1.Prologue
In this series on psychedelic music, I’ve examined how and why the hippie movement of the mid-to-late 60s was a predominantly white counterculture, centered in San Francisco, California. Many of the hippies had come from middle-class families, from parents who had put their own dreams and desires aside to put their nose to the grindstone and obtain their own piece of the American Dream. They began to rebel against their parents’ conservative views, materialism, and commercialism. They were swept up in the rebellious spirit of rock and roll music and sky-high under the influence of hallucinogens. The psychedelic rock that came out of the hippie movement would have long-lasting and wide-ranging effects on everything from mainstream pop (*3) to experimental music.
Psychedelic music came to prominence in the late 60s as a style that seeks to recreate—or enhance—the kind of hallucinatory experiences brought about by psychedelics. Because LSD was referred to as “acid", psychedelic rock is also known as “acid rock". (Famous acid rock bands include the Grateful Dead, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Cream.)
That being said, no matter how psychedelic rock got, it was still rock: popular music, which in the eyes of the average listener was more about lyrics and guitar riffs than some transcendent experience. Rock music was made by and for rebels and renegades. As a result, the effect of the live vocals and instrumentals of rock was not so much to spark psychedelic experiences within the listener as it was about conveying such experiences to audiences that wanted to rebel vicariously. That would change with disco in the 70s and nightclubs in the 80s, where the combination of electronic dance music, fashion, lighting, lasers, and atmosphere would give birth to spaces that would trigger direct psychedelic experiences in those who dared step out onto the dance floor.
Over the next several entries in this series, we will look at the different kinds of electronic dance music that stemmed out the psychedelic music that came out of the hippie movement in the late 60s. In this article I will cover disco music and a few other adjacent genres.
2.The Birth of Disco
Disco is short for discothèque—a nightclub for dancing to recorded music. Discothèques began as illegal underground clubs in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. The Nazis had banned jazz (and other American music) in France because of its connections to the black and Jewish communities of America, and as a result jazz became a kind of symbol of resistance. Having a band play live would have been conspicuous, to say the least, so instead, Paris nightclubs played jazz records. After the war, the scene evolved with discothèques like Whisky à Go-Go, which featured a dance floor with colored lights and turntables. Discos became exclusive spaces for fashionable adults.
Discothèques were imported to New York in the 60s, where they became an industry of expensive membership clubs. However, as older clientele increasingly chose to stay at home, the rise of rock and roll and the British Invasion meant that such exclusive spaces became less and less with the times. In the mid-sixties, they started to cater to a wider audience, who would take to the dance floor to partake in whatever dance trend was happening that week. By the late sixties, they had become havens for the counterculture—less a venue for dancing and more a circus-like atmosphere for high hippies to express themselves freely.
Following the Stonewall riots at the end of June 1969, the burnt out disco scene was revived in the early 70s as safe spaces for gay, black, and Hispanic members of the community. These minorities had largely been excluded from the white, middle-class counterculture movement of the second half of the 60s, and they were sorely in need of a place where they could dance without fear of harassment—or in the case of gay people, police action. Many of these began as informal house parties that were invitation-only in order to protect their attendees, who began to see the gatherings as their church. The parties were a place where hedonism, drugs, and free sex reigned, and disco music developed as a genre that was happy, sensual, groovy, and above all, made you want to get up and dance. One of the most popular disco tunes ever is Gloria Gaynor’s gay anthem, “I Will Survive".
In the early 70s, the music being played at discos was mostly soul music and Motown—black music considered to be precursors to disco. A song that many point to as the first true disco track is “Soul Makossa" by Cameroon saxophonist and singer Manu Dibango—who passed away at the end of March as a result of complications caused by COVID-19. The song features lyrics mostly written in a dialect from Cameroon, and is best known for the chanted vocal refrain “ma-ma-se, ma-ma-sa, ma-ma-ko-sa", which Michael Jackson later incorporated into “Wanna Be Startin’ Something" from his album Thriller.
“Soul Makossa" would set the template for disco music: dance beat, the repetition of catchy hooks and phrases, and a focus on groove rather than storytelling. Other essential elements of disco include psychedelic soul, funk, and the orchestral strings and brass of Philadelphia soul. Tunes were stretched out and extended to allow people to dance for longer than the standard 3-minute pop song. Side note, one of the quintessential Philadelphia soul songs that showcases the strings that would become a staple of disco is the O’Jays’ “Back Stabbers".
Disco would begin to break out into the mainstream consciousness with Van McCoy’s 1975 hit, “The Hustle".
