Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures

and Popular Music

Series Editors
Keith Gildart
University of Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton, UK

Anna Gough-Yates
University of Roehampton
London, UK

Sian Lincoln
Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, UK

Bill Osgerby
London Metropolitan University
London, UK

Lucy Robinson
University of Sussex
Brighton, UK

John Street
University of East Anglia
Norwich, UK

Peter Webb
University of the West of England
Bristol, UK

Matthew Worley
University of Reading
Reading, UK
From 1940s zoot-suiters and hepcats through 1950s rock ‘n’ rollers,
­beatniks and Teddy boys; 1960s surfers, rude boys, mods, hippies and
­bikers; 1970s skinheads, soul boys, rastas, glam rockers, funksters and
punks; on to the heavy metal, hip-hop, casual, goth, rave and clubber
styles of the 1980s, 90s, noughties and beyond, distinctive blends of fashion
and music have become a defining feature of the cultural landscape. The
Subcultures Network series is international in scope and designed to
explore the social and political implications of subcultural forms. Youth
and subcultures will be located in their historical, socio-economic and
cultural context; the motivations and meanings applied to the aesthetics,
actions and manifestations of youth and subculture will be assessed. The
objective is to facilitate a genuinely cross-disciplinary and transnational
outlet for a burgeoning area of academic study.

More information about this series at

https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14579
 Flora Pitrolo • Marko Zubak
Editors

Global Dance
Cultures in the 1970s
and 1980s
Disco Heterotopias
Editors
Flora Pitrolo Marko Zubak
Department of English, Theatre and Department of Contemporary History
Creative Writing Croatian Institute of History
Birkbeck, University of London Zagreb, Croatia
London, UK

ISSN 2730-9517     ISSN 2730-9525 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music
ISBN 978-3-030-91994-8    ISBN 978-3-030-91995-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5

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 Acknowledgements

This book has been a long time in the making and has acquired the
support of friends and allies through stratified conversations, debates,
listening sessions and parties with more people than we can thank here.
We would like to thank our colleagues from the disciplines and institu-
tions we work within, and Marko Zubak expressly wishes to thank the
Croatian Institute of History and Cost Action NEP4DISSENT for giving
him the freedom to research.
Some of the people who have helped us shape ideas related to this book
in its very early stages are Franco Fabbri, Rachel Haworth, Paul Long,
Ewa Mazierska, Goffredo Plastino and Gábor Vályi, aka DJ Shuriken. Our
gratitude goes to them for having given us both intellectual stimulus and
more public stages to begin to work on the ideas that eventually crystal-
lised in this volume.
We would like to thank Arabella Stanger, Mimi Haddon and Michael
Lawrence for giving this book a platform at the Brighton Disco! Conference
in June 2018 when we were still in the heat of working through this edito-
rial project, and to all the attendees of that conference for their generous
input, enlightened comments and enthusiasm for this book when it was
just beginning to take shape.
We wish to acknowledge generous help and input from Lucia
Udvardyova and Marysia Lewandowska; Colin Cumming’s eagle-eyed
work was invaluable in helping us move through the final throes of preparing
these texts and we want to thank him for his professionalism and interest
in our work.

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our deepest thanks to the series editors of Palgrave Studies in the

History of Subcultures and Popular Music, and in particular to Matthew
Worley for making this collaboration happen. Indeed, thanks to all the
individuals we have interacted with at Palgrave over the years for their
patience, help and guidance.
This collection couldn’t have happened without the unwavering sup-
port and love of our partners Robert Jack and Jelena Gluhak Zubak (and
Maša and Jura). Thank you for everything.
Finally, we wish to thank the authors whose chapters make up this col-
lection. It is a huge honour and pleasure to be able to host your work.
 Contents


Introduction: Disco Heterotopias—Other Places, Other
Spaces, Other Lives  1
Flora Pitrolo and Marko Zubak


Montreal, Funkytown: Two Decades of Disco History 29
Will Straw


Dancin’ Days: Disco Flashes in 1970s Brazil 51
Ivan Paolo de Paris Fontanari

Gimmick! Italo Disco, Copy and Consumption 75

Flora Pitrolo


Japanese Disco as Pseudo-International Music101
Yusuke Wajima


Disco, Dancing, Globalization and Class in 1980s Hindi
Cinema127
Gregory D. Booth


Dancing Desire, Dancing Revolution: Sexuality and the
Politics of Disco in China Since the 1980s151
Qian Wang

vii
viii Contents

Non-stop, I Want to Live Non-stop: The Role of Disco in Late

Socialist Czechoslovakia173
Jakub Machek


Yugoslav Disco: The Forgotten Sound of Late Socialism195
Marko Zubak


The Lebanese Music Experiment: Disco and Nightlife During
the Civil War223
Natalie Shooter and Ernesto Chahoud


Disco and Discontent in Nigeria: A Conversation251
Uchenna C. Ikonne, Flora Pitrolo, and Marko Zubak


Outer Space, Futurism, and the Quest for Disco Utopia281
Ken McLeod


Epilogue: Decolonising Disco—Counterculture, Postindustrial
Creativity, the 1970s Dance Floor and Disco303
Tim Lawrence

Index339
 Notes on Contributors

Gregory D. Booth is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of

Auckland and has been engaged in the study of Indian music and culture
for more than 30 years. He has published numerous articles and chapters
on music, film, industry and culture in South Asia, and is the author of
Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios (2008) and
Brass Baja: Stories from the World of Indian Wedding Bands (2005).
Ernesto Chahoud A philosophy postgraduate, Ernesto Chahoud is a DJ,
compiler and radio host who has been working in music for over 20 years.
In 2009 he founded The Beirut Groove Collective, which evolved into a
weekly clubnight with an international reputation playing obscure records
from the 1960s and 1970s from around the world. As a DJ, Chahoud has
toured the world and hosts monthly radio shows on NTS, Totally Wired
Radio and Radio Alhara. Specialising in Arabic and Ethiopian music, his
discography includes two electro-acoustic albums, Taitu, a double compi-
lation of Ethiopian music from the 1970s, and a series of reissues of
groundbreaking Lebanese music under the series ‘Middle Eastern Heavens’.
Ivan Paolo de Paris Fontanari is Professor of Anthropology and coordi-
nator of the Anthropology, Youth and Youthfulness Research Group at
Federal University of Fronteira Sul, Chapeco, SC, Brazil. He writes on
issues concerning youth and expressive culture in contemporary Brazil. He
is the author of The DJs from Periferia: Electronic Dance Music, Trajectories
and Cultural Mediations in Sao Paulo (Editora Sulina, 2013), published in
Portuguese, based on his award-winning doctoral dissertation.

ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Uchenna C. Ikonne is an author, DJ and historian specialising in the

field of Nigerian popular music. As the head of the Comb & Razor Sound
record label, he has curated collections of vintage recordings such as Wake
Up You! The Rise and Fall of Nigerian Rock 1972–1977 (released by Now
Again Records in 2016). He has written extensively about music and pop-
ular culture for a variety of outlets, and is working on a four-volume his-
tory of Nigerian music.
Tim Lawrence is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of East
London. He is the author of Love Saves the Day: A History of American
Dance Music Culture, 1970–79, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell
and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973–92, and Life and Death on the
New York Dance Floor, 1980–83. He is a co-founder of Lucky Cloud Sound
System, which has been staging Loft parties in London since 2003.
Jakub Machek is a popular culture historian. He lectures in the
Department of Media Studies at the Metropolitan University Prague. His
research covers Czech popular culture from the end of the nineteenth
century, throughout socialism until the present day. He is the author of
the monograph The Emergence of Popular Culture in the Czech Lands
(2017) and has co-edited several collections of essays. His latest research
is focused on the function of music in Czech society, from brass band
music to disco.
Ken McLeod is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of
Toronto. He has published widely on identity politics in popular music;
the intersections between technology, science fiction, and hip hop; and
popular music appropriations of art music. He is the author of We Are the
Champions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music (2011) and Driving
Identities: At the Intersection of Popular Music and Automotive Culture
(2020). He is researching issues of colonisation, racism and spirituality in
the nexus of popular music, science fiction and the space industry.
Flora Pitrolo lectures on theatre, performance and media studies at
Birkbeck, University of London and Syracuse University London. Her
work investigates alternative European performance and music cultures of
the 1980s, with a special focus on Italy. She publishes both as a scholar and
as a journalist, and is active as a DJ and producer in various archival and
experimental music scenes.received her PhD in Drama, Theatre and
Performance Studies in 2014. She teaches courses on Performance and
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi

