Generating page narration, please wait...

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.

Discover Music

Discover Video

Keywords

Listening Guides

References

Development of the Disco Sound

In a parallel development, European producers started to release disco recordings in 1975, and their collective efforts soon acquired the label of Eurodisco. Silver Convention demonstrated that the shift was aesthetic and geographical when " Fly, Robin, Fly♫" featured a big four-on-the-floor kick drum beat along with a clipped female chorus. See a performance below:

Silver Convention performing Fly Robin Fly

That same year Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte continued the entrenched Eurodisco's thudding four-on-the-floor bass drum motif when they recorded " Love to Love You Baby♫ " with Donna Summer, as seen here.

Donna Summer performing Love To Love You Baby

Eurodisco's rising share of the disco market grew when the Los Angeles-based disco label Casablanca Records signed up a significant number of its most prominent producers and artists. Propelled by its hyperactive and uncontained owner Neil Bogart, Casablanca became the most commercially successful disco label of the second half of the 1970s. It counted Cher (" Take Me Home♫," 1979), Love and Kisses (" Thank God It's Friday♫ ," 1978), and the Village People (" YMCA♫" 1978), along with the ubiquitous Donna Summer, among its most prominent artists. Disco acts also scaled the Hot 100 on other labels, including the Bee Gees (" Stayin' Alive♫," 1977), Chic (" Good Times♫ ," 1979), Tavares (" Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel♫," 1976), The Ritchie Family (" The Best Disco in Town♫," 1976), Diana Ross (" Love Hangover♫," 1976), The Trammps (" Disco Inferno♫," 1976), and Barry White (" You're the First, the Last, My Everything♫," 1974). At the same time, one-hit wonders such as Carl Douglas (" Kung Fu Fighting♫ ," 1974) and Van McCoy (" The Hustle♫ ," 1975) were also a salient presence as well as an indicator of the transient nature of many disco acts.

Casablanca Records and Filmworks

Van McCoy performing The Hustle

Carl Douglas performing Kung Fu Fighting

Gloria Gaynor, who endured four years of failure, eventually scored her second hit, " I Will Survive♫ " (1978), which was initially released as a B-side until DJs revealed it to be more effective than the A-side.

Gloria Gaynor singing I Will Survive

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!

Don Cornelius

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