Disco thumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the music.
In the 1970s, as the disco tsunami engulfed America, the question, “Do you wanna dance?” became divisive, even explosive. What was it about this music that made it such hot stuff? In this incisive history, Alice Echols reveals the ways in which disco, assumed to be shallow and disposable, permanently transformed popular music, propelling it into new sonic territory and influencing rap, techno, and trance. This account probes the complex relationship between disco and the era’s major movements: gay liberation, feminism, and African American rights. But it never loses sight of the era’s defining soundtrack, spotlighting the work of precursors James Brown and Isaac Hayes, its dazzling divas Donna Summer and the women of Labelle, and some of its lesser-known but no less illustrious performers like Sylvester. You’ll never say “disco sucks” again after reading this fascinating account of the music you thought you hated but can’t stop dancing to.
Alice Echols is Barbra Streisand Professor of contemporary gender studies and professor of history at the University of Southern California. A former disco deejay, she is the author of four books including Hot Stuff and the acclaimed biography of Janis Joplin, Scars of Sweet Paradise.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Plastic Fantastic: The Disco Year xv
1 I Hear a Symphony: Black Masculinity and the Disco Turn 1
2 More, More, More: One and Oneness in Gay Disco 39
3 Ladies' Night: Women and Disco 71
4 The Homo Superiors: Disco and the Rise of Gay Macho 121
5 Saturday Night Fever: The Little Disco Movie 159
6 One Nation under a Thump?: Disco and its Discontents 195
Epilogue: Do It Again 233
Notes 241
Playlist 303
Photograph Credits 307
Index 309
What People are Saying About This
Michaelangelo Matos
Persuasively argued… [a] stimulating rethinking of well-trod terrain.— Bookforum
