Northern Soul & Motown Sunday Dance Party

The Northern Soul & Motown Sunday Dance Party comes to the Mercure Brighton Seafront Hotel on Sunday 25 October, a charity afternoon raising funds for The Martlets Hospice. It's a dedicated soul session, with the hospice as this year's beneficiary and the organisers aiming to raise money for them over the course of the day. They describe the Mercure as a marvellous venue for their soul sessions, and it's easy to see why: it sits right on the seafront at 149 Kings Road, BN1 2PP, so you've got the sea just outside while the dancefloor is going inside.

If you're not familiar with the two sounds on the bill, they're closely linked but distinct. Motown is the smoother, polished soul that came out of Berry Gordy's Detroit hit factory in the sixties. Northern Soul, by contrast, grew out of the British mod scene in the early seventies across Northern England and the Midlands. It was built around Black American soul with a heavy beat and a fast tempo — 100 bpm and up. The term was coined by collector Dave Godin at his Covent Garden shop, Soul City, to set these funkier sounds apart from the smoother, Motown-influenced records.

The scene lived on rare 'stompers' from labels like VeeJay, Chess, Brunswick, Ric-Tic, Gordy and Golden World, and it spawned an athletic style of dancing inspired by Jackie Wilson and Little Anthony and the Imperials. Its logo, the clenched raised fist, came from the 1960s Black Power movement. So, across the afternoon, you'll hear the polished Motown classics alongside the faster, rarer Northern Soul that kept those dancefloors moving.

It's a long one, running from 2pm for about six hours, so there's plenty of time to settle in and dance. Tickets start from £10, and everything raised goes to The Martlets Hospice, which is based right here in Brighton.