Dance music is a back East phenomenon in America, unlike most other cultural domains

Let's take a break from looking at how the Western frontier has defined our distinctly American culture, as separate from the Old World nations we came from, and have a look at another exception from back East.

A recent post looked at the naturalistic trend in American narrative or dramatic culture, drawing inspiration from both Russia and Scandinavia -- together with America, the group of outsiders to the Western Euro club of Early Modern empires that defined high culture.

In a series of comments beginning here, I pointed to one exception -- pro wrestling -- that is very much a back East phenomenon. In that way, it's like ballet, opera, and musical theater, which have always been centered back East. But pro wrestling was not inherited from the Old World, unlike those other formats. And sure enough, pro wrestling has a choreographed, theatrical, not naturalistic style. It could never have emerged from Los Angeles, the center of American naturalistic narrative culture -- movies.

Now let's have a look at popular dance music, and the popular dance culture generally. Although every culture has popular, as opposed to artistic, dances, ours is distinctly American -- and yet, not defined by the Western frontier. It is distinct in its drawing on African sources, particularly the heavy use of syncopation and complex rhythms.

These sources were not directly from Africa, as though African groups toured America or Americans visited Africa. They came through African slaves in the New World -- whether living in America proper or the colonies that we later won, like Puerto Rico and Cuba, and the people from there who migrated to America proper.

So it doesn't sound exactly like the European folk or art dance music traditions from the Old World. But it is highly theatrical, choreographed, and not contributing to a grand narrative about who we are as a people -- other than that we, unlike Europeans, live with the descendants of African slaves and have access to some of their source culture. Therefore, it is best suited to the East, like pro wrestling.

That's not to say that there are no major dance bands or showcases out West, but they are mostly jumping on trends that originated back East.

* * *

Empire-defining culture has to wait until after the first of three long-term stages that empires go through, from expansion to consolidation to fragmentation. Between the first and second stage, there is a major civil war between two organized -- *not* anarchic -- factions for control over the *unified* future territory. Crucially, not a "civil war" where everything is breaking down and anarchic, where the winner does not incorporate the loser, and where the territory remains broken into pieces forever after.

Before this point between stages 1 and 2, the empire has not settled on a shared collective identity, and ethnogenesis is still somewhat up in the air. After one side of that civil war wins, and incorporates the losing side, plus anything to come in the future, only then is there a sense of a single united culture spanning the entire empire.

The first stage is the reaction to external pressures, namely along the meta-ethnic frontier with a highly different Other. But there is still an indefinite, up-in-the-air question of "which we are we" or "who among us counts most as we"? Just because a bunch of people on one side of the meta-ethnic frontier share an interest against those on the other side, doesn't mean there still isn't diversity and conflicts of interest within the one side. That culminates in a civil war, where the pressures are internal. The winning side of that war determines what the unified and consolidated "we" will be like into the future.

To take the familiar example of the Roman Empire, the first stage corresponds to the Republic (although it was very much an empire, expanding territorially through conquest), the second to the Augustan through the Severan eras, and the third to the Crisis of the Third Century and after. The three canonical Roman poets -- Virgil, Horace, and Ovid -- are from the Augustan era, and the Silver Age that follows them lasts into the 2nd C. AD, before Roman literature bit the dust during the 3rd C., along with imperial disintegration.

And really, it had already died during the pre-fragmentation crisis represented by the Severan era (coming out of the Year of the Five Emperors). The last major Roman work was the Golden Ass by Apuleius, probably during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (author of the Meditations), circa the 160s or '70s. I highlight this because we are currently in the Year of the Five Emperors, and it's plain to see that American cultural production has more or less stopped. It was clearly over for the Roman empire and its culture by the 190s -- they just hadn't descended into all-out endless anarchy just yet. And it is clearly over for America as of 2020, even if we aren't splitting up formally just yet.

The main point is that the Golden and Silver Ages were not produced by the Republic stage, because the empire had not yet defined itself through internal conflict -- only external, based on the meta-ethnic frontier against the Celtic and later Carthaginian invaders. Only after the Crisis of the Roman Republic was there an internally defined "us vs. them", and the winning side would set the tone for "us" going forward. And so, without wasting any time, the Roman national / imperial founding myth of the Aeneid was written after the civil war had yielded a winner, who was to be glorified and legitimized through a new sacred narrative.

* * *

Distinctly American music, high or low, begins in the 1890s, as with American architecture, and slightly later than that for American drama (stage or movies). This followed the Civil War and Reconstruction eras -- that turning point between stages 1 and 2 of the imperial lifespan. Before then, we had been expanding primarily against the Indian frontier. The nature of future westward expansion was still up in the air, whether its economy would be based on slave agriculture or not, and this finally brought the internal conflict among "us non-Indians" to a head in the 1860s and '70s. The anti-slave agriculture side won, and it defined American identity through the consolidation stage of imperial life.

