disco as a white cultural phenomenon and bastardization of the Black dance music of the period is kinda wack, but there were good performers among the many shitty ones
I prefer funk to disco for that reason but I still don't get why disco got such a bad rap.
because it's not great music, and it's more like the 1970s equivalent of rockabilly... which, i guess, whatever floats your boat
Totally disagree with this lazy take. Just because white people enjoyed the music doesn’t mean they bastardized it. Yeah capitalism tries to make most music shit, but disco actually united groups and tropes like this one were used to take it down.
This is the same energy as criticizing BLM protesters for having too many white people.
yes, from the start, disco was a late-coming commercialized and watered down version of funk & soul/r&b & electronic music which for a period each of these genres in the early 1970s actually did have real subaltern value & countercultural richness. But then disco became this white urban lifestyle identifier. Donna Summer may have had some of the hugest hits, but it was fucking John Travolta and the Bee Gees who ended up embodying the Zeitgeist.
Hell, even the lead singer of Village People tried to say afterward that he was never gay & never liked the way his music was cherished in these communities.
And I am no outright fan of Frank Zappa, I think a lot of his music is unbearable, but the guy had a lot of interesting things to say. And I agree with F. Z. that the genre was always prepackaged in this anodyne & overly palatable way.
"Disco music makes it possible to have disco entertainment centers. Disco entertainment centers make it possible for mellow, laid-back, boring kinds of people to meet each other and reproduce. People who think of themselves as young moderns, upwardly mobile, go for the fusion or disco – that slick, cleaned-up, precise, mechanical kind of music. And they tend to dislike everything else because it doesn't have its hair combed. Three-chord fuzztone music is not exactly the kind of thing that you'd expect a young executive to be interested in. He wants something that sounds like it might be really good to listen to riding around in a Maserati. So ultimately, that cheapens the music and whatever the musicians have done. ... But like I said, it's a good thing that all that music is there for all those people. Because without it, their lifestyle would lack something"
I know it's contradictory when the mfer built his shitty "rocker" career &lifestyle around rocker entertainment centers & young moderns in the 1960s, but at least he takes the time to seethe about not being famous anymore.
BLM and disco could not be further from the same thing lol, you made that comparison, not me.
Yes their were white people in the space. If you enjoy the genre you’re not listening to a lot of white artists. Any genre black people created white people then bit off it and continue you to do so. There’s a fair critique to be made about cultural appropriation in disco, but that doesn’t define it as a genre. Especially considering disco was the birthplace of hip hop.
It’s music that makes you dance. So the fact it appealed to discotheques, places where people could dance is the whole point. You can call any genre watered down from jazz. And because it’s easy to dance to and makes you feel good it’s easy to commercialize. Not the most surprising thing. That also doesn’t take away it’s counterculture voice.
If instead of “watered down” you framed it as “blends” you start to realize the genius simplicity of the art form. The aesthetic alone is one of the coolest to date. Using a lot 60s psychedelia with more flat designs of the 70s. Bright colors, nature, peace and love. Dance, sing, and enjoy life.
Disco entertainment centers make it possible for mellow, laid-back, boring kinds of people to meet each other and reproduce.
Just a trash take on a whole genre of music that made people less boring and feel more free to be themselves.
BLM and disco could not be further from the same thing lol, you made that comparison, not me
Not a comparison. Similar energy of saying because white people are in the space it’s not lead by black people.
Yeah, the roots of disco are all actually firmly planted and rich organic musical traditions, but disco itself is trash... sorry
I didn't say that disco sucked because of white people, I said that disco was the way that comfortable normie Yuppie white people approached Black musical & popular culture... it's not even a "blend", it's just uninspired tripe
There were always gay clubs & dance halls & roller rinks that played these funk tracks & encouraged a form of DJing that was always evolving, but that's not really what disco became in the Saturday Night Fever craze. That's why Black artists had to reclaim and revive their own more organic forms of expression with hip hop & breakbeat and other sorts of musical traditions outside of mayo Yuppie leisure suits & Studio 54 spotlight. ABBA was okay, I didn't say the music was bad because it's somewhat dance-able, I said it was bad because it's not making funk music any better, it's just making rock music worse.
You know that Studio 54 was the elitist & exclusive representation of 1970s Disco debauchery and decadence and class disparity, right? You seem to like the aesthetic, but it sounds more like you just want to be accepted in the cultural milieu
Hahaha yeah that’s it. I want to be accepted by a cultural milieu from a genre that most people don’t look back on fondly.
Gatekeeping music is highly irritating. I don’t really care if you don’t like it. Just don’t claim it’s because you have some superior understanding of the music or culture. Yuppies liked it therefor I can’t. Imagine approaching your life like that. Hella weird.
You sound like the white moms who complain about their kids listening to hip hop because they’re talking about violence. Except it’s rich white people also listened to disco so now the artist who made the music are bad.
When we’re talking about disco in 2020 it has so many branches like most genres of music. Contemporarily you would be cutting out future funk, French house. Disco House and most vaporwave genres (including labourwave). Disco continues to influence all of them and in quite a significant way.
The only reason it died is because of racism. Burning the disco records (which were actually any record from a black artist) the constant barrage of the Disco Sucks campaigns, calling into radio stations to complain about disco music was lead by young white men to continued the long American tradition of finding any way to hate black people.
You could say that about every single genre. Doesn’t make it historically accurate.
that's not true. certain genres of music are spontaneous & truly syncretic & dynamic and influential whereas disco just has John Travolta lol... I am not saying that electronic music would be better without going through an embarrassing disco stage, but it should come as a surprise to no one that DJs from Chicago and Detroit and NY & UK who were fed up with the way disco music was perverted, then evolved house, which isn't disco... because the pop element is mostly removed and independent innovative artists emerged
Hahahaha you don’t know anything about disco but what you have been spoon fed.
