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| Sixties | Seventies | Eighties | Nineties |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soul | Disco | House | Still Dancin' |
| Funk | Larry Levan | Ron Hardy | MAW |
| Reggae | New York | Chicago | UK |
| MFSB | Salsoul | Electronica | Gilles Peterson |
| DJs | Walter Gibbons | Frankie Knuckles | Kenny Dixon Jr |
Discotheques originated in occupied Paris during the Second World War. The Nazis banned jazz and closed many of the dance clubs, breaking up jazz groups and driving fans into illicit cellars to listen to recorded music. One of these venues - on the rue Huchette - called itself La Discothèque. Then Paul Pacine opened the Whiskey a Go-Go, where dancers would hit the floor accompanied by records played by disc jockeys on a phonograph. Pacine went on to open other clubs in Europe, while in Paris Chez Régine opened in 1960, catering to the self-styled beautiful people. The upmarket thrills of Régine's enjoyed by the American jet-set in turn inspired New York's Le Club, although it didn't last long, closing soon after a new venue in New York took off in 1961: the Peppermint Lounge. -- David Haslam
Before the word disco existed, the phrase discotheque records was used to denote music played in New York private rent or after hours parties like the Loft and Better Days. The records played there was a mixture of funk, soul and European imports. We will call this genre of music "disco 1". These "disco 1" records are the same kind of records that were played by Kool Herc on the early hip hop scene. -- [more on Proto Disco ... ]
Paar-ty! Paar-ty! . . . You hear the chant at concerts, rising like a tribal rallying cry on a shrill wave of whistles and hard-beaten tambourines. It's at once a call to get down and party, a statement that there's a party going on and an indication that discotheques, where the chant originated, are back in force . . ., 1973, Rolling Stone magazine -- [Vince Aletti ...]
The Paradise Garage is still considered as the most legendary club of club culture history. It was located at 84 King Street, New York and from 1977 till 1987, it was the playground of one Larry Levan. The club gave its name to garage music, New York's flavor of underground dance music. 1000+ classic tracks that were championed by Larry at the Garage -- [more on the Paradise Garage ...]
But it wasn't just American music laying the groundwork for house. European music, spanning English electronic pop like Depeche Mode and Soft Cell and the earlier, more disco based sounds of Giorgio Moroder, Klein & MBO and a thousand Italian productions were immensely popular in urban areas like New York and Chicago. One of the reasons for their popularity was two clubs that had simultaneously broken the barriers of race and sexual preference, two clubs that were to pass on into dance music legend - Chicago's Warehouse and New York's Paradise Garage. Up until then, and after, the norm was for black, hispanic, white, straight and gay to segregate themselves, but with the Warehouse, opened in 1977 and presided over by Frankie Knuckles and the Garage where Larry Levan spun, the emphasis was on the music. (Ironically, Levan was first choice for the Warehouse, but he didn't want to leave New York). And the music was as varied as the clienteles - r'n'b based Black dance music and disco peppered with things as diverse as The Clash's 'Magnificent Seven'. For most people, these were the places that acted as breeding grounds for the music that eventually came to be known after the clubs - house and garage. --
There are two US clubs that had simultaneously broken the barriers of race and sexual preference, two clubs that were to pass on into dance music legend - Chicago's Warehouse and New York's Paradise Garage. Up until then, and after, the norm was for black, hispanic, white, straight and gay to segregate themselves, but with the Warehouse, opened in 1977 and presided over by Frankie Knuckles and the Paradise Garage whereLarry Levan spun, the emphasis was on the music. And the music was as varied as the clienteles - r'n'b based Black dance music and disco peppered with things as diverse as The Clash's 'Magnificent Seven'. For most people, these were the places that acted as breeding grounds for the music that eventually came to be known after the clubs - house and garage. -- [more on clubs ...]
"In the seventies, when clubs only needed one DJ, that DJ was in a position to make waves. And in cities where the clubs were usually soundtracked by jukeboxes, those waves could become a storm. " -- [More Legendary DJs ...]