Media Studies at Birkbeck, University of London and Syracuse University

London, and works independently as a curator and as a consultant for
cultural projects in the UK and in Italy. Her work investigates alternative
European performance and music cultures of the 1980s, with a special
focus on Italy. She has published both as a scholar (Theatre Journal, About
Performance, Studies in Theatre and Performance) and as a journalist (she
was Editor of Archival and Reissues for leading UK electronic music portal
JunoPlus between 2014 and 2016, and broadcasts since 2011 on London’s
Resonance FM and on Skopje’s Kanal 103). Her most recent large edito-
rial project is the archive book Syxty Sorriso & Altre Storie (2017) on per-
formance art in early 1980s Milan.
Natalie Shooter Based between Beirut and the UK, Natalie Shooter is an
editor, writer and researcher with a focus on music from the South West
Asian/North African (SWANA) region. She has worked as editor of sev-
eral magazines, and her writing has been published in The Guardian,
Pin-Up, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. She has also curated and pro-
duced many concerts, clubnights and festivals in Beirut and beyond, such
as the outdoor festival series The Shoreline Sessions and Hiya Live, a digi-
tal festival focused on progressive female artists from the Arabic-speaking
world, founded in 2020. She co-runs The Beirut Groove Collective, a
vinyl DJ collective and clubnight in Beirut that has been running for the
past 12 years.
Will Straw is James McGill Professor of Urban Media Studies at McGill
University in Montreal, where he teaches within the Department of Art
History and Communications Studies. He is the author of Cyanide and
Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America (2006) and co-­editor of several
volumes, including The Cambridge Companion to Rock and Pop (with
Simon Frith and John Street, 2001), Circulation and the City: Essays on
Urban Culture (with Alexandra Boutros, 2010), Formes Urbaines (with
Anouk Bélanger and Annie Gérin, 2014) and The Oxford Handbook of
Canadian Cinema (with Janine Marchessault, 2019). He is the author of
over 160 articles on music, cinema and urban culture.
Yusuke Wajima is Professor of Musicology at Osaka University. He has
published on the history of Japanese popular music, authoring Tsukurareta
‘Nihon-no-kokoro’ Shinwa (2010), which won the 2011 IASPM Book
Prize and the Suntory Prize. Its English translation, Creating Enka: The
‘Soul of Japan’ in the Postwar Era, was published in 2018. He contributed
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

a book chapter, titled ‘The Birth of Enka’, for Made in Japan: Studies in
Popular Music (2014). His recent book, Odoru Showa Kayou (Dance
Music in the Showa Period (1926–1989), 2015), focuses on dance music in
modern Japan.
Qian Wang is Professor of Sociology at Yibin University. His research is
mainly focused on music sociology, cultural studies and gender studies in
the context of Chinese popular music. He examines the sophisticated
interaction between popular music and social transformation since the
economic reform and writes on issues such as gender and queer. He is the
author of Rock Crises: Research on Chinese Rock Music in the 1990s and the
co-author of Research on New Media and Urban Children (forthcoming).
Marko Zubak is a researcher at the Croatian Institute of History in
Zagreb, specialising in popular culture in socialist Eastern Europe. Recent
publications include the monograph The Yugoslav Youth Press (1968–1980)
(2018). He has curated the exhibitions ‘Yugoslav Youth Press as
Underground Press’ and ‘Stayin’ Alive: Socialist Disco Culture’, which
travelled across the region.holds a PhD in History from the Central
European University in Budapest. He is a research associate at the Croatian
Institute of History in Zagreb, focusing on popular, alternative and youth
cultures and media in the second half of the twentieth century in Eastern
Europe, on which he taught at several universities (Zagreb, Budapest,
Klagenfurt). He published on these topics, including a monograph The
Yugoslav Youth Press (1968–1980): Student Movements, Youth Subcultures
and Alternative Communist Media (2018). His recent interest focuses on
popular music and club cultures. He has curated two exhibitions (‘Yugoslav
Youth Press as Underground Press: 1968–1972’, ‘Stayin’ Alive: Socialist
Disco Culture’) that have travelled around the region and collaborated on
many others, most recently on ‘Restless Youth: 70 Years of Growing up in
Europe, 1945 to Now’ at the House of European History in Brussels.
 Introduction: Disco Heterotopias—Other
Places, Other Spaces, Other Lives

Flora Pitrolo and Marko Zubak

The purpose of this collection is to shed light on disco’s global journey

between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, investigating the whys and hows
of its evolution across ideological, social, political, economical and linguis-
tic contexts other to the one in which it originated. The chapters compiled
here look at how disco acquired different forms, meanings and functions
as it was adopted and re-imagined outside of its Anglophone manifesta-
tions; they analyse the cultural and economic infrastructures disco trav-
elled through, the musical forms, styles and traditions it adopted, the
various ways it located itself on cultural mainstreams or undergrounds, its
links to parallel artistic phenomena, to distinct sexual and racial politics, to
the lifestyles of particular groups, subcultures and to specific spaces of the
social city and of the built environment. While scholars have increasingly

F. Pitrolo (*)
Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of
London, London, UK
M. Zubak
Department of Contemporary History, Croatian Institute of History,
Zagreb, Croatia

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_1
2 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

taken disco seriously over the past two decades, examining both its under-
ground roots and its more conventional aspects (Lawrence 2003; Flatley
and Kronengold 2008; Echols 2011; Lawrence 2016), the genre’s capac-
ity to be absorbed and remodelled across a wider geographical range has
not thus far been chartered, and disco’s other lives in local, marginal and
peripheral scenes remain mostly under-appreciated. But as it exploded,
atomised and travelled, disco served a number of different agendas: its
aesthetic rootedness in ideas of pleasure, transgression and escapism and
its formal malleability, constructed around a four-on-the-floor beat,
allowed it to permeate a number of local scenes for whom the meaning of
disco shifted, sometimes in unexpected and radical ways.
This volume seeks to go some of the way in opening up a terrain for the
global study of disco as a musical genre, as a dance culture and as a wider
cultural phenomenon. Across these chapters, our authors capture the vari-
ety of scenes, contexts and reasons for which disco took on diverse dimen-
sions in its global journey, acting as generous interpreters between
English-language scholarship and geo-political, ideological and sociologi-
cal landscapes that fall outside of its more well-trodden narratives. From
oil boom Nigeria to post-Invasion Czechoslovakia, from post-colonial
India to war-torn Lebanon, our aim here is to increase the visibility of
scenes that have hitherto been under-represented and to make some criti-
cal interventions in how to tackle the ideology of derivative musics and
‘glocal’ and ‘non-local’ music- and nightlife-related cultures. How can we
balance representation and appropriation in a globalised world? How can
we complicate the discourse between centre and periphery? How do dif-
ference and sameness play out in the complex travelling of global cultural
phenomena?
The book you hold in your hands is intended as a set of guided tours—
which may be a starting point for your own historical research and musical
discoveries, or an ulterior step of the way in debates you are already
embedded within—which can serve as tools of comparison and differen-
tiation. It contains rich historical and geo-political backgrounds, expert
analysis and much discographic detail. It is the result of deep reading, deep
listening, oral histories and personal discoveries; it is made by writers and
scholars who are also diggers, collectors, DJs, label bosses, cultural agita-
tors and people of the night, and targets the music lover as much as the
academic reader. Indeed, our curation of writers, contributions and inves-
tigative angles here seeks to establish a crucial connection between ‘scene’
and ‘field’, because there are important differences in the kinds of
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 3

knowledge the two produce and in the ways in which that knowledge
circulates. Allowing these to overlap and cross-pollinate is crucial to enrich
our work from both sides, taking disco seriously as an object of analysis
without sacrificing its effects on lived experience.

Other Places: The Global, The Local,

The Glocal World
This volume comes into a critical panorama in which debates on cultural
imperialism—and concepts of local and global, centre and periphery,
hybridisation, colonisation, decolonisation and self-colonisation—have
undergone and are still undergoing a huge, and hugely generative, process
of complication. Current movements in popular music studies, and indeed
in the studies of all cultural phenomena, are undoing structures and
assumptions that have tainted our disciplines since their inception. In her
introduction to the collection Relocating Popular Music, Ewa Mazierska
notes that

[m]usic travels practically as long as it exists, but some routes are more fre-
quented than others. (…) In the twentieth century, music is used less in
open acts of colonisation and missionisation (not least because they were
replaced by subtler forms of dominance), yet its production and consump-
tion reflects well on the imbalances of power between different regions and
countries. (Mazierska in Gregory and Mazierska 2015, 8)

We are conscious that the terms ‘local’, ‘global’ and ‘glocal’ have to be
productively redefined at each turn, and indeed these and other terms
appear in this volume in multifarious ways which not only speak back to
ongoing debates in Anglophone scholarship but also reflect the cultural
and discursive positionalities of each author. This collection seeks to join a
protean move towards analytical differentiation in an interdisciplinary field
already marked by work such as that performed by Gregory and Mazierska
and many others (see, e.g., Mitchell 1996; Fairley 2001; Connell and
Gibson 2003; White 2012; Guerra and Quintela 2020), as well as single-­
regional focus work (such as the volumes making up the Routledge
Popular Music Studies Made In series, as well as texts in the same series as
this book such as Marsh 2016, Lohman 2017, and Tosoni and Zuccalà
2020), work invested in both demolishing and rebuilding the critical and
racial palimpsests that still bury our understanding of many popular musics
4 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

