Disco will always be with us

“Like the legend of the phoenix…” begins the first line of lyrics in Daft Punk’s widely popular single “Get Lucky.” This phoenix is an excellent allegory for the disco influence of the song, and to disco as a genre in general.

“Disco is dead, and it should stay dead,” is what someone told me after I mentioned that I want to see it come back to prominence. And, after I started to pursue the topic through some basic research, I discovered that disco is not exactly dead.

About a year ago, I started to stray away from my EDM (Electronic Dance Music) roots. I dove headfirst into the world of swing music, and I also began listening to country music. As I became familiar with the genres, I started to get bored with them, and I felt like I needed something new.

I had been listening to tracks off of Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories,” and I watched an interview about the album, and the mention of disco being a big influence caught my attention. So, I decided to check out this unfamiliar territory to see if it was something that I could vibe with.

As I immersed myself in the genre, learning about the way (uh huh), and how to like it (uh huh uh huh), I began to realize this was something that I have always been exposed to, but in an indirect way. So, as I baptized myself with the soothing musicvocals of Barry White, and I synchronized the syncopated patterns of the four-on-the-floor beats to my own pulse, I discovered that this was the voice of a generation that needed a positive and relatable way to express its personality that was just too groovy and funky for the mainstream world.

Disco is the product of the frustrations faced by those who needed to unleash the dance and funk in their hearts. The black, Latin, and, especially, gay communities all gathered and partied to a soundtrack that made anyone that wasn’t dancing look like a square – similar to a rave setting of our time.

During the ’70s, as disco caught fire (“Saturday Night Fever,” the BeeGees), many record labels started to take notice and did what they could to incorporate it into their music. Groups such as Blondie, The Rolling Stones, and KISS released singles and albums that either had elements of disco or were straight disco records.

As disco swept through the music industry, the industry did all it could to profit from the genre as much as it could. Just like any style of music, disco became a packaged, mainstream redundancy. All anyone would hear on any radio station or club was disco.

This abuse of a single genre led to the horrific events at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1979 where radio personality, Steve Dahl, a disco-hater, incited a memorable outburst of anti-disco fever. He encouraged fellow disco-haters to bring their vinyls to a White Sox baseball game for destruction, and blew up a pile of these records between games of a double-header. The crowd went wild, throwing more records into the blast. This scene is comparable to a book burning where the community is so caught up in its narrow-mindedness, it forgets it is destroying evidence of a piece of history.

All hell broke loose at that historic baseball game, foretelling what many would consider the death of disco.

But, while the baseball fans were cheering and destroying their music, disco took one final breath for the decade, and inconspicuously rose from the ashes in Comiskey Park. Instead of staying dead, instead of disappearing into the obscurity of the strange ’70s, disco imbedded itself into the future of music.

Today, many artists are releasing music with elements of disco that breeds a sense of familiarity with the seventies.

The most obvious example is Daft Punk, and the group’s aforementioned Grammy-winning single and album, whose other songs also incorporate disco. More artists who have songs with a disco vibe are Justin Timberlake with “Rock Your Body,” from 2003, and Bruno Mars with “Treasure,” from 2013.

Disco doesn’t need to be “brought back.” It might gain enough momentum to being blatantly present on mainstream radio, but until then, disco will continue to breathe. It will nurture our music, and it will survive.

Disco never left us, and it never will. It is present in the background of the R&B of today. It’s a genre that doesn’t ask to become a lifestyle; it feeds the soul, and inspires the inner funk. Everyone should find his or her groove, and recognize the influence disco continues to have on music today.