1.Prologue
Disco was born in the early 70s, reached its peak in the late 70s, and died by the end of the decade.
On July 12th, 1979, a promotional event called Disco Demolition Night was held at a baseball doubleheader in Chicago between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. The event was essentially an anti-disco demonstration organized by local rock radio disc jockeys. In between the first and second games, boxes filled with disco records were brought out onto centerfield and blown up. Invigorated, thousands of attendees stormed onto the field and caused a riot. In the end, 39 participants were arrested for disorderly conduct, and the field was so torn up that the second game was postponed, and later forfeited.
The disco scene in the U.S. was born in the early 70s when a hippie New York DJ named David Mancuso started holding invitation-only house parties catering to the local gay community. His club, called the Loft, would become the stuff of legend, and Mancuso would play an important role in elevating the image of the DJ from a disc jockey who took requests an played records to an artist who manipulated the atmosphere of a space with the music they chose to play.
The Loft was frequented by gay, black, and Hispanic attendees, that is to say, minorities and outsiders. Among them were the people who would become the pioneering DJs of house: Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Francois K, David Morales, and more.
Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles would begin to DJ together at gay discos around New York in the early 70s. Later in the decade, Knuckles would move to Chicago to become a resident at a new nightclub called the Warehouse, where he would lay the foundations of Chicago house music. Levan would remain in New York and become a resident at the Paradise Garage, and forge a style that would come to be known as garage house music. Meanwhile, three teens from Detroit—Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson would drive to Chicago to see Knuckles in action, and leave inspired. They would go on to develop a more industrial style that came to be known as Detroit techno.
The transition period between disco and house/techno is captured in the 1998 film 54. It centers on the legendary Manhattan disco Studio 54, which was frequented by a who’s who of musicians and celebrities of the day. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Boogie Nights captures the dark side of the L.A. porn industry right around the same time.
In this article we will look at how Chicago house, Detroit techno, and New York garage rose from the ashes of disco in the 80s.
2.The Warehouse and the Birth of Chicago House
While the disco craze was effectively destroyed in the middle of a baseball field in Chicago, disco music would actually continue to enjoy popularity on select radio stations and in the underground clubbing scene. In Chicago, in turns out, disco never really died—it just evolved into house music.
Disco’s evolution into house music was partly facilitated by the development of Euro disco by the Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder. Moroder used drum machines (*16) to simplify complex funk beats into a four-on-the-floor rhythm that would become the basis for the majority of dance music that followed. Instead of using live strings and brass instruments like American disco, Moroder mainly used synthesizers to produce his music. His work with American singer Donna Summer was internationally successful, as well as enormously influential on the development of house music. Many consider their song “I Feel Love" to be a proto-house track.
At the beginning of the 80s, the end of the disco craze meant that DJs no longer had a steady stream of new disco tunes to replenish their record boxes. DJs like Frankie Knuckles started to use reel-to-reel recorders to edit Italo disco, synthpop, and electro tunes to be more dance floor-friendly, adding additional electronic instrumentation like drum machines, and essentially doing the kind of work that is now called remixing. With Knuckles and the Warehouse at the center of the scene, other DJs would also start holding their own regular parties around the city, developing new techniques and cultivating the house music sound, pushing each other to be more creative and ingenious.
House music, in essence, takes the elements of disco that rock and roll adherents had hated—synthesizers and other electronic instrumentation, the repetition of phrases and motifs, the hypersexual aesthetic—and doubled down on them. In the process, they created a safe haven for the outsiders of society, a church for gay attendees that did not feel accepted among their own communities. Knuckles’ DJ sets became an almost religious experience, and aided by the use of drugs, the dance floor offered a path to a kind of enlightenment.
Eventually, music producers began making new music to satiate the neverending crave that DJs had for new music. One DJ/producer that made a name for himself was the Chicago-born Jesse Saunders. As a teenager, he had been taken by Knuckles’ DJ sets and inspired to become a DJ himself. Saunders opened a nightclub called the Playground in 1982, which would grow so popular that it would eclipse the Warehouse; clubgoers flocked to see Saunders play sets peppered with his own original productions. In the mid 80s, the house records coming out of Chicago would spread around the U.S. and across the Atlantic to Europe.