(beyond the volumes mentioned across these chapters see, e.g., recent
volumes such as diverse as Brooks 2021 and Haddon 2020) and work on
how the digital reconfigures our perception of the ‘global’ (as an example
see Clayton 2016). As such, it inscribes itself as part of a process that seeks
to nuance understandings of local and global in the face of the hybrid, the
hyperlocal and the decentralised.
This process has been underway for at least two or three decades in
academic circles, but it is now being accelerated by progressively moving
up the mainstream agenda. The world this volume comes into is not sim-
ply a world in which one might hear the same single being played in clubs
and on radios everywhere, as was the case in the time this book explores,
the 1970s and 1980s; it is a world in which tapes from a market vendor in
Azerbaijan will end up on a famous DJs SoundCloud account and be dis-
tributed to millions of followers, a world in which Dutch and Syrian stu-
dents of economics might argue expertly over the best Russian trance
singles on a beach in Goa. Situated beyond Jameson’s problems with post-
modernist ‘random cannibalisation’ (Jameson 1991, 18) and beyond the
notions of ‘mutual misunderstanding/an imagined quality of elsewhere/a
projection from the unconscious’ that sit at the centre of David Toop’s pyra-
mid diagram at the beginning of his Exotica (1999), the world this volume
comes into is a world in which students openly protest curricula that don’t
adequately account for the global South and in which statues are toppled.
The notion of ‘world music’ has been problematised for at least two
decades in popular music scholarship (Connell and Gibson 2003; Guilbault
2001; Stokes 2003), but the mere fact that it has become quite hard to
find a ‘world music’ section in independent record stores demonstrates on
a day-to-day level how there is a widespread dissatisfaction with the tax-
onomies we have hitherto used to order experience. Equally, in academic
fields, the notion of intersectionality has found many applications as ‘buzz-
word’ since Kimberlé Crenshaw coined it in 1989 (Davis 2008), and
intersectional views of cultural phenomena proliferate in contemporary
scholarship; at the same time, the notion of aesthetic cosmopolitanism
(Papastergiadis 2012; Regev 2013), which works on a quasi-Derridaen
always already globalised and thus interactive formation of taste and artis-
tic practices in late modernity, has provided much food for thought and
has been both utilised and criticised. Meanwhile, in the scene, three decades
of DIY internet radio experimentation have brought us now to a place in
which NTS, still one of the most successful internet radios, carries the
slogan ‘don’t assume’; the radios Threads and Threads* broadcast at the
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 5

same time from Tottenham (‘Tottenham’—not ‘London’) and from Zona

Leste de São Paulo not São Paulo, Debar Maalo not Skopje; concurrently,
Radio Al Hara is the world-reaching but firmly Palestinian lockdown radio
that has scored the COVID-19 era for hipsters all over the world.
These phenomena might not all be doing it ‘right’ from everyone’s
point of view or from a scholarly perspective—and they often represent the
interests of those who have had the luxury to study and travel—but they
do tell us about an impatience to problematise assumptions, include what
had been excluded, widen the breadth of the archive and celebrate differ-
ence. Anybody who teaches at a university will have remarked how decen-
tralisation and hyperlocality are becoming increasingly cool; of course,
these discourses in their vernacularised forms still sometimes appear in
ways haunted by twentieth-century essentialism and, much more often,
hijacked by the cogs of neoliberalism. If difference is cool, then difference
sells: the increasingly interconnected lines linking promiscuous listener-
ship and ethical considerations are not straight, and the fetishisation of
place is still a powerful marketing operation (Connell and Gibson 2003,
153). We mustn’t be naive with regards to ours or our students’ enthusi-
asm—or that of diggers, or dancers—at the same time, however, we should
take care to not throw out the baby with the bathwater: what Gregory and
Mazierska in 2015 intercepted as a spatial turn in popular music studies is,
in 2021, much more widely reflected in a spatial turn in the experience of
music lovers, in which place really matters and universalism is increasingly
seen as suspicious.
Interdisciplinary and anti-hierarchical in how it moves through knowl-
edge, this volume comes to disco as a genre as it blossomed across the
world through two epistemological constructs which we want to devote
some time to here so that they may follow the reader as they delve into the
scenes and archives explored as the volume progresses: on the one hand,
Foucault’s philosophical construct of the heterotopia as a term rooted in
the spatial and able to account for a simultaneous participation in different
geographical and imaginary regimes; on the other, the vernacular practice
of crate digging, which we elevate here to a scholarly methodology. It is
not only that ‘promiscuous and omnivorous, disco absorbed sounds and
styles from all over, and in the process accelerated the transnational flow of
musical ideas and idioms’ (Echols 2011, xxiv)—it is also and crucially that
charting disco’s travels as a genre, as an archive and as a set of values allows
us to account for highly differentiated experiences of listening, dancing
6 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

and living while keeping our eye on ‘the investment in imaginary unities’
that keeps these experiences in common (Straw 1991, 369).

Other Spaces: The Heterotopian Paradigm

We are bringing together the work presented in this volume under the
rubric of heterotopia, one of Michel Foucault’s most infectious yet also
most fluid terms, outlined briefly in the preface to The Order of Things and
then returned to in the 1967 lecture ‘Des Espaces Autres’, published in
1984 in French and two years later in English. Infectious, because the
term has sparked the imagination of generations of scholars across fields
and proven immensely flexible in bridging disciplinary areas: the concept
of heterotopia holds together and at the same time sets in motion a series
of spatial, temporal, ideological and affective dimensions of marginality
and liminality, and because of this its applications have been far-reaching
and wide-ranging. Fluid, for those very same reasons; and thus perhaps
overly elastic and porous, dialectically contradictory and self-fulfilling.
Foucault elaborated very little on the term in the canon he left behind fol-
lowing his untimely death: the ‘heterotopia’ as a critical edifice is, as such,
unfinished, and always open to being completed and integrated every time
it is interpreted and applied. Therefore we are also indebted here to the
careful subsequent engagements with the term offered by those who have
come to it before us—in scholarly contexts as diverse as the study of vam-
pires, shopping centres, adult education, porn sites and Islamic architec-
ture and in geographical contexts from Congo to L.A., from Hong Kong
to Vienna (and we are grateful to Peter Johnson for both carefully work-
ing through the concept and keeping tabs on the term’s application).1
Perhaps most starkly within its own disciplinary confines of spatial stud-
ies—Foucault’s lecture addressed a group of architects in Berlin—the term
has come under scrutiny. David Harvey has argued that in the term ‘the
problem of Utopia could be resurrected and simultaneously evaded’
(Harvey 2000, 183): in Harvey’s account the final ‘ship’ in Foucault’s
lecture is a ship which allows both Foucault and postmodern theory to
‘escape’ (a crucial term for us here) the problem of utopia, and the revo-
lutionary, useful re-materialisation of the term ‘heterotopia’ happens in
Lefebvre, not in Foucault (Harvey 2012). Edward Soja laments how
Foucault’s rendering of the term is ‘frustratingly incomplete, inconsistent,
incoherent’ in his influential Thirdspace (1986): ‘Foucault romps through
the principles of heterotopology with unsystematic autobiographical
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 7

enjoyment and disorderly irresponsibility’ (Soja 1996, 159). Indeed, the

cumulative taxonomy Foucault provides in his lecture has perhaps proven
more of an enigma than a solid theoretical foundation: the stacking up of
spaces—beach, cemetery, ship, prison, mirror—has kept most of us guess-
ing at the Sphinx, trying to cross-check the ‘principles’ of these other
spaces onto one another and understand where we might go looking for
them in our world. We have heterotopias everywhere, it seems, and we
have never fully been able to ‘map them’; such is their appeal and, most
importantly, their usefulness as a category by which to question the con-
temporary. The power of the term, after all, lies also in its inbuilt capacity
to at the same time provide and disrupt categorisation, ordering itself as a
locus of ‘disorder in which fragments of a large number of possible orders
glitter separately in the dimension, without law or geometry’ (Foucault
1966, xix, emphasis added).
Our sense is that a collection of chapters about a phenomenon such as
dance cultures—incoherent, disobedient, disorderly, vernacular and play-
ful—should ride on such a fluid concept, in which glittering possible
orders should be redefined at each turn. We also feel that in devoting our
attention to dance cultures, ‘autobiographical enjoyment and disorderly
irresponsibility’ (Soja 1996) are the name of our game, in which a ludic
marginality is always at work. The various ‘missions’ we encounter across
this volume—musical, cultural and subcultural, collective missions and
individual ones, driven by love, by money or by fame—always entail build-
ing ‘something like counter-sites: a kind of effectively enacted utopia in
which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the
culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted’ (Foucault
1984, 3); and yes, these missions are also always and undoubtedly laced
with a longing to escape. And while the problem of utopia, as Harvey sug-
gests, is (literally) jettisoned in Foucault’s second text—and we too are
firm on the idea that indeed the term can be so easily evacuated of its
materiality—this is also because utopias are built into the idea of heteroto-
pias. Perhaps in no other example offered by Foucault is this more evident
than in the mirror, which is a utopia because when I look in the mirror ‘I
see myself there where I am not’ (Foucault 1984, 4). But the mirror is
intensely real, although it gives me an image of myself which is effectively
unreal: it projects me into a utopian space but it is definitely over here. The
‘joint space’, Foucault calls it, of the heterotopia powerfully takes shape:
8 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

The mirror makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at
myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that
surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to
pass through this virtual point which is over there. (Foucault 1984, 4)

The example of the mirror makes tangibly perceivable and demonstrable a

synchronous participation in regimes that logically do not connect. Our
use of the concept in this volume, similarly to authors who have most
recently approached the term (Ferdinand et al. 2020) and to Ben Gallan’s
work on music scenes (2015) with whom we share a disciplinary kinship,
embraces its slipperiness and enigmatic nature. In fact, we are interested
above all in the heterotopia as a locus of potentially irreconcilable con-
trasts in which different regimes co-exist in unstable ways which constantly
necessitate reinvention and restructuring. ‘Existing’, however, is key: the
heterotopia does not carry an anticipatory ‘there and then’ but a strange
‘here and now’. And while Foucault’s formulation of heterotopias as
‘effectively enacted utopias’ does create some problems in how we think
the tension between the two terms, it is a definition worth reckoning
with—and it is worth doing so away from the clamour of celebratory
accounts of disco as an easy horizon of liberation through dance and as an
altogether more complex, thornier phenomenon. Its usefulness could lik-
ened it to Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, in as much as it provokes a
defamiliarisation:

[I]n describing generally the space in which we live, as opposed to

Bachelard’s inner space, Foucault refers to that which ‘draws us out of our-
selves’. This is crucial. Heterotopias draw us out of ourselves in peculiar
ways; they display and inaugurate a difference and challenge the space in
which we may feel at home. (Johnson 2006, 84)