●Disco Compilation Picks
3.Disco Goes Mainstream
Disco music has its roots in the psychedelic soul and funk of the late 60s and early 70s, which are genres that developed out of the psychedelic rock of the second half of the 60s. Yet the disco movement was championed by outsiders who had been excluded from the hippie movement to begin with.
In the early 70s, disco was a largely minority scene—gay, black, and Hispanic—found in New York and other cities, but as the decade wore on, they also became the place for young Baby Boomers who had for one reason or another missed the hippie train to let loose. They had sat on the sidelines, unwilling or unable to “turn on, tune in, and drop out" out of conventional society. The disco movement gave them the chance to taste the freedom their hippie peers had experienced for nothing more than some fancy clothes and the price admission to a disco club.
Disco, at first glance, appears to be an extension of the hippie movement in its embrace of drugs and sex. But whereas the hippie movement and rock music was earthy, dirty, and Edenic, disco was urban, glittery, and sophisticated. Instead of dressing down with tie-dye t-shirts and jeans, clubgoers dressed up with gaudy collared shirts and sequined trousers. At the disco, working-class whites could feel like kings.
Nowhere is this dream of upward mobility better encapsulated than in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta. The film was a huge commercial success, and its soundtrack, featuring songs by the Bee Gees, became one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time, and the only disco album to win a Grammy for Album of the Year. The Bee Gees made disco a mainstream phenomenon.
In the years that followed, the guitarist Nile Rodgers founded the disco/funk band Chic, which scored its biggest hit with the disco classic “Le Freak" in 1978. The Jackson 5 also began going in a more disco-oriented direction; Michael Jackson’s 1979 solo album Off the Wall is one of disco’s defining achievements. Funk musicians like James Brown and Earth, Wind & Fire also began producing disco tracks—Brown called himself “the original disco man", and Earth, Wind & Fire released the seminal “Boogie Wonderland" in 1979.
As disco fever swept up the nation, anti-disco sentiment began to build up among rock music fans—or in other words, white Americans who couldn’t dance. They considered the repetition boring, thought the sophisticated style was overkill, and saw the urban vibe as incredibly unhip. On July 12, 1979, local DJs in Chicago organized an anti-disco demonstration in the middle of a baseball doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers. At the climax of the event, a wooden crate filled with disco records was blown up in the middle of the field, causing spectators to flood the field and cause a riot. That is considered the day that disco died. Its popularity would fade rapidly in the ensuing months.
●Disco Picks From the Late 70s
4.Euro Disco and Eurobeat
In the mid 70s, Europe was growing its own disco scene, which fused the sound of French and Italian pop with influences from jazz, rock, soul, funk, and early disco records imported from the U.S.
One of the central figures in what came to be called Euro disco was the Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder, who was then based in Munich, Germany. Moroder used a drum machine to simplify complex funk beats to a four-on-the-floor rhythm, and used synthesizers rather than live instruments to create his electronic sounds. During this era he produced singles for Donna Summer, like “I Feel Love", which not only became classics of the disco scene, but laid the groundwork for house music to rise from the ashes of disco in the 80s.
The biggest and most commercially successful act to come out of the Euro disco scene was ABBA. The Swedish foursome had a succession of hits in the mid-to-late 70s, including “Waterloo" (1974), “Dancing Queen (1976), and “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" (1979). Madonna borrowed the latter’s hook for her 2005 global smash “Hung Up", which was part of a disco revival in the 2000s.
Even after disco died in the U.S. at the end of the 70s, Euro disco continued to evolve and be popular in many parts of the world. In the 80s, Italo disco—featuring Italian singers singing in heavily accented English—became so popular that it became synonymous with Euro disco. The term Euro disco was also applied to all dance pop acts coming from countries other than the U.S., like Bananarama and the Pet Shop Boys from the U.K., and even Kylie Minogue from Australia.
Meanwhile, high energy Italo disco began to overtake Japanese dance floors in the mid-80s, and record companies like Avex—which got its start as a record importer—rebranded the sound as “Eurobeat". At the time, Tokyo discos like Juliana’s Tokyo and Maharaja were at their peak, and Japan even had its own dances, like the Para Para dance. By the end of the 80s, Eurobeat was more popular in Japan than in Europe itself, and Italian producers began producing Eurobeat tracks specifically for the Japanese market.
Around this time, Avex head Max Matsuura started releasing Eurobeat compilation albums to further establish Eurobeat in the Japanese music market. He teamed up with producer Komuro Tetsuya, and with acts like TRF, Amuro Namie, and Hamasaki Ayumi, Avex would rule the J-Pop scene in the 90s.
●Eurobeat Albums Picks
5.How Kraftwerk and YMO Created Synthpop and Electro
Around the same time that disco scenes were growing in both the U.S. and across Europe, another electronic music scene was developing—one centered on musicians playing synthesizers and other electronic instruments live. Two pioneering acts in this genre were the German band Kraftwerk and the Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra.
