House music Facts for Kids

Kym Mazelle (born 1960) has been called the "The First Lady of House Music."

House music is a type of electronic dance music. It began during the early 1980s from disco and the black American soul music tradition. It takes its name from the Warehouse, a Chicago club where DJs first played their records to a large audience. The original "House" sound is characterized by "four on the floor" beats at 120-130 BPM, forward-driven bass lines, an emphasis on the second and fourth beats of each measure, handclaps, and cymbals. Over the years, house has created many types of house music. These include:

Acid house (with its "trippy" melodic lines, usually generated on a Roland 303 synthesizer)
Ambient house (with an ambient, atmospheric sound)
Deep house (with a greater emphasis on "soul" and atmospheric background sounds)
Electro house (with a fuzzy, electronic and dirty bassline and heavy usage of synthesizers, similar to electropop)
Euro house (with a sound similar to Eurodance)
- Balearic house (originating in the Balearic islands of Spain)
- French house (originating in France)
- Italo house (originating in Italy)
Speed garage (featuring choppy basslines, reggae-style vocals and often "broken" beats)
Progressive house (usually faster than traditional house, with many volume and phase changes and a "progression" of different background sounds)
Disco house (even greater emphasis on the bassline, and the return of many disco-like additions such as violin sections)
Hip house (House music with rapped lyrics)
Tech house (techno sounds featured over a house-derived beat, with melodic progression often less emphasized)
Latin house (incorporating elements of traditional Latin American music)
Tribal house (greater emphasis on drumlines; melodies may be present, but with less traditional "progression")
Witch house (with a dark, paranormal and witchcraft-themed sound)

Images for kids

House music pioneers Alan King, Robert Williams and Derrick Carter.
Frankie Knuckles (pictured in 2012) played an important role in developing house music in Chicago during the 1980s.
An honorary street name sign in Chicago for house music and the seminal DJ Frankie Knuckles.
A badge bearing a smiley, a symbol of the 1980s acid house scene in the UK
Building in New York City where the Paradise Garage nightclub was located
Swedish House Mafia and Italian DJ Benny Benassi performing in 2011.
Drake, who dropped house album Honestly Nevermind in 2022