In our work on this volume we are using this concept on two levels: on the
one hand, the level on which as Garcia has rightly picked up before us,
‘given their layered spatialities, interstitial sites, and fleeting materializa-
tions, disco’s dancefloors could be perhaps described as heterotopias instead
of utopias’ (Garcia 2014); and on the other, we are using it to speak of the
position of disco scenes that are geographically, socially, economically,
politically, linguistically other to disco’s original conditions of production
and consumption. Reinvented at each turn—in each linguistic, political,
socio-cultural landscape—the scenes taken into analysis in this volume
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 9

present different ways in which the domain of the imaginary produces

effectively enacted, existing local impacts. Each scene is thus ‘drawn out of
itself’, and draws into itself the disco paradigm as imaginary cipher made
available by a globalising music industry and by the cultural imperialism of
US-made products and images (the film Saturday Night Fever, mentioned
in almost all of the chapters that make up this collection, is a case in point).
These mutations of the disco paradigm—variously described by our
authors as translations, adaptations, importations, fakes, reformulations,
absorptions, imitations, inflections, inspirations, aspirations, assimilations,
globalisations—function as heterotopias within heterotopias: the already
‘joint’ space of the discotheque and disco music vis-à-vis everyday life
takes its place within larger cultural operations by which the imaginary
regime of ‘disco’—which we might pseudo-geographically refer to as
‘New York City’ as utopian locus—co-exists, for example, with Rio, Beirut,
Lagos, Prague as places of ‘real’ experience. We are interested in these
modes of co-existence not in order to celebrate a kind of cultural flatten-
ing—the heterotopian edifice could be folded into all sorts of political
idealisms which evade the question of everyday life and can even end up in
a tragic embrace with neoliberalism, as some of our authors suggest—but
because of the spikes, the tensions, the difficulties that this co-existence
make available to consider.
The pervasiveness of mirrors in discotheques all over the world has
something to do with the description of the mirror offered by Foucault.
My image in the mirror—forcefully real and unreal at the same time—
proves to me that I am participating in multiple incongruous orders simul-
taneously: at once day and night, reality and fantasy, domesticity and
foreignness. But even more, we might locate our heterotopian mirror in
the mirrorball, the main purpose of which is to refract, a term which
Ferdinand et al. (2020) also return to time and again in their work on
globalised spaces. To re-frangere is to break again, to scatter the whole
into a myriad different pieces: the mirrorball refracts light as well as our
own image, and while the image that comes back is made of recognisable
units, these appear to us ordered in a way that is no longer what it was.
The act of glittering, then, carries important epistemological conse-
quences: the mirrorball scatters what is whole, makes difference out of
sameness and multiplies the singular. In an interrogation of Jim Hodges’
artworks in which mirror mosaics are placed on canvas, José Esteban
Munoz writes:
10 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

Hodges’s mirror work, such as the piece Great Event, also promises another
wish-landscape. Tiny pieces of mirror connect on canvas in the shape of a
circle. One immediate connotation is the disco ball and the world of play,
dance, and exuberance it represents. Here the world of salvation on the
dance floor is conjured. But the mirrored orb also has other connotations.
It can be understood as an aerial perspective of a great glittering landscape.
It can appear to be something like a demographic or population-density
map of a queer utopia. (Muñoz 2009, 142)

We can venture that discos, disco, dance music and nightlife in general
function in these terms: the space of a dance culture always refracts every-
day experience, reassembling it into new and other potential demograph-
ics and ‘great glittering landscapes’. The dots of light on the walls of the
discotheque—shattered, scattered—return the image of what is over here
broken up into a thousand pieces by ‘this virtual point which is over there’
(Foucault 1984, 4). Another work that famously used a mirrorball was
Marc-Camille Chaimovicz’s Celebration? Real Life (1972)—about which,
importantly, Lizzie Carey-Thomas has singled out the question mark in
the artwork’s title as ‘a metaphor for that gap between art and life’ (Carey-­
Thomas 2011). Tom Holert notes that the mirrorball in the artwork
became the tool Chaimovicz used to conjugate the ‘lower class ballroom’
and the ‘upper class mansion’ and still show how it ‘remains at odds with
its surroundings’: ‘the working class dream of upper class glamour tran-
scends even the realities of the upper class home’ (Holert 2007, 83). We
might use this idea to return to questions of importation, assimilation,
aspiration, inspiration—and reflect on how the imaginary conditions of
disco might be transcended in the chapters collected here. Holert
continues:

The inclusion of the mirrorball in Celebration? Real Life suggests that the
mirrorball can be put into the service of an aesthetic critique of everyday life.
By recontextualising its deterritorialising, scattering and disseminating pow-
ers, Chaimovicz explores its cultural and sensual, discursive and political
dimensions. (Holert 2007, 83)

What a mirrorball does, what a heterotopia does, is invest the real into an
aesthetic regime of mystery and at the same time illuminate a limit, a bor-
der between here and there. Our vision switches continuously in the het-
erotopian condition from experiencing separate spaces to experiencing the
joint space, and back again (and again, and again). Scattering and
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 11

disseminating the knowledge they produce, the chapters herein collected

all negotiate this switching, navigating a series of cultural dilemmas in the
various scenes taken into analysis which extends into the present moment
as a dilemma in scholarship: similarly to the tension between what is always
perceived as an Anglophone genre and its permutations across countries,
the tension between Anglophone scholarship and non-Anglophone
objects of inquiry is enacted and continuously renegotiated across the
pages of this volume. By setting the heterotopian paradigm in motion as a
framework by which to read these contributions, we hope to also keep
alight the critical question of what it means to keep together what we have
already termed ‘potentially irreconcilable contrasts in which different
regimes co-exist’.

Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine lan-

guage, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they
shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy ‘syntax’ in advance,
and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less
apparent syntax which causes words and things (next to and also opposite
one another) to ‘hold together’. (Foucault 1966, xix)

This volume itself is a joint space in which various ideological, cultural,

linguistic contexts co-exist, held together by the English language and by
contemporary Anglophone scholarship, both of which are forms of syntax
as Foucault describes. This gesture is not without problems, but those
problems appear—conjugated in different ways—across each one of the
chapters presented here, and are made available to the reader as problems
to work with. Our editorial effort has been to balance the demands of
knowledge circulation while respecting the cultural frameworks each
author is embedded in and writes from: most of the authors who have
contributed to this collection are either based in or come from the region
they write about, and in preparing these chapters with them we have
attempted to ‘hold together’ Anglophone and non-Anglophone ‘syn-
taxes’. Translation scholar Lawrence Venuti’s influential work on the con-
cepts of ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignisation’ (1995) might finally come to
our aid here, according to which the former performs ‘an ethnocentric
reduction of the foreign text to target language cultural values’, and the
latter applies ‘an ethnodeviant pressure on those target language values to
register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text’ (Venuti
1995, 20). Venuti differentiates between to two as ‘bringing the author
12 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

back home’ versus ‘sending the reader abroad’ (Venuti 1995, 20). We
have always tried to send the reader abroad here, staging the author as
guide but keeping the demand to travel firmly on those who come to the
text; our hope is that chapter by chapter, scene by scene, the reader will
register ethnodeviance and cultural difference and work with the distur-
bance they provide. If heterotopias, as we have seen, ‘display and inaugu-
rate a difference and challenge the space in which we may feel at home’
(Johnson 2006, 84), we hope nobody ever feels at home in this collection
of chapters, and that they will serve as an invitation to travel and experi-
ment with one’s own syntactical worldview.

Other Lives: Digging as Methodology

Crate digging is the practice of picking through stashes of old records in
search of forgotten or underrated musical artefacts: tracks which for vari-
ous reasons have remained under the radar, but which because of certain
characteristics become valuable to those who go hunting for them. Beyond
vinyl, the practice encompasses other media used to preserve and record
music, from magnetic tapes to online digital formats. The term now des-
ignates any type of exploration through big collections of unstructured
musical information, undertaken in order to catch, preserve and circulate
lost or ignored musical expressions that lay outside of the prevailing canon.
Crate diggers—music aficionados, DJs, collectors—feature strongly in this
volume, evoked through mixtapes, compilations and reissues; we also have
crate diggers amongst our contributors, and explicitly link this informal
research practice to the work of scholarship and recent studies of popular
music heritage and history (Baker 2015; Bennett and Janssen 2017; Baker
et al. 2018). Driven by a DIY ethos, crate diggers—many of them DJs
themselves—uncover a body of previously unknown and unappreciated
music, establishing new musical narratives in the process. Within the last
two decades, the practice has played an especially important role in the
safeguarding and circulating of non-Western musical heritage, expanding
our knowledge of global, hyperlocal and peripheral scenes.
While DJs have searched for old records to use in new contexts at least
since the Northern Soul craze, when British DJs looked for fresh but for-
saken soul tracks to sustain an ongoing fascination with Black American
dance rhythms, the term as we use it today is indebted primarily to the
early 1970s practices of Bronx hip-hop DJs who turned digging for
‘breaks’ into an aesthetic. In his groundbreaking study on crate digging,
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 13

