It's been 40 years since the first ever house track, and its legacy lives ‘On and On’

2024 marks 40 years since the release of Jesse Saunders’ seminal track ‘On & On’. While there is some debate around it, ‘On & On’ is widely considered the first ever house track put to record. In a moment of fortuity or destiny, one man’s late-night experiment with a Roland TR-808 drum machine would help change the course of music forever, turning what was just a style of DJing into a fully fledged genre. The impact was immediate and immense; lighting the fuse to a house music explosion that produced some of the world’s most timeless records.

But that wasn’t the first time house music had been heard. The style, or “culture” as dance music legend Honey Dijon calls it, had been around in Chicago for some years before that, most notably pioneered at its namesake club, The Warehouse, but also at the Muzic Box, Power Plant, Rialto Tap, Club LaRay, and even at local skating rinks and school discos. This culture was about “the clothes you wore, the magazines you read, the language you used,” says Honey Dijon, herself a Chicago native that grew up in this context. And, of course, it was the music you were hearing, which ranged from funk to soul, new wave, R&B, punk, jazz, European synth, industrial and disco – a melting pot of genres played together in new and unexpected ways.

Disco would play a particularly large part in the birth of house music. Following 1979’s Disco Demolition Night, when racist and homophobic anti-disco campaigners started blowing up records at a Chicago baseball game (in reality, it wasn't just disco records at risk of destruction, but anything made by a Black artist), there was an almost immediate response from the mainstream media, with radio stations removing the genre from their airwaves and the GRAMMY Awards cancelling its Best Disco Recording category. As a result, disco retreated back to a more underground status, where there was more room for creativity and experimentation. As is often the case with music, it was here that disco flourished and, “rebirthed itself as house music,” as Honey Dijon says.

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Frankie Knuckles, the anointed godfather of house, is largely credited with pioneering this new approach to DJing. Having grown up in New York, watching DJs like Nicky Siano at The Gallery, David Mancuso at The Loft, and Larry Levan at The Continental Baths, Knuckles was invited to become the Musical Director of The (newly opened) Warehouse nightclub in 1977 by its owner Robert Williams. So, when he moved to Chicago, Knuckles brought with him a substantial record collection as well as the lessons he’d learnt watching Siano, Mancuso and Levan play. The 22-year-old hadn’t yet found the distinct style he would become so well-known for, but this would all change once he took over his new role.

Playing to a crowd that was predominantly Black, queer and Latinx people, Knuckles would have two copies of the same record and mess around with them, playing the breakdown twice or skipping parts out. He was also renowned for playing sound effects during his set, like the noise of a train approaching and then disappearing into the distance. This style of mixing spread rapidly around the city, influencing other DJs like Ron Hardy (who played heavier, faster sets at the Muzic Box), Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley, Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk, DJ Pierre, Marshall Jefferson and a young, school-aged Jesse Saunders.

By 1983, Saunders had become a popular DJ around town himself, hosting a residency at The Playground – another nightclub located in a former industrial building. Inspired by this new musical subculture, Saunders would play his own mix of underground dance records, with one song in particular becoming a hallmark of his sets.

That track was ‘On & On’. Released by Remix Records in 1980, it was the B-side to a 12” with two different disco medleys remixed by Mach, a mysterious artist no one seems to know much about to this day. While the A-side, called ‘Funky Mix’, featured everyone from Michael Jackson to Sergio Mendes, ‘On & On’ took its bassline from Player One’s ‘Space Invaders’, the “toot-toot, beep beep” from Donna Summer’s ‘Bad Girls’, the horns from Lipps Inc’s ‘Funkytown’, and an intro from Munich Machine’s ‘Get On The Funk Train’.

“I loved it so much that I immediately made it my ‘signature record’ and added it as the intro to all my sets,” says Saunders. “But unfortunately – or fortunately depending on how you look at it – some of my records, including the bootleg mashup ‘On & On’, were stolen from The Playground and I was devastated. So, I decided to make my own version.”

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Enlisting his friend and fellow DJ Vince Lawrence to help, the pair set to work using their new Roland TR-808 drum machine to imitate the disco loops in the song, keeping the original bassline intact and adding vocals in. Saunders says he wanted to recreate that “unadulterated, euphoric feeling that makes you lose control of your body and jack all night long.”

“I played it on cassette at The Playground, and it received an immediate, overwhelming response,” he continues. So, Saunders and Lawrence took the track to the only pressing plant in town, Musical Products, and asked them to press as many records as possible. “After about a week, I had 500 copies of ‘On & On’ and promptly delivered them to Importes Etc. [the most popular record store in town] who sold out of them in a couple of days.”