Around 1987, Chicago house producers began incorporating the sound of “acid" (LSD) into their tracks. The culprit was the Roland TB-303, a bass synthesizer that the Japanese company had developed to compliment its drum machine, the TR-606. Originally meant for guitarists, the synth was discontinued after poor sales; Chicago house producers dug it up and began experimenting, eventually producing the warped, otherworldly bass sound that would come to define acid house tracks. (The name “acid" comes from the fact that the bass sound reminded the producers of psychedelic rock.) The first acid house track is said to be “Acid Tracks", released by Phuture in 1987. More and more Chicago house records made their way over to Europe, setting the scene for the rise of acid house in the U.K. at the end of the 80s.
In the late 80s, the Chicago police began to crack down on parties, and the local house scene began to wane. Frankie Knuckles moved back to New York, while other Chicago DJs went over to Europe, where the house music scene was starting to develop a passionate following.
●Chicago House Picks
3.The Belleville Three and Detroit Techno
Over in Detroit, about a 4.5, 5-hour drive from Chicago, Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson would develop a distinct style of electronic dance music that came to be called Detroit techno. Atkins, May, and Saunderson grew up not in Detroit’s ghettos but in a suburban neighborhood called Belleville. They led middle-class lives, thanks to the stable employment that had been provided by the local automobile industry—although by the time they were born the industry was in a steep decline.
Owing to their middle-class roots, the Belleville three had eclectic taste in music, taking a liking to music groups like Kraftwerk and YMO. When it came to black music, they found themselves more drawn to the sci-fi mysticism of funk musicians like Bootsy Collins and George Clinton.
These influences would play a significant role in shaping the sound of Detroit techno. While the sound would be rooted in disco music—not the orchestral sounds of American disco, but the synths and drum machines of Euro disco—the Belleville three would infuse the light dance music aesthetic with intellectualism and futurism. To put it more plainly, Atkins, May, and Saunderson were Europhiles.
By the 80s, the city of Detroit had become a shadow of its former self. Working-class whites had moved to the suburbs, and most of central Detroit had either become a ghetto or a ghost town. The stripped down, instrumental-centric sound of Detroit techno reflects the environment that the Belleville three had grown up in. At the same time, you can see why they would be drawn to the streamlined digital beauty of bands like Kraftwerk and YMO, which represented the antithesis to the run-down cityscapes of Detroit. Despite being centered on drum machines and other electronic instrumentation, their music reflects an ambivalent attitude toward industrialization and mechanization.
Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that fully embracing the technology—not as mere tools to create music but weapons to inspire crowds—would allow them to transcend their dystopian environment. This philosophy was taken even further by the second generation of Detroit techno DJs—visionaries like Carl Craig and Jeff Mills. Craig and Mills would double down on the mechanical, industrial techno aesthetic, and embrace sci-fi themes even more overtly. Craig would launch a label called Planet E. Mills would produce music inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon.
The British-Canadian DJ Richie Hawtin would further strip down techno music of superfluous elements and reduce it to the most basic, primitive elements necessary to get people to dance. That was partly the influence of Hawtin’s father, who worked as a technician for General Motors and was a fan of electronic music, and had introduced his son to Kraftwerk at a young age. Hawtin would begin DJing at nightclubs around Detroit around the age of 17, and go on to become a champion of minimal techno in the 90s.
Here I’d like to take a moment to review the main differences between Chicago house and Detroit techno. While Chicago house heavily incorporates the kind of soulful vocals found in disco and gospel, Detroit techno is largely instrumental. While Chicago house is in essence disco music played to a four-on-the-four beat, techno is more focused on the groove. While the Chicago house scene was a hedonistic world where drug use was rampant, the Belleville three took a more intellectual approach to the music. Finally, the Chicago house scene was supported by the gay community, while Detroit techno was largely a “straight" scene.
●Detroit Techno Picks
4.Paradise Garage and Garage House
While Frankie Knuckles was pioneering Chicago House and the Belleville three were developing Detroit techno, a deeper house sound influenced by R&B, soul music, and gospel was being cultivated in New York. After the disco craze had faded, private underground parties became the heart of the scene—safe havens for gays, black, and Hispanics to let loose, partake in drugs, and enjoy sex. Those clubs and parties essentially played the role of church for the outsiders who frequented them.
At the center of the scene was the disc jockey David Mancuso, known as “the father of disco". The Loft became the stuff of legend, and his ear for music would turn the DJ into a kind of wizard who manipulated the atmosphere of a space at will. However, Mancuso himself would eventually settle on a style where he would play out each track in full, rather than mix them seamlessly.