Gábor Vályi posits that hip-hop’s use of sampling provided the core of a
new aesthetic approach to musical heritage, which he identifies as ‘break
aesthetics’. Grounded in the search for breaks, and emerging from an
innovative approach to repertoire, this new sensibility shifted the focus to
qualities different to those favoured by traditional musical criticism,
namely rhythmic appeal and the potential for the music to be used in sets
(Vályi 2013). The term ‘digging’ acquired more prominent visibility from
the mid-1990s, when the search for breaks began to be extended to new
musical landscapes and was no longer limited to dance-oriented findings.
Over time, crate diggers became interested in an ever-wider range of
genres: beyond traditional digging areas such as jazz and soul, more
obscure genres came into sight, such as psychedelia or exploitation, and
many other genres that find their way into this collection, including forms
of ‘disco’. Indeed, disco has proven to be a particularly fertile playground
for diggers—and thus digging as a methodology is particularly suited to
studying disco—because of at least a couple of the genre’s inherent quali-
ties. First, its status as a dance music: the congenital overlay between dig-
ging and DJing has enabled disco tracks to resurface, often re-edited or
remixed, on dance floors and in mixes. Second, its supposed artificiality—
heightened in musical cultures in which disco sounded very unfamiliar,
and often took the form of one-offs, B-sides and isolated artistic excur-
sions in artists’ careers—played into its neglect: left outside of popular
canons, it became available to be rediscovered and reassessed. From the
mid-1990s onwards, in parallel to a general diversification of digging in
terms of genre, the end goal of the practice also shifted: the functional
search for the break gave way to a more organic exploration of entire
tracks, genres and musical traditions, and the practice began to overlap
with that of ‘rare groove’ collectors, with whom diggers shared an interest
in ‘obscure’ and ‘exotic’ musics.
While many diggers share a fondness for vinyl, the format on which the
music is stored is not essential to the practice, and digging is set apart from
record collecting by three of its major traits: its exploratory dimension, its
element of aesthetic (re)evaluation and its inherently inclusionary nature.
Digging is exploratory because its fundamental aim is to expand the canon
by including within it new elements—unknown, misplaced, lost or forgot-
ten tracks, artists and genres. In this regard, diggers play an important role
in the preservation of local musical heritage which for various reasons has
remained outside of general interest. But beyond this work of expansion
and preservation, diggers re-evaluate existing traditions by rearranging
14 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

them according to new aesthetic sensibilities, a feature rooted in the old

days of hip-hop. Fundamentally eclectic and unrestrained by established
categories of genre or taste, diggers also complicate and destabilise the
canon, setting the music in a context other to its original frameworks.
Finally, crate digging is inherently inclusionary and democratic in the
sense that it is a non-institutional, vernacular practice: digging, like other
DIY approaches to the appreciation of a musical legacy, happens ‘from
below’, and there are no rules to how one might go about it (Bennett
2009). Additionally, digging—at least in its inception and ethos—is not as
tied to market forces, and ‘rare’ and ‘obscure’ doesn’t necessarily translate
to ‘expensive’. Indeed, the cheap, rare and great record is the digger’s
ultimate goal; and that record is to be played, not to be cleaned and
stored away.
For Western diggers, non-Western music provides the perfect material
for these kinds of endeavours: under-publicised and rarely circulated,
much of it has remained ‘unmapped’ for a long time, and provides new
and rich territory to be explored and classified. Digging practices in the
West have naturally been drawn to the ‘exotic’ quality of musics that are at
the same time unusual yet familiar enough to be understood within
Western frameworks, and that can easily find their way into DJ sets, com-
pilations and mixtapes. But digging at this point is not an exclusively
Western practice: over time, diggers around the world have started to
explore their own local lost or forgotten scenes. Just like Bronx hip-hop
DJs had turned to their parents’ record collections to look for usable
‘breaks’, diggers across the globe search in their own backyard—visiting
local music libraries, second-hand records shops and flea markets—to find
material which will expand not only the way their heritage is viewed from
the West but much more crucially, the way they view the musical heritage
of their own region or community.
While we have so far framed digging as fundamentally a force for good,
the practice can of course be criticised for its ethics. This kind of hunt for
the rare, hidden or forgotten can be linked to a fundamentally colonial
mentality, especially when Western diggers search for tracks outside of
their own musical terrain—the ‘discovery’ in this sense is a false discovery,
as all it does is reveal to the West something that had been well known to
the locals all along. Indeed, the narrative of musical discovery can easily
carry echoes of Orientalism, in which the ‘othering’ of music created else-
where strengthens a perception of Western supremacy embodied in the
figure of the digger. Instead of an image of enthusiastic aficionados
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 15

performing a labour of love as they search for lost musical treasures, a

picture emerges of commercial exploitation that utilises the discursive
mechanisms of colonialism to misread and misrepresent other people’s
heritage, shaping it according to Western acoustic sensibility (Aaltonen
2016). While such apprehension towards the cultural hegemonic tenden-
cies inherent in digging is essential to keep in mind, it also oversees some
of its more innovative and generative elements: in order to breathe new
life into a certain musical heritage an aesthetic relocation needs to take
place, and in this sense the fact of hearing oneself with somebody else’s
ears is vital. In contrast to the memory industry that simply re-packages
non-Western music under the category of ‘world music’, the crate digger’s
approach re-­contextualises, reshuffles and reuses it by placing it within the
contexts of more familiar popular genres.
To be sure, packaging non-Western music for Western ears and Western
markets carries the inherent danger of artificially tailoring it to fit Western
musical tastes and expectations. Yet, as pointed out in some of these chap-
ters, it does not exclude the potential for establishing a cultural flow in the
other direction, with the ‘periphery’ at times impacting the core canon
itself—as in the famous example of Cameroon’s Manu Dibango’s hit
“Soul Makossa”, which both Tim Lawrence and Uchenna Ikonne deal
with in this collection. Furthermore, although the liner notes of many of
the records spawned by contemporary reissue culture tend to overstress
the ‘forgotten’ dimension of the music, there is no doubt that a lot of the
music currently in circulation as a result of digging was by and large
ignored in its context of provenance as well—indeed, the denigration of
the domestic archive in favour of foreign music appears time and again
across the contributions collected here. Finally, an Orientalist critique of
digging neglects the ever-growing impact of local diggers, whose role is
ever more dominant. Across Eastern Europe, for example, the digging and
reissue scene is at the time of writing mostly local; at the same time, as a
disheartening meme from the past decade shows, the situation in Africa
works practically in reverse.2 While one might see even local diggers as
fundamentally tied into a global aesthetic cosmopolitanism (Regev 2013),
what we have previously called an ‘always already globalised formation of
musical taste’, their expertise is indispensable in shedding new light on
local musical heritage, and this has an important impact on younger gen-
erations and current musical production.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the practice of digging was almost
exclusively tied to vinyl, and vinyl was generally insisted upon and
16 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

fetishised. Rooted in its resistance to damage, as well as in the alleged

inherent credibility it carries, the format of the record provides a sort of
proof of the authenticity of the music inscribed onto it; during this early,
‘romantic’ digging era, key digging spaces were second-hand record
shops, record fairs, flea markets or old attics where collectors, connoisseurs
and fans rummaged through dusty stacks in search of some precious slab
carrying a forgotten gem. The expansion of digital music and platforms
for its circulation has since enabled a much wider circle of fans to access
previously unreachable and copyright-protected music, and years of col-
lecting were suddenly replaced by a few clicks. In parallel, a shift has taken
place from vinyl to online digging. Next to old school diggers, a new
generation has appeared whose practice happens at least partially online,
from early blog culture to more current YouTube playlists and streaming
services. The important aspect of this shift is that the internet plays a major
role in popularising findings. A key aspect of current crate digging is shar-
ing, and working towards the popularisation of this newly (re)found
music. This is a drastic change vis-à-vis the original digging tradition,
where hip-hop DJs deliberately obscured their sources, the knowledge of
which secured competitive advantage and gave them cultural prestige and
a certain sense of ‘property’; this kind of ‘possessive’ attitude was still com-
mon in the 2000s as diggers still often claimed their ‘digs’ and were not
willing to reveal their origin. But since the rise of music blogs, online
music archives and peer-to-peer platforms, an open source policy has pre-
vailed. Diggers around the world increasingly see it as their mission to
promote the music they curate and educate others to understand its value.
YouTube, Mixcloud or SoundCloud make it possible to post thematic
playlists, DJ sets and mixtapes; in the current landscape the hierarchy
between diggers and common users is hardly visible, as anyone can create
or repost content according to their own personal musical narratives. In
fact, the work of diggers has gained visibility precisely through such online
playlists and compilations of newly discovered and classified music, even
though, more often than not, these are rip-offs of the research performed
by the primary investigators. At the same time, specialised blogs have
become popular archives (Long and Collins 2016) which both provide
expert additional context to the music and express the personal feelings of
their curators, facilitating and personalising access to music that would
otherwise remain inaccessible (Pogačar 2016). Along with the democrati-
sation of personal preferences, comprehensive online music catalogues
such as Discogs have had an important role in codifying new taxonomies:
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 17

as users place genre tags on its ever-growing list of tracks and albums, they
help spread diggers’ informed insights and work to canonise their find-
ings. An informed search through the Discogs database across different
countries will thus easily locate most if not all the tracks of certain genre
or style in a chosen country.
Taken as a whole, diggers’ mixtapes and their echoes on YouTube playl-
ists, new classifications and musical blogging from below have created
alternative, popular musical archives which have democratised practices of
preservation. While traditional archives are characterised by limited access
and professional archival methodologies, online archives are freely acces-
sible and their self-fashioned archivists have no formal qualifications,
enabling a simple, direct approach in line with the DIY ethos. While these
generatively supplant the notion of authority implicit in archival practices
and the notion of the arché as tied to power (Derrida 1996), they also
open up questions of legitimacy in a joint, communal, collective process
(Long et al. 2017). Diggers’ mixtapes, compilations and reissues create
counter-canons and forge new connections, and can be seen as ‘anti-­
collections’: collections made by non-institutional, non-expert actors
according to methods beyond formal regulations that can nevertheless
sustain interactions and co-exist with core official collections (Welburn
2013, 148). An example of anti-collection in this sense is provided by how
reissue labels increasingly inform and/or are absorbed or distributed by
major labels.
Finally, diggers create new audiences, attracting a new generation of
fans who either did not know about a certain scene or never thought of it
as valuable, desirable or interesting. Reissue labels, radio shows and the-
matic parties are all digging-related activities that work to recirculate the
music sonically, physically and socially. Some of the authors in this collec-
tion are heavily involved in the making of contemporary scenes that re-­
evaluate the archival in this sense, with their non-scholarly activities
informing their scholarly work and vice versa. Uchenna Ikonne’s research
runs parallel to his work as a curator for labels including his own Comb &
Razor, and Flora Pitrolo has for the past decade run the radio show A
Colder Consciousness and label ACC Records, devoted to DIY electronic
musics of the 1980s. Tim Lawrence has curated disco compilations based
on his groundbreaking volumes Love Saves The Day: A History of American
Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 (2004) and Life and Death on the
New York Dancefloor, 1980–1983 (2016), and his party ‘All Our Friends’
keeps the memory of David Mancuso’s Loft parties alive and pays homage
18 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