The record was an instant success, with Lawrence and Saunders helping to stamp, package and deliver it themselves to stores around town. And, sure enough, news caught on: this new sound that had been coming out of the clubs, played only by those with the proficiency and expertise to mix it, had been etched into the grooves of a vinyl record, ready to be played by anyone who bought it, anywhere with a turntable. “The atmosphere in Chicago was electric,” says Saunders. “Every DJ said: Jesse is a DJ, I can do the same thing."

One of these DJs was Marshall Jefferson, who reiterates Saunders’ sentiment: “It was a seismic shift because it had a DJ as the artist, which hadn't been done before. If ‘On & On’ was never released, house music never would have left the city of Chicago. No DJs from Chicago would have released a single record if it wasn't for ‘On & On’ – myself included.”

By 1985, Chip E. had released ‘Time To Jack’, while 1986 saw Adonis’ ‘No Way Back’, Larry Heard’s ‘Can You Feel It’ and Marshall Jefferson's ‘The House Music Anthem (Move Your Body)’, a record that would take the movement overseas, becoming an instant hit in the UK.

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“I just think it was really the perfect storm,” Chicago house icon DJ Lady D said to Mixmag at 2023’s edition of ARC Music Festival. “So many things happened at once. You had new wave and punk music and that DIY aesthetic; that was really appealing to Black kids. Then you had Roland machinery democratising the studio experience because suddenly you could do it on your own. You had radio coming on board at the same time; two million people hearing this new house music. And then young people who were motivated to have places where they could be together and experience each other. That drive, that energy, it was so youthful. The folly of it, to just be like, yeah, we can do this. Nobody telling you that you can't. And then just being enterprising enough to make it happen. All of that kind of happened at once.”

It should here be noted that all of the above records were released via Trax Records. a label co-founded by Larry Sherman, Lawrence and Saunders. It has since come to light that the late Sherman’s dodgy dealings at the record label left many of the Chicago producers feeling aggrieved and embittered. Sherman – a white man – had failed to pay the artists their proper royalties and often released records without them knowing, signing away the rights to tracks that would become international hits. His legacy, along with that of Trax Records, is tainted by the air of exploitation.

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Meanwhile, the legacy of Saunders and Lawrence is profound. Whether or not you agree it’s the first house track, the role of ‘On & On’ in pioneering a sound that would continue to dominate nightclubs, festivals and radio stations across the world some 40 years later, is indisputable.

But since those early days in downtown Chicago, where the seeds of the genre were first planted, house music has morphed, evolved and splintered into various different off-shoots, pushed forward by new generations, influenced by other genres and adapted by different cultures. “People need to understand that house is an umbrella,” said DJ Lady D. “There's a constant evolution and we absolutely admire all the things that have come after.”

To celebrate the past 40 years of development, we’ve compiled a list reflecting on 10 major subgenres to emerge out of house music. It's not exhaustive, and doesn't include entire genres such as Jersey club, garage, UK funky and amapiano, all of which have their roots in house music.

Keep reading to find out more about deep, soulful, acid, Italo, diva, Latin, Afro, tech, hip, ghetto and hard house.

Larry Heard is credited with being the artist that initiated what would become known as deep house music. By slowing down the tempo and fusing the genre with elements from jazz and funk, he pioneered a formula that would become embedded into the house canon. This is evident in his seminal tracks ‘Mystery of Love’ (1985) and ‘Can You Feel It’ (1986), which incorporated lush chords, complex melodies and a groovy bassline alongside the four-to-the-floor beat.

During the ’90s, the sound was pushed further, becoming even more atmospheric and drawing influence from African and Latin rhythms. The various innovations of its producers make deep house harder to define than other forms of the genre. It is less of a distinct set of features, more of a feeling, a mood; deep house is spiritual, spacey, blue, woozy, ethereal, hypnotic, laid-back and soulful.

In 1993, one of its greatest and most prolific creators, Ron Trent, teamed up with Chez Damier to found Prescription, a record label that played a huge part in shaping the deep house style, releasing tracks like ‘Morning Factory’, ‘The Meaning’ and ‘Don’t Try It’. Speaking on the label some years later (when he compiled a compilation album in its honour), Trent described its signature sound as “drum-orientated Chicago rhythm tracks with a minimalistic melody”.

Over the years, the term deep house has sometimes been misused, mistaken for anything with a slightly misty feeling and a warm bass, or simply anything less hectic than the more pop-aligned electronic music out there. But deep house is more than that. Deep house has a strong sense of musicality, stemming from its roots in jazz, funk and soul, and a complex layering of various different aspects, some from the electronic canon, others from the acoustic.

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While Damier and Trent have continued to carry the torch for deep house music right up until today, other artists have joined them along the way like DJ Heather, Theo Parrish, Osunalde, Karizma, Atjazz, DJ Minx, Trinidadian Deep, Glenn Underground, Moodymann and Kerri Chandler. And producers such as Ash Lauryn, Fred P, LADYMONIX and Space Ghost coming onto the scene a bit later.

