Favorite Dance Tracks

[Woochifer]

Figured I'd start a thread highlighting dance music, because I rarely see the dance genres featured on this board. As much as I like to sit at home with my system and listen to music, I also like to get out and interact with the music! Good dance music is something that you can identify with, and it carries a rhythm that you can't put down.

So, c'mon guys! Even if you're rhythmically challenged and can't stand much of what passes for dance music nowadays or in decades past, there's got to be SOMETHING that moves you! Give up your dance picks!

This list has some of my personal favorite dance tracks. All of these tracks have been played countless times, yet I never get tired of them. They also cover a fairly Considering how much dance music (or music in general) is disposable and forgettable, these are the ones that have stood up the best for my own personal enjoyment.

"That Old Black Magic" - Louis Prima & Keely Smith

This is incredibly fun music with the consumate showman Prima and the incomparable voice of Keely Smith. It's music that swings, and was made after the swing era. More of a small jump-blues ensemble than the traditional big band format. All the more fun because it switches between samba and swing rhythms.

"Yaye Boy" - Africando

Ironic that my favorite salsa tune comes from a band that features West Africans! I don't understand a damn thing that these guys are saying, but whatever it is, it moves so well! This is a great track that starts with a very memorable piano melody that's cool and full of machisimo at the same time.

"Vertigo/Relight My Fire" - Dan Hartman

I was never huge on most disco music, because so much of it was gawdawful and overplayed. The stuff that gets heard most often is often derisively referred to as "wedding disco." And if you've been to enough weddings, you'd know that ANY music with the "wedding-" prefix in front of it can't be good! Anyway, this particular track was released at the tail end of the disco heyday in 1980. Even though this song recycles just about every disco cliche -- the string flurries, the female background vocals, the watered-down funk guitars, and that familiar rhythm -- it also recombines everything so effectively that I view this as the epitome of what disco is capable of in the right hands. Yes, it's bombastic, derivative at times, and LONG, but damn is it ever great to dance to.

"Space Cowboy" (David Morales remix) - Jamiroquai

Acid jazz was an early-90s effort to meld hip hop with live musicians and a jazz-like improvising structure. Even though it produced some very uneven results, it also created one of the best ever platforms for dance remixing. This track is an incredibly reloaded dance tune, transforming a song that originally sounded almost like something from a mid-70s Stevie Wonder album into something very contemporary. IMO, this is about as timeless a dance track as there is from that time period. David Morales did a lot of other superative remixes, but this is his masterwork.

"Game Master" - Lost Tribe

IMO, this is the ultimate trance track and the best of what late-90s dance music had to offer. It's abstract (as most trance music is), yet it has an ebb and flow that's missing from a lot of electronica, which most listeners will regard as just repetitive noise on first listen (until a master DJ properly mixes it). To me, it's also incredibly intense. The first time I heard this at a club, it felt like an out of body experience and no drugs were involved!