What genre is hardstyle in?

I've been wondering for awhile. What kind of genre hardstyle is in under Electronic Dance Music? It has roots from Hard Techno (aka Schranz), Hard Trance, and Gabber. I can easily rule out house, drum & bass, and hardcore. Early hardstyle tracks seem to be very similar to Hard Trance. Nustyle tracks are usually trancey. Does this mean that hardstyle is a genre of trance?

By the way, I can't seem to find accurate sources about genres of Electronic Dance Music. I don't trust wikipedia that much with genres of Electronic Dance Music.

There are very much theories about Hardstyle's roots. A few people says, that The Prophet was the first who made Hardstyle. If this is true, than it originates from hardcore. On a hardstyle forum someone said that this track was the first hardstyle track.[url] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL5xh-wt3Vc&feature=player_embedded[/url]. It's from 1990 (OMG it's older than me (and older than hardcore lol )), so i think it was just an experiment.




Anyway, the hardstyle is a genre of Hard Dance, which contains the Hardcore, and a lot of other subgenres.



I think it's a mixture of the hardcore (because of heavy kicks) and hard trance.(because of the epic melodies).
If you want more info, i suggest you to look at hardstyle/hardcore communities, the old people there, knows a lot about these historical things Oh, and don't say, that you're a shuffler. They hate us

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/
Check out this guide for starters. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it's a good place to start.

But in all honesty I think once you start breaking down EDM as a whole it gets pretty arbitrary with the sub-genres being made for political reasons rather than being truly different from its parent. For me it's always been the 'big' genres like House, DnB, Techno, Trance where there is a big obvious difference. Not to mention we've been experiencing a sort of blending of genres anyway.

But yea I'd agree with Adam, Hardstyle probably fits best under Hard Dance.

Thanks guys!

yeah the definitions on wikipedia and even forums are biased heaps. Often it's the record companies that put things into specific genres to make marketing easier. But music development rarely sticks to commercial marketing rules.

So for instance this set by 4MR Dj Proteus, would drive western music marketing people nuts, it's hardcore with noise and scratching, with heavy metal headbanging beats, and opera and it's dance music - commercial dance music marketing think of madonna, LMFAO, hiphop/urban daft punk etc as 'dance' music. This style just scares the stuffing out of them hehe

This is the venue for the Russian Melbourne Shuffle Championships 2010. This is a former USSR military aircraft hanger 77, and the air field is the dance floor ! This is Hardline 77 H77, as those banners show, which are based on the Norweigian flag colors and Russian early 1900's grafic design, both which the nazi's stole for their propaganda and occupation of Norway. The championships were held in the hanger, on the original wooden floor.



Here's the 2009 Russian Melbourne Shuffle Championships held inside the H77 hanger. A really nice hardstyle mix for those not familiar with it.

[youtube]