Gommance

France · 2010s

Dancing Happy Intense Dark

Your digging level

For this genre

0/8

🏆

Description

Gommance is a contemporary club style from Réunion that fuses local island grooves with Caribbean party music and Afro‑Dutch club energy. Producers stitch together syncopated percussion, bubbling‑style chopped vocals, and bass‑driven patterns at dance‑floor tempos, while singers and MCs switch between Réunion Creole and French.

The sound balances the hand‑played feel of maloya and séga with the slick synths, drum machines, and sound‑system aesthetics of zouk, dancehall, and Dutch “bubbling” house. The result is upbeat, percussive, and hook‑focused music designed for community dances, block parties, and nightclubs.

Sources: Spotify, Wikipedia, Discogs, Rate Your Music, MusicBrainz, and other online sources

History

How to make a track in this genre

Main artists

Top tracks

Locked

Share your favorite track to unlock other users’ top tracks

Influenced by

Maloya

Maloya is a drum-and-voice–driven music and dance tradition from Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean. It emerged among enslaved Malagasy and East African peoples on sugar plantations and later among indentured laborers, becoming a vehicle for memory, ritual, and resistance. Its sound centers on earthy percussion (notably the deep, barrel-like roulèr drum and the grain-filled kayamb shaker), call-and-response singing in Réunion Creole, and trance-inducing, cyclical rhythms. Melodies tend to be modal and harmonically sparse, with the groove and collective chant taking precedence over chord changes. Beyond the village and ritual context (such as the syncretic servis kabaré ceremonies), maloya became a modern emblem of Réunion identity and political expression. In 2009, UNESCO inscribed maloya on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Séga

Séga is a Creole dance‑music tradition from the southwest Indian Ocean, most closely associated with Mauritius (and also present in Réunion and Rodrigues). It is built on hand percussion, call‑and‑response singing, and a lilting, swaying groove that invites circular hip movements. Traditional ensembles center on the ravanne (a large frame drum), the maravanne/kayamb (a shaker made from dried sugarcane flower seed pods), and a metal triangle. Modern bands often add guitar, bass, keyboards, and drum kit while preserving the characteristic beat. Lyrics are typically in Mauritian Creole and speak with wit and warmth about everyday life, love, celebration, and social observation. Rhythmically, séga usually leans on a gently swung, buoyant pulse (often felt in 6/8 or a swaying 4 subdivided in three) with interlocking percussive patterns. Harmonies are simple and major‑key leaning, supporting singable melodies and refrains.

2 Tone

2 Tone (often styled Two Tone) is a late-1970s British fusion of first-wave Jamaican ska and rocksteady with the urgency of punk rock and the pop sensibility of new wave. It is fast, tightly arranged, and danceable, featuring off‑beat guitar "skank" upstrokes, melodic basslines, crisp backbeat drumming, stabbing horn riffs, and bright organ/keyboard textures. The genre is notable for its anti-racist stance and multiracial line-ups, with lyrics addressing social issues such as unemployment, urban decay, violence, and youth alienation in late-1970s/early-1980s Britain. Its visual identity—black-and-white checkerboard patterns, sharp suits, pork pie hats, and the iconic Walt Jabsco logo—symbolized racial unity and became a hallmark of the movement. Musically, 2 Tone keeps the rhythmic buoyancy of ska while tightening song structures and lifting tempos, often using minor keys and brisk grooves that balance exuberant energy with a tense, street‑level edge.

Dancehall

Dancehall is a Jamaican popular music style built around bass‑heavy, groove‑centric riddims and the vocal art of chatting or singjaying in Jamaican Patois. It emphasizes direct, energetic delivery, call‑and‑response hooks, and a party‑forward attitude, while also leaving space for sharp social commentary and witty wordplay. The genre is fundamentally riddim‑based: producers release instrumental tracks (riddims) that many different vocalists "voice" with their own songs. This culture encourages competitive creativity, rapid evolution of styles, and a constant stream of new versions. Tempos typically sit in the midtempo range, with syncopated kicks and snares and prominent sub‑bass. Since the mid‑1980s, digital drum machines and synths have defined much of dancehall’s sound, though live instrumentation and hybrid production are common too.

Bubbling House

Bubbling house is a Netherlands-born club style that fuses four‑on‑the‑floor house with the chopped, pitch-twisted dancehall edits of Rotterdam’s 1990s bubbling scene. It keeps a house tempo and kick pattern but redistributes dembow and dancehall syncopations across hats, snares, and percussion, often using sirens, horn stabs, and short percussive synth leads. Vocals are typically fragmented dancehall or Caribbean acapellas, cut into rhythmic riffs and callouts. Harmonically it is sparse and functional for the dancefloor, prioritizing groove, tension-and-release builds, and DJ-friendly structures. The overall effect is high-energy, minimal yet punchy, and distinctly Caribbean in feel despite a house framework.

