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Disco

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Disco
Stylistic originsFunk and soul music
Cultural originsUnited States, Early 1970s
Typical instrumentsGuitar, Bass, Piano, Keyboard Drums, Drum machine
Derivative formsHi-NRG, House, Euro, Italo
Subgenres
Bright
(complete list)
Fusion genres
Disco-punk
Other topics
Discothèque, Nightclubs, Orchestration
Disco artists

Disco is a genre of music that originated in discothèques. Generally the term refers to a specific style of music that has influences from funk, soul music, and salsa and the Latin or Hispanic musics which influenced salsa.

Origins

A US 'Celebrate the Century' stamp featuring disco dancers
A US 'Celebrate the Century' stamp featuring disco dancers

Elements of disco music appear on records from the early 1970s such as the 1971 theme from the film Shaft by Isaac Hayes (Jones and Kantonen, 1999). In general it can be said that first disco songs were released in 1973, however many consider Manu Dibango's 1972 Soul Makossa the first disco record (Jones and Kantonen, 1999). Initially, most disco songs catered to a nightclub/dancing audience only, rather than general audiences such as radio listeners, but there are many aspects proving opposite tendencies as well; popular radio-hits were being played in discothèques, as long as they had an easy to follow rhythmic base-pattern close to 120 BPM (beats per minute). Most 70's Disco genre songs had a distinctive four/four bass beat.

Soul and funk records that influenced disco include:

The Motown Sound also featured many elements that would be associated with the disco sound:

Philadelphia International Records defined Philly soul and helped define disco (ibid) with records such as:

Pre-/Early-disco TK Records tracks:

Early-disco hits include:

Popularity

File:Saturday night fever.jpg
Saturday Night Fever, a 1977 film about New York's disco subculture starring John Travolta.

1975 was the year when disco really took off, with hit songs like Van McCoy's "The Hustle" and Donna Summer's "Love To Love You Baby" reaching the mainstream. 1975 also marked the release of the first disco mix on album, the A side of Gloria Gaynor's remake of The Jackson 5's "Never Can Say Goodbye". Disco's popularity peaked between 1977 - 1979, driven in part by films such as 1977's classic Saturday Night Fever and 1978's Thank God It's Friday. Disco also gave rise to an increased popularity of line dancing and other partly pre-choreographed dances; many line dances can be seen in films such as Saturday Night Fever, which also features the Hustle.

Internationally, the pop star Dalida was the first to make disco music in France with 1975's "J'attendrai" which was a big hit there as well as in Canada and Japan in 1976. She also released many other disco hits between 1975 and 1981, including "Monday, Tuesday... Laissez-moi danser" in 1979, translated the same year as "Let Me Dance Tonight" for the USA, where she was their "French diva" since her late-1978 performance at the Carnegie Hall). Soon after Dalida's pioneering French disco work, other French artists recorded disco: Claude François, in 1976 with his song "Cette année-là" (a cover of The Four Seasons' disco hit "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)"), then the famous "yé-yé" French pop singer Sheila, with her group B. Devotion, who even had a hit in the USA (a rarity for French artists) with the song "Spacer" in 1979. Many other European artists also recorded disco music; in Germany, Frank Farian formed a disco band by the name Boney M around 1975. They had a string of number one hits in a few European countries which continued into the early 1980s, with songs such as Daddy Cool, Brown Girl in the Ring and By the Rivers of Babylon. Still today, the trademark sound of Boney M is seen as emblematic for late 70's German disco music.

File:Discodancer.jpg
Disco Dancer (1982), an Indian disco fantasy film starring Mithun Chakraborty.

Disco fever reached a peak in South Asia after the release of the Bollywood film Disco Dancer in 1982. It stars Mithun Chakraborty as an Indian disco champion who is out to get revenge on P. N. Oberoi (Om Shivpuri), a rich industrialist who once slapped and insulted his mother.