Soulful house, as a distinct subgenre, is more explicitly influenced by – you guessed it – soul. Vocals are more prominent, giving a soulful house track more of a typical song structure (with verses and choruses) than a deep house track, which is more free-flowing. Like in soul, these healing vocals are gospel-inspired and silky smooth, their lyrics often centred around love, spirituality, unity, and freedom.

Marshall Jefferson’s collaboration with singer CeCe Rogers is an early example of soulful house. With its melodic piano riffs (which have since been sampled in other classics such as Liquid’s ‘Sweet Harmony’), conscious lyrics, and exceptional vocals, ‘Someday’ (1987) paved the way for one of house music’s most powerful subgenres.

During the '90s and early 2000s, soulful house experienced some commercial success with tracks like ‘Gypsy Woman’ by Crystal Waters, ‘Finally’ by Kings of Tomorrow and Julie McKnight, and Roy Davis Jr.’s ‘Gabriel’ featuring Peven Everett. It coincided with the rise of diva house, which is also deeply soulful, as you will see later.

While this mainstream success did not endure into the 2010s, a strong contingent of soulful house lovers continued to champion the scene across the globe through events like Southport Weekender and artists like Timmy Regisford, Phil Asher, Reel People, Sean McCabe, Vanessa Freeman, Omar, Lady Alma, Blaze, Kai Alcé, Lisa Shaw, Emmaculate, Monique Bingham, Masters At Work, Osunlade, Ralf Gum and many, many more.

In some ways, and perhaps in direct response to the mainstream desire for ‘soulless’ house music, the subgenre became even smoother during the 21st century, taking on greater influence from R&B and jazz. In more recent years, it has been rising to the fore again, with festivals like We Out Here giving soulful house a platform. Also, the rise in Afro house has had a positive effect on the subgenre by bringing the soul back to house music.

In 1987, in another moment of serendipity, the house music trio Phuture (DJ Pierre, Spanky and Herb J) spawned acid house. Unsure of how to programme their new Roland TB-303 bass synth, DJ Pierre and Spanky started playing around with the knobs, producing what, to their ears, was an entirely new and unheard sound, often described as a squelching noise.

Upon hearing this, the trio immediately thought of the Muzic Box, where Ron Hardy had a residency. Renowned for his fearless approach to DJing, Hardy’s sets were wild and experimental. The pace was faster and the sounds wackier. Ever the non-conformist, he would accept tapes over the booth without listening to them and even play tracks backwards, reel-to-reel. His crowd matched this energy, jacking their bodies with an overwhelming urge to move.

So, when Phuture discovered this unfamiliar sound, they knew there was only one spinner in town that would play it. "We were already attuned – Ron Hardy had trained our minds – so the bass didn't sound like noise, it sounded like something you could dance to,” DJ Pierre told Tim Lawrence for Soul Jazz in 2005. They took their new track, then called ‘In Your Mind’, to the Muzic Box and gave it to Hardy, who didn't play it just once, but four times over the course of one set. By the final time, folks were “dancing on their hands”.

This track eventually became known as ‘Acid Tracks’, released in 1987, christened by the dancers who used to request it. "There was a rumour that they put acid in the water at the Muzic Box," said DJ Pierre to Lawrence. "I don't know if it was true or not, but we now had a new name for our record."

“We made the first acid track, we coined the term acid. No one heard of the word, the term, the sound, before we made our tracks,” DJ Pierre told Mixmag in 2023. And other artists followed suit, using the same machine to craft songs built around a squelching bassline. Next came Armando’s ‘Land of Confusion’ and ‘Acid Over’ by Tyree (both 1987) then ‘This Is Acid’ by Maurice featuring Hot Hands Hula (1989) – all played by Hardy at the Muzic Box.

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This particular off-shoot of the genre would become immensely popular amongst young Brits in the late ’80s and early ’90s, played at clubs like Shoom, Spectrum, Sin and the Haçienda, but also at unlicensed raves in fields and abandoned warehouses. Acid house became the poster sound for the Second Summer of Love in 1988, the backing track to a youth revolution that would change the face of dance music culture for years to come.

“The Summer of Love not only changed how we danced and where, it altered our relationships, our interactions, and the way we saw the world,” Bill Brewster explains in Mixmag. “Peering through its foggy prism, suddenly we were no longer alone, but one giant collective of smiling, happy people.”

‘Voodoo Ray’by A Guy Called Gerald (released in 1988) was one of the first British acid house productions. It spent 18 weeks on the UK Singles Chart and became one of the Haçienda anthems – although the artist has since revealed that he did not receive any royalties from the track’s success.

