Transformation of Disco and its Origins

[Bernie]

Marty Angelo of Disco Step By Step sent me an e-mail with a story many of you might find interesting. It is a piece written by David Low entitled "Hustling Disco:* The Transformation of Disco in the Film Saturday Night Fever and Its Origin in the Homosexual and African American Subculture"

It is well written and discusses how Disco music was essentially whitewashed for mass consumption. Although there are a few factual errors it should make for some good reading. Let us know what you thought of it.

You can read it at....
http://www.discostepbystep.com/hustling_disco.htm

[QUINNY]

I think the whole article is too up its own ass, if you get my drift. :lol: It is as flawed as the film it (over) discusses and its one biggest flaw is that it only views Disco from the American perspective.
I understand that the USA was the power house of all things disco and to some extent that makes it the primary source for any interpretations as to what made disco tick, but speaking from a European perspective, the Gay angle especially, would be largely irrelevant. Discos had been in small towns, playing to largely white heterosexual audiences since the early '60s. They were simply the place one went to dance to exotic (black) music and meet people of the opposite sex. Very few Gay discos existed in comparison.

I for one believe that black music was more of an influence on disco music than the Gay movement. O.K. many of the artists were Gay, many of the producers too, but a whole lot of 'em were black first and as such I believe those roots had much more influence on the music they produced. It may have been that the Gays (in the US) accepted their music more openly (at first), but did that mean that none of it was played in Black discos because it was Gay? I don't know. It was certainly played in heterosexual discos all over Europe. I don't think I worried for one moment about the inticasies of why the music was made and what politics were behind it. It was the music that made my audiences dance....simple, really. I accept that's a somewhat dumbass, ignorant view, but that's how I felt. I didn't want to know anything else and nor did anyone else at the time, did they?

If anything, the article shows just how at odds the whole of American society must have been with itself and how insular, racist and corrupt. That's not to say that any other country probably wasn't as bad, but at least the article got one thing right. Nothing happens in America unless there's big bucks to be made. So let's thank the capitalistas for Disco. God Bless 'em. :)

[Nano]

BTW, Bernie, do you know if the full text of Nik Cohn's famous article "The tribal rites of Saturday night" (basis for the SNF movie) is available somewhere in the web? Not the book to buy but the very text on the screen?

[SandraDee]

I've always noticed how disco is quite often seen as gay in the US but in Europe this isn't really the case. Although I'm gay & acknowledge that the gay scene here is dominated by dance music, most gay men in the UK I've met hate dance music, whereas many straight men I've met love it.
Quite often when I watch US films & TV shows there's a line like 'he likes disco 'cos he's gay' almost as though the only people who like it are gay which of course isn't the case.

[efunk_adelic]

If we are gonna associate disco with Blacks & Gays.... then why is Rock or Metal not a problem with the hertosexual audience... Freddie Mercury (Queen) and the lead singer of (Judas Priest) are both gay. :roll:

The people who don't like disco have labeled it to make it less appealing to the new generation so that hopefully they won't to listen to it either. I wonder if that made sense? :P
:lol:

[SandraDee]

That's interesting, but those prejudiced people who tried to kill disco off didn't count on future generations being so much more accepting of gays. I find that these days young people/kids often see being gay as a cool alternative lifestyle that is nothing to be ashamed of. I'm very pleased about this turn of events, but at the same time it means that the gay scene isn't as interesting as it was in the 'dark ages'!

[Paulo]

I did not read the article yet, but speaking from a Rio de Janeiro point of view:

In the early to mid 70's, soul music, funk and philly-soul was man music. Downtown richer white boys rejected it, but boys (black or white) who lived in the outskirts/suburbs embraced it.

From mid to late 70's disco separated itself from soul. Because of its world domination purposes, everybody jumped on the train (one just couldn't escape it). So I think it wasn't still defined as white, black or gay simply because the thing was still happening to everybody.

But when it ended in the early 80's and when the HI-NRG thing began, it was very clear to me that it had become synonym to gay music in the conscious of the public.

[originalbigm]

Certainly an interesting perspective but I'd have to agree with Quinny.When I began deejaying in my first club in 1972 it was predominately a white heterosexual crowd that enjoyed dancing to black music.There was no "disco" genre in 1972.It was all R&B,Soul,Funk and Motown.
I was a big fan of R&B,Soul & blues throughout the sixties.The availability of that music was limited in Toronto at that time and the only place I could here it consistently was on a black music station WBLK out of Buffalo that I could pickup on the FM dial. I would travel to Buffalo once a month to pickup black music at Audrey & Dells record store in Buffalo because they would play the new 45 singles for you to pick and choose.Consequently when ever one of my friends had a party they enevitably would ask me to bring along my records so they could dance to them.That's how my DJ career started.The majority of my friends were white and heterosexual.So I wasn't surprised that this was the same demographics I encountered when I started DJ ing in commercial establishments.
Yes there were some gay clubs in Toronto back in the early seventies but they tended to be more secluded or private and were not as public as they were in New York.I can relate to the portrayal of Italian Americans and in this case Italian Canadians being the huge followers of disco but I also equate this to the fact that that was the place to go if you were looking for chicks and we all know how much Italians love the women.And having the largest concentartion of Italians outside of Italy here in Toronto what else would you expect.The disco scene here was well established and rooted prior to SNF and was not changed or influenced by the film other than more people and more clubs emerged on the disco scene.
I'm sure a lot of what David Low suggests is factual but those things happen on a day to day basis when there is an opportunity for money to be made regardless of the medium or venue here in North America because for good or bad we truly are a society of opportunists and exploiters.
IMO the disco scene in Toronto Canada was well established prior to Saturday Night Fever with the white heterosexual crowd.Blacks or gays were not the catalyst but rather the music and vibe was.

[Nano]

Maybe the problem is that the writer has a snobby approach to the subject. His conclusion seems to be: ah, those were the good times when disco was black & gay, then the whiteys caught on and everything died. Clever as it seems his reading of the SNF movie, he fails to notice that at least half the SNF soundtrack consists of black artists doing black music, and he also seems to dismiss the music of the white artists (namely the Bee Gees). He also overstates the importance of SNF in the disco movement he describes (it fills half of the whole article).
In fact disco was not a movement but a phenomenon, a craze the music industry had not seen since the early days of rock and roll itself. Disco wasn't the "danger" music the writer presumes, in fact it was the opposite: even with the sex references and heavy breathing, these records were "safe" for the casual listener next to those of glam rock (which claimed its presumed homosexuality more openly) and the punk movement of the day.
However, it's interesting reading nonetheless.