Main article: List of disco artists

The most popular disco artists of the 1970s included:

The Bee Gees
A Taste of Honey
Cerrone
Dalida
ABBA
CHIC
Sister Sledge
The Jacksons
Claudja Barry
Linda Clifford
Donna Summer
Grace Jones
Sylvester
Gloria Gaynor
Boney M
Village People
K.C. and the Sunshine Band
Vicki Sue Robinson
MFSB
Loleatta Holloway
France Joli
Evelyn 'Champagne' King
Yvonne Elliman
Tavares
Salsoul Orchestra
Phyllis Hyman
The Emotions
Thelma Houston
Cheryl Lynn
The Trammps
Love and Kisses
Barry White
Silver Convention
Shalamar
and
Kool & the Gang.

Many non-disco artists recorded disco songs at the height of its popularity, most often due to demand from the record companies who needed a surefire hit. These acts included:

The Eagles
The Rolling Stones
KISS
The Grateful Dead
Dolly Parton
Cher
Marvin Gaye
Barry Manilow
Aretha Franklin
Isaac Hayes
Leif Garrett
Toto
Chaka Khan
Michael Jackson
The Beach Boys
Billy Preston
Chicago
Electric Light Orchestra
The Pointer Sisters
Teddy Pendergrass
Elton John
James Brown
Bette Midler
Prince
Helen Reddy
Stephanie Mills
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons
Carly Simon
Diana Ross
Earth, Wind and Fire
Rod Stewart
Queen (with the bass guitar riffs emulating those of Chic in their hit Another One Bites The Dust)
and
Blondie.

Even adult contemporary vocalists were sucked into the disco machine. Those artists included:

Johnny Mathis
Paul Anka
Ann-Margret
Charo
Frankie Avalon
Engelbert Humperdinck
Ethel Merman
Wayne Newton
Barbra Streisand
Eartha Kitt
Andy Williams
and
Frank Sinatra.

Many disco novelty songs sold well and were popular. Rick Dees, at the time a radio DJ in Memphis, Tennessee, recorded what is considered to be one of the most popular parodies of all time, Disco Duck.

DJs and producers

Disco music diverged from the rock of the 1960s, elevating music from the raw sound of 4-piece garage bands to refined music composed by producers who contracted local symphony and philharmonic orchestras and session musicians. For the first time in three decades, orchestral music became the preeminent sound in the popular-music scene. Top disco music producers included Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Adams, Biddu, Cerrone, Alec R. Costandinos, John Davis, Gregg Diamond, Kenneth Gamble & Leon Huff, Norman Harris, Sylvester Levay, Ian Levine, Mike Lewis, Van McCoy, Meco Monardo, Tom Moulton, Boris Midney, Vincent Montana Jr, Randy Muller, Freddie Perren, Laurin Rinder, Richie Rome, Warren Schatz, Harold Wheeler, and Michael Zager, whose roles involved every aspect of production, from composing the arrangements to conducting the 50- to 100-member orchestras from Los Angeles to New York, from Chicago to Philadelphia, from Detroit to Miami, from London to Berlin, from Vancouver to Montreal, from to Paris to Milan.

With as many as 64 tracks of vocals and instruments to be compiled into a fluid composition of verses, bridges, and refrains, complete with orchestral builds and breaks, the mixing engineers became an important fixture in the production process, and, as a result, were most influential in developing the "sound" of the recording through the disco mix. Record sales were often dependent on, though not guaranteed by, floor play in clubs. Notable DJs include Jim Burgess, Walter Gibbons, John "Jellybean" Benitez, Rick Gianatos, Francis Grasso (Sanctuary), Larry Levan, Ian Levine, John Luongo, and David Mancuso.

Instrumentation

Instruments commonly used by disco musicians included the rhythm guitar (most often played in "chicken-scratch" style, usually through a wah-wah or phaser), bass, piano and electroacoustic keyboards (most important: the Fender-Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos and the Hohner Clavinet), harp, string synth, violin, viola, cello, trumpet, saxophone, trombone, clarinet, flugelhorn, French horn, tuba, English horn, oboe, flute, piccolo, and drums, African/Latin percussion, timpani, as well a drum kit. Electronic drums were making a debut during this era, with Simmons and Roland drum modules appearing as pioneers in electronic percussion. Most disco songs have a steady four-on-the-floor beat (sometimes using a 16-beat pattern on the hi-hat cymbal, or an eight-beat pattern with an open hi-hat on the "off" beat) and a heavy, syncopated bassline.