The acid house movement posed a threat to British authority. Its grassroots nature, spirit of collectivism and promotion of anti-capitalist values did not sit well with Margaret Thatcher and her competitive, individualistic neoliberal politics. The media fanned the flames of a moral panic and swiftly the party was stamped down on, with a law criminalising events that played ‘repetitive beats’ coming in 1994 giving police carte blanche to break up the raves and arrest anyone involved.

The legacy of the movement endures and whenever the Roland TB-303 sound pops up in new productions, its distinctive distorted synth noise immediately recalls the hedonism and radicalism of its defining era.

Having been such a key part of its creation, is it any wonder that disco, in some form or other, would eventually merge back with house? In this case, it would be as its European cousin, Italo disco.

The emergence of Italo disco can also be traced back to the knock-on effects of the 1979 Disco Demolition Night. While mainstream demand for the genre waned in the US, there was still a huge market for disco across the Atlantic. But with fewer records being produced by the American pioneers (and the ones that were becoming increasingly expensive), disco-lovers in Europe had to find alternative ways to feed their dancefloor desires. Hence, Italo disco.

With less equipment, the Italian producers relied more heavily on machines than live instrumentation, giving their tracks a more electronic sound. Its collision with house in the late ’80s and early ’90s produced a subgenre that was synth-led, with electronic piano chords and a dreamy, euphoric quality.

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“The sounds that came from Chicago also came to our clubs, so many Italian producers and DJs, like me, began to make house music,” says Don Carlos, an eminent Italo house producer. “But it is very important to understand that, from that period on, the computer meant that anyone could make music at a low cost.”

“It was a fantastic time,” he says. “The clubs were filling up with people, lots of colour, people wanted to have fun and put all their problems behind them. Music was able to do what politics can’t do and that is to unite people.”

Dave Lee is a seminal British DJ and producer. Renowned for his compilation albums, he released ‘Italo House compiled by Joey Negro’ in 2014. Speaking on the subgenre, he says: “Though Italo house spanned many styles, the sound it’s mostly associated with is heavy use of the piano. It was the busy rhythmic piano drops, often coupled with a repeated vocal sample that often made it identifiable as Italian. Most Italo house was made using acapella samples from American (and occasionally English) records, as opposed to actually getting a singer into the studio. Without those acapella mixes on US 12”s from the early-to-mid-'80s I’m not sure there would have been Italo house in the same way.”

As the genre expanded and men slowly moved over to allow their female counterparts a small amount of room in the industry, a string of powerful female house singers rose to the fore. Much like soulful house, diva house is characterised by strong, heartfelt, gospel-infused vocals that sing of hope, love and acceptance, however it is more anthemic than the former, with pumping kick drums and uplifting melodies (often in the form of piano stabs) reminiscent of disco.

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It became hugely popular at gay clubs in the ’90s. With lyrics about freedom (Ultra Nate ‘Free’, 1997), love (‘Show Me Love’ Robin S, 1990),‘Beautiful People’ (Barbara Tucker, 1994) and having ‘Big Fun’ (Inner City,1989), diva house served as an expression of queer pride, celebration and joy.

But the ascendance of female house icons didn’t come without its difficulties and the genre is sometimes patronisingly described as ‘handbag house’ – a reference to women placing their handbags on the floor to dance around.

It wouldn’t be a discussion of house music without reference to some of its most prolific and subgenre crossing innovators. Masters at Work, by name, masters at work by nature, Louie Vega and Kenny Dope have produced a monumental amount of music since the duo first collaborated in 1990, taking the genre down new paths and consistently raising the bar for house music.

While the unstoppable duo could be spoken about in reference to a number of the genre’s mutations (namely soulful and diva house), arguably their greatest influence has been on the birth and development of Latin house, and they have been credited with heralding the golden age of Latin house in the early ’90s.

But to understand Latin house, we must first unpick its parent genre. Encompassing a range of musical styles, Latin music is an umbrella term for music coming from so-called Latin American countries. Thus, included in this broad category is everything from cumbia to salsa to merengue to bossa nova to samba to rumba to tango to reggaeton, and beyond.

“Latin music has its roots in Africa,” says Toribio, a Brooklyn-based DJ, producer and multi-instrumentalist with Dominican heritage. “During the transatlantic slave trade many African people were held captive and brought to the ‘new world’, and with them they brought their rhythms, dance, food, and spirit. In the Americas, new music genres were created that fused African, European, and Indigenous elements. A common mixture would be African rhythms with European harmony or song forms.”

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“There are so many different countries with different dialects and rhythms that sometimes the term Latin is too general and doesn't do justice to a whole world of information,” he adds. Although one feature that might string these various different styles together is their complex rhythm patterns produced by percussive instruments such as bongos, timbales, congas, claves, cowbells, shakers, maracas, and the Güiro.

