Dance Music's Adaption Into American Culture

The New Rock And Roll There I was, in the middle of the Las Vegas desert at 5 in the morning watching the sunrise above the barriers of the Motor Speedway and over the mountains across the way. There was dance music pouring from the DJs turntables into the crowd with a bass line so groovy and loud my body was tingling from head to toe. Around me there were thousands of males and females of all ages from every race, sexuality, and religion cheerfully mingling through out the festival, jumping in sync to the song, singing along to the lyrics as loud as they can, or dancing as if no one else is there. There were bright neon lasers illuminating the sky desert above the crowd, huge LED screens surrounding the stage visualizing hallucinogenic images, and occasional fireworks went off in the sky that formed into a heart, smiley face, and sparkly circles. It was hard to ignore the strong emotional vibe of pure happiness, joy, and excitement that was being carried on throughout the crowd. Suddenly, I mentally stepped back from everything going on to realize the bigger picture at that moment. The image of electronic dance music has shifted from and unacceptable underground movement heavily associated with drugs to a socially accepted cultural phenomenon. Electronic dance music, or better known as EDM for short, is a genre of music that is generally produced by synthesizers, drum machines, sequencers, and/or production programs that are ran through computers. This genre of music consists of many different sub-genres such as house, techno, trance, drum ‘n’ bass, dub-step, hard-style, and electro that branch into other supporting genres. To tell apart the difference of each sub-genre is by the sound and speed because they all are very distinct from each other. For example, techno music has a BPM (beats per minute) of 124 and a dominant synthesized bass throughout the whole song, when trance music has a mix of melodic strings, bass, and pianos at 140 beats per minute. The