Description
Disco mix 70s 80s vol2 karaoke
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Disco is a genre of dance music containing elements of funk, soul, pop, and salsa that was most popular in the mid to late 1970s, though it has had brief resurgences. Its initial audiences were club-goers from the gay, African American, Italian American Latino, and psychedelic communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco also was a reaction against both the domination of rock music and the stigmatization of dance music by the counterculture during this period. Women embraced disco as well, and the music eventually expanded to several other marginalized communities of the time.
The disco sound has soaring vocals over a steady “four-on-the-floor” beat, an eighth note (quaver) or 16th note (semi-quaver) hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and a prominent, syncopated electric bass line. In most disco tracks, strings, horns, electric pianos, and electric guitars create a lush background sound. Orchestral instruments such as the flute are often used for solo melodies, and lead guitar is less frequently used in disco than in rock. Many disco songs use electronic synthesizers.
Well-known 1970s disco performers included Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, Boney M, KC and the Sunshine Band, The Trammps, Gloria Gaynor and Chic. While performers and singers garnered some public attention, producers working behind the scenes played an important role. Many non-disco artists recorded disco songs at the height of disco’s popularity, and films such as Saturday Night Fever and Thank God It’s Friday contributed to disco’s rise in mainstream popularity. Disco was the last mass popular music movement that was driven by the baby boom generation. Disco was a worldwide phenomenon, but its popularity drastically declined in the United States in 1979 and 1980, and disco was basically dead by 1981. Disco Demolition Night, an anti-disco protest held in Chicago on 12 July 1979, is commonly thought of as a factor to disco’s fast and drastic decline.
By the late 1970s most major U.S. cities had thriving disco club scenes, with Studio 54 being a well-known example of a disco club. Popular dances included The Hustle, a sexually suggestive dance. Discotheque-goers often wore expensive and extravagant fashions. There was also a thriving drug subculture in the disco scene, particularly for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as cocaine.
Disco was a key influence on the 1980s dance music style called House. A disco revival was seen, first in 2005 with Madonna’s album Confessions on a Dance Floor, and again in 2013, as disco-styled songs by artists like Daft Punk (with Nile Rodgers), Justin Timberlake, Breakbot, and Bruno Mars filled the pop charts in the UK and the US.
Origins of the term and type of nightclub
The term is derived from discothèque (French for “library of phonograph records”, but subsequently used as a term for nightclubs in Paris). By the early 1940s, the terms DJ and Disc Jockey were in use to describe radio presenters. Because of restrictions, jazz dance halls in Occupied France played records instead of using live music. Eventually more than one of these jazz venues had the proper name discothèque. By 1959, the term was used in Paris to describe any of these type of nightclubs. That year a young reporter Klaus Quirini spontaneously started to select and introduce records at the Scotch-Club in Aachen, West Germany. By the following year the term was being used in the United States to describe that type of club, and a type of dancing in those clubs. By 1964, discotheque and the shorthand disco were used to describe a type of sleeveless dress worn when going out to nightclubs. In September 1964, Playboy Magazine used the word disco as a shorthand for a discothèque-styled nightclub.
Proto-disco and early history of disco music
In New York City musicians and audiences from the female, homosexual, black, and Latino communities adopted several traits from the hippies and psychedelia. They included overwhelming sound, free-form dancing, trippy lighting, colorful costumes, and hallucinogens. Psychedelic soul groups like the Chambers Brothers and especially Sly and The Family Stone influenced proto-disco acts such as Isaac Hayes, Willie Hutch and the Philadelphia Sound. In addition, the perceived positivity, lack of irony, and earnestness of the hippies informed proto-disco music like M.F.S.B.’s album Love Is the Message. To the mainstream public M.F.S.B. stood for “Mother Father Sister Brother”; to the tough areas where they came from it was understood to stand for “Mother Fuckin’ Son of a Bitch”. Referring to their Playing Skill/Prowess.
A forerunner to disco-style clubs was the private parties held by New York City DJ David Mancuso in The Loft, a members-only club in his home in 1970. The first article about disco was written in 1973 by Vince Aletti for Rolling Stone magazine. In 1974 New York City’s WPIX-FM premiered the first disco radio show.
Philadelphia and New York soul were evolutions of the Motown sound, and were typified by the lavish percussion and lush strings that became a prominent part of mid-1970s disco songs. Early songs with disco elements include “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (The Supremes, 1966), “Only the Strong Survive” (Jerry Butler, 1968), “The Love You Save” by Jackson 5 (1970), “Soul Makossa” (Manu Dibango, 1972), “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder (1972) Eddie Kendricks’ “Keep on Truckin'” (1973) and “The Love I Lost” by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (1973). “Love Train” by The O’Jays (1972), with M.F.S.B. as the backup band, hit Billboard Number 1 in March 1973, and has been called “disco”.
The early disco was dominated with producers and labels such as Salsoul Records (Ken, Stanley, and Joseph Cayre), West End Records (Mel Cheren), Casablanca (Neil Bogart), and Prelude (Marvin Schlachter) to name a few. The genre was also shaped by Tom Moulton, who wanted to extend the enjoyment — thus creating the extended mix or “remix”. Other influential DJs and remixers who helped to establish what became known as the “disco sound” included David Mancuso, Nicky Siano, Shep Pettibone, Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons, and Chicago-based “Godfather of House” Frankie Knuckles.
Disco-era DJs would often remix existing songs using reel-to-reel tape machines, and add in percussion breaks, new sections, and new sounds. DJs would select songs and grooves according to what the dancers wanted, transitioning from one song to another with a DJ mixer and using a microphone to introduce songs and speak to the audiences. Other equipment was added to the basic DJ setup, providing unique sound manipulations, such as reverb, equalization, and echo. Using this equipment, a DJ could do effects such as cutting out all but the throbbing bassline of a song, and then slowly mixing in the beginning of another song using the DJ mixer crossfader.
Disco hit the television airwaves with Soul Train in 1971 hosted by Don Cornelius, then Marty Angelo’s Disco Step-by-Step Television Show in 1975, Steve Marcus’ Disco Magic/Disco 77, Eddie Rivera’s Soap Factory, and Merv Griffin’s Dance Fever, hosted by Deney Terrio, who is credited with teaching actor John Travolta to dance for his role in the hit movie Saturday Night Fever, as well as DANCE based out of Columbia, South Carolina.