With a huge Hispanic and Latinx community living in New York, the Latin sound has become a staple of the city, perhaps especially in the childhood homes of Vega and Dope, both of them being of Puerto Rican heritage, or boricuas. In Vega’s family alone, his father was a saxophonist and his uncle was the renowned salsa vocalist and bandleader Héctor Lavoe.

Thus it was only natural that when the pair would start making music, it would be influenced by the sounds they grew up with. The Nuyorican Soul project, launched in 1993, was the most obvious manifestation of these Latin influences, itself a combination of the words New York, Puerto Rican, and soul. Their first single released under the alias was ‘The Nervous Track’.

With its complicated, syncopated beats, use of congas and brass stabs, ‘The Nervous Track’ brought the rhythm, percussion and live swing of Latin music to house, a combination that would prove popular for years to come. The track, later included in Nuyorican Soul’s seminal self-titled album, has also been referred to as a precursor to West London’s broken beat scene.

Speaking on MAW’s influence, Toribio says: “I think they opened up a world of possibilities for how this music could sound and feel. Kenny Dope’s bombastic drum programming is a continuation of Latin drumming in an electronic aesthetic. A quick example is how the song ‘I can't get no sleep feat. India’ has the clave rhythm that is an integral part of Latin music disguised in the saxophone line. The clave isn't explicit, but it is felt; it is there and not in a contrived way.”

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“Rhythm in itself is like a language that carries different pieces of information,” he adds. “These patterns are like information bits that have been passed down, preserved, and expanded upon through generations from varied enclaves of the diaspora. In portions of Jesse Saunders’ ‘On & On’, there are kick patterns or rhythms that are the same kick patterns that can be found in Brazilian samba. Now I’m not saying that this song was influenced by samba, I'm just pointing out the fact that the same bits of rhythmic information can be found in both. Both genres are connected by their ancestry.”

Other major forces pushing the Latin house style over the years include Armand Van Helden, Antonio Ocasio, Louie Gorbea, Frankie Feliciano, DJ Fudge, Joe “Joaquin” Claussell, Atjazz, and, of course, Toribio AKA Conclave.

No origin story is clear-cut, but perhaps none more than Afro house. The story of Afro house is long and winding, with multiple different innovators working, often at the same time, across the globe. It is a story that is still going today, with the genre morphing further into new directions.

But first, what does Afro house sound like?

“Afro house, as a subgenre, presents a spiritual and polyrhythmic sound where ancestral grooves meet electronic music,” says South London producer Hagan, a staple of the UK's Afro house scene. “Primarily originating in South Africa, the genre transcends borders and can be further broken down based on various factors: location, African music traditions, tempo, instruments used, bassline patterns, and the intricate placement of drums and melodies. Some variants produce high-tension building drops, while others are very soulful. What keeps them all connected is the distinct polyrhythms created by the African percussion and timbres heard in the arrangements.”

As Hagan mentioned, Afro house’s roots can be traced back to South Africa in the late ’80s, early ’90s, when local DJs in Johannesburg and Pretoria were beginning to get a taste for the new house sounds coming from Chicago. While American anti-apartheid sanctions made it difficult for music-lovers to import records, they found ways of getting their hands on new tracks, asking friends at airlines to sneak them into their luggage or paying couriers to smuggle them in.

Vinny Da Vinci and DJ Christos were amongst those making a name for themselves in the (segregated) South African club scene. “I grew up listening to all types of music. Once I caught the house bug I never looked back.” Da Vinci told IOL (a South African news platform) in 2014.

In 1994, the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela, was elected to government, bringing with it an end to apartheid. With sanctions lifted, house music flowed into South Africa, becoming the soundtrack to an era of immense social and political change.

Around this time, DJs had begun to stamp their own style on the genre, slowing tracks down to around 110 BPM and adding their own lyrics. This new style coming out of the townships was called kwaito. While some argue kwaito was around before 1994, DJ Oskido, a pioneering figure of the sound, believes its creation to be a direct response to the end of apartheid. Speaking to The Guardian in 2011, he said: "That's when the idea of kwaito came through for me. And after we slowed down the beats we started thinking: Why can't we put our own lyrics on it? Why can't we write? We are free now!”

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By the late ’90s, house and kwaito were mainstream genres in South Africa, equivalent to pop music in the West. With much thanks to the radio station YFM, the sounds of electronic dance music could be heard blasting out of taxis, in supermarkets, and at barbers, as well as at clubs and parties, at all times of the day.

