Source: Behance.
Flared and super-tight trousers, platform shoes, V-neck shirts, mirrored balls, huge afros, bright colors, a lot of drugs and sex being done on the dance floor. Whenever you try to think of the 70s that’s what usually comes to mind, a memorable decade for those who lived it, dominated by a particolar kind of music: disco.
Often labeled as an unoriginal, almost ‘lazy’ genre created with the only purpose of making nightclubs full of partying (and paying) people, disco perhaps had something more to offer under its ‘solely hedonistic and glittery’ surface.
Source: Behance.
First of all, the word ‘disco’ is the shortened version of ‘discoteque’, a French term which was used in the 40s, during the Nazis’ occupation, to describe a type of clubs that played jazz records. Jazz music itself was a sort of provacation towards the Nazis: in fact, it was created by African-American artists on labels owned by Jews.
The rise
Disco had that ‘rebellious’ feeling to it as well: it was music mostly made and listened by young blacks, Latinos, gays and women, ‘the weakest’ and ‘most excluded’ social classes.
Source: Behance.
During the period disco began to take shape, movements such as the Gay Movement and the Feminist Movement were taking over, it was the post-Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War was about to end. The 1973 oil crisis caused a massive economic collapse in many industrialized countries (excluding Japan). Cities like New York got in a state of deep decadence, fueled by extremely high crime rates, unemployment and depopulation. Behind the new and glamorous Twin Towers, abandoned and burned buildings still dominated the famous metropolis’ landscape. In fact, landlords who could not afford to maintain their edifices anymore, sometimes decided to set them on fire to collect insurance money.
Two different worlds in the same city: the Twin Towers in May 1973 vs. abandoned and burned blocks in Harlem.
That declining situation, though, didn’t stop the rise of disco. “A laughter will bury you all”, as the members of the revolutionary Italian 1977 Movement used to say in a strongly ironic way against a humorless political system, seemed to mutate into “a party will bury you all”, with the ‘you all’ referring to bigotry, racism, ignorance and distress.
“They were no longer the oppressed […]. Here they took command, they reigned.”
as an article (which would later inspire the production of the movie-symbol of the disco era, “Saturday Night Fever”) from 1976 wrote. When disco started to go mainstream, everybody seemed to love it: by 1973, over 100.000 Newyorkers found themselves drown to spend their Saturday nights under that playful and fun music’s spell, in the city’s trendiest nightclubs such as ‘The Loft’ and later, ‘Studio 54’ which would become a ‘hotspot’ for celebrities.
People hoping to get into Studio 54.
“Hollywood is not in California, it’s the main thought of the new disco scene, a seductive freeway straight to the heart of all hard partyers.” (from The New York Magazine-Hollyw-o-o-o-d! The Return of the New York Disco)
Unlike the 60s, when dancing was mostly done individually and there was almost no touching/real interaction between people, disco gave birth to a huge variety of often sexually-explicit partner dance moves.
Omnisexuality was no more considered freaky and everyone, even if not famous or wealthy, could aspire to be the shining star of the night and express his/herself in any way possible. Nothing and nobody could stop the unstoppable disco…until that day of 1979.
The Fall
July 12, 1979: during a football match in Chicago between the Tigers and the White Sox, an angry crowd began chanting “disco sucks!” while burning more than 1000 disco music records in the stadium’s field. The people who participated in the event were mostly white rock fans led by Steve Dahl, a former DJ who had lost his job when the AOR radio he used to work for had made a shift and had turned all-disco. Rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t the most popular musical genre anymore so he and all his ‘followers’ wanted big revenge.
"And every morning, I would play a disco record. I’d run the needle across the record. And then I would have an explosion, like, blowing up the record."
-Steve Dahl
Although Dahl frequently denied all the allegations, the movement he formed was accused of being homophobic and a pathetic expression of racism.
Some weeks after the controversial event, named “Disco Demolition Night” by its partecipants, took place, no disco song could be found on the charts. Donna Summer’s hit "Bad Girls" and Chic’s (the same group who made “Studio 54’s anthem”, "Le Freak") “Good Times” both lost their position at no. 1 and got replaced by a rock single, My Sharona.
Disco was officially dead…or maybe NOT.
The Return
“You know, I was wondering, you know, if you could keep on…because the force…it’s got a lot of power and it make me feel like ah...it make me feel like…oooh!”
Hail to this masterpiece.
And then bam!
A thousand violins break in, percussions, glass bottles, drums, some bass and a note of synth: the ingredients of a joyful, vivid and exciting explosion of music accompained by the classy falsetto vocals of a 20-year-old MJ with a luminous smile on his face, wearing a tuxedo and a ’jumping’ bow tie while dancing in front of a colored, surreal background.
It was all like ‘the good old days’ of disco although "Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough" was released exactly 16 days after ‘disco’s official funeral’.
It was a sign: disco was re-born and it was living again with all its force and vitality, not stopping anymore.
No barriers, no prejudice, no anti-disco event could put an end to it. DSTYGE was acclaimed by critics and fans as it bacame a huge, succesful hit, literally tearing down the wall and paving the way for other post-disco songs such as 1981 "Let’s Groove" by Earth, Wind and Fire and inspiring groups like Jamiroquai in the 90s.
With "Wanna Be Startin’ Something", from the Thriller album, the King of Pop paid a homage to the disco era once again: the infamous serie of ‘mama-say-mama-say-ma-makoosa’ in the song are ‘sampled’ from a classical disco hit, "Soul Makossa" by African artist Manu Dibango.
One of, if not today’s most popular music genre, hip-hop, has its roots in disco as well: in the mid-late 70s, DJs used to rap on disco tracks' beats.