House is the most soulful genre. It's also the simplest, the oldest, the warmest, and where electronic music is concerned, easily the most human-sounding, making it the most popular, commanding the most producers, artists, labels, DJs, fans, and subgenres. The whole of top40 pop music gets its hooks, gimmicks, lines and melodies from house music (and vice versa). That is why it stands as the world's perennial party music, and it will probably stay that way until the end of time. Or until someone finds a more catchy beat than the 4/4 bassdrum.
1970's
Disco
Not just any Disco, but electro boogie! The synthesized direction Disco was heading after its flame was extinguished by American meatheads. Trivia time: the last Disco track to reach #1? Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown", May 1980. And by then synthesizers and drum machines really started coming into their own, as shown by the track's stark contrast to the big-band, string-section, entire-ensemble disco cuts that permeated radio waves 5 years earlier. Machines allowed making the music easier, faster, and cheaper, but they also brought on a whole bunch of other things. The 80s proved to be the coming-out party for electronic music, as within a year of Disco's infamous backlash everyone, from Reggae (Eddy Grant) to Funk (George Clinton) to Jazz (Herbie Hancock) to movie soundtracks (The Warriors) would employ electronic instruments with glee. As for Disco--it moved to Europe and became Italo Disco.
Dub
This kind of stuff's been around at least for 30 years. Take reggae, remove the lyrics and harmonies. What you have left is what those lovable Jamaicans like to call the dub. Yeah: Dub. Sheesh, sounds like one of those pet words stoners always come up with in their spare time. Add a beat to it and it becomes Dub House. It was the first ever tool for DJs--a groove to lay down under all the anthems and floorfillers--somehow making it a genre in its own right. Now it's influenced everything else as well. There's probably a million and one sub genres of this--ambient dub, techno dub, dub dub--but I'm too lazy to find out what they got going for them. But god bless those wacky Jamaicans and their wonderful detail to rhythm.
1980's
Garage (AKA New York House)
Around the same time that gay black people were inventing House in Chicago, gay black people were inventing Garage in New York. It makes you wonder if gay black people in other cities weren't doing similar things, like maybe 'Shack' in Indianapolis, or 'Toolshed' in Des Moines, or the uptempo, swanky, soulful 'Apartment Complex' coming out of Cleveland's urban underground. Where House brings the funk, Garage brings the soul, as it sounds more organic and 'disco-y'. Scientists have still yet been able to figure out what makes its spin-off genres 2-step/UK and that godawful 'speed' stuff actual Garage, since they've both been disowned from conception.
Classic House (Chicago House)
It's antecedents include funk, soul, blues, jazz, disco, dub, and sometimes even hip hop, but none of that is here because it isn't electronic (unless specified specifically). Still, no genre is an island, and it had to get its inspiration from somewhere. Like, say someone banging a stick on the edge of a wooden box or something. The music's really been around for 40 years (if you don't believe me, go listen to the Jazz Crusaders), the drum machines just make things more groove-centric. Which is a good thing, owing to the highly-convoluted social phenomenon that was about to emerge from this thing.
Acid House
Raves weren't actual raves until this came along. 1988, the Summer of Love, the Hacienda, Shoom, Heaven, and all that. Well, first they were called acid house parties, then they were raves. The music itself is actually pretty moody and sinister compared to today. We always think of the music at parties to be upbeat and energizing. I think the whole motif of this evil-sounding, mechanical 80s music in dark rooms with minimal lighting and hundreds of people squashed on drugs swaying about like automatons to be quaintly cool. Of course, at the time this must have freaked out the suits. It would've freaked me out too. It's definitely lost its edge since those seedy days. Rave-oriented music now is just too warm, receptive, and pleasant-sounding to give its origins any justice.
Hip House
It's more popular than you think; people are just wack bitches and don't give it their props like they should. Some of your favourite top40 hits you remember getting down to at your Bar Mitzvah or Prom or Commencement or whatever lame dance you thought was cool back in highschool were actually house remixes of rap songs, or rap remixes of house songs, or a forethought meshing of both. Making them Hip House. Come to think of it, most modern rap (Dr. Dre comes to mind) is employing a steady house beat these days. I don't hear much scratching in rap music much anymore. Is hip hop truly dead?
1990's
Deep House
This genre is to House music like Superman is to the Superfriends: indispensable. Everything that other House genres can do, Deep House does. Sometimes better. In fact, this genre IS House music. It encapsulates everything House music is supposed to do, supposed to sound like, supposed to make you feel, to a T. If there was no Deep House, House just wouldn't be House. Deep House is the sound that holds the whole genre together. There are several sub-sub-genres of this, all of it good, including Mark Farina's own special brand of Mushroom Jazz. One of my favourites is a really swanky, soulful sub-sub-genre tentatively named (meaning, called only by my friends and I) "Dad House", because it always evokes images of your father walking around the house in his bathrobe on a Sunday morning, reading the paper and smoking on a pipe. Well, mine anyway.
Funky House
Yes, officially sanctioned by the Department of Redundancy Department, it's Funky House! Since when is House Music not funky? Well, when it's doing something else, I guess. Still, this and Deep House are easily the strongest genres, because they encapsulate best what House music represents: groovy soul. Well, I suppose there's a Soul House genre somewhere as well, but for the time being all soulful house gets squeezed into here. Or Vocal House. Point is if you aren't moving at least ONE PART OF YOUR BODY RIGHT NOW (even a head bobbing), then you just don't get it. House music is not for you. Go pick up a craft project or something.
Funky house!!!!!!!
Disco House
Of course House wasn't going to leave Disco alone. Even if every track samples the same riff from Change - "The Glow of Love". This is easily the style of music that has the most fun. If there was an official gauge of how much fun something is, Disco House would score off the chart. If there was a country in the world called Funia, Disco House would be its national anthem, as well as the name of its capital city. Everyone would be free, easy, super and gay (that's gay as in happy and fun, not gay as in lame and stupid). I was once walking down the street late one night and a hooker called to me from the curb, asking me if I was looking for some fun. "No thanks, Miss," I replied, pulling out a pair of headphones. "I've got Disco House, the most fun there is." She nodded completely in agreement. "Word. Be on your way, then."
Tech House
You'd think that a hybrid genre combining the best qualities of House and Techno would be totally rad, but it's not. In actual fact, Tech House comes out mostly as a dull, monotonous drone (something Tech House was the undisputed king of until only recently, when the technique of making boring music was surpassed by the pretentious Brit House scene calling itself only "progressive"), with barely enough going for it to make it interesting. It's like it decided to combine the worst qualities of Techno and House. Why the hell it would do that, I don't know. But it's been around, like, forever, and people keep making it, so someone somewhere has to be listening/buying/dancing/spinning all those Tech House records. I have yet to find anyone though (Tripwire, shut up).
Hard House
Yeah, there we go. Real _FUCKING_ Hard House. To even remotely hint at suggesting that Hard House is some other kind of limp-wristed pussy circus music makes you ridiculously dumb. I mean it: you are really really DUMB for fostering the delusion that Hard House should be anything other than.....HARD. A distorted 909 bassdrum is what you need. And some courses on how to properly focus your anger management, and hopping around pumping your fist in the air.
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