Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture
"A thumping good read." —The Atlantic
In the 1970s, as the disco tsunami engulfed America, the question, "Do you wanna dance?" became divisive, even explosive. What about this music made it such hot stuff? In her incisive history, Alice Echols reveals the ways in which disco 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 the black freedom struggle. You won’t say “disco sucks” again as disco pumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the music.
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Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture
"A thumping good read." —The Atlantic
In the 1970s, as the disco tsunami engulfed America, the question, "Do you wanna dance?" became divisive, even explosive. What about this music made it such hot stuff? In her incisive history, Alice Echols reveals the ways in which disco 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 the black freedom struggle. You won’t say “disco sucks” again as disco pumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the music.
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Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture
In the 1970s, as the disco tsunami engulfed America, the question, "Do you wanna dance?" became divisive, even explosive. What about this music made it such hot stuff? In her incisive history, Alice Echols reveals the ways in which disco 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 the black freedom struggle. You won’t say “disco sucks” again as disco pumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the music.
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