Last night, for no reason at all, I got thinking about a dance routine I learned during spring break a couple years ago. In my Junior year of high school, I went on a Royal Caribbean cruise for a week. Since going on a cruise requires you to live on a ship for a week, each day, the crew has all sorts of activities they plan for the guests to participate in to enhance our vacation experience. One of the activities I looked forward to was the daily dance lessons in various types of dance styles. The one I remember most vividly is disco. I learned some moves from the disco days of the 70s and later that night, the group I danced with and I performed the routine in a kind of parade/dance party in the ship's Promenade. The routine was from the movie Saturday Night Fever during a scene when John Travolta participates in a line dance with a group at a club. You can watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m9ZP_tTtLc&feature=related
I've learned plenty of routines and choreographies in my life, but I must say, this one was one of the most enjoyable for me to learn and perform. It really is a shame that disco died.
In class, we talked about how a lot of things have a cycle, such as fashion. Things are in style for a while, then they go out of style, then they make it back into style...so on and so forth. Do you think disco will ever have it's comeback? The 70s clothing is said to become fashionable again, so maybe disco will come back with it...who knows. I, for one, sure hope it does.
I love my disco, and am glad to say it never truly "died"...it just went underground. There was a serious backlash against the genre at the end of the '70s, as people accused it of being the sugary pop music exploitation of mass consumerism. In fact, there was even a giant anti-disco rally held in Chicago now infamously referred to as "Disco Demolition Night", where thousands of people conglomerated at a stadium to burn, blow up, and outright destroy their disco records. Disco’s mainstream popularity declined considerably after that, but it would also find its next life in Chicago.
ReplyDeleteHouse music started in the inner-city African American, Latino, and gay clubs of Chicago and particularly at one in particular dubbed the Warehouse—where DJ Frankie Knuckles would take loops from extended disco records and overdub them with drum machines and other effects. Just like hip hop arose from sampling drum breaks from funk and soul records, house had its origins in sampling disco. It also spawned a number of dance styles including jacking, voguing, footwork, and lofting.
From house music, you get acid house. From acid house you get techno. From techno, there’s rave, then trance, then jungle, drum n’ bass, and (now) dubstep. Somewhere along the line the major labels picked up on this underground movement, and now you get today’s current top 40. Many of the songs you hear on the radio today represent a more poppy and electronic style of house with the four to the floor beats and heavy focus on bass and drums.
So, in a way, I feel disco has come back to the mainstream via evolution. Big clubs are starting to play dance-oriented music again. Of course, the dances and sound have changed drastically, but the influence is there. It’s nothing like the oldschool in my opinion, but without disco the current sound wouldn’t be what it is today.
Good point. Disco has changed since the 70s but there is still a lot of electronic dance music out there that fulfills similar needs.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we know that YMCA will never die.
I dont think disco will ever return as a mainstream form of music but i do agree with Chris in that the influence of disco (via house/trance/electro) can be seen almost everywhere in pop music today. Some contemporary djs still play and create styles of house that are very similar to disco like carl craig and armand van helden, however their tracks are for a small niche and are rarely seen at the top of the pop or electronic music charts. People enjoy hearing a classic disco sound track or throwback (hence the perpetual popularity of YMCA) but I doubt we will ever see it emerge close to its original form in mainstream music. What is mainstream music anyway?
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