In general, the difference between a disco, or any dance song, and a rock or popular song is that in dance music the bass hits "four to the floor", at least once a beat (which in 4/4 time is 4 beats per measure), whereas in rock the bass hits on one and three and lets the snare take the lead on two and four. (Michaels, 1990) Disco is further characterized by a sixteenth note division of the quarter notes established by the bass as shown in the second drum pattern below, after a typical rock drum pattern:

Characteristic rock and disco drum patterns

This sixteenth note pattern is often supported by other instruments such as the rhythm guitar (lead guitar parts are rare), and may be implied rather than explicitly present, often involving syncopation. As a simpler example, bass lines often use the following rhythm:

Characteristic disco bass rhythm

The orchestral sound usually known as "disco sound" relies heavily on strings and horns playing linear phrases, in unison with the soaring, often reverberated vocals or playing instrumental fills, while electric pianos and chicken-scratch guitars create the background "pad" sound defining the harmony progression. Typically, a "wall of sound" results. There are however more minimalistic flavors of disco with reduced, transparent instrumentation, pioneered by Chic.

Format

At first, singles were released on 7-inch 45-rpm records, 45s, which were shorter in length and of poorer sound quality than 12-inch singles. Motown Records was the first to market these through their "Eye-Cue" label, but these and other 12-inch singles were the length of the original 45s until Scepter/Wand released the first 12-inch extended-version single in 1976: Jesse Green's "Nice and Slow" b/w Sweet Music's "I Get Lifted" (engineered by Tom Moulton). The single was packaged in collectible picture sleeves, a relatively new concept at the time. 12-Inch singles became commercially available after the first crossover, Tavares' "Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel." 12-Inch singles allowed longer dance time and formal possibilities. (Jones and Kantonen, 1999)

Backlash in U.S. and UK

The popularity of the film Saturday Night Fever prompted the major record labels to mass-produce hits, however, as some perceived, turning the genre from something vital and edgy into a safe "product" homogenized for the mass audience. Though disco music had several years of popularity, an American anti-disco sentiment was festering, marked by an impatient return to rock (loudly encouraged by worried rock radio stations). Disco music and dancing fads were depicted as not only silly (witness Frank Zappa's satirical song "Dancin' Fool"), but effeminate. Others objected to the perceived wanton sex and drugs that became associated with music while others were put off by the exclusivity of the disco scene symbolized by doormen who kept people out of discos that did not look or dress correctly while still others objected to the then new idea of centering music around a computerized beat instead of people.


In Britain, however, during the same year as the first American anti-disco demonstration (see below), The Young Nationalist publication of the far-right British National Party reported that "disco and its melting pot pseudo-philosophy must be fought or Britain's streets will be full of black-worshipping soul boys," though this had been true for twenty years with many white male English teens considering themselves "soul freaks". The emergence of the punk and goth scenes contributed to disco's decline.

Rock versus disco

Strong disapproval of disco among some rock fans existed throughout the disco era, growing as disco's influence grew, such that the expression "Disco Sucks" was common by the late-1970s among these fans.

In 1979, deejays Steve Dahl and Garry Meier along with Michael Veeck (son of legendary sports marketer Bill Veeck) staged a promotional event with an anti-disco theme, Disco Demolition Night, between games at a White Sox doubleheader. The event involved exploding disco records, and ended in a near-riot. The second game of the doubleheader had to be forfeited.

