Liberating Disco by Darryle Aldridge

Two years after the Stonewall riots, where the LGBTQ community rebelled against the overpolicing of gay bars, New York City legalized the act of two men dancing together. With this, the burgeoning disco scene in New York’s gay community flourished. Gay people traded in serious rock music and weighty protest songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” of the 1960s to dance their worries away and escape into a world of glamour, hedonism, and sensuality. Disco was born out of gay liberation. People; gay, straight, Black, brown and white, crowded dancefloors where bass boomed and disco balls rotated from the ceiling, reflecting shimmering lights throughout low-lit rooms. For a few short hours, their differences were of no consequence.

In its purest form, disco was unabashedly black, queer, and sensual. The best example of this is Sylvester, the openly queer singer of “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” Sylvester’s androgynous appearance and falsetto encapsulated the queerness and Blackness of disco. His ethereal falsetto blurred the lines between masculine and feminine with its non-descript sound. Blurring the gender binary was not uncommon in disco music. Michael Jackson followed suit with his upper register on “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” and Donna Summer subverted gender norms by empowering female sexuality and sex work on “Bad Girls.”

In 1977, disco mainstream America co-opted with the film “Saturday Night Fever.” It presented disco in a white, masculine, heterosexual package, making a genre popularized by Black women and enjoyed by gay men palatable for the average American. Many Black or queer artists still dominated the charts after the film. However, the question remains: why could this not occur with them at the forefront of the genre?

Not only did white, straight men make disco mainstream, they also killed it. On July 12, 1979, The Major League Baseball organization promoted Disco Demolition Night. Attendees were allowed entry for 98c if carrying a disco record. Around 50,000 people crowded the stadium. At the end of the baseball game, disc Jockey, Steve Dahl, burned disco records. This sparked a riot, with police making 39 arrests. This event hastened disco's demise as there was already an oversaturation of the genre and growing conservatism in the United States. Disco Demolition Night further highlighted these sentiments, making its downfall inevitable. Historians debate if the riot was a product of homophobia and racism, or the genre’s oversaturation and commercialization. Dahl maintains it was about supporting the dying rock genre. He has said, “It's really easy to look at it historically...and attach [homophobia and racism] to [Disco Demolition Night]. But we weren't thinking like that.” Despite this, the night was fueled by a hatred for disco: participants blew up disco records, carried banners reading “disco sucks,” and chanted that phrase. Such an overt reaction against something so closely linked to queerness and Blackness is deeply symbolic — regardless of intent. Similar to its popularization and death, disco revivals are products of straight, white artists like Dua Lipa and Carly Rae Jepsen. Most notable is Justin Timberlake. Timberlake has three successful disco tracks: “Love Never Felt so Good,” “Can’t Stop This Feeling,” and “The Other Side.” Timberlake's track record with women and Black artists is less than stellar. He publicly mocked Prince and remained silent while Janet Jackson faced misogynoir after the 2004 Super Bowl. It is unjust to allow him to profit from disco, a genre pioneered by Black artists. Listeners must problematize his success and their consumption of his music.

To counterbalance such co-opting, listeners must support disco music from mainstream and smaller Black and queer artists. For instance, Nile Rodgers of Chic, or artists like Mariah Carey, Beyonce, and Samii. For smaller artists like Samii, a crucial method of support is buying music. Artists make fractions of a penny from streaming. Buying music puts more money directly in their pocket. Ultimately, if we fail to acknowledge disco's queer and Black roots in the present, we risk whitewashing its past.

Music will never see a genuine rebirth of disco, but its influence is omnipresent in popular culture. The prominence of the soul train line at parties and family gatherings and the resurgence of roller skating and roller discos in 2020 are all products of the genre. Such things permeate our lives, yet their creators are forgotten or erased. The impact of the Black and queer creators of disco is undeniable and deserving of recognition. Disco was demolished, but it will never burn out.