to its legendary sound system; Ernesto Chahoud is also a curator of spe-

cialised compilations, and he and Natalie Shooter run the Beirut Groove
Collective who throw a weekly strictly 7” club-night of 1960s garage, funk
and Ethiopian and Lebanese tracks. These activities too share the dual
function of bridging the ‘official’, ‘diurnal’ work of scholarship and the
‘unofficial’, ‘nocturnal’ work of making and dancing to records, and the
two kinds of knowledge derived from these activities sustain each other in
important ways.
By now, a number of exciting, previously unacknowledged local scenes
have resurfaced, and this points to the striking number of local disco vari-
ants, revealing and reminding music historians and fans of a forgotten
musical past. The way the various disco scenes charted in this volume
materialised depended on numerous factors such as the political climate
they emerged in, degrees of cultural freedoms, the extent of cross-cultural
flows, the availability of media and infrastructure and the existing intel-
lectual and musical heritage of a certain country, which deemed certain
expressions valuable while discounting others. The authors in this collec-
tion explore how disco was reworked, what was taken and what was left
out, which media were used in this process, in what kind of environments
it lived and to what effect. What diggers have brought to the study of
these scenes needs to be taken seriously as it forces us to adjust existing
narratives and expand our understanding of our musical world; it is thanks
to diggers that, all of a sudden, exciting genres and sonorities have
appeared in unexpected places where they have been reworked in unex-
pected ways, as this collection shows.

Chapter Outline
We have organised the interventions in this volume primarily following a
thematic logic, choosing to run a series of threads between chapters and
opening up areas of enquiry, critical approaches and social, cultural and
political landscapes progressively. While readers are welcome to navigate
these chapters as they wish, those who approach the volume following its
order will notice micro-areas of research being passed from chapter to
chapter, in a sort of intellectual relay which we hope will also spark other
terms of contrast and comparison in the reader’s own knowledge and
imagination. While this book declaredly singles out its historiographical
focus on the 1970s and 1980s—and more often than not on the passage
between the two, when most of the disco cultures studied across these
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 19

pages took hold—other temporalities are also at work here, and although
the account this book proposes is not chronological, we have attempted to
nevertheless reflect an attention to the temporal in its structure: as such,
we start from a kind of pre-history of disco in the 1960s, work our way to
the genre’s most futuristic incarnations and end on a set of propositions
for the future of the field. Finally, and duly for a volume so deeply inter-
ested in space, a spatial organisation also underpins the way these chapters
are presented—but rather than geographical space, what we contemplate
here is imaginary and cultural space, from the built environment of the
discotheque and the city to outer reaches of the universe.
The volume opens with Will Straw’s chapter (Chap. 2), ‘Montreal,
Funkytown: Two Decades of Disco History’, in which the author charts
the social, cultural and commercial roles of disco in the city, starting from
its many dance floors. Integrating his previous work on Montreal’s night-
life and sound, Straw concentrates here on the years before and after the
city’s disco heyday, starting from the 1960s—which saw the importation
of the ‘chic’ Parisian nightclub paradigm—and ending with considerations
on the current memorialisation of the disco scene Billboard called the
continent’s second best. The connections between city and scene are cen-
tral to Straw’s contribution here, as are the tensions between the city’s
nightlife and the way the image of that nightlife was recounted, promoted
and sold to the city’s inhabitants as well as to outsiders. Indeed, a dual
(self)representation is always at work in Straw’s work on Montreal as a
centre of mediation between European and North American styles and
appetites and as a locus of internationalisation; the notion of performance
is key in his analysis, as he traces the ups and downs of how ‘the city per-
formed and contemplated the spectacle of its own extravagant urbanity’.
Ivan Paolo de Paris Fontanari also concentrates on a dance floor—that
of impresario Nelson Motta’s first discotheque, The Frenetic Dancin’
Days Discotheque—and follows it in its transformation from space to
institution, brand, track, soap opera and finally to overarching symbol of
the Brazilian disco era. In Chap. 3, ‘Dancin’ Days: Disco Flashes in 1970s
Brazil’, Fontanari works across various manifestations of Motta’s disco
empire, singling out the contributions the Dancin’ Days concept made to
youth cultures in Brazil. In particular, the author pays attention to the
class transformation operated via the Dancin’ Days soap opera, from disco
as Rio-based élite phenomenon to mass televised escape and to the disco-
theque’s house band, Frenéticas, who subverted gender norms in rich and
multifarious ways. While the chapter as a whole focuses on disco’s role in
20 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

shaping a new sensibility for Brazil’s middle class, white, metropolitan

youths, Fontanari turns towards the end of his chapter to what and espe-
cially who disco left out, reflecting on how the disco heritage is present
and absent in successive, and more globally successful, forms of Brazilian
popular music.
Flora Pitrolo’s contribution to this volume acts as a bridge between the
investigation of local phenomena and the question of derivative and
imported musics. Chapter 4, ‘Gimmick! Italo Disco, Copy and
Consumption’, adds to a slowly emergent canon of work on Italo disco, a
genre that has historically been greatly appreciated abroad and perceived
as an enigmatic misnomer at home. While this chapter too begins in the
register of the spatial and the historical, painting the genre’s emergence
against the backdrop of the Adriatic riviera at the end of Italy’s decade of
terrorism, it concentrates chiefly on theorising the genre in an industrial
logic of copy first and seriality later. Working through Italo’s story of pro-
duction and consumption—in which notions of copy and original, fake
and real, domestic and foreign, import and export gradually lose consis-
tency—Pitrolo ultimately intercepts the genre’s unoriginality as its trade-
mark and asks some fundamental questions about its value. Here, she
turns to Italo lyrics and to the particular pidgin English they deploy to
theorise the genre as the music of a ‘felt loss’, in which the impossibility of
originality is dealt with in the key of postmodern irony.
In Chap. 5, ‘Japanese Disco as Pseudo-International Music’, Yusuke
Wajima also considers the ‘industrial’ question of the formula in making
and marketing dance music between the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the
frictions between domestic and foreign records and their representations
in a given culture and society. Wajima’s nomenclature of ‘pseudo-­
international music’ is particularly complex, as it braids together questions
of international aspirations and of domestic market forces, also touching
on the ‘big in Japan’ phenomenon and, in his final remarks, on Eurobeat
as a specifically Japanese genre. At the centre of Wajima’s analysis is the
story of the track “Sexy Bus Stop” and of its makers, who navigated a
multifaceted cultural and commercial web and invented new paradigms
for the production and consumption of pop music in Japan. Wajima’s
work here is also precious in taking into account dance styles and disco’s
traces in visual cultures, noting how disco’s transformations continue to
provide visual clues and embodied traces in contemporary Japanese
culture.
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 21

Gregory D. Booth in Chap. 6, ‘Disco, Dancing, Globalization and

Class in 1980s Hindi Cinema’, chronicles how disco was adopted and
especially adapted—yet never fully replicated—in the relatively culturally
isolated but progressively globalising context of Indian 1980s film.
Propelled into popular culture, as most pop music was, via the medium of
film, the author notes how disco took on a number of received meanings
as a ‘fetish’ and can be seen to have enacted transformations of class and
masculinity of India’s film and music industries at this particular stage of
their globalisation. Booth’s investigative thread is supplied here by the
actor/composer duo of Mithun Chakraborty and Bappi Lahiri, whose col-
laborations provide exemplary case studies of the manner in which disco
found its ideal audiences in Hindi-speaking lower-classes cinemagoers. For
this section of Indian society, disco became a symbol of global modernity:
it played out in nightclub settings, which most viewers had never seen or
experienced first-hand, and leaned on the recognisable borrowing of
Western disco music, equally unknown to fans. Its appeal was driven by
disco’s visual flamboyance and its connection to social dancing, which
proved more adaptable to local cultural traditions and gendered cinematic
conventions than earlier musical styles.
Chapter 7, ‘Dancing Desire, Dancing Revolution: Sexuality and the
Politics of Disco in China since the 1980s’, by Qian Wang traverses the
little-known territory of Chinese disco to investigate the genre vis-à-vis
the country’s sexual mores and Communist policies. Beginning with a rich
history of the emergence and various re-significations of the term, Wang
argues that because the ‘disco fever’ was impossible to keep at bay it was
in fact ‘assimilated’ by way of various official and vernacular strategies in
terms of politics, culture and lifestyle: from poetry that militarised disco,
to disco as a form of exercise for the elderly and middle-aged, to hybrid
forms meshing disco and disco dancing with folk traditions and Peking
Opera, the author shows how the struggle between disco and state-­
sanctioned Chinese identity was constant throughout the 1980s. The
heart of Wang’s analysis rests on a notion of ‘desexualisation’ of disco at
the hand of the authorities, which he explores via the analysis of three
Chinese cover versions of Modern Talking’s “Brother Louie”; succes-
sively, in the long decades following the events of Tiananmen, we learn
that disco is currently being ‘resexualised’ by increasingly active but still
very much underground LGBTQI+ communities.
Another complex relationship between censorship and mainstreaming,
and underground and overground, is articulated in Jakub Machek’s
22 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