White male rock fans who spoke out against the music were sometimes accused of prejudice for objecting to a musical idiom that was strongly associated with both black and homosexual audiences. To further complicate matters, several prominent, popular rock artists recorded songs with audible debts to disco, sometimes to strong critical and commercial response. David Bowie's "Golden Years," and The Rolling Stones' "Miss You" and "Emotional Rescue," are distinguished examples of these disco-rock fusions, and artists such as The Who, Rod Stewart, and to a lesser extent Queen and The Clash also recorded disco-informed songs. Many of these artists were accused of selling out and received hate mail. Since the advent of disco and dance music in general, many have argued that more and more rock music has absorbed the rhythmic sensibilities of dance.

The most troubling aspect of disco for white working class males may have been its association with dancing, which tends to become a site of emotional conflict under modernization, as in Norman Mailer's catchphrase "tough guys don't dance". Disco, by being so clearly an invitation to the dance, is associated under modernization with an abandonment of self which threatens dissolution and depersonalization. Steve Dahl, Garry Meier and Mike Veeck were as impresarios rather innocent, in 1979, about a growing working-class anger, and, in trying to channel this anger into safe targets such as gay men and people of color, found that it overflowed these artificial limits.

Disco in Germany

Disco clubs became popular in Germany in the 1970's and continued into the 1980's. Unlike its counterparts in America, however, the word "Disko" in German nowadays usually refers to any dance club, and not just ones that include disco. It is starting to be phased out in favor of "Klub" as of late in normal speech and in titles, but it still remains.

Time of transition

The gradual change that occurred in the late-1970s pop-disco sound can be evidenced in such titles as:


The aforementioned songs foreboded the events of the next decade, as the year 1980 was a transitional time for music, especially dance music. As the "disco sound" was phased out, faster tempos and synthesized affects during the early-1980s dance sound, accompanied by simplified backgrounds and rock guitars, directed dance music toward the pop-rock genre such as:


Those aforementioned exemplified the emerging dance-music form that dropped the complicated melodic structures of the disco style, as woodwinds, horns, and strings were replaced by synthesizers, which mimicked their sound. Here, one can readily experience the drastic changes, from the musical arrangements - missing all signs of symphony-orchestration, including orchestral builds and breaks - to the melody - missing all signs of the complicated structures of the typical disco sound, including multiple bridges and fanciful refrains.

Regional styles of disco

Main article: disco orchestration

As with many forms of art, music contains many types, of which there are distinct genres, and within which there are various styles. The sound of a disco song, as with the sound of a song of any genre of music, depended on the particular tastes of the artists, and the arrangers, producers, and even the orchestra conductors and concertmasters dictating the type of stylized playing method of each section of the orchestra, down to the engineers and mixers who assembled all the elements to make a fluid, cohesive sculpture of sound through melodic continuity. Even without a very knowledgeable ear for music, one can distinguish the stylings of Van McCoy's The Hustle (1975) from those of Silver Convention's Get Up and Boogie (1976), and from those of Chic's Good Times(1979), and Sister Sledge's We Are Family(1979).

As such, many regional sounds of disco developed during the mid-1970s, as a result of collaborative efforts of many individuals with a legacy of formal education and training in music theory and orchestration, whose educational backgrounds laid the foundation for the musical genre that was to burst forth onto the dance-music scene into what would come to be regarded as designer music. It can be noted that many of the conductors and players of the large city symphony and philharmonic orchestras responsible for the grand productions of disco were seasoned veterans of orchestras throughout the country, some even going back to the big-band era.

Some of the different regional sounds include:

Transition from the disco sound of the 1970s to the dance sound of the 1980s

The transition from the late-1970s disco styles to the early-1980s dance styles can be illustrated best by analysis of the work of specific artists, arrangers, and producers within each region, respective to the timeperiods. Complex musical structurres basically gave way to a "one-man-band" sound produced on synthesizer keyboards. Also, the increased addition of a slightly different harmonic structure, with elements borrowed from Blues and Jazz, (such as more prominent chords created with acoustic or electric pianos) created a different style of "dance music" in the 1981-83 period. But by this time, the word "disco" became associated with anything danceable, that played in discothèques, so the music continued for a time to be called "disco" by many. Examples include D. Train, Kashif, and Patrice Rushen. Both changes was influenced by some of the great R & B and jazz musicians of the 70's, such as Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock, who had pioneered and perfected "one-man-band" type keyboard techniques.

