The return of Dance Mania Records

Dance Mania was born just as house music was finding its legs internationally, but it’s best known for an uncommercial subgenre called ghetto house—raw, lean, and raunchy, it evolved in the late 80s and early 90s, and its natural home was in the club, not on the radio. The label racked up more than 200 releases during its 15-year run, and its best-known artists include beloved footwork producer Traxman (aka Cornelius Ferguson), ghetto-house pioneer DJ Funk (aka Charles Chambers), chart-topping DJ and producer Paul Johnson, and hardstyle techno master Robert Armani. It wasn’t a hit-making machine—Barney says its biggest releases sold between 5,000 and 10,000 copies—but its influence was huge. “When you said ‘Chicago’ in the mid-90s midwest rave scene, you meant that kind of house music that Dance Mania was releasing,” says critic Michaelangelo Matos, who wrote at length about Chicago house for the Reader last year and is working on a book on U.S. rave history called The Underground Is Massive. In 1995, when the Midwest Raves mailing list polled its subscribers, the best Chicago DJ winner was Paul Johnson.

Dance Mania’s reputation wasn’t confined to the States, either. In 1997, when French duo Daft Punk released their debut, Homework, it included the track “Teachers,” which riffs on the song “Ghetto Shout Out!!” from a 1995 Mitchell EP on Dance Mania called Project. In it Daft Punk name-drops several artists who released music through the label, including Mitchell. The band even sent Mitchell and “Ghetto Shout Out!!” collaborator Wax Master Homework plaques after the album went gold.Today electronic music has been resurgent on the pop charts for a few years, and interest in house—including the Dance Mania catalog—is surging too. Dance Mania is “huge in clubland right now,” says Matos. “That is the label to drop the name of, one of them.”

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