Disco Music
Disco Music was a huge underground club scene in the early 1970’s. Old warehouses and abandoned building were transformed into social scenes where dancing, taking drugs, and having sex were common elements of fun. The movie ‘Saturday Night Fever’ starring John Travoltra in 1977 brought the scene to the attention of people all over the world. The dive into the disco scene was phenomenal. Disco clubs with disco balls sprouted up everywhere imaginable. Another appeal of disco was the use of disk jockeys, commonly referred to as DJ’s. These DJ’s played the music while providing a live MC show to go along with it. People found this very entertaining.
The sound of disco music resulted from a combination of funk and soul. It is stereotyped as a music enjoyed by blacks and gays. The word disco is a shortened version of the French word, discotheque, meaning nightclub. The first discos were in Paris, the result of Jazz music being banned. It is believed the disco era saw it’s demise in part due to the awareness of AIDS because disco combined gays and free sex. No evidence shows this to be true. However, many disco artists were known to be gay, and the first gay clubs were being introduced in areas around the United States at the same time.
The disco music all sounded very similar. The songs were lengthy lyrics about sex, love, fun, and dancing. The market was flooded with albums. Disco music quickly became a money making industry. Ironically, the era came to a screeching halt almost as abruptly as it erupted. That is what has led disco to be known as a fad. It is often ridiculed as a dysfunctional sound with big afros, drugs, polyester suites, and drunks using it as a background noise to cover up the other things going on.
