genre” the human body is often held as a relatable tool. The audience notices the human element and realizes that they can create such works as well. Electronic music to some may feel that it is missing the human component in the normalized concept of seeing the artist. However, when developing the art itself, electronic music, whether it be in live performances, editing the material, or commercializing the music for use, the human element is still very prominent. The human component is implicated in music directly or indirectly.