Dance music is music composed, played, or both, specifically for social dancing, and in principle, dance music includes a huge variety of music, from rock and roll to country music. As of the late 1970s, however, and particularly for people who frequent nightclubs, the term "dance music" has come to more specifically refer to electronic music offshoots of rock and roll such as disco, house, techno and trance.
See also: hip hop, breakdancing, funk, drum and bass, reggae, and electronic music.
Dance music in the traditional sense, are musical forms supposed to serve as an accompaniment for a dance (at least formally). It can be either the whole musical piece or a part of a larger musical arrangement. Many cultures have their own form of traditional dance music such as Irish traditional music.
Dance musical works usually bear the name of the corresponding dance, for example, waltz, tango, bolero, can-can, minuet, salsa, various kind of jig and the breakdown. Other dance forms include contradance, the merengue, the Cha-Cha, Since dance almost always inseparable from music, in most cases it is difficult to decide whether the name of a particular kind of music was transferred onto the dance or vice versa.
See also: Dance as form of musical composition.
