Disco
Disco originally comes out of a mix of soul, funk, psychedelic soul & rock and Philly soul music. “Mix” is the operative word because it is not a band mixing the styles and genres but rather a DJ with a multiple turntable setup and a library of rare dance records of separate genres of funk, soul, pop, salsa, rock, and psychedelia of the late 60s and early 70s.
The term is derived from the French word discotheque for a library of phonograph records which was then used as a short-term for the dance clubs in France and later Germany and the UK and the rest of post-WWII Europe.
Discothèques in occupied France featured dance-friendly music such as swing jazz, urban blues, and boogie-woogie in the 1940s. During the Nazi occupation, the “discos” had to operate underground, much like the “speakeasies” of the 30s during Americas’ alcohol prohibition period. The clubs had to be underground and secret due to the Nazi oppression and hatred of African Americans (many of who were jazz musicians) and Jewish Americans (many of whom were jazz music executives).
The term then was used in America for dance clubs in NY and Phillie of African American, Latin, Italian, and homosexual communities as well as a growing urban psychedelic community in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Then in 1974, the term was used to describe the “music” being played is discotheques which had become a genre on to its own rather than a mix of different genres. There are rough parallels between France under occupation by the Nazis and the early 1970s “disco” crowd, in terms of the music being a response to oppression and tyranny.
Disco Characteristics
First, disco in its early period became music that was created by and played for people, who were in large part considered to be “the fringe” of society, namely homosexuals (LGBT), minorities (black & Latino people) and women. Up until the early 1970s, these groups as a collective had been discriminated against by mainstream America but because of the changes of the 60s, they began to have a more vocal input in American society. There was a coming of age, a rise up, or even a backlash against the old norms of society including racism, sexism, and homophobia.
Second is that due to the economic downturn and instability in social justices in the early 1970s, people were looking for an “escape”. Disco music and the rise of the club scene was a way to combat the harsh realities of life in early seventies fringe America. Disco would spark the beginning of modern dance music which would continue to dominate the Billboard charts and would have a vast number of fans worldwide.
Music in the wake of the 60s
The 60s saw the rise of the protest songs coming out of the folk-rock music movement of the mid-sixties. Then came psychedelic rock, and in particular, psychedelic soul and hardcore funk, which also, like folk rock, pursued awareness and consciousness of civil rights, women’s rights, peace movements and gay rights. The 60s saw the rise of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements and in 1969, the Stonewall Inn riots are considered by many as the start of the gay rights movement.
Funk music grew out of soul and psychedelic soul and crossed-over and mixed with psychedelic rock and blues rock making funk rock. Funk music is an aggressive, band-oriented music similar to rock music but with a more dance-oriented influence. The lyrics of funk music were frank like folk music which could get downright explicit and aggressive. Much of the lyrical content was expressed freedom (of speech), social injustice, anti-racism, anti-war (Vietnam conflict) and the general questioning of the old mores.
Disco, like funk music, also was an expression of freedom though not as politically aggressive as funk. Disco celebrated freedoms of alternate lifestyles, philosophy, and just freedom of expression (just like glam-rock was doing in the early 70s) which had the common message of love. After the disillusionment of the late sixties, with all the changes, the turmoil, the unrest and the economic downturn, people were in search of an escape, especially people in the urban cities like Philly New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and DC.
Along with the music of the 60s and a direct influence from psychedelic music, was the experimentation with all sorts of drugs. Like many other popular genres, there was always a dark side with the problems with alcohol and associated drugs and disco was not immune to it. In the beginning, most of these drugs were hallucinogenic like marijuana and LSD (acid) and also amphetamines like “poppers”, “uppers” and then later the preferred disco drug was cocaine.
Previous popular dance styles and music
Dance music as a term has been used to refer to a large range of a different kind of dance music. There are various kinds of “stomps” and “swings” in country & western music that was considered “dance music”. In jazz, the dance music of the 20s to the 40s was swing jazz which was referred to as simply dance music throughout the early decades of the 20th century.
This usually involved an audience of paired men and women who danced to the sounds of big bands. In the early part of the 20th century, the bands were unamplified and the acoustic sound needed big bands and multiple instruments to be heard loud enough for a mass of dancers. Then after WWII, the new amplified realm of R&B music, which started out as a form of dance music as well as much of 50’s rock & roll, was considered dance music.
In the early-mid 60s Motown soul, a new fast tempo of music that grew out of a mix of gospel and R&B, took over the charts with the new British invasion of blues and upbeat and often crossover rock & roll. Soul and rock crossed over and mixed with the psychedelic movements of rock to make “psychedelic soul”.
Funk music took over the pop dance music of the day in the early 1970s and “funkified” almost all of the pop music of the day and other genres like light rock, funk rock, country rock, prog rock and mainstream rock. All of a sudden, modern music is influenced by the funk movement in 1970, just notice how the bass guitar is more prominent and is funkier in pop music than before.
Disco’s rhythm generally is faster than funk and soul tempos. In the beginning, the tempos were mostly between 110 to 130 beats per minutes, but as disco progressed the tempos increased to speeds well past 130 to 150 or more in dance genres like Hi-NRG, House, Techno and other sub-genres of Electronica. Disco also has what is called a “four on the floor” rhythm.
“Four-on-the-Floor”
Most current dance music has a persistent four on the flour structure, in common time of four-four; each beat gets an equal stress to it as “One, Two, Three, Four” usually a bass drum being hit on each pulse. Add to the four-on-the-floor bass-drum beat, a backbeat on the snare drum on the Two and the Four of each bar. Next, most dance beats incorporate an 8th note or 16th note syncopations or off-beat open hi-hat rhythms like (one) and, (two) and, (three) and, (four) and; and you have a strong beat for dancing.
The beat gets to you with its persistent pulse and after a while, if you let yourself go, you are moving along with the pulse of the song. Dancing seems to be as old as music itself. Dancing can be done without music, but with music, in particular with the beat, is where people commonly are inspired to dance. Music and dance can become esoteric and can conjure up trances or channeling. Music holds the secrets to transcendence in many ways.
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