Meanwhile, in the US, DJs and producers had started introducing complex African polyrhythms into their house productions, played either live or electronically via bongos, congas, claves and djembes. Two New York-based imprints were particularly instrumental to this. One was Jerome Sydenham’s Ibadan Records (established 1995) and the other was Joe Clausell’s Spiritual Life Music (1996). Between them, they released tracks that would play a huge part in the birth of Afro-influenced house music including Jephté Guillaume’s ‘Lakou-A’, Afrikan Jazz’s ‘Stubborn Problems’, Clausell’s ‘Je Ka Jo’ as well as his remix of Ten City’s ‘All Loved Out’, Claussell and Kerri Chandler’s ‘Escravos De Jo’, and Chandler’s ‘Lagos Jump’.

With this cultural exchange of music continuing to take place, South African house producers began to combine the sounds of kwaito with deep house and more traditional African elements around the turn of the century. “Afro house has its foundation in house music,” says South African producer TekniQ. “A genre that has been exposed to us South Africans from as early as 1994 onwards. So, when it was time for us to conceive our own interpretation of it, we did it in a way we could understand and enjoy by mixing it with African influences. I think we found a haven or an escape in music as South Africans, and Afro house is a bi-product of the circumstance.”

South African producer Black Coffee might be the ideal personification of Afro house’s journey since the mid 2000s. Establishing his Soulistic label in 2005, with its debut release ‘Stimela’ placing him firmly in the Afro house canon, the artist rose from being a relatively unknown DJ to becoming the first ever resident at Hï Ibiza in 2017 and then the first African musician to win a GRAMMY Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album in 2022. Shout out Bucie too, who collaborated with Black Coffee on some of his biggest tracks, and produced her own Afro house bangers like ‘Easy to Love’.

“Black Coffee has played a significant role in the growth of Afro House,” explains TekniQ. “He is one of the biggest exports of Afro House music and has helped paved way for young aspiring artists and DJs in the African continent.” These include, but are not limited to, Uncle Waffles, Da Capo, DJ Kent, Thazkin, Culoe de Song, Shimza, Caiiro, and DESIREE.

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Afro house is now one of the most popular subgenres on this list, with scenes established all over the globe, particularly in cities where there is a large African diaspora such as Lisbon, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris. “As soon as it cemented its place on the global stage, Afro house catapulted to being one of the most sought after genres of today's dance music scene. It has launched the most diverse talent within its sphere, each artist telling their own story through this music,” says TekniQ.

“I love seeing the growth of the scene from where it started to where it is today,” says Kitty Amor, a DJ who has been championing the sound in the UK since her university days. “There were hardly any venues or external promoters that were interested in what we were doing from 2009 to 2020. Now the sound has become global, there has been an increase in interest from popular club venues who are booking international Afro house DJs alongside those already established in the UK – it’s wonderful to see the community spill outwards and have more of a culturally diverse audience.”

“But it is important for producers and DJs to appreciate and value the history of the sound and to keep its authenticity alive,” notes Amor. “Reflecting what we do in the UK back to the beauty of Africa is something I’ve always vowed to do over the last 15 years and something I will continue to do.”

Speaking on the sound’s evolution in the UK, Karen Nyame KG says: “The proliferation of Afro-electronic genres in general has opened up new avenues for British producers to explore and experiment more. Those of us, myself included, who were entrenched in the UK funky scene of the 2000s are offering a reinterpretation of familiar sounds through an Afro-electronic lens.” Other key Afro house producers and DJs in the UK include Sef Kombo, Zepherin Saint, Supa D, Scratcha DVA, Tribal Brothers,DJ IC and Charisse C.

Tech-house – it’s in the name; a subgenre that paired the toughness of Detroit’s techno with the swing of Chicago’s house. Initially less of a genre, more of a scene, tech-house was born when three DJs decided to put on a party that showcased their love for “bass-heavy, rough house music”, as tech-house pioneer Eddie Richards told Mixmag in 2014. The night was Wiggle, co-founded by Nathan Coles and DJ Terry Francis in 1994, with Richards enlisted as its first resident DJ.

“We first started doing it because of the lack of parties we wanted to go to around London at the time,” recalled Francis in the same 2014 feature. “We wanted to play the music we liked, which was the tough, acid, funky, Chicago and Detroit house music. The heads down, no nonsense stuff.”

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Much like the early days of house itself, there were no ‘tech-house’ records at the start; it was thought of more as an approach to DJing, a particular taste, than a genre. The scene was very underground, taking place in car parks, industrial warehouses and studios. “We had a great crowd of friends who came to have fun and dance their heads off in venues where you could do what the hell you liked; no bouncers, you were just there to dance! Then, if other people came, they got off on that atmosphere,” said Francis.