Kraftwerk is a German band formed in Dusseldorf in 1970. They began as part of West Germany’s experimental krautrock scene before embracing synthesizers, drum machines, vocoders, and other electronic instrumentation around the mid-70s. The group’s sound is characterized by pop melodies, sparse arrangements, and repetitive rhythms—which would inspire techno music in the 80s. The members also began wearing matching suits and maintaining an aura of mystery around their personas. Their “robot pop" aesthetic would be integral in spawning groups like The Prodigy and Daft Punk in the 90s.
Yellow Magic Orchestra, or YMO, debuted in Japan in 1978. They were the product of a wide range of influences, including Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder and Euro disco, funk music, Japanese traditional music, arcade games, and more. Their 1978 track “Computer Game” sold 400,000 copies in the U.S., and broke the Top 20 in the U.K., making them one of a handful of Japanese music acts to achieve a degree of success overseas. YMO continued to develop their sound by incorporating the latest technology—synthesizers, samplers, sequencers, drum machines—which culminated in their most celebrated album, Solid State Survivor (1979). The single “Behind the Mask” became an international hit, and was covered by musicians like Eric Clapton and Michael Jackson. Jackson tweaked the lyrics, added a melody, and intended to put it on Thriller, but negotiations with YMO’s management would break down and the song would not be released until after Jackson’s death.
Groups like Kraftwerk and YMO would also inspire the more funk-influenced genre of electro. One of the biggest champions of electro in the 80s was the jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, and the sound would reach its commercial peak with “Rockit". In the late 80s Electro artists would forge a harder-edged sound, incorporating rock samples and merging with old school hip hop, paving the way for groups like Run D.M.C.
Early synthpop acts would also inspire the 80s new wave scene in the U.K. New wave is rooted in a punk rock aesthetic, but instead of “old" styles like blues and rock and roll, it sought to update the sound by embracing disco and electronic music. Some of the best known new wave acts and songs include Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film" (1981), the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me" (1981), and the Eurhythmics’ “Sweet Dreams" (1983). New wave is sometimes called “techno pop" in Japan.
The popularity of electro and new wave was boosted by airplay on MTV in the U.S., which paved the way for electronic dance music to make inroads in the American market from the 90s onwards.
●Synthpop Picks
6.Epilogue
Why did disco remain popular in Europe and Japan throughout the 80s and into the 90s, while in the U.S. it was effectively dead by the end of 1979?
Rock and roll-loving white Americans derided disco music as empty, artificial, and commercial. Perhaps for those who lacked rhythm, part of their disdain stemmed from an inferiority complex. They likely also couldn’t stand that there were sacred spaces that they were essentially forbidden from entering. Killing disco was the only way to demonstrate the right of rock to rule. As we’ve looked at in this series, most, if not all of American pop music is black music filtered and rearranged to suit white audiences. So while dance music has enjoyed the occasional crossover hit, it would be a long time before it would be accepted into the mainstream. In fact, as we will see in upcoming entries, that would only occur after dance and club culture was re-imported into the U.S. from the U.K.
Meanwhile, in Europe, working-class audiences don’t have the same aversion to black music that American audiences did. As we’ve seen, British audiences tend to have a fascination with the exotic—the alien. As for the rest of Europe, Giorgio Moroder and other producers and DJ’s developed a simpler, cleaner sound to suit European tastes. What’s more, orchestral instrumentation made disco an easy fit for classical music-loving European audiences. Finally, perhaps the dance floor was a place of healing, a place for people to come together—a neutral zone Europe sorely needed after World War II.
In Japan, audiences tend not to differentiate between “white” music and “black” music. If anything, as we saw in MUSIC & PARTIES #022, many Japanese people feel an affinity for black music. The comedian Shimura Ken was an ardent fan of soul music. The comedy band Busy Four became famous for impressions of acts like Earth, Wind & Fire. And the Japanese doo-wop group the Chanels (later renamed Rats & Star) clearly wanted to be black. (The conversation around the Busy Four and the Chanels is complicated by their use of blackface in the 80s and 90s, which is a topic that deserves more careful consideration on a separate occasion.) The urban sophistication of disco was also a perfect compliment to the City Pop scene of the late 70s, which often incorporated disco beats. For many Japanese urban dwellers at the time, disco cassettes provided the perfect soundtrack for a drive. Finally, record companies like Avex would tailor a gaudy, relentlessly upbeat sound specifically to entice the Japanese masses.
In my next entry, we will cover house and techno music, which would rise from the ashes of disco like a phoenix.
