Mainstreamed: The Origins and Domestication of the Dance Music Culture

Dance music culture is the dominant culture in the United Kingdom. It pervades everyday life in the nation-its poppy electronic melodies dominate telephone ringtones, television commercials, record stores and car stereos. It defines modern British popular culture. It has not always been wildly popular in the United Kingdom, however, as it was once a subculture limited to the small nightclubs of London. The dance music genre has been mixed popularized through a mix with pop, and the culture has been domesticated and generalized into the chic culture that it is today. This journey can be traced, however, and its path runs largely parallel to the course taken by technological culture. The dance music culture had a relatively short and unimpeded journey in becoming a part of the dominant culture in the United Kingdom due to its fresh, electronic sound catering to a now-technological generation of wired Brits as well as an open embrace by already-established pop artists and hit-seeking music executives.

Dick Hebdige's Subculture proves an effective and detailed handbook for the study of subculture, detailing the process of evolution as a subculture grows to become part of the dominant mainstream culture. Hebdige's work "[deciphers] the graffiti" and "[teases] out the meanings embedded in the various post-war youth styles" in order to find the meaning behind the artistic expression of youth subcultures (Hebdige 3). Subcultures "manifest culture in the broadest sense, as systems of communication, forms of expression and representation" (Hebdige 129). His work is especially relevant here, as this essay follows the development of dance music and its subculture from its origins to the present day and details the reasons it has become a dominant culture and the most popular form of music in the United Kingdom. And though the subculture has no definable style of dress, the individuals are defined by the scene, a.k.a. club, they frequent, and what unique style of dance music that scene represents (Langlois 230).