chapter (Chap. 8), ‘Non-stop, I Want to Live Non-stop: The Role of Disco
in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia’, which takes into analysis two genera-
tions of Czechoslovak disco music and culture and their respective nego-
tiations of an ever-more liberal-leaning youth culture on the one hand and
the impositions of the socialist state on the other. Machek explores how,
perhaps surprisingly, disco as a genre and form of socialisation was partially
endowed in the climate of ‘normalisation’ following the 1968 Soviet inva-
sion, for whose authorities it provided a potentially wholesome, fresh,
optimistic vision for future Czechoslovak generations. The author exam-
ines how a disco craze took hold in the country while its potential disrup-
tive power and implicit connections to private dimensions of escape and
consumerism were tamed via interventions such as ‘retraining examina-
tions’ for musicians and DJs, strict instructions for radio broadcast, the
balancing of entertainment and education in discotheques, and the con-
tent of lyrics. Investigating both official policy publications and youth
magazines, and leaning on Alexei Yurchak’s (2003) notion of a shift from
semantic to pragmatic discursive regimes, Machek sheds light on the com-
plex mechanisms that underscored disco’s absorption as both an official
and unofficial praxis, seen differently by critics and authorities, and acquir-
ing different meanings in the city and in the countryside.
Disco’s conquest of Eastern Europe is returned to again by Marko
Zubak in Chap. 9, ‘Yugoslav Disco: The Forgotten Sound of Late
Socialism’. Zubak explores the curious absence of disco from the local
popular canon and from collective memory, despite its rich presence in the
late 1970s and early 1980s, and roots this amnesia in the prevailing musi-
cal discourses of the time which mythologized punk and new wave as
historical synchronisers of local and global trends. Ironically, it was the
deep Western imprint of Yugoslav popular culture that led to this mistreat-
ment of disco, since music critics adopted early Western tropes which dis-
missed the genre as worthless. Zubak, in turn, pays respect to the crate
diggers who, against this background, came across the disco sound and
follows its sonic traces back to Yugoslav media archives to reveal a wider
and more complex culture around it. Here too, Yurchak’s seminal work
(2006) provides the theoretical framework for the analysis of different lay-
ers of Yugoslav disco’s appropriation, from its initial import to consequent
local adaptations. Yurchak’s non-binary optics, which approach late social-
ism beyond the dichotomies of repression and dissent, accommodate
Yugoslav disco’s own contrasting elements, which ranged from the
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 23

co-­existence of affluent fans and proletarian dance champions to the con-

jugation of funk grooves with exploitative brands of Schlager disco.
Natalie Shooter and Ernesto Chahoud survey the opulent rise, against-­
the-­odds survival and melancholy decline of disco in one of its non-­
Western bedrocks in Chap. 10, ‘Other Voices of the Orient: Lebanese
Disco and Nightlife during the Civil War’. As the authors make immedi-
ately clear, the history of Lebanon’s civil war and that of Lebanese disco
are ‘inextricably linked, each forming the backdrop to the other’—yet
their account is of an effervescent scene rife with musical and cultural
invention and experimentation. After setting the scene of one of the Arab
world’s most developed music hubs, Shooter and Chahoud trace the intri-
cate story of the early singles “Liza … Liza” and “Abu Ali”—marked by
pioneering choices and international difficulties—before chronicling the
story of the genre as it took root, from Jacqueline and Rafic Hobeika’s
Oriental-tinged covers and Marwan Rahbani’s “Salade du Chef” to the
emergence of ‘bellydance disco’. Shooter and Chahoud’s chapter weaves
discographic and musicological analysis through extensive interviews
across the Lebanese scene and archival research, and their writing hinges
on letters and invoices, and personal accounts gathered in studios and liv-
ing rooms across the world. Even as we turn our gaze to home studios to
avoid the bombings and to the rise of synthesizers to cut production costs,
this is a precious portrayal of a precious scene which is finally—also thanks
to the authors’ own efforts as DJs and cultural agitators—receiving
renewed attention.
Another context in some ways framed by war—and by the ‘oil crisis
which turned out to be an oil boom’—is that explored in Chap. 11, ‘Disco
and Discontent in Nigeria: A Conversation’, in which we present an inter-
view with label boss, journalist and cultural theorist Uchenna Ikonne.
Beginning by positioning the rise of Nigerian disco amongst the end of
the civil war, a huge financial boom, and the decline of the Fela Kuti-led
movement of Afrocentrism, we discuss the peculiarities of the country’s
nightlife, its rich club scene, DJs and sound systems, the influence of disco
on Nigerian social and cultural life at large in the 1970s and 1980s, and
the various ways in which a growing sense of austerity that came with the
military coup of 1983 eventually swallowed the movement. Ikonne makes
significant reflections across this conversation about how disco’s ‘original’
locus in New York City was informed by African sonorities—a topic which
returns forcefully in Tim Lawrence’s epilogue to this volume—and makes
rich interventions on how Nigeria acted as both a sonic and cultural
24 F. PITROLO AND M. ZUBAK

factory for disco and as a consumer of disco as it came back, glossier, more
polished, sounding ‘expensive’. What does it mean, in this context, to
want to ‘sound foreign’? And how can current reissue cultures, archival
practices and newly found interests in Nigerian disco ethically navigate a
history without once again replicating colonial gestures?
As we move towards the end of the volume, we posit outer space as our
last geographical and cultural positioning. Ken McLeod’s chapter (Chap.
12), ‘Outer Space, Futurism, and the Quest for Disco Utopia’, hones in
on the widespread fascination with outer space, intergalactic travel and
encounters with alien species in disco cultures around the globe, interro-
gating these under the Blochian rubric of hope. McLeod begins by tracing
the history of space disco and interrogates its materialisation on the dance
floor via its iconography, the design of clubs and that of sound systems,
before moving to discuss the genre in musical terms. Here, he provides a
panoply of discographic examples across the ages and across countries—
from the American 1950s to Berlin School iterations, from Italo disco to
French touch—and offers a deep analysis of Donna Summer’s “I Feel
Love” (1977) and Boney M.’s “Night Flight to Venus” (1978) as case
studies. The chapter moves on to analyse the cross-pollination between
space films and their soundtracks and space disco through the 1970s, put-
ting forward a series of theoretical readings that braid together ideas of
utopia, heterotopia and atopia: ‘impossibly, at once a place and not a place,
a territory without boundaries, a position without parameters’ (Vermeulen
and van den Akker 2010).
We hand the final word in this volume to Tim Lawrence, who as the key
scholar on disco is in a privileged position to comment on current work
and to understand what research still needs to be done. His chapter (Chap.
13), ‘Decolonising Disco: Counterculture, Postindustrial Creativity, the
1970s Dance Floor and Disco’, undoes some important political and cul-
tural assumptions made about disco in New York City and lays the ground
for future scholarship on the genre. Lawrence’s generous epilogue makes
two crucial critical moves. On the one hand, it offers a post-Harveyan
counter-reading of NYC disco as engaged in a form of ‘collectivist proto-­
politics’, shedding light on its radical nature by traversing the 1970s
through the personal and philosophical journey of Sylvère Lotringer and
juxtaposing its development to—rather than distancing it from—the par-
allel formation of punk and hip-hop as scenes. On the other, this epilogue
lays the foundations for an expanded definition of the disco archive which
pays attention not only to disco as a much more stratified phenomenon
 INTRODUCTION: DISCO HETEROTOPIAS—OTHER PLACES, OTHER SPACES… 25

than has been historically been acknowledged, but to how disco’s story in
the US is in itself an expression of a colonial logic. Shedding light back
onto some of the work done in the volume, Lawrence asks: ‘what might
an anti-colonial history of disco look like if it was written from within
Africa or Latin America or another part of the world?’. Here too we end
on hope, a ‘strange hope’, as Lawrence calls it: the wider and more com-
plex history of disco is still recuperable, and in our taking seriously ‘an
oft-ridiculed cultural formation’ we may just find a key to better interpret
the present moment and more dance cultures to come.

Notes
1. Peter Johnson provides an updated survey of work done across disciplines
on the concept of heterotopia on his website www.heterotopiastudies.com
[Accessed 10th January 2020].
2. The meme is a colour-coded map of Africa ‘partitioned’ not by colonial
powers but by diggers and discographers mostly based in Western Europe.
The meme is from 2010 and is accessible here: https://africasacountry.files.
wordpress.com/2010/09/29476_413133910989_529365989_511226
5_1384749_n.jpg [Accessed 20th February 2017].

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 Montreal, Funkytown: Two Decades
of Disco History

Will Straw

Observation: Everybody, even the suit-and-tie business crowd and the

fashion-conscious slummers, knows how to dance, really dance, in
Montreal
—Chin (1997)

In 2016, the Cologne-based Red Bull Music Academy came to Montreal

for a month of seminars, talks and concerts. One of the most high profile
of these events was an evening devoted to celebrating the period now
known as the ‘golden age’ of Montreal disco, which extended from the
mid-1970s through the early 1980s. Guests at this event included Robert
Ouimet (who had DJ’d from 1973 to 1981 at the Limelight, the city’s
pre-eminent discothèque during those years) and Montreal-born per-
former France Joli (whose hit records during the city’s golden age of disco
included “Come to Me” in 1979 and “Gonna Get Over You” in 1981).