Larry Levan would be the first to realize the full potential of the DJ/nightclub combination. As resident DJ at the Paradise Garage, he would attain a deity-like status; his “followers" would refer to his sets as “Saturday mass", and Paradise Garage as “our church". Through his ear for music and his skills behind the decks, Levan became a Shaman of sorts, creating spiritual experiences for those out on the dance floor. He was also very particular about sound, and would spend much of his time tweaking and repositioning the soundsystem (Larry Levan even developed a special subwoofer known as the Levan Horn) to create the most immersive experience possible. He turned house music from something to be listened to with your ears to something to be felt with your entire body. That, in essence, is garage house.
Of the three schools of electronic dance music I’ve covered in this article, Detroit techno was the most machine-like and industrial of the three, while garage house, with its R&B and soul influences, was the deepest and warmest. For garage house DJs and producers, samplers and drum machines were not so much instruments as they were tools for recreating the orchestral instrumentation of disco on a budget. Chicago house lies somewhere in between the two.
There are several other DJs from the New York garage house scene that need to be mentioned: Junior Vasquez, David Morales, and Danny Tenaglia. All three were inspired by witnessing Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage.
Junior Vasquez became famous for playing obscure samples and his innovative remixing, and quickly rose to the top of the New York club scene. In 1989 he cofounded the Sound Factory in Manhattan, a legendary club that would be frequented by the era’s biggest stars. One of its regular VIPs was none other than Madonna, who would ask Vasquez to remix a number of her songs until they had a falling out when Vasquez used a samples of a voice message she had left him on a track without her permission.
David Morales also became renowned for his exceptional skills as a remixer. Throughout the late 80s and 90s, he would remix and produce tracks for acts like Seal, Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Eric Clapton, U2, Whitney Houston, and Bjork. In 1998, Morales won a Grammy Award for Remixer of the Year. Morales would also team up with Frankie Knuckles to form the production team Def Mix Productions.¥
Danny Tenaglia took note of the crowded New York DJ scene and decided to move to Florida in 1985. There, he became a resident at a Miami club and honed his skills and his style, mixing garage house and Chicago house, Kraftwerk and other synthpop, and samba and other Latin rhythms. His hard-driving style would form the basis for a subgenre called tribal house. Later he would return to New York, where he would become a resident of Twilo—which opened at the same location as the former Sound Factory—alongside Junior Vasquez. Tenaglia and Vasquez would become the two biggest DJs in New York.
Another important DJ that deserves mention is Tomiie Satoshi. He took up DJing and producing when house music records started to be imported into Japan in the 80s. While he was still a student at Waseda University, a demo tape he had made caught the ear of Frankie Knuckles, and he would subsequently make his record debut from Def Mix Productions with the singles “Tears". He would go on to team up with David Morales on remixes for big names like Mariah Carey and U2, all the while continuing to hone his skills as a globe-trotting DJ.
5.Epilogue
One interesting commonality between the three scenes I’ve covered in this article is that each was led by one or several figureheads. Each of these figures went on to become the first generation of superstar DJs.
Before the advent of house music, DJs were disc jockeys, whose job it was to take requests and play records on the radio or at parties and other events. At a rock concert, the spotlight is always on the band on stage, and especially charismatic frontmen and guitarists become revered as rockstars At a disco or at a nightclub, it is the audience on the dance floor that is lit up, and each and every person is at the center of the experience. Meanwhile, the DJ is relegated to a dark corner of the venue, an anonymous figure there to do your bidding.
As the underground house music scene developed, clubs and parties became more than a dance floor—they became an almost sacred space like church. The DJ became revered like a god—someone that would mix together the tracks that they saw fit in order to take their audiences on a journey. As it was their taste and skills that would shape the atmosphere on the dance floor, they were true creators, not in the modern sense (these days everybody who designs and produces content calls themself a “creator", or a “creative") but in the biblical sense. All of the DJs I’ve mentioned in the article fall into that exclusive group. People sometimes refer to church as the House of God; perhaps the house in house music comes not from the Warehouse, but from its power to heal, inspire, and enlighten.
Next time we will look at how Chicago house, Detroit techno, and New York garage inspired the acid house and rave scenes in the U.K. during the late 80s and early 90s.