Disco "spinoffs": rap and "house" music

Finally, disco was largely succeeded for younger listeners by rap, which had started, by rapping over disco tracks. The first commercially popular rap hits were "Rapper's Delight" (which borrowed the bass line from Chic's "Good Times") and Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks". The two styles existed side by side for a few years, with rap sometimes being used in disco songs such as Blondie's "Rapture",Teena Marie's "Square Biz", and In Deep's "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life". The two styles together also sparked off "House Music" with such legendary innovators such as Larry Levan in New York, and Frankie Knuckles in Chicago in the early 1980's. Legendary clubs associated with the birth of house included New York's 'Paradise Garage' and Chicago's "Warehouse" and "The Music Box". Mixes incorporated here included various disco loops overlapped with a strong bassbeat, usually computer driven, and with longer segments intended for mixing. Afrika Bambataa released the 1982 single "Planet Rock", which drew several elements from Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" and the previous year's "Numbers". Electronic sounds in rap were eventually discarded in favor of a more "raw" hip-hop sound in songs such as "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. However, the "Planet Rock" sound also spawned a non-"hip-hop" electronic dance trend, with such follow-ups as Planet Patrol's "Play At Your Own Risk", the same year, followed by "One More Shot" by C-Bank; and the following year, its popularity skyrocketed with Shannon's "Let The Music Play" Freeze's "I.O.U.", Gwen Guthrie's "Ain't Nothin' Goin' On But The Rent", Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You", and Midnight Star's "Freakazoid". Electronic Dance music or House Music (later called "techno") had now emerged as its own genre, and this became the new "disco", even though it was not addressed as such.

Did it really "die"?

By the year 1983, disco was said to be pretty much "dead". It did not really have a distinctive "death", but simply blended back into other popular styles, while spawning some new styles. It was the synthesizer, and resulting change in the sounds, that basically ended disco as it was known in the pre-electronic 70's, moreso than the reaction from the competing rock genre. The danceable rhythms would live on in pop-rock, rap, Techno/House Music and regular R & B; and the dance club continued to thrive with these styles.

"Retro" revival

In the 1990s, a revival of the original disco style began and is exemplified by such songs as "Lemon" by U2 (1993), "Spend Some Time" by Brand New Heavies (1994), "Cosmic Girl" by Jamiroquai (1996), "Never Give Up on the Good Times" by The Spice Girls (1997), and "Strong Enough" by Cher (1998) (who had also released disco songs in the seventies).

During the first half of the 2000s, there were releases by a number of artists including "Spinning Around" and "Love at First Sight" by Kylie Minogue (2001), "I Don't Understand It" by Ultra Nate (2001), "Crying at the Discoteque" by Alcazar (2001), "Love Foolosophy" by Jamiroquai (2001), "Murder on the Dancefloor" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor (2001), and "Love Invincible" by Michael Franti and Spearhead (2003) that channeled classic disco music.

In (2004) former Three Degress lead singer, Sheila Ferguson hired Burning Vision Entertainment to create the ultimate disco music video to accompany the release of A New Kind Of Medicine' with mesmerising effect.

Most recently, Madonna has used disco themes in her latest album, Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005). Her single "Hung Up", notably samples ABBA's "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)".

Radio

Currently, most radio stations that play dance music or '70s-era music will play this music and related forms such as funk and Philadelphia soul at some point in their playlists; both major satellite radio companies also have disco music stations in their lineup. However, dance music stations in general are not known for having high ratings.

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Disco.

Sources

  • Michaels, Mark (1990). The Billboard Book of Rock Arranging. ISBN 0823075370.
  • Jones, Alan and Kantonen, Jussi (1999). Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco. Chicago, Illinois: A Cappella Books. ISBN 1556524110.
  • Brewster, Bill and Broughton, Frank (1999) Last Night a DJ Saved my Life: the History of the Disc Jockey Headline Book Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0747262306
  • Lawrence, Tim (2004). Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979 . Duke University Press. ISBN 0822331985.
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