Is Dance Music a Subculture or Has it Now Become a Culture in its Own Right?

Is Dance Music a Subculture or Has it Now Become a Culture in its Own

Right?

Classically subcultures define themselves as 'other' and 'subordinate'

to 'the dominant' culture. Many cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall

and Dick Hebdige have been chiefly concerned with the ways in which

subcultures subvert and pose a resistance to the 'established order'

through their expressive dress codes and rituals. Dance music seems to

depart from these theories of youth culture, since it has not

established its own identifiable dress code nor consciously set itself

apart from the wider culture.

Today dance music is primarily focussed around clubs, where people

meet together and dance to electronically engineered music. It could

take place in a derelict warehouse, a bar, a beach, a field, an

aircraft hangar or a sports arena. Some may be free, and others may

charge an entrance fee. Each venue seems to have its own discourse. A

beach may signify the escapism of a holiday; a warehouse may signify

the decline of industrialisation; and a sports arena may signify

commercial profiteering. The sort of people that go to any particular

one will vary according to the place where it is held, the way in

which it is advertised, and the price of the ticket. For example, the

London Jungle scene is predominantly black-led and attracts a racially

diverse section of urban youth; the location of these raves is

communicated by the pirate radio stations and those 'in the know'.

Conversely, a rave held at Cream sells tickets at £25, advertises on

commercial radio and in 'Mixmag' and targets a wealthier,

predominantly white middle class section of society. In 199...

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...tional sources that Dance music creates a

sublime atmosphere of an ever-lasting present. Through this

bastardisation it transcends the realms of sub-culture and becomes a

parent culture, spawning off various subcultures of its own from

Techno to House. Dance music encompasses both the underground and the

mainstream facets of society through its multidirectional subgenera.

What started life as an underground subculture from the USA in the

late 1970s transcended through the mainstream of the mid 1990s to

create its own unique culture in the early 21st Century. Whilst dance

music itself is still very much part of the general popular culture of

Britain, however its underling Club Culture remains the choice of the

minority rather than the majority, and is, as most subcultures are

generally feared rather than fully understood.