House music's roots lie in the spontaneous combustion that was a handful of Chicago clubs in the early 1980s. In the days when clubs only needed one DJ, that DJ was in a position to make waves. And in a city where the clubs were usually soundtracked by jukeboxes, those waves could become a storm.

In 1979, disco was pronounced dead by the media and it moved underground. Electronic music instruments and studio equipment had made their introduction and what I refer to as proto-house was born.

The defining phase of house has its roots firmly in Chicago where DJ Frankie Knuckles had introduced New York styled clubbing and musical selection at the Warehouse.

Cheap and small musical electronic equipment flooded the market. Instruments which made those old Trax records records we love. A footnote in house's history perhaps, but it is DJ Ron Hardy and his residency at hte Music Box which are often associated with the rawer, sleazier sounds which would become house music.

The eighties: While Electronic sounds had been in the European music scene since the mid to late seventies, the cheaper and more widely available Japanese electronic gear set off a musical revolution in Detroit, Chicago and New York. The music that this revolution set off was called techno, house or garage, depending in which of the previously mentioned cities you partied in.

In the nineties, house is still the preferred name for a global style of music, like disco had been in the past, a catch-all phrase for a very eclectic style of music, centered around having a good time and most of all, having a great party.

But it wasn't just American music laying the groundwork for house. European music, spanning English electronic pop like Gary Numan and Soft Cell, sparse German proto-techno by Kraftwerk, the more disco based sounds of Giorgio Moroder and Klein & MBO and Belgium's Telex were immensely popular in urban areas like New York and Chicago.

Roy Davis Jr MP3s Masters At Work -- good set of links to contemporary house music.

Categories in this cat are:

--People (Bands_and_Artists)

--Shopping (end-user selling of recordings, tickets, online music)

--Radio (for house sites geared for audio or listening)

--Magazines or E-zines

--Festivals and Events

--Record Labels

--Clubs (both real-life venues and virtual communities)

--History

--Business (recording studios, business to business
services)
--Personal Homepages

--Instruments (instruments which define the house genre)