For my final assignment in history of pop music I decided to tackle electronic dance music (EDM) and explore its start and the prominent artists featured today. I started by looking at were EDM music began and how it evolved into the dominating genre it is today. Ironically, as it turns out, we already technically talked about the start of EDM in class. EDM had its humble beginnings after disco died in the early 80s. the electronic sounds and fast paced beat of disco led to the main framework of EDM. Having remixes of popular and classical songs being the forefront in EDM today, the same can be said about early electronic and progressive dance music. Beethoven’s 5th symphony by Walter Murphy is a prime example of early EDM. It features no original words, I say original words meaning that none were recorded or added but rather taken  off of a sampling. This definitely reflects one of the main ideologies of EDM music. A modern day example being Skrillex’s song Scary Monsters and Nice Spirtes. The song itself has no words beside a voice clip taken from a youtube video of a girl cup stacking, in which she exclaims “YES OH MY GOD!”. Those lines are the only spoken word throughout the song. This song is usually considered to be in the genre of Dubstep by die-hard EDM fans, but I believe they fall under the same umbrella within EDM. The culture of EDM drastically changed in the late 90s and early 2000s when festivals, such as Bonaroo and Burning Man, gained popularity and began signing more electronic and techno artists to the roster of musicians. In a lot of ways EDM can relate to rap, hold on I’ll explain, in rap, as we have discussed in class, sampling is taken from other songs and the rappers talk over it with a certain “flow” to add their own musical input. EDM works in a similar way, taking samplings from older songs or, as mentioned above, random video clips in order to make a song out of it. Also with rap, there are remixes of other artists songs that include new words or input from other artists, EDM musicians do a similar practice when remix other artists songs and even their own. The criticisms I have run into with EDM music is that people, (usually those of an older generation) do not define it as music. The blast beat repetitiveness of the songs are so simplistic, they argue, that it doesn;t hold the same virtuosity that other genres like rock n’ roll hold. I can understand their frustration, spending your whole life perfecting an instrument, then seeing a kid with an iPod dock for a concert would make me a bit peeved off too. But these EDM artists are similar to MCs in a way, they make a concert or a festival seem nonstop by playing one track into the next, as long as it has a similar tempo, very close to how disco was done in the 70s. So, in my thinking, if you don’t like disco, you won’t like EDM, but I am going to try my best to make it fun for everyone,  even if it isn’t your cup of tea.