Dance-Punk

An overview of dance-punk that explores the music’s foundations, tropes, and related subgenres.

Dance-punk, an offshoot of disco and punk that emerged in the late 1970s, is difficult to define. Sometimes referred to as disco-punk or funk-punk, the music blurs into other genres like post-punk, post-disco, new wave, mutant disco, and synthpop. In this book, Larissa Wodtke illuminates dance-punk music and underscores the importance of defining and delineating the genre.

Dance-Punk explores the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural dimensions of the genre from its origins in the late 1970s and early 1980s and through its resurgence in the early 2000s. Looking at the work of bands like LCD Soundsystem, Talking Heads, Le Tigre, Gang of Four, ESG, Public Image Ltd, The Rapture, and many more, Wodtke traces the evolution of the music and investigates when and how dance-punk broke off from other subgenres. Further, Wodtke explores the notion of coolness and its currency in popular music. Finally, Dance-Punk examines the inherent tensions in the genre’s melding of the rhetoric and emotion in dance music with the cynical and ironic intellectualizing associated with post-punk.

Genre: A 33 1/3 Series publishes short books about musical subgenres that have intrigued, perplexed, or provoked listeners.

Larissa Wodtke works in the Office of Research and Innovation at The University of Winnipeg, Canada, where she is also a member of the Centre for Research in Cultural Studies. She is the author of Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible.