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Overview

This lesson focuses on African American dance music styles following the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many of these music styles had signature dances as well. These styles include but are not limited to funk, go-go, and disco, while popular dances were the funky chicken, mashed potato, camel walk, hustle, James Brown, and others. We will look at all of them in this lesson. On the social front, during the 1970s, more tangible steps towards proper racial integration and gender equality were happening than before. Besides the style of music itself, because of these steps toward equality, this lesson categorizes this music as contemporary. However, we will also see that the music industry often coopted popular Black dance music and dances to varying degrees of economic success during this era.

Be ready to:

Discuss the significance of rhythm and terms such as riff, groove, syncopation, and four-on-the-floor.

Identify dances that occurred during the late 1960s through the 1970s and venues that aided in disseminating them to the general American population.

Identify instruments such as synthesizer, slap bass, and scratch guitar and their use within funk, go-go, and disco.

Explain the role of music in raising people's level of social consciousness.

Discuss how the demographics among Black Washingtonians influenced the development of go-go.

Articulate the role of the DJ in the development and dissemination of disco music.

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References

From Local Scenes to Mainstream Saturation (Continued)

Dolly Parton in 1977

Previously skeptical about disco's aesthetic and commercial potential, major music companies including Warner Bros. and CBS responded to the post-Saturday Night Fever boom by establishing dedicated disco departments. As a result, artists such as Alfredo De La Fe (" Hot to Trot♫ " 1979), Herbie Hancock (" You Bet Your Love♫ " 1979), Johnny Mathis (" Gone Gone Gone♫ " 1979), Dolly Parton (" Baby I'm Burnin'♫ " 1978), and the Rolling Stones (" Miss You♫" 1978) started to record disco, albeit with mixed results.

The Rolling Stones 1970

Around the same time, WKTU, an anonymous soft rock station based in New York, switched to an all-disco format and increased its ratings from a 1.3 share to an 11.3 share overnight. Along with the sweeping success of Saturday Night Fever, the rise of disco radio encouraged the majors to switch their promotional focus from discotheque DJs to radio DJs. Unfortunately, they also decided to expand their disco output exponentially in the belief that anything that contained disco's recognizable four-on-the-floor bass beat would climb the charts. As a result, DJs and dancers alike were faced with a rush of substandard disco releases. However, the shift towards a more profit-driven release strategy was not absolute, and 1978 saw the release of records such as Instant Funk's " I Got My Mind Made Up♫ ," which brought together many of the aesthetic borrowings and innovations of disco, and Sylvester's " You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)♫ ," which included Patrick Cowley's synthesizer and influenced the "San Francisco Sound." Released the following year and combining hard-edged drums, a prominent bass riff, and shimmering vocals, Chic's seminal " Good Times♫" aligned the feel-good quality of the discotheque experience with Black upward mobility.

Don Cornelius

You can bet your last money, it's all gonna be a stone gas, honey.

George Clinton

Funk is fun. And it's also a state of mind,(...) But it's all the ramifications of that state of mind. Once you've done the best you can, funk it!