Fifty years ago, I heard the future in a disco. It wasn't a psychic experience; it was the mixing of African-American, Latinx and LGBT communities that changed what the world was listening to forever. With "Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution" PBS provides a vibrant three-part documentary on the history of disco that is entertaining, thoughtful and at times poignant.
From the beginning of "Episode 1: Rock the Boat" you know you're in for something special. The episode makes a nod toward the hippie era with swelling strains of the Fifth Dimension's "Aquarius" as well as chronicling the events surrounding the Stonewall Riots with some of the headlines from the New York press ("Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees are Stinging Mad," New York Daily News July 6, 1969).
Lofty
What is easy to miss, and what "Rock the Boat" makes clear, is that the roots of disco are inexorably bound up in the cultural changes that occurred after Stonewall. DJ David Mancuso's "Love Saves The Day" party happened on February 14, 1970 at The Loft on 645-657 Broadway, a scant eight months after the riot.
Archival footage has the late Mancuso discussing the space and the parties as well as Mancuso's sound engineer Alex Rosner and Vince Aletti, the Rolling Stone and Village Voice journalist who first made me aware of disco in New York in the early 1970s. From the beginning the audience was a rich mixture. Describing the loft in the Village Voice in 1975, Aletti wrote, "The crowd was a rich mix of classes, colors and sexual tastes with two key things in common: they were hard-core dancers and they were utterly devoted to the Loft."
The music at the Loft and clubs like it did something that no amount of consciousness raising sessions or direct action could do: it made nightlife and sexual orientation compelling and fun. It was a revolution you could dance to.
And dance they did. The documentary covers Mancuso's discovery of "Soul Makossa" by Manu Dibango in a West Indian record store in New York. When it subsequently became popular on New York radio, it was picked up by Atlantic Records and released in 1972, becoming the first disco record to enter the Billboard charts, peaking at number 35.
Philly sound
Disco may have started as a New York phenomenon, but the music it emphasized certainly was not limited to the city. Nicky Siano, the DJ who opened The Gallery in Chelsea in 1972 (and would go on to play at Studio 54) was a regular at Mancuso's Loft parties and notes that one singer in heavy rotation was Eddie Kendricks, former lead singer of the Temptations. "Girl You Need A Change of Mind" was a particular favorite of Mancuso's and Kendricks' 1973 single "Boogie Down" can be heard playing in the documentary.
Earl Young, drummer of the Trammps, introduces the Philadelphia segment of the doc by talking about changes he made to his drumming style for disco, including putting a wallet on his snare and reversing the drumsticks to use the thick end for a fuller sound.
Young was the drummer on Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes "The Love I Lost" and is credited here with convincing Gamble and Huff of Philadelphia International records to change the song from a ballad to a disco song. The rest, as they say, is history.
Episode 2, "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" digs deeper into the social background of the '70s and why it set the scene for disco to be wildly successful.
As Dr. Lisa Farrington, a professor of Art History from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice says, "In the mid-1970s the United States was not a happy place. There was the Watergate scandal and any faith that Americans had in government was shaken to its core."
While being interviewed for her album "Never Can Say Goodbye," Gloria Gaynor echoes these sentiments. "I think it's because of all of the hardships that are going on in the world today. People need a place to go and relieve tension."
1974 was the year that Gaynor began to make her mark. George McRae (famous for 1974's hit "Rock Your Baby") says of her, "When Gloria was doing her thing, I think she was the first lady of disco."
Women rise
What is evident in the interviews with Anita Ward, Candi Staton and Nona Hendryx is that disco music was both an economic opportunity and a chance for fame for women.
Dr. Francesca T. Royster, English and Critical Ethnic Studies professor at DePaul University puts it this way. "Disco did offer Black women new opportunities. Disco did give space for Black women to add soul and funk and depth to a lot of different kinds of music; to kind of take center stage."
Or, as Nona Hendryx put it regarding the difference between her '60s group and the renamed 70s band, "Patti Labelle and the Bluebells were a girl group. Labelle was a girl band."
Labelle was the first Black women's group to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. They were wildly popular. As Vince Aletti says in the documentary, "Black and white, straight and gay, they flocked to Labelle as if to a cause, a movement, or, perhaps, a mirror."
Not all of the stories of Black women singers are quite so positive, however. Candi Staton tells of how her ex-husband's attempt on her life (he threatened to throw her off of a balcony in Las Vegas) led to her song "Young Hearts Run Free." Regarding the music Staton says, "I was so glad that disco came in: good music, good lyrics, songs that had a meaning to them. Disco freed me. It saved me."
It was also extra ordinarily lucrative. Joyce Bogart Trabulus, widow of Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart, says in the documentary that one year Donna Summer made over 26 million dollars.
"Ain't No Stopping Us Now" also features a wonderful segment on Sylvester. Barry Walters, writer for Rolling Stone, Spin, The Advocate and the San Francisco Examiner says of Sylvester, "Just like Harvey Milk mirrored an element of San Francisco, so did Sylvester," and "disco allowed Sylvester to be churchy and queer at the same time."
Regarding "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" Sylvester's backup singer Jeanie Tracy says, "I remember when "Mighty Real" was released and it was major."
Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters says of the song, "It's a song that never gets old, it's never going to get old, it's one of the best songs ever recorded."
This segment also features photos of Sylvester and Harvey Milk at Harvey's last birthday party in May 1978. Jeannie Tracy says of the photos, "It was for Harvey Milk's birthday party. I was with Sylvester. It was a grand party too. Harvey Milk knew how to party."
Night fever
Episode 3 "Staying Alive" is perhaps the most familiar of the series, as it covers a lot of the same territory that the PBS American Experience program "The War on Disco" did. It documents how the Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever made disco music a commodity, and how after the commoditization of disco there followed crass commercialism typified by Rick Dees "Disco Duck." As Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters puts it, "It became less about the music and more about the money."
This does crystalize some of the reasons for the backlash against disco typified by the Disco Demolition held by Steve Dahl and WLUP at Comiskey Park, however. Before 1977, disco was easier to ignore as it didn't threaten the hegemony or economics of rock. It wasn't threatening when it was a subcultural phenomenon among people of color and LGBT fans. When it crossed over it was.
The difference between the American Experience program and this series, however, is that "Soundtrack of a Revolution" goes into how disco came back. It details the influence of disco on rock and talks extensively about The Warehouse in Chicago and the rise of house music and Frankie Knuckles in the mid-1980s.
Regarding dance music and its importance, musician and activist Honey Dijon puts it best. "Dance floors do what religions and governments do not. They bring people together from all walks of life. As a trans woman of color this is where I found home, this is where I found my community and I was celebrated for who I was."
"Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution" is a celebration of this community. If you lived through any of this history, it will feel like coming home.
www.pbs.org
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