How electronic dance music conquered America: a writer explains

From its humble American beginnings as house music in Chicago, techno in Detroit and rave music in England, the genre now known as electronic dance music (EDM) has become a billion-dollar business. Superstar DJs earn tens of millions of dollars annually; corporations such as Live Nation have EDM departments run by first-generation ravers gone mainstream. In America, festivals such as the Electric Daisy Carnival, Hard and Coachella, all born in Southern California, draw hundreds of thousands to annual events. How did this cultural transformation occur? Writer Michaelangelo Matos explores this question in The Underground is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America . A comprehensive history of a movement, rave culture, that sprouted in Southern California after its rise in England, the book traces the 40-plus year history of EDM in America. Matos talks to

Southern California is expat central. That's where all the Londoners go, and a lot of them started up the scene. There were American DJs playing that music, but turning it into rave culture per se is a very different thing. That's what the Brits brought … to Northern California as well.

The scene got bigger as the internet grew. They go hand in hand. Both are moving ahead in the United States at the same time. That core group of people that are passionate about it are online. In 1992 when the Hyperreal list-servs [which provided news of upcoming raves] began, that's obviously a cradle of Southern California thing too, because Brian Behlendorf [who created them] is a Los Angeles native. That's his work. The internet is the internet because of him. The fact that it's a raver doing it isn't a coincidence at all.