American dance music and the dances themselves, defined by heavy syncopation, were born with ragtime music in the 1890s. It did begin in Missouri, in the Midwest, but it migrated eastward rather than westward, and became established in the East Coast. New Orleans, also right near the Mississippi River border, gave birth to jazz, which also moved eastward rather than westward. Jazz came to define uniquely American music, especially in its dance-oriented function. It remains an East Coast genre to this day.

From the early Jazz Age forms and the Charleston dance of the 1920s, it evolved into Big Band music and swing dances during the '30s and '40s, lasting into the '50s, including the early stages of rock 'n' roll when rock music didn't have its own style of dance (it never would, evolving in a different direction from jazz, and migrating westward in typical American fashion).

The big dance crazes of the '60s were from back East, too, epitomized by the twist, introduced by Philly musician Chubby Checker.

Dick Clark's American Bandstand TV show, which showed young people dancing to contemporary hit songs and broadcast to a national audience, was filmed in Philly as well. It aired from the late '50s through the late '80s, setting the standard that all Americans looked up to for "what today's dances look like". Later dance shows like Dancin' on Air / Dance Party USA (for the USA Network) were filmed there, too. All-American audiences tuned into Club MTV and then The Grind between '87 and '97, both filmed in New York City. The only similar shows filmed out West were Soul Train, but that was aimed at a black audience, not Americans as a whole, and Solid Gold, which was the also-ran of the genre (both were filmed in L.A.).

After the dance crazes of the '60s, the East Coast continued to define dance music with disco in the '70s, post-disco or electrofunk in the early '80s, and freestyle / hi-NRG in the late '80s, all of which were made from New York to Miami. We still know the names of certain crucial clubs like Studio 54, Danceteria, and the Palladium (all in New York). And far from being a narrow niche for blacks and Puerto Ricans, it was mainstreamed to all of America by the likes of Madonna (from "Holiday" through "Into the Groove") and Debbie Gibson ("Shake Your Love"), both based in New York.

House music and '90s techno in general was still centered in New York (like C+C Music Factory, Robin S., etc.). As the house / techno style of the '90s and early 2000s gave way to electropop in the late 2000s and 2010s, the center remained in New York, primarily Lady Gaga, but also Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, and Bebe Rexha (fellow Albanian-origin dance diva Ava Max was raised in Virginia, and worked with Canadian mega-producer Cirkut, who's from Nova Scotia and Ontario, not British Columbia). By the late 2000s and 2010s, though, much more of our dance music was imported from Europe.

* * *

A final note on some ethnic angles.

The '80s saw the emergence of "Latin" dance, starting with Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, the Miami-based DJ remix of "Macarena" (originally flamenco-meets-pop from Spain), then Pitbull as well as reggaeton during the 2000s and 2010s. Puerto Ricans from New York took part as well, such as Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Marc Anthony in the '90s and after. I put "Latin" in quotes because it has to be Caribbean, linked to the influence of African sources, rather than Mexican or other Central American, let alone South American, Latin styles. Maybe something like samba from Brazil, as part of the Brazil craze of the 2000s. But not the seemingly obvious choice of Mexican music, given its importance to influencing Western American culture.

The danceable strains of rap have always been centered back East as well, from the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, Young MC, Salt-N-Pepa, and many others from the New York metro area in the late '70s and '80s, where breakdancing originated. Then it was Will Smith from Philly during the '80s and '90s, Vanilla Ice from southern Florida in the '90s, and the entire genre of crunk music and twerk dancing from Atlanta and the Southeast during the 2000s and 2010s.

There wasn't quite as much danceable rap in the '90s because that was the heyday of West Coast rap, which was more in the vein of American naturalism -- narrative, depicting daily life, more sober and restrained than the more theatrical and choreo-friendly East Coast rap styles. Naturalism crossed from music and into drama with Ice Cube appearing as a main character in the movie Boyz n the Hood. The only big dance-driven rapper from the West Coast was MC Hammer (from Oakland, CA). Even one-hit wonders from back East still scored major dance hits, like Atlanta's Tag Team -- "Whoomp! (There It Is)" -- and Jacksonville FL's Quad City DJs -- "C'Mon N' Ride It (The Train)".

This is crucial to show that it isn't about African DNA, but historically contingent facts like the eastern founding vs. westward expansion of the American empire. If it were about genes, we would've gotten one danceclub banger after another by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 2Pac, Nate Dogg, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Kendrick Lamar, etc., rather than naturalistic narratives about daily life. Really the only party anthem rump shaker from that entire scene was "California Love". Likewise, LMFAO was an L.A. exception during the 2010s.

Then there's the mostly white dance genre of industrial music, which is centered in the Great Lakes region, mainly among Ellis Islanders rather than founding stock Americans. The two biggest acts here are Chicago's Ministry, and Cleveland's Nine Inch Nails, both of whose early work is very danceclub oriented. This is east of the Mississippi, despite being the Midwest (and Old Northwest). But it is still a bit too far west to be central to dance music and club culture, like New York and Miami are.