“Hip hop sucks. All it offers is Lil John.”That’s you
but there were good performers
Also you. At least stick with one coherent understanding of the genre.
Part of the genre is commercialized therefore the whole thing is commercialized.
you're not just gonna both sides the debate about disco music's sudden and total implosion... there are reasons that the genre as a pop cultural cornerstone bottomed out, and same with punk music I would argue, and part of that is because it wasn't something that big labels and corporations merely acquired and opportunistically latched onto, these entities literally invented and tailored it for consumption.
rap and hip hop on the other hand have always been an organic bottom-up artistic tradition that, while largely commercialized and subsumed within corporate consumerist tastemaking, can't functionally ever be rid of its very real & genuine connection to Black experience. disco never had anything to do with real life experience, or like... anything?
Let’s just look at the names of some of the most famous disco songs and think about how well these things “sell you shit.”
- We Are Family
- It’s Raining Men
- Boogie Wonderland
- It’s Your Thing
- Workin Day and Night
- Last Dance
- Shake Your Groove Thing
- Stomp!
- I Love Music
- Disco Inferno
It’s pure dance music. Does that also make it easier to commercialize it, yes? Remember the song “For the Love of Money” by the O’Jays? The opening to the apprentice. What does that song actually say? All the shitty things people do for greed. “The root of all evil.” Kinda ironic huh? What about another O’Jays song “Love Train” telling people to start a love train all around the world. Then used by capitalists to sell us a shitty beer. But let’s blame the artists for their music being bastardized by capitalists?
For the Love of Money is soul/funk and so is Love Train
It's Your Thing is funk
Stomp! is decidedly after disco, and It's Raining Men is mostly after disco too...
And I Love Music is very much a funk song, and imo sounds like some 1960s showtune with the string part. I am being real here, but there's a reason that the disco backlash was so major across genres.
Michael Jackson is the artist who pretty much single-handedly brought America out of the dreary times and replaced disco
All of those songs played at discotheques across the world throughout the 70s early 80s. If you want to create your own idea of what fits in a genre that’s fine, but it doesn’t fit the lived reality to the music people were calling disco at the time nor what what people call disco today.
It's Your Thing was around before anyone was calling anything "disco music"
Let me point out this one song on your list that isn’t quite disco. Okay...
Okay great. five songs we can agree are some of the biggest disco hits that also don’t appeal strictly to white people and aren’t hyperconsumer driven and by artists that have whole catalogues of similar songs.
No, actually I said that 7 of the 10 songs you posted weren't really Disco, which leaves a few of some of the worst fucking songs of the 70s.
Are you gonna tell me about how great KC and The Sunshine Band is?
Oh now it’s 7. You just make it up as you go along. We are family. What an awful song. Your idea of what music fits inside the genre doesn’t fit with anyone else’s view. Here’s the playlist for an intro to disco created by the database of all genres. https://open.spotify.com/user/particleintroductor/playlist/6lEMZsAwYzwFiwjdelr5ds?si=5ioZxfaPTtSiTLc7lIQP2g . I can see why you dislike disco because you’ve decided you didn’t like it and then any music that others call disco that you do like you refute it as not. Kinda odd don’t ya think?
I didn't say We Are Family was an awful song, but I would argue it's more of an R&B tune made in the disco era. Hot Stuff had it beat in the charts lol, and Hot Stuff is groovy but c'mon man, it's a cheesy song & always used for goofy montages in movies
Here we go more redefining what music fits in the genre. You check out that playlist or any playlist that mentions disco so you can have a better understanding of your disconnect with the genre?
So we’re gonna totally forget the origins of hip hop were disco tracks? This music had nothing to do with the experience of black people, but the genres that were birthed from it were?
Hip hop has not always been about the experience of black people nor is it now. One could argue it’s a tool for capitalists to paint a vivid picture of black culture that is inherently not palatable to white people in order to embolden racism. But once again it’s a whole genre of music. Painting it with wide strokes to encapsulate all the different fine strokes of the genre will never give a full understanding.
If you look at most the hip hop songs people listen to today it’s telling you to buy something so others will like you or take some drugs to make yourself feel better. And they’re even “killing” hip hop as we speak by making it a fusion genre. So eventually hip hop will die as well and something else will become the popular music. This is how genres work.
yes, it does make it historically accurate. it's the same sort of critique people give of KPOP...
whether or not you identify with or love the aesthetic or listen to it, could KPOP exist without the brutal and overtly hypercapitalistic formula and pressures of the big labels? doubtful
Young white cis men killed disco and did it large part because of racism and homophobia. That’s historically accurate. Disco becoming more commercial the more popular it was is the life cycle of all genres.
Disco did not start off as a hypercapitalistic genre nor did it ever become one. That’s historically inaccurate. If it was such a cash machine it would’ve had a longer run.
Disco was only accessible because of the mass commercial popularization in the suburbs through associated movies and dance crazes etc. Van McCoy's probably great, but like "The Hustle" is not really the best shit imo you know?
How it got into white people’s space does not define the genre. Hope we don’t think slim shady represents all of hip hop.
slim shady was actually talented in his own way and had somewhat of an interesting story
I would argue the point you attempted to make about Slim Shady was irrelevant
White artists or songs that white people like in the genre does not define the genre, that’s the point.
yes, actually Saturday Night Fever and BeeGees define the genre LMFAO
Exactly, you don’t know shit about the genre except what you’ve been spoon fed.
Who? You? It’s a popular movie that included the genre. What’s popular does not define the genre.
Hahaha says the person who doesn’t know what music is apart of the genre.
I love that disco is making a come back. It never should have left.