Every musical generation has its own defining musical style and attendant agenda. In the 1970s, punk disobedience was sound-tracked by second-hand New York Dolls pastiches and New Wave posturing, while the 1980s alternated between the uninspired worthiness of agit rock's jangling guitars and the fey narcissism of New Romantic synth pop.

The explosion of acid house and the subsequent multi-tentacled pleasure zone of contemporary dance music has made a break with these embarrassing memories, setting an uncomplicated, egalitarian agenda which has succeeded in bringing more people together than Billy Bragg could ever dream of.

Unfortunately, the authorities and legislature in Ireland and Britain don't subscribe to dance music's philosophy. In the past they have broken up parties, intimidated promoters and put well-known DJs under scrutiny; and in 1994, the Irish and British governments dealt dance music a killer blow when they passed the Criminal Justice Act and Public Order Act respectively, effectively outlawing many aspects of club culture.

There are strong similarities between the cultural persecution of contemporary dance music and the social marginalisation of the pre-second World War jazz scene. Often relegated to the sidelines and margins of society, the prohibition period in 1930s America saw jazz singers and performers playing in the illicit "speakeasy" bars of the period, concealed from mainstream white society. In Germany, Adolf Hitler and the architects of the Third Reich set about banning the "evil, decadent black music" they felt would endanger the realisation of their racially and culturally pure Aryan Empire.

There are also striking likenesses between the lifestyles of the main dance music players and some of jazz music's gurus. In the same way that many of jazz music's greatest visionaries were plagued with addictive personas - Parker, Davis and Coltrane were notorious for their over-indulgence - some of the best-known international DJs have suffered from their hedonistic ways, with Carl Cox and Danny Rampling recently receiving hospital treatment.

Happily, the comparisons don't end with tales of wanton excess. In the futuristic world of computer-manipulated rhythms and technology-created grooves, it's hard to imagine that older musical forms play an essential role in setting trends. However, despite the use of highly sophisticated studio tools, dance music paradoxically returns to older musical sources for inspiration, fulfilling Detroit techno innovator Derrick May's advice to "look to the past to reinvent the future".

So while 1970s disco has recently given modern house music a groove, and unwittingly kick-started the careers of Daft Punk, Cassius and a seemingly infinite entourage of French producers, jazz has played a subtler yet more integral role in the development of dance music.

Imbuing floor grooves with depth, melody and soul, the jazz sound has been assimilated and filtered through the intricate workings of the contemporary dance music producer's studio, and is apparent in the most innovative, timeless and, ultimately, endearing dance music. Jazz has also injected a warmth that outsiders often feel is lacking among the seemingly oppressive sound structures of modern club music, with the legacy of Sun Ra, Miles Davis and John Coltrane giving many a dance music doubting Thomas the necessary road to Damascus enlightenment.

Hi Tech Jazz is a perfect example. Authored by the renowned Detroit conspiracy techno terrorists, Underground Resistance - better known for their abrasive electronic funk - the record is punctuated by a joyously wailing melodic saxophone riff married to deep atmospherics and a fluid groove. Dismissed in certain corners when it was released in 1991, Hi Tech Jazz is now cited as pivotal in the development of deep, soulful dance music. British techno producer Dave Angel told Muzik magazine "when I first heard it, it reminded me of the jazz I had listened to as a kid mixed into the future. It was the first time I'd heard anything like it and immediately thought `I'm into this music!' "

With clubbers and producers becoming bored with the tried and tested hardcore rave formula of the early 1990s, jazz-based melodies and rhythms pointed to a golden mean. Sampling brass on vinyl didn't necessitate a shredding of dance floor suss or an artistic cop-out. Dance music creatives who had been hampered and frustrated by the style's allegiance to beat and tempo formats found they could add alluring elements through the adaptation of jazz arrangements. Throughout the broad spectrum of dance, from techno to hip-hop, and house to drum'n'bass, a subconscious reassessment of production values took place.

In the US, techno's guiding lights ceased to forge minimal tracks to embrace deeper textures; house made an organic-sounding comeback from its self-imposed creative purgatory, and hip-hop gave the gangster element the elbow, replaced by the jazz-soaked positivism of De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Gang Starr.