Bubbling

Bubbling is a Dutch-Caribbean DJ style that emerged in Rotterdam in the late 1980s, built on speeding up, chopping, and rhythmically “stuttering” Jamaican dancehall and related Caribbean riddims. It is as much a performance technique as a production style, centering on turntable manipulation, spinbacks, and barrage-like cue cuts that create its characteristic effervescent feel. Rather than conventional song structures, bubbling prioritizes relentless energy for the dancefloor: pitch-shifted dancehall vocals, looped fragments of soca or reggae, heavy sub-bass, airhorns and sirens, and rapid-fire rewinds. In the 1990s it grew from underground neighborhood parties to a youth movement, later cross-pollinating with Dutch house and helping set the stage for global club fusions such as moombahton.

Soca

Soca is a high‑energy dance music from Trinidad and Tobago that emerged in the early 1970s as a modernized offshoot of calypso. It blends calypso’s witty lyricism and call‑and‑response with Afro‑Caribbean percussion, East Indian rhythmic accents, and contemporary funk/disco/pop production. Typical features include a four‑on‑the‑floor kick, strong backbeat claps, driving "engine room" percussion (iron/cowbell), syncopated bass lines, bright synths or brass stabs, up‑stroke rhythm guitar, and catchy chant‑like hooks designed for crowd participation. Tempos range from around 110–125 BPM for "groovy soca" to 150–165 BPM for "power soca," reflecting music made for Carnival fetes, road marches, and mass performance.

Kaseko

Kaseko is a vibrant, horn‑driven dance music from Suriname that blends Afro‑Surinamese rhythms with Caribbean and American influences. It is typically performed by a compact marching‑band‑like ensemble with trap set or marching drums, hand percussion, electric bass, guitar or keyboards, and a bright brass/saxophone section. Vocals are often in Sranan Tongo (and sometimes Dutch), using lively call‑and‑response refrains and catchy, street‑party hooks. Rhythms lock into propulsive, syncopated grooves that invite communal dancing, while the horns deliver punchy riffs, breaks, and counter‑melodies reminiscent of jazz and calypso bands. Kaseko’s name is commonly linked to the French “casser” (to break), reflecting the music’s quickstep pace and sharply accented “breaks.” It evolved out of Afro‑Surinamese festive traditions and urban brass band culture, becoming a cornerstone of Surinamese identity at parades, club stages, and diaspora celebrations in the Netherlands.

Kuduro

Kuduro is a high-energy dance music and street culture that originated in Angola in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Its name comes from Angolan Portuguese, roughly meaning “hard butt,” a playful reference to the explosive, physically demanding dance moves and the hard-hitting, percussive beats that drive the style. Musically, kuduro fuses local Angolan rhythms with electronic dance music, hip hop, ragga/dancehall, and Caribbean influences like soca and zouk. Tracks typically sit around 140–150 BPM, feature pounding, syncopated kick patterns, claps on off-beats, chopped vocal shouts, sirens, and whistle FX. Harmony is sparse or loop-based; the focus is on rhythm, call-and-response MCing (in Portuguese and local languages), and relentless forward motion tailored for dance battles and street parties.

Afrobeats

Afrobeats (plural) is a contemporary West African pop umbrella that blends indigenous Nigerian and Ghanaian rhythms with global Black music—especially dancehall, hip hop, R&B, and highlife. Typical tracks sit in the mid‑tempo 95–115 BPM range and feature syncopated, polyrhythmic drum programming (shakers, rimshots, congas, talking drum), rubbery sub‑bass lines, bright synths, and guitar licks that recall highlife. Vocals are melodic and hook‑driven, often delivered in a fluid mix of English, Nigerian Pidgin, Yoruba, Twi, or other local languages, with call‑and‑response refrains tailored for dance floors. Distinct from Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat (singular), Afrobeats prioritizes songcraft, club‑ready grooves, and pop structures. It travels easily across diasporas, seamlessly absorbing UK club influences and Caribbean cadence while maintaining unmistakably West African rhythmic DNA.

Has influenced

Maloya Élektrik

Maloya élektrik is the electrified, band-driven evolution of maloya from Réunion (France), where ancestral percussion and call-and-response vocals meet electric guitar, bass, drum kit, and keyboards. It keeps the genre’s hypnotic 6/8 swing, polyrhythms, and Creole storytelling, but channels the energy and timbres of rock, reggae, and dub to create a dance-floor-ready, amplified sound. Lyrically, it often carries maloya’s social conscience—identity, history, love, and everyday life—while arrangements add riff-based guitars, dubwise bass lines, and modern production for festivals and large venues.

Maloya Électronique

Maloya électronique is a contemporary fusion of Réunion Island’s ceremonial maloya with modern electronic production. It retains maloya’s characteristic 6/8 ternary pulse and hand‑played percussion patterns while translating them to synthesizers, samplers, and drum machines. Producers often sample kayamb, roulèr, and pikèr timbres, program polyrhythms that emphasize the swinging triplet feel, and layer creole vocals or call‑and‑response chants over sub‑bass, pads, and sequenced motifs. The result ranges from hypnotic, trance‑like grooves to club‑ready tracks that remain unmistakably rooted in maloya’s cadence.

Challenges

Digger Battle

Let's see who can find the best track in this genre