disco
Thursday, 02 May 2019
disco
- Disco: It Never Really Died, Did It? – DJ John Bisci’s article about the ’70s dance craze living on today in many different forms.
- Disco Museum – Labels, DJs, artists, and club, links, and a Disco Mausoleum.
- Disco Music Was Gay Music – An essay regarding the importance and influence of disco music for gay culture in the ’70s.
- Disco Odyssey – Disco, Funk, Hi-NRG and 80’s dance music Windows Media Player radio station.
- Disco Radio – Sound samples from assorted disco records, some rare vinyl samples with photos. Includes a download section and disco radio.
- Disco Savvy – Biographies and discographies of singers and instrumentalists from the first wave (’70s and early ’80s) and second wave (late ’90s to today) of disco music.
- Disco Sound and Vision – Catering to various musical tastes.
- DiscoDisco.com – Record labels, remixers, clubs, producers and audio clips for popular and rare disco music of the ’70s and ’80s.
- DiscoMania – Internet-radio broadcasting disco dance music from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.
- DiscoMusic.com – RealAudio disco, house, and dance music from the ’70s and ’80s, information on classic vinyl records, discussion board, and Top 500 Disco Songs list.
- Disconight – Disco radio – FM Hollywood 88.1
- Ed Dolista’s Disco Fever – Latest official news and information about the show, plus Disco Profiles, Top 10 charts, and Multimedia.
- Ellen Michaels – Disco record company, Salsoul Records’ cover girl. Autographed photos, CD’s and memorabilia.
- Frankie’s Dance and Disco Classics – Disco music from the ’70s and ’80s.
- How I Missed the Disco Era – David Swatling’s Real Audio mix of stories, interviews and 30 years of disco music.
- Leon’s Disco Classics – MP3 collection.
- Thomas Foyer – Specializes in high-energy, cutting-edge electronic music for dance floor and radio, including vocal production and remixes.
- Tom Moulton – Tribute to the inventor of the 12″ disco single and the Disco Mix. Includes biography and interview.
- Tribute to Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer – Discography, biography, lyrics, covers, rare images, and news.
- International Hustle Dance Association – Organization which promotes the Hustle as a social and competitive dance form. Includes history of the dance and event listing.
- Mark’s Hustle FAQ – Information about the dance from the rec.arts.dance FAQ.
- Moscow Hustle Federation – Regional association of public organizations interested in promoting hustle, disco-hustle, disco-swing, disco-fox and similar dance styles. Includes news, articles, interviews, and photographs.
Disco is a genre of music that originated in discothèques. Generally the term refers to a specific style of music that has influences from funk, soul music, and salsa and the Latin or Hispanic musics which influenced salsa.
Elements of disco music appear on records from the early 1970s such as the 1971 theme from the film Shaft by Isaac Hayes (Jones and Kantonen, 1999). In general it can be said that first disco songs were released in 1973, however many consider Manu Dibango’s 1972 Soul Makossa the first disco record (Jones and Kantonen, 1999). Initially, most disco songs catered to a nightclub/dancing audience only, rather than general audiences such as radio listeners, but there are many aspects proving opposite tendencies as well; popular radio-hits were being played in discothèques, as long as they had an easy to follow rhythmic base-pattern close to 120 BPM (beats per minute).
1975 was the year when disco really took off, with hit songs like Van McCoy’s «The Hustle» and Donna Summer’s «Love To Love You Baby» reaching the mainstream. 1975 also marked the release of the first disco mix on album, the A side of Gloria Gaynor’s Never Can Say Goodbye (Jones and Kantonen, 1999). Disco’s popularity peaked in the so-called Disco era of 1977 – 1980, driven in part by the 1977 classic film Saturday Night Fever. Disco also gave rise to an increased popularity of line dancing and other partly pre-choreographed dances; many line dances can be seen in films such as Saturday Night Fever, which also features the Hustle.
In 1975, the pop star Dalida was the first to make disco music in France with her song «J’attendrai» which was a big hit there as well as in Canada and Japan in 1976. She also released many other disco hits between 1975 and 1981, including «Monday, Tuesday… Laissez-moi danser» in 1979, translated the same year as «Let Me Dance Tonight» for the USA, where she was their «French diva» since her late-1978 performance at the Carnegie Hall). Soon after Dalida’s pioneering French disco work, other French artists recorded disco: Claude François, in 1976 with his song «Cette année-là» (a cover of The Four Seasons’ disco hit «December 1963 (Oh what a night)»), then the famous «yé-yé» French pop singer Sheila, with her group B. Devotion, who even had a hit in the USA (a rarity for French artists) with the song «Spacer» in 1979. Many other European artists also recorded disco music.
