The rise of emo music goes back to the mid 80s. It all started with the Hardcore-punk band Rites Of Spring. This hardcore-punk band played with the same aggression and punk style as the other hardcore-punk bands. But while hardcore-punk bands wrote more political lyrics, Rites Of Spring wrote more personal and emotional lyrics and sang their songs full of emotion. That's why Rites Of Spring is seen as THE father of emo. Rites Of Spring it self doesn't like the emo label and doesn't agree with this. But if they like it or not, It's just a fact that they are our biological emo daddys.

The summer of 1985 is been called the revolution summer because a lot of bands were inspired by Rites Of Spring and started to follow this. It's not sure where the term Emotional-hardcore is comming from. Most people seem to agree that the name started as an insult. No band wanted to get that label. That's probelly why Rites Of Spring still don't accept being the father of emo. But if they like it or not, they created all of this and the term emotional-hardcore is stuck in this world forever.

In an interview with Rites Of Spring in Flipside Magazine in 1985, the word emocore was first used (I think they were really pissed of). Right after this a few bands started to focus more on the emo side and were singing in a more extreme emotional way. In the beggining of the 90s started to form a harder and faster style of emo in San Diego whitch formed a lot of new bands like: Swingkids, Heroin and 1.6 Band.

This all is called the first wave (1984-1994). In the mid 90s This first emo wave started slowly to vanish. More and more emo bands started to break up and less new emo bands formed. But lucky this was just the start. Emo evolved in more waves. It keeps disepearing into the underground but it also keeps going to the mainstream in parts. The first wave of emo just ended but this didn't make emotional-hardcore dead. This first wave would later be followed by the secont wave next...

Sources: Wikipedia, nme, altpress