Meanwhile, equally important musical shifts were happening in Britain. Like its techno and house predecessors, the metamorphous from hardcore into drum'n'bass heralded a brand-new style. Essentially urban, black and British, drum'n'bass was England's first indigenous musical sound since punk rock in the 1970s, and it bore all the hallmarks of disaffected protest music.

In keeping with the ongoing escapist theme common to all black music from jazz to Detroit techno, the prime movers behind drum'n'bass used their music as a means to express their frustration with, and temporarily suspend, their precarious inner-city existence. It's also true that, like house and techno, drum'n'bass draws heavily on jazz to fuel its innovations, especially when harder, darker sub-genres threatened to lead the music into a cul-de-sac of soul-less aggression.

This trend is confirmed by the London-based part-Italian producer Peshay, about to release his Miles From Home album. An accessible drum'n'bass work with mighty jazz-funk overtones, Peshay admits that much of the inspiration for the LP came from his love of jazz. "The album tells where I'm coming from, what I like listening to and what I'm influenced by," he explains. "I've always liked Weather Report, and Miles Davis and making music with jazzy elements, be it drum'n'bass or other styles. Drum'n'bass needs to vary its sound and this is my way of contributing to that."

However, most dance producers don't merely steal jazz sounds and use them wholesale. "We don't just take a jazz sample and slip it over a breakbeat," comments drum'n'bass producer Justice. "We use jazz theories which means there are no rules. At the beginning, jazz was ridiculed because people didn't understand it."

In the years since its first flirtations with dance, jazz has been welcomed into the general electronic music fabric, and, like disco, has become one of the key ingredients in the transition of underground artists into the mainstream. From the double bass breaks of Roni Size's Mercury Prize-winning Reprazent crew to Charles Webster's sensuous vocal house project as Presence and Nightmares On Wax's smoky beats, it's clear that many successful acts are indebted to jazz music.

However, electronic music's avant garde has also turned increasingly to jazz structures, signatures and instrumentation to delve deeper into uncharted, abstract territories, and new work from two very different producers - Detroit's Carl Craig and Wicklow's Ian O'Brien reveals the synergetic relationship jazz and experimental dance music share.

For over a decade Carl Craig has been the most influential dance music producer: tracks like Throw and Bug In The Bassbin invented disco-house and drum'n'bass, so his decision to record his new album, Programmed, as a member of the fully live jazz band Innerzone Orchestra is intriguing. "I'm doing something different all the time; that's the concept behind Programmed," he explains.

"I also wanted to get away from house and techno, because it's so easy to make the same record again and again. That's why I've altered the way I make music and moved further away from my other projects."

An intoxicating mixture of soul, hip-hop and funk, Programmed is underpinned by the legacy of Sun Ra, Davis and Coltrane "I would love if someone listened to Programmed in the same way they listened to a Sun Ra record," says Craig. "That's my goal, to attain that kind of status and go beyond what's happening nowadays."

Although Ian O'Brien has moved away from his dance floor roots to release the elegant post-club sprawl of his second album, Gigantic Days, he remains refreshingly modest about the work. "My earliest musical roots are becoming increasingly evident," he jokes. "When I first heard music like Weather Report and Miles Davis I was only 14, so it was a revelation for me. All those arrangements are similar to techno structures, and, even if the new album doesn't have any dance floor tracks, it's still techno and was recorded with honesty."

Ten jazz-influenced dance producers, and an essential album from each1. Carl Craig: Innerzone Orchestra Programmed (Talkin' Loud)

2. Ian O'Brien: Gigantic Days (Peacefrog)

3. Peshay: Miles From Home (Universal)

4. Justice: The Greatest Hit (Recordings of Substance)

5. Dave Angel: Tales of the Unexpected (Island)

6. Dan Curtin: Art & Science (Peacefrog)

7. St Germain: Boulevard (F Communications)

8. Roni Size: Reprazent: New Forms (Talkin' Loud)

9. Kirk De Giorgio: In With The Arps and Moogs and Jazz and Things (Clear)

10. Red Snapper: Making Bones (Warp)