Balearic beat, also known as Balearic house, Balearic, Ibiza house or Ibizan chillout, is an eclectic blend of DJ-led dance music that emerged in the mid-1980s.[1][2] It later became the name of a more specific style[3] of electronic dance/house music that was popular into the mid-1990s. Balearic beat was named for its popularity among European nightclub and beach rave patrons on the Balearic island of Ibiza, a popular tourist destination. Some dance music compilations referred to it as "the sound of Ibiza", even though many other, more aggressive and upbeat forms of dance music could be heard on the island, such as Balearic trance.
^Gilbert, Jeremy; Pearson, Ewan. Discographies: Dance Music, Culture, and the Politics of Sound. Routledge. 1999. ISBN0-415-17032-X. "The musics which fed into acid house and the developing culture were various too; the heterogeneous sounds of the 'Balearic beat' which helped define it did not constitute a discrete musical genre, but an unholy mix of, among other things, hip hop, house, Mediterranean pop and indie rock. DJs' playlists temporarily situated highly disparate musics beside one another. Musical miscegenation reunited several of the dance forms that had emerged after disco, mixing American and European dance musics. Though house music was the dominant mode, the rapid proliferation of styles and subgenres which followed in its wake, for a short time at least, kept dancefloors moving to a range of grooves."