
In understanding and trying to write about house music the only thing I found easy was the fact that house music started after James Brown. Not only should every article about music include some reference to The Godfather, but he's also a great place to begin when trying to understand the history of any modern music. He's the cut off point for what the world used to be like (culturally speaking), before the beat killed Elvis. Ironically however, House is one of the few modern
music genres not influenced by J.B. He pioneered, and fine-tuned of a method of rhythm known as the break (as in "
breakdancing"). It's easy to grasp that musical concept. House on the other hand is much more profound, and the part after James Brown gets a little tricky. As you suspected, house is a direct
descendant of disco. Maybe therein lie the roots of some prejudice. On the one hand a lot of disco sucks (probably because it was designed that way), and I think it's stupid. On the other hand, there's lots of good shit hidden within the designation of what most people called disco, including rock and roll, reggae, funk soul, jazz, and tons of
r & b. Artists like Parliament, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes,
Zapp, L.T.D. (that's Jeffrey Osbourne for you suckers) and
Chaka Kahn are always showing up on disco compilations (at least the good ones). But those are soul, funk and r & b artists. Therein lie the roots of house. In order to understand house music you have to understand soul music, because from soul came house. While some folks got into
Black Sabbath, or Kiss, or Deep Purple some got into
Frankie Beverly & Maze, or Mandrill, or Rare Earth, or The Rotary Connection (and some got into all of that). Back in the day when black radio wasn't so black, and white radio wasn't so white (read: The
Doobie Bros.) the average music played on mainstream "black" radio was soulful, funky, gospel sounding melodic shit that you could either dance to, or make out to. Now that pretty much describes all of popular music, but that's not to say that the lyrics were not at times inspiring and "uplifting" (which coincidentally is considering one of the many genres of house). Still it was mostly music that was excepted by a large cross-section of people. At some point this all became gay. In doing my research on house music I have discovered that homosexuality actually played a significant role in the sound that more than any other sound has changed the way people dance all over the world. And that's a good thing. Two words to keep in mind - "black" and "gay". And drugs. As a disclaimer, I want to admit to how fully not-gay, and not-black house music has become today, but I want to make sure everyone gets there props, and the gay boys laid it down (no pun intended) back in the day. Back in the day refers to the Ford and Carter years before Reagan put the conservative black boot down on anything not white, Christian, American, or first ordained by Jerry Falwell. These are the days when soul, funk, and kick-ass
rock & roll were the norm on commercial radio. Clubs in big cities played this music, but there was one small problem - the songs were not long enough. The average record on the radio in the 70's and 80's was about three minutes. It takes that long just to get the nerve to ask someone to dance (at least it did for me). I believe I have isolated the origin of house music to the introduction of the "twelve inch". The 12"is a common term now, used by all types of artists, and is understood by anyone under 40 living in an urban area anywhere in Western society. The 12'' also gave birth to hip-hop, albeit along a different evolutionary branch (very black, but not very gay). The 12'' is designed to extend a record to allow the folks dancing, in the club, while high, the chance to get lost in the music. A house DJ is like an electronic jam band, and the dancers are his
hippy groupies all spinning around in circles, and loving everybody (I actually experienced this in New York recently). For anyone looking for the origin of what is the house experience the first place to start is 1977; New York City; Paradise Garage. I'm sure all the house heads reading this are thinking about Chicago and
Detroit, but all books, websites, and personal antidotes lead to Larry
Levan.
Levan, by virtue of knowing someone who was someone
else's lover, ended up at the Garage (world-renowned as the greatest house club ever). Larry later gave several people their starts because he wanted to be their lover. To say that Larry
Levan was just a DJ is like saying that Lee Perry is just a reggae dude. They both changed the way people dance worldwide. To make a long story short,
Levan influenced Derrick May, Tony
Humphries, Mark Farina, Kenny Dope,
Louie Vega,
Roger Sanchez,
Frankie Knuckles, and countless other producers, mixers,
DJ's, and dancers in the U.S. and the U.K. Knuckles took this sound back to his native Chicago, circa '78 or '79, and made it a staple at a club known as The Warehouse. Therein lies the origin of the name, "House". The cool thing about Chicago is that there were a couple of late night radio programs that played house records. Chicago gets credit for the place of origin for house because so many more people there got down to it, due to so many more people being exposed to it. New York on the other hand had this new "rap" thing, and it really didn't have time for house music, or at least not commercially. The underground was born. Aptly named, The Garage became the center of the house music world, and Larry
Levan was it's 'Rick the Ruler'. Mixing, spinning, engineering, and then re-mixing, explaining house music technically is like explaining Tito
Puente' - it's a feeling, not a technique. Four on the floor, or the 4/4 time signature is the best way to describe it…for those who speak music. I do not really, and all I know is that once I was infected with the house groove I was forever a changed man. I didn't turn gay, but I did start to notice similarities between house, Latin and Caribbean grooves, Middle Eastern, and African "tribal" beats. I thought, "Whoa, it's all house really, This shit is ancient!" And I really did think just that, you know. So in short I reckon you could say that house music is a modern incarnation of ancient indigenous beats and grooves fused with the intensity of experiencing life in a metropolitan environment. And, of course, it's fun to dance to. The fact that it is the world's official dance music is no accident. Anyone who dances can dance to house, because it's so damn simple. You think you know how to dance to James Brown, but people are laughing at you. There's a reason why white people love, "I feel Good". Another reason why house was so popular in Chicago, and New York, and
London was because of its message of inclusiveness and acceptance. This is very true in the music today. "Body and Soul" was a weekly party in New York directly descended from The Garage and I had the pleasure of going to its last night before it closed in March. It was the most happening shit I had ever seen. 2000 people of all ages, races, nationalities, persuasions, and preferences were dancing, singing hugging, and spinning around in circles of course, and this was all on a Sunday night at 9:30pm.
Fuckin' amazing! You haven't dance until you've had a comparable experience. House means benevolence; it means kindness, it means sharing and generosity, it means love. So today there are so many damn categories of house I don't try to keep up with them. The best thing to do is check out these websites: (http://www.jahsonic.com/House.html), (http://www.disco-disco.com/clubs/paradise.html), (http://www.ishkur.com/music/). These people are professional
explainers, and they can better guide you through this wonderfully useful form of music. Or if you think it's ridiculous to waste time reading about something you could actually be doing perhaps you should get off of you tush, and go an experience this phenomena yourself.
Neu Romance every Sunday featuring Deep House, Rare Groove, Urban Classics, and Acid Jazz.