Imagine this: You are standing in the middle of a pulsating dancefloor. The beats grab you, lights flicker, and you can almost feel a collective energy rising. The DJ smoothly mixes one track into the next. The crowd moves as one. Dance music is not just sound. It is culture, community, a global phenomenon, and above all a feeling. It is also resistance, an expression of freedom and belonging, especially for those often on the edges of society. But where did it all begin? What do Jamaican dub legends, analog synthesizers, and a run-down car city have to do with it? In this deep dive, we go down to the often overlooked origins and developments of dance music – right where it was born. Let’s dive in.

What is dance music?

Dancing and music are as old as humanity itself. Already in the 1920s, people danced to big bands, swing, and jazz. But it was only with synthesizers[1], drum machines[2], and samplers[3] that the electronic sound that defines dance music as we know it today became possible. This article focuses on the modern form of dance music, especially its underground currents. As an umbrella term for various electronic music styles played in nightclubs such as disco, house, techno, garage, drum and bass, and trance – all shaped by subcultural roots, experimental approaches, and independent distribution. Here our focus lies on the genres disco, house, and techno.

Unlike commercial dance music that aims for charts and mass audiences, the underground stands for artistic freedom, innovation, and a return to cultural origins. It not only creates new sounds but also spaces of belonging and acceptance for marginal communities – for queers, BIPOCs, and free spirits. But how exactly did this movement come about? Who took the decisive steps? And what role did technology play? In the following sections, we will trace the key stages of development – from the revolutionary power of the synthesizer and the influence of Jamaican dub music, through the cultural roots of disco, to the birth of house and techno.

The first sound: the synthesizer as gamechanger

To understand the roots of dance music, one must look at the technological developments that made electronic sound possible in the first place. One name stands out: Robert Moog. In the 1960s, the American electrical engineer developed the Moog synthesizer – a device that allowed musicians not only to produce sounds but also to shape and modulate them freely.

Moog himself once described it in a 1993 phone interview with music historian Irwin Chusid like this:

“Everything that makes sounds and can be changed with switches is a synthesizer. […] But if you can adjust this and that, put a patch cable[4] here, another there, and lead the sound into new areas in its quality, then you have a synthesizer.”

Although Moog was not the first to develop such sound generators, he laid the foundation for what electronic music is today with his synthesizer. It enabled individual sound design with a typical warm and analog tone that clearly stood out from other devices. The live adaptation of sounds opened new creative possibilities for musicians, making it theoretically possible for anyone to produce music. But technology alone does not make a revolution. It took creative minds and a cultural environment to use the technology and elevate music to the next level.

Cultural roots: from dub to disco

The first cultural innovation came from sunny Jamaica. At the end of the 1960s, artists like King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry experimented with multitrack recording, reverb, and echo effects. They laid the foundation for dub music, which had a lasting influence on reggae and the entire music production. By opening up the creative potential of the studio as an instrument, they changed not only the production methods of the music industry but also how music was seen as an art form and expression of personal creativity.

Dub became the soundtrack of a new generation in Jamaica’s nightclubs and later influenced genres like punk, hip-hop, house, and dubstep. It was a forerunner of what was to come: the fusion of technology, culture, and experimentation. To this day, dub stands for the possibility to make an individual “Do Your Thing” statement while mixing. Dub is not just about remixing in the classical sense. It is rather a creative process where original tracks are rebuilt, restructured, and fine-tuned by consciously using deep basses and effects like echo and reverb[5]. Here, space was created for musical freedom where producers and DJs could unfold their own vision of sound.