Overview
Objectives
- Identify several musical and cultural predecessors of disco music
- Recall the influence of the gay community and the Stonewall Riots on disco music
- Identify several defining features of the style of disco music
- Examine several significant disco artists and their contributions during the 1970s
Introduction
Rock music’s aesthetics were primarily focused on listening and songwriting. Not since the early 1960s and the days of Chubby Checker’s "The Twist ♫" and other dance crazes had rock been considered a music for dancing. By the 1970s, most rock was consumed by listening, not by dancing. In contrast, disco was music for dancing. Similarly, many rock artists had shifted toward an album-oriented aesthetic wherein the entire album was meant to be consumed as a unit instead of as separable singles that could be played in any order. Disco embraced the single, extracting whatever song would keep people dancing.
In addition, the performers of rock music were the rock musicians: the guitarist(s), singer, bassist, drummer, and any other instruments.
Although record producers did play roles in the studio production of the group’s sounds, for the most part, the members of the band were the performers of the music. In disco, the performer is a disc jockey or a record producer, and the people dancing to the music are equal participants in the performance of the music. Unlike rock, in which the production occurred after the initial recording process, in disco, production was the primary means of creating the music. The sounds heard on a disco record might have been initially created by studio musicians, but the producer was responsible for editing and manipulating those sounds into a cohesive, danceable record.
Disco was largely an underground music, reserved for clubs, until the release of the film Saturday Night Fever in 1977.
“Disco is a major influence in the world of fashion. It is a dynamic factor in contemporary advertising. It is a message from every consumer that there has been a rediscovery of America's greatest by-product: fun.”
“Disco music in the '70s was just a call to go wild and party and dance with no thought or conscience or regard for tomorrow.”
"[Get Down Tonight] was the first of five US #1 hits for KC & The Sunshine Band."
