Disco
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Disco is the broad dance-music style that fused soul, funk, Latin percussion, orchestral arranging, gospel vocals, and DJ-minded repetition into a modern club language. Its rhythm is usually steady and propulsive, but the emotional range is wide: sensual, ecstatic, glamorous, political, romantic, or defiant. The term covers underground loft culture, Philadelphia soul extensions, European electronic disco, commercial film-era hits, and the records that became raw material for house, hip-hop, pop, and electronic dance music.
History
Disco developed before its name became a mass-market slogan, with DJs extending danceable soul, funk, and Latin records for mixed urban crowds. The mid-to-late 1970s brought 12-inch singles, specialist labels, and global hits; by 1979, disco was commercially overexposed and culturally attacked. Yet the supposed end of disco mostly changed the name. Its producers, DJs, drum patterns, basslines, and remix practices flowed into post-disco, boogie, Hi-NRG, house, freestyle, synth-pop, hip-hop sampling, and every later disco revival.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Rock Your Baby(1974) — George McCraeSpotifyYouTube
- Love to Love You Baby(1975) — Donna SummerSpotifyYouTube
- You Should Be Dancing(1976) — Bee GeesSpotifyYouTube
- Disco Inferno(1976) — The TrammpsSpotifyYouTube
- I Feel Love(1977) — Donna SummerSpotifyYouTube
- You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)(1978) — SylvesterSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Vanity Fair disco oral history https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2010/02/oral-history-of-disco-201002
- Pitchfork Donna Summer obituary https://pitchfork.com/news/46552-rip-donna-summer
- Pitchfork I Feel Love history https://pitchfork.com/features/article/song-from-the-future-the-story-of-donna-summer-and-giorgio-moroders-i-feel-love
- Them Sylvester remaster feature https://www.them.us/story/sylvester-you-make-me-feel-remaster