Coles and Francis founded the Wiggle label the same year the party started, providing a platform to release the kind of music they had been playing at their events. For Coles, the name ‘tech-house’ came from that. “We were all chatting about how it needed a name, this mid-ground between house and techno, and it spawned from that.” Soon after, other producers began making music that fit into this niche. “It became a genre after all this music was released," explained Coles, who sadly passed away last year.

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The scene itself remained fairly underground until 1997, when Francis won Muzik Magazine’s Best Newcomer award and was subsequently made a resident at the newly opened fabric nightclub, cementing the sound of tech-house – as it was now referred to – in the UK club scene.

But Wiggle wasn’t the only place this was happening. Back in its hometown, house was being merged with the Detroit-bred sounds of techno by someone else. Having started out producing under the alias Cajmere, releasing the iconic ‘Brighter Days’ in 1992, Curtis Jones launched a new project in 1995. Green Velvet, as it was called, would be focussed on tougher, more bass-driven sounds than the typical Chicago house he had been making, and his labels Cajual and Relief helped set the parameters for tech-house.

But, as the 2000s rolled in, the sound started to become cleaner, tighter and slicker, with less of the range and eclecticism it was characterised by in the ’90s. “I think music gets watered down as time goes on, every music does, it gets formulated and starts to sound similar,” explained Francis. “We played acid, vocals, breakbeat, any good music with a certain groove; we didn't try to follow any rules or fit in, it was just quality music.”

Influenced by minimal techno, the sound of tech-house took on a more restrained and detached feeling, with the soulful house vocals that were once there, suddenly stripped-back.

This formula would prove to be a blueprint for success among the superclubs of Ibiza, coinciding with the island’s own surge in tourism around the 2010s. Elrow launched at the start of the decade, an events company specialising in techno and house, as well as Jamie Jones and Lee Foss’s Hot Creations label, a staple of the scene.

The marketability of tech-house has given rise to many of dance music’s biggest names including Dennis Cruz, Sonny Fodera, Solardo, The Martinez Brothers. Claude VonStroke, PAWSA, FISHER and Maya Jane Coles.

During the '80s and '90s, another genre of music had been rising from the underground and into the mainstream. That genre was hip hop.

Although different in sound and scene, both genres came out of marginalised Black and Latinx communities, and thus were created under many of the same socio-economic conditions and shared roots as acts of resistance and creative liberation.

In the late 1980s, when both genres were in their prime, the two came together to create a powerful subgenre that took the feisty, energetic rhymes of hip hop and put them on the four-to-the-floor rhythm of house. Scratching and sampling were also key features of hip house.

For Fast Eddie, a pioneer of the genre, the sound represents “creativity, innovation, freedom and being unafraid to go your own way and being in your own lane”, because his idea to fuse the two genres together first came from a desire to do “something new that no one was doing at the time.”

“House music was just being duplicated by pretty much every producer that was releasing tracks and, for me, it started getting boring listening to the same old songs. I was looking for something different to energise the house music sound. So, by me loving hip hop and wanting to be different, I thought to myself, why not try to incorporate the genres together and see what it sounds like as one. They blended really well together and when I let a few of my friends and family hear what I had done they were all excited and blown away, so at that point, I knew I was on to something.”

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The title for the first ever hip house record is widely contested as scenes took off in London, Chicago and New York, respectively, around the same time. In Chicago, Fast Eddie released ‘Yo Yo Get Funky’ in 1988, while in New York, house producer Todd Terry collaborated with emerging hip hop duo the Jungle Brothers on ‘I’ll House You’ that same year. In London, electronic group the Beatmasters had the same idea when they produced ‘Rok da House’ featuring another hip hop duo, The Cookie Crew, in 1987.

From there, hip house caught on with artists like Tyree Cooper, Mr. Lee, Kool Rock Steady, JMD and Sundance spearheading the scene in Chicago; Doug Lazy in Washington; Queen Latifah, Mister Cee, KC Flightt and Twin Hype in New York; and Double Trouble, Blapps Posse and Shut Up and Dance in London. In the UK, hip house became a popular sound in the ’90s rave scene.

“Its heyday was in 1988 all the way up to the year 2000,” says Eddie. “Over the past years it has evolved from the underground scene into commercial success around the globe from major artists today replicating the genre hip house.” Some of these include Missy Elliott, Kaytranada, Channel Tres and Azealia Banks, who fuse the two genres in their own distinct ways.

Described as a rougher and more stripped-back style of house music, ghetto house, or booty bass, originated in Chicago’s South and West sides around the early ’90s, when DJs and producers (who had grown up listening to the sounds of Ron Hardy, Lil Louis and Chip E.) began to evolve their city’s trademark style.

