Learn The History Of Disco Music

(Blogger’s note–I’ve got a lot going on today. This is a rerun of a post from last year. Thanks for reading Texas Liberal.)

I enjoy disco music. As I write this post, I’m listening to the disco channel on Pandora radio. I find the music good-natured. Enough of life is angry.

I think if we all played disco in our cars during our commute to work people would be nicer to each other on the road.

At this very moment the song Disco Inferno by The Trammps is playing on Pandora. This is indeed entertainment.

Here are some of the lyrics to Disco Inferno—

To mass fires, yes! One hundred stories high

People gettin’ loose – all gettin’ down on the roof – Do you hear?

(the folks are flaming) Folks were screamin’ – out of control
It was so entertainin’ – when the boogie started to explode
I heard somebody say

Burn baby burn! – Disco inferno!

Burn baby burn! – Burn that mother down
Burn baby burn! – Disco inferno!
Burn baby burn! – Burn that mother down
Burnin’!

These words seem like you are being urged to burn something down. But it is quite the opposite. The singer clearly says in the song that your soul is on fire and you are happy. This song is channeling your negative energy away from destructive acts!

A new book reviewed in the New York Times recently tells some of the history and the social meaning of disco. The book is called Hot Stuff–Disco and the Remaking of American Culture and was written by Alice Echols.

From the review-—

“But for the thrill-seekers, especially gay ones, who packed the trendier nightspots, disco was the sound of hard-earned freedom. It meant dancing your heart out until dawn, often aided by drugs, in clubs where anybody could pair with anybody. Disco’s beat took over your body and pounded away your inhibitions. At its headiest, the experience was a close simulation of sex, or a direct lead-in to it. Women were the main voices of lust. In “I Feel Love,” Donna Summer’s techno-backed moaning — “Oooooh, it’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good” — seemed like a six-minute glide on the runway to orgasm….Alice Echols, a professor of American studies and history at Rutgers University and a former disco D.J., knows that most of the music she spun is considered “mindless, repetitive, formulaic and banal.” But in her engrossing new book, “Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture,” she portrays that scene as a hotbed of social change — for gays, for women and their sexual rights, for blacks in the record industry. Other writers have done more to evoke the era’s sleazy glamour and animal excitement. But Echols…has few peers among music sociologists. Scholarly but fun, “Hot Stuff” is not just about disco; it re-examines the ’70s as a decade of revolution.”

(Below—A classic.)

Here is an article on the history of disco from American Heritage magazine. It is a good article that traces the evolution of disco to Paris during WW II.

Now playing on Pandora is Upside Down by Diana Ross.

Here is a history of disco from Soul-Patrol.com.

Listen to some disco and let some happiness into your life. Learn about the history of disco and see why it was music that made a difference in people’s lives and in our society.

(Below–Why must this gentleman be a hater? Photo taken by Rich.lionheart.)