What is Chicago House?

Here's another sub genre of House where the sounds of Bay Area house originated from.

Chicago house is a style of house music, a genre of electronic dance music, which emerged in Chicago in the mid-1980s. Stylistically, Chicago house has no widely accepted definition, but generally includes the first house music productions by Chicago-based artists throughout the 1980s, and any later house music, regardless of geographic origin, which more closely emulates the early Chicago artists' styles more than any others. Chicago house tracks may also be in theacid house, hip house, deep house, garage house or jackin house genres. 

Many of the songs that defined the Chicago house music sound were released primarily on vinyl by the labels DJ International Records and Trax Records, both of which had distribution outside of Chicago, leading to house's popularity in other cities, including New York and London.  

Popular acts of this genre include artists like:

- Derrick Carter

- DJ Sneak

- Gene Farris

- Frankie Knuckles

- Larry Heard

- Marshall Jefferson

- Mark Farina

- Chip E

- Jesse Saunders

- Farley Keith

- Ron Hardy

- Paul Johnson

Another element of Chicago house is Jacking or Jackin', the term by which the form is more commonly known, is a dance technique and music form that first became popular in the late 1980’s as one of the myriad music forms which arose from the last days of disco. Though there continues to be some dispute as to a single absolute stylistic origin, "Jacking" music and dance most likely came from the multicultural roots in the early underground Chicago house and London music scenes. Both concepts of Jacking have their origins in various African and types of Latino and Hispanic dance culture, with a fair amount of influence from early European and American disco culture.   

More recently, some well known House influenced artists like Stacy Kidd and Jamiroquai have made the use of Jack beats, often incorporating them into house tracks. Jacking tracks like hip-house artist Peven Everett's dance-friendly hit "Stuck" are soulful, housed-up lyrics and rhythms over a relatively straightforward Jack beat.

Much growth of the current underground American Jack beat scene has occurred in the Acid and Soulful house veins, where jack rhythms are often fused with the deeper, polyrhythmic melodies from Afro-Cuban Jazz and World Beat genres. Many of these jacking-influenced tracks and jack hybrid rhythms are often listed under Soulful House, Deep House, or in cases where disco or even neo-soul melodies are used, Rare Grooves.  

Here are a few sound examples from original Chicago house and Jackin House:

-       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCOdGR5jnfw  (Oldskool Chicago house – Frankie Knuckles)

-       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4cW5mfBRE8 (Jackin house – DJ Sneak)

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