“Ghetto house was influenced by the genres that came before it like house, hip hop, R&B and Miami bass music,” says DJ Assault. Growing up in Detroit’s techno scene, DJ Assault was more drawn to the house sounds coming out of Chicago and has since become associated with bringing ghetto house to the club circuit. “It also had some techno influences,” he says. “But what they call techno now is different from what techno originally was in Detroit.”

“I looked at ghetto house as the newer guys that were doing it in the ’90s. It was still similar to the older guys who was doing it in the ’80s, it was just way more ghetto and raw. That was really the only difference. But you could tell they came from the same city, with all of the Roland drum machine influence – I don’t think that stopped with the ghetto house. Initially, house was relatively slow, maybe not even 120 BPM. So it progressively got faster. Things change in time.”

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Played at parties in Chicago's housing projects, ghetto house was characterised by rhythmic, bass-heavy arrangements and X-rated lyrics. Just like the Chicago house that came before it, it was the creative outlet of a generation coping under poverty, unemployment, racism, police brutality and political disillusionment.

The prolific Chicago-based imprint Dance Mania was a major exponent of the subgenre, releasing seminal ghetto house tracks such as the late DJ Deeon’s ‘House-O-Matic’ and Jammin’ Gerald’s ‘Pump That Shit Up’ both released in 1994. Other pioneers include DJ Funk, DJ Slugo, Traxman, Parris Mitchell, DJ Milton, and more.

Ghetto house is intrinsically linked to a distinct underground culture that in turn gave birth to footwork and juke (even faster variations of the style) and the associated dance styles, pioneered by DJ Clent, RP Boo, DJ Rashad, DJ Spinn, C-Bit, Majik Myke and T-Rell. Dance battles were a big part of the scene, with footwork DJs such as Rashad and Spinn holding competitions for local youth.

In the mid to late ’90s, one of the genre’s most extreme derivatives came about: hard house – not for the faint-hearted. Influenced by Hi-NRG, the subgenre is fast, with a relentless, driving bassline. Features include off-beat stabs, compressed kick drums, quirky samples (such as sirens, drills and howls) and a synth sound, colloquially known as the ‘hoover’.

“It also has a wide range of tempos,” says Amadeus Mozart of the Tidy Boys, a DJ duo that spearheaded the genre’s growth in the North of England. “Many think it's just one, but a good hard house night can start at 130 BPM and go up to 150 BPM.”

Its origins can be traced back to London’s queer scene, specifically a LGBTQ+ club night called Trade, which used to be at Turnmills, an abandoned warehouse in Islington. With its doors opening at 3:AM and closing at 1:PM the next day, Trade was the capital’s first legal after-hours club. And after-hours it was. Notoriously hedonistic, Trade was where you went when all the other clubs had closed and you wanted something more hardcore, more unorthodox.

“Trade was an electrifying hub of energy and freedom. The atmosphere was intoxicating, with a diverse crowd dancing until dawn. I loved the sense of community and acceptance, where everyone could express themselves without judgement, all driven by the pounding beats of hard house,” recounts Lisa Lashes, a DJ and producer who used to attend the club.

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“It was full on debauchery in Turnmils, there was fucking in the hallways and fucking on the stairs. It was the music that got people to that stage of feeling so free, so charged up. You could feel the intensity; it was exciting and scary,” says Fergie, a DJ who regularly played at Trade.

“Hard house resonated deeply with the queer scene because it offered an escape and a space for self-expression,” says Lashes. “The genre's vibrant beats and euphoric melodies matched the spirit of nightlife, creating a sense of belonging and celebration among the LGBTQ+ community.”

The sound was pioneered by the late Tony De Vit, a charismatic man known for his daring style of DJing and lovable character. “You just knew when Tony was playing,” remembers Fergie, who was mentored by De Vit from the age of 15. “His aggressive mixing style would rattle your brain. He would not use the EQ so much to blend a mix, he would bring the fader volume straight up to full when he was bringing a new record on. He was an impact mixer, it was always an intense build.”

The Tidy Boys founded their record label, Tidy Trax, in 1995 and stamped the name ‘hard house’ on the genre. “Hard house is sort of the punk rock of house music, it’s never quite conformed to become mainstream,” says Mozart, one half of the duo alongside Andy Pickles. “It's been around for 30 years and yet never sold out commercially to radio and wide exposure; its success is because it's remained a dirty secret in clubland.”

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In recent years however, the genre has been experiencing something of a revival, as a new generation of ravers discover the thumping sounds of hard house. “The popularity has resurged for a number of reasons, one is the natural merry-go-round of music cycles, but also I think the time has come for people to let their hair down again,” Mozart explains. “The black-T-shirted-techno-one-level-blandness has pushed people into looking for some emotion and fun on the dancefloor and people are realising to dance and sweat is no longer a sin.”

Meena Sears is a freelance writer, follow her on Instagram