House Music, disco-based electronic dance music that first appeared in New York and Chicago in the early 1980s, using new technology (including samplers and synthesizers) to strip dance music back to simple bass lines and a heavy ¹ drumbeat, using the synthesizer sounds and treated vocal lines to add interest.
As a distinctive sound it was first heard at The Loft in New York, and was then taken to Chicago by Disc Jockey (DJ) Frankie Knuckles, who set up the Warehouse club. It gained its name both from the club and from the warehouse parties at which it was first played, and was principally the music of the gay black community until Farley Jackmaster Funk’s Chicago DJ collective the Hot Mix 5 and New York’s Tony Humphries began to play it on the radio. House gained growing attention with J. M. Silk’s 1985 chart hit “Music is the Key”: new clubs, radio programmes, and independent record labels (like Trax—which released records by Marshall Jefferson and Frankie Knuckles—and DJ International) appeared, but it was Steve “Silk” Hurley’s number-one hit “Jack Your Body” (1986) that confirmed the new style’s popularity.
Built from samples, looped and electronically altered, Chicago house music focused on the most danceable elements of disco (extended drum breaks and special effects) to the exclusion of traditional musical structures (such as the verse/chorus divisions of 32-bar song form). As with the related style of techno music, it was rapidly hybridized into a variety of sub-styles. New York garage (named after DJ Larry Levan’s club, Paradise Garage) reintroduced soul vocals and piano-stylings, exposing house’s roots in disco, while the release of Phuture’s “Acid Trax” (1987) with its characteristic “squelchy” bass sound (generated by the Roland 303 synthesizer) made Acid house the music of choice for the warehouse raves of the late 1980s—hits included Maurice’s “This is Acid” (1987) and D-Mob’s “We Call It Acieed” (1988). Crystal Waters’s “Gypsy Woman” and CeCe Peniston’s “Finally” (both 1991) signalled the arrival of house as a staple of the pop charts, with house remixes becoming a routine part of pop marketing.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
As a distinctive sound it was first heard at The Loft in New York, and was then taken to Chicago by Disc Jockey (DJ) Frankie Knuckles, who set up the Warehouse club. It gained its name both from the club and from the warehouse parties at which it was first played, and was principally the music of the gay black community until Farley Jackmaster Funk’s Chicago DJ collective the Hot Mix 5 and New York’s Tony Humphries began to play it on the radio. House gained growing attention with J. M. Silk’s 1985 chart hit “Music is the Key”: new clubs, radio programmes, and independent record labels (like Trax—which released records by Marshall Jefferson and Frankie Knuckles—and DJ International) appeared, but it was Steve “Silk” Hurley’s number-one hit “Jack Your Body” (1986) that confirmed the new style’s popularity.
Built from samples, looped and electronically altered, Chicago house music focused on the most danceable elements of disco (extended drum breaks and special effects) to the exclusion of traditional musical structures (such as the verse/chorus divisions of 32-bar song form). As with the related style of techno music, it was rapidly hybridized into a variety of sub-styles. New York garage (named after DJ Larry Levan’s club, Paradise Garage) reintroduced soul vocals and piano-stylings, exposing house’s roots in disco, while the release of Phuture’s “Acid Trax” (1987) with its characteristic “squelchy” bass sound (generated by the Roland 303 synthesizer) made Acid house the music of choice for the warehouse raves of the late 1980s—hits included Maurice’s “This is Acid” (1987) and D-Mob’s “We Call It Acieed” (1988). Crystal Waters’s “Gypsy Woman” and CeCe Peniston’s “Finally” (both 1991) signalled the arrival of house as a staple of the pop charts, with house remixes becoming a routine part of pop marketing.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