W. Straw (*)
Department of Art History & Communication Studies, McGill University,
Montreal, QC, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 29

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_2
30 W. STRAW

Brian Chin, who covered disco records for many years for Billboard, has
described “Come to Me” as ‘the generational turning point between tra-
ditional Fire Island disco and the more progressive ‘dance music’ of the
‘80s’’ (Chin 1997). Joli’s international career had taken off in 1979, when
she was a last-minute replacement for Donna Summer at a 1979 Fire
Island concert, in New York, beginning an association with LGBTQ
groups which has continued through the present.
The Red Bull Music Academy’s acknowledgement of Montreal’s cen-
trality as a disco city went beyond this celebratory evening. In 2014, I had
been asked to write a piece on Montreal disco for the RBMA’s online
platform (Straw 2014), and other articles on the site have covered
Montreal’s dance music history from a variety of other perspectives.
Outside the RBMA, commemorations of Montreal’s disco history have
grown in frequency and media ubiquity since the early 2000s. DJ sets or
playlists of disco music made in Montreal may be found on a number of
download or streaming sites. Some of them, like Disco Spatial Quebec
(1976–1982) (Psycquébélique 2013) or Disco 80s Canadian MONTREAL
SOUND Hi-NRG Electro—Non-Stop Mix (77 mins) 1977–1984 (Mixcloud
2015), highlight (or retrospectively construct) specific generic strains
within the history of the city’s disco music.1
In 2009 Funkytown, an hour-long Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
radio documentary, interviewed key players in the scene and set the city’s
golden age of disco within a broader history of the city’s nightlife
(Funkytown: The Montreal Disco Era 2009). Two years later, a feature-­
length French-language film, also titled Funkytown, was released, accom-
panied by a 2-CD soundtrack album. Its fictional story was set in and
around a 1970s Montreal disco called Starlight (based on the original
Limelight). The film both glorified Montreal’s disco culture of the 1970s
and set out to expose the corruption and violence allegedly at the core of
the scene in which that culture was embedded. Funkytown met with a
mixed reception, criticized in several quarters for its emphasis on
Anglophone participation in the city’s disco scene and for its marginaliza-
tion of the French language (Lisée 2011).
Commemorations like these of Montreal’s disco histories acknowledge
achievements too long overlooked in official accounts of the city’s cultural
heritage, which have tended to emphasize the legacies of Québec political
chanson or Montreal’s folk-tinged rock music of the 1970s. At the same
time, it must be admitted, coverage of Montreal disco culture often reveals
the city’s fondness for exaggerated claims about its cultural pre-eminence.
 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 31

In the mid-1960s, local news reports repeated the boast that La Licorne,
which opened in Montreal in 1962, was the first discothèque in North
America. One of its owners, it was reported, had seen discothèque-style
dance clubs in Paris and other parts of Europe and brought the idea back
to Montreal (La Patrie 1968, 31). While this claim was often repeated
over the next decade (Billboard 1969, C12), it may easily be contested.
Jim Dawson, in his history of the twist, suggests that the first true disco-
thèque in North America was Le Club, launched in New York City in
1960 (Dawson 1995, 60). A thorough history of record-centred night-
clubs in Harlem and other North American locations would almost cer-
tainly move the moment of their appearance back even further, though
this would require resolving the murky instability which marks the very
definition of ‘discothèque’ (Thornton 1995, 37–43). These claims of
Montreal’s absolute pre-eminence as a nightlife capital would continue. In
1970, Current Events, a tourist-oriented entertainment magazine distrib-
uted in Montreal hotel rooms, suggested that ‘Montreal’s ratio of disco-
thèques to population is the highest in the world—certainly the highest in
Canada!’ (Current Events 1970, 46). In that same year, a reporter for The
Gazette newspaper made reference to Montreal’s one-time reputation as
‘the city that had the best night-life on the continent’ (The Gazette
(Montreal) 1970, 39).
A more modest and convincing claim about Montreal’s stature as disco
music capital came in a headline from Billboard magazine in 1979:
‘Montreal may be the continent’s 2nd best city [for disco music]’ (Billboard
1979a, 84). This article appeared at a time when press coverage of
Montreal’s disco culture, both in specialist and in general media, would
enumerate several empirical indicators of that culture’s success: the num-
bers of people attending clubs, the capacity of Montreal discothèques to
stimulate record sales and the significant number of Montreal-based per-
formers, producers and record label owners who had emerged from the
city’s disco music infrastructures and attained international stature.
Together, these phenomena were seen to place Montreal just behind
New York on a list of North American disco capitals.
In my own research and published work, I have returned regularly to
the history of Montreal disco culture, focussing on the networks of col-
laboration and dissemination which marked this scene from the mid-1970s
through the early 1980s (Straw 2005, 2008). To avoid excessive duplica-
tion of these other writings, I am concentrating here on the periods before
and after the perceived ‘heyday’ of Montreal disco culture. I will begin by
32 W. STRAW

looking at the wave of discothèque openings in Montreal in the 1960s,

and at the range of economic, cultural and other actors pulled into what
quickly became a discothèque scene. I will briefly summarize the recon-
figuration of the city’s disco culture in the early to mid-1970s, when
‘disco’ came to designate a distinctive complex of musical styles, recording
formats and transnational musical flows. Finally, I will turn to the late
1970s and early 1980s. In this final period, ongoing international diagno-
ses of a crisis or ‘death’ of disco (the familiar post-Saturday Night Fever
‘burn-out’) obscured the real successes occurring at this time within
Montreal’s disco infrastructures.

A Scene Takes Shape, 1962–1970

The opening of La Licorne, widely regarded as Montreal’s first disco-
thèque, occurred, as noted, in 1962. It preceded, by only a few months,
the opening of Place des Arts, a major performing arts centre funded with
public monies. Both establishments permitted Montreal to reimagine
itself, during a decade in which the city became a major world tourist des-
tination, largely as a result of its hosting of the 1967 World’s Far, Expo
’67. In the 20 years following the beginning of World War II, Montreal
had acquired a reputation as a corrupt and vice-ridden city, one whose
night-time culture was intimately interwoven with sexual commerce, gam-
bling and the collusion of municipal administrators with organized crime
(Lapointe 2014; Straw 1992). By the 1950s, many of the venues dominat-
ing Montreal’s nightlife were decaying cabarets and supper clubs from the
pre-war era, or smaller taverns and ‘grills’ offering versions of burlesque
entertainment and small-ensemble musical performance.
While crime and vice would continue to flourish in the 1960s, the city’s
image would be revised in important ways during that decade. The 1960
election of a Liberal Party government in the province of Quebec is now
viewed as the beginning of the so-called Révolution Tranquille [Quiet
Revolution], a broad set of social transformations marked by the growth
of the middle class, the spread of post-secondary education, moves to
protect the French language and a modernization of Quebec’s cultural
sphere. The newly built Place des Arts was intended both as a home for a
new, liberal Quebec culture—one which resisted the oppressive influence
of the Catholic church—and as one stop on the continental circuit of
municipal cultural centres that included Lincoln Center in New York and
the O’Keefe Centre in Toronto, Canada’s largest city. The construction of
 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 33

Place des Arts had occurred on one edge of Montreal’s longstanding red-
light district, an area of bars, brothels and back-room gambling pits that
the city was anxious to eradicate. The city government used the building
of the new arts centre, and the subsequent hosting of the 1967 World’s
Fair, as pretexts for demolishing many of the vestiges of the city’s older
nightlife (Straw 2015).
It was meaningful, within Montreal’s linguistic and moral geographies,
that the city’s first discothèque, La Licorne, opened on McKay Street,
several blocks to the west of the old red-light district. From the early
1960s through the 1980s, McKay and the streets adjacent to it (including
Stanley Street, where the Limelight would later be located) would serve as
the gravitational centre of Montreal’s disco scene. To move west in down-
town Montreal is to move closer to its English-speaking populations, and
while McKay Street was still in the linguistically mixed centre of the city, it
was in close proximity to the largely Anglophone bohemian strip on
Crescent Street and to the campus of the English-language Sir George
Williams University (renamed Concordia University in 1974). It was in
this neighbourhood, as well, that the city’s largest concentration of gay
bars could be found, before police repression and a changing real estate
market pushed the institutions of gay nightlife to the city’s present-day
Gay Village, far to the east of downtown (Crawford 2016). This section of
Montreal’s downtown remains a key site of nightlife, but the dominant
institution, since the 1980s, has been the British-style pub.
In the journalistic commentary which accompanied the opening of La
Licorne, it was clear that the institution of the discothèque was seen as a
European invention. The discothèque was chic and modern and thus
appeared to have little to do with the burlesque clubs and cabarets which
had typified Montreal nightlife for much of the post-war period. Over the
next ten years, advertisements for La Licorne would brag that ‘[t]here’s
the atmosphere of Paris in Discothèque La Licorne,’ and compare the club
to a Parisian ‘cave’ (Current Events 1971, 20).
The perceived freshness and cosmopolitanism of the 1960s discothèque
are efficiently condensed in the following passage from an article in the
popular French-language weekly newspaper La Patrie. If I quote it at
some length, it is because it expresses, better than anything else I have
seen, the specific appeal of the discothèque as an institution engaged in
reordering the temporal and spatial dimensions of music. The article’s
very title—‘La “dolce vita” dans le vent établit ses quartiers dans les disco-
thèques’ [‘The “good life” of today finds its domain in
34 W. STRAW

discothèques’]—invokes the glamorous world featured in contemporary

Italian films, while the description which follows captures the transition
from an old era of live orchestras to a new culture based on the playing of
records:

Montreal, just like New York, now dances to Paris time. Old-fashioned now
are those nightclubs where you suffered your boredom in front of a listless
orchestra of lifeless, mechanical fingers