Due to the rise of the discotheque and the technical innovation of the twelve inch recording, a new genre of music that was explicitly made with the dancefloor in mind, was born . This music was coined disco, of which there are two flavors and time periods: disco 1.0, which is firmly connected to soul and funk in the first half of the seventies and disco 2.0 in the second half of the seventies, as the incarnation of gay hedonistic club culture. This movement was fueled by the DJ, who came into prominence during the seventies. --
In 1977, two legendary disco clubs open their doors: the Paradise Garage in New York and the Warehouse in Chicago. In the summer of that same year, Time and Newsweek magazine informed their readers of a new subculture, called "punk," that had emerged at a few rock clubs in the United States and Britain.
Stuck between Punk Rock noise and Disco, the No Wave scene was born in New York where it lived a short life in tight connection with downtown's avant-garde artistic crowd. Mostly an attitude towards music, it was characterized by the refusal of traditional Rock 'n' Roll format (chords, chorus...) and the incorporation of exterior influences such as Free Jazz (the Loft Scene), contemporary and black music (funk, disco). My favourite artist in this scene is Arthur Russell
A wealth of spacey disco tunes -- all selected by Kenny Dope for this massive 3CD set! 2 of the set's CDs feature unmixed tracks -- a total of 18 in all, with a wide range of obscure dancefloor numbers from the 70s and early 80s, especially those that have had strong currency in recent years, thanks to a far-thinking approach to production and instrumentation. Disc 3 of the set features Kenny mixing together tracks on the other two -- coming up with a swirling batch of grooves that are all linked by the unique Dope approach! There's loads of choice rarebits in the set -- and tracks include "Just As Long As I Got You" by Love Committee, "I Need You" by Sylvester, "Powerline" by Double Journey, "In The Bush" by Musique, "Go Bang" by Dinosaur L, "Me & The Gang" by Hamilton Bohannon, "You Got Me Running" by Lenny Williams, "Grooving You" by Harvey Mason, "Got To Have Your Love" by Clyde Alexander, "Keep On Dancin" by Gary's Gang, "Life On Mars" by Dexter Wansel, "Delerium" by Francine McGhee, "Jazz Carnival" by Azymuth, and "Here I Go Again" by Thelma Houston.
[more on Kenny dope Gonzalez ]
Like it or not, house was first and foremost a direct descendant of disco. Follow the links below to know more about house, where house started, when it started, who started house and where to listen to house online.
Like it or not, house was first and foremost a direct descendant of disco. Disco had already been going for ten years when the first electronic drum tracks began to appear out of Chicago, and in that time it had already suffered the slings and arrows of merciless commercial exploitation, dilution and racial and sexual prejudice which culminated in the 'disco sucks' campaign. In one bizarrely extreme incident, people attending a baseball game in Chicago's Komishi Park were invited to bring all their unwanted disco records and after the game they were tossed onto a massive bonfire. Disco eventually collapsed under a heaving weight of crass disco versions of pop records and an ever-increasing volume of records that were simply no good. But the underground scene had already stepped off and was beginning to develop a new style that was deeper, rawer and more designed to make people dance. Disco had already produced the first records to be aimed specifically at DJs with extended 12" versions that included long percussion breaks for mixing purposes and the early eighties proved a vital turning point. Sinnamon's 'Thanks To You', D-Train's 'You're The One For Me' and The Peech Boys' 'Don't Make Me Wait', a record that's been continually sampled over the last decade, took things in a different direction with their sparse, synthesized sounds that introduced dub effects and drop-outs that had never been heard before. -- [more on Proto House ...]
We have talked about how disco with added electronica becomes in a way house music, although the phrase 'house music' had not yet been coined. In fact, the Warehouse (geddit?) had existed since 1977, and it was only at the time that New York born DJ Frankie Knuckles moved to a discotheque in Chicago that people began to talk about house music, as in, the music that was played over at the Warehouse. In the mid 1980s, cheap electronica happened, Trax records was founded in Chicago, and a new rawer, sleazier sound was being championed by Ron Hardy at the Music Box. House crossed the distance to New York with the track ‘Mysteries of Love’ by Mr. Fingers. The 110bpm original instrumental becomes an anthem at the Garage after Levan gets hold of it on acetate. In the late eighties, New York rose again with Todd Terry introducing sampling to house music. -- [more ...]
When future generations look back upon the nineties, it seems most likely that they will recognize the '90s as a time of fusion. Much like the '70s, most of what has pushed the musical envelope in this decade have been the sounds of combined elements; jazz, disco, house, funk, reggae, soul, you know your black music. Much of what today is hailed as electronica in the US and garage in the UK, falls in line with this very '90s mode of creating music. In lack of a name for this genre, I refer to it as nineties eclecticism. -- [more on the nineties... ]
Right from the start there was a difference in approach between New York and Chicago. "All of the records coming out of New York had been either mid or down tempo, and the kids in Chicago wouldn't do that all night long, they needed more energy" commented Frankie Knuckles after his move to Chicago. The Windy City was seduced to a far greater extent by the European sound and when the records started to come, it showed. Whereas garage in New York evolved more smoothly from First Choice and the labels Salsoul, West End and Prelude ... -- [more on New York ...]
Because it's now accepted as undeniable history that Carl, Kevin, Derrick and Juan Atkins somersaulted dance and electronic music beyond disco, electro, Kraftwerk, Eno, Kraut Rock, P-Funk, New Romantic and New Order into something new. At the time they called it techno. -- [more on Detroit Techno ...]
New York native Frankie Knuckles was the Dj from 1977 to 1982 at the Warehouse. It is widely accepted that his style of DJing and his selection and the appeal of the Warehouse gave house music its name, although in the beginning, the word 'house' was used only in Chicago to denote something which was cool, hip, fresh or bad. Frankie Knuckles had been long time friends with Larry Levan, they had had their musical upbringing together from going to clubs like Loft and the Gallery
-- [more on Frankie Knuckles ... ]It was into this exciting and transitional environment that a young, would-be producer walked up to Vega and handed him a cassette. "This guy came up to the booth and said, 'My name is Todd Terry. I just wanted to give you these new jams.'" The night was drawing to a close, so Vega had a quick listen to the track that was about to turn Terry into New York's hottest house producer. "I was like, 'Wow! This is powerful!'" With its quick-fire sampling techniques and harder beats, 'Party People' introduced an edgy, hip hop aesthetic to the Chicago house sound, and Vega wasted little time in securing a reel-to-reel copy. "There was an instant reaction on the dance floor," he remembers. "I was playing 'Party People' six to nine months before it came out, so I got everybody into that sound." -- [more on Todd Terry ...]
In the late nineties, there has been the emergence of a new sound in dance music, one that places more emphasis on Latin, African and jazz elements than straight 4/4 beats. This global dance movement can in many ways be traced to Joe Claussell, perhaps the most significant figure to arrive on the scene since the Masters at Work. As a DJ, record store owner, label executive and artist he's been intricately involved with all aspects of music, giving him a unique perspective that's allowed him to avoid the pitfalls of so many pioneers. -- [more on Joe Claussell ...]
Think of a classic house record and nine times out of ten you'll think of Trax, although you may not realise it. 'Move Your Body'? 'Baby Wants To Ride'? 'Washing Machine'? 'Can U Feel It'? All Trax releases. 'House Nation'? 'Acid Trax'? 'Your Love'? 'We Are Phuture'? 'U Used To Hold Me'? Yup, those too. What's more they introduced the world to producers who've become immortalised as some of house music's greatest innovators - Larry Heard, Marshall Jefferson, Frankie Knuckles - and have provided an outlet for many more of Chicago's house artists over the years, such as Armando, Liddell Townsend, Robert Owens, Farley Jackmaster Funk, Mr Lee, Adonis, Fast Eddie, Ralphie Rosario, DJ Rush, Steve Poindexter, Terry Baldwin, DJ Skull... the list goes on. And they did it all by releasing crappy-looking records that sounded like they'd been pressed on sandpaper. Now there's a story worth telling. -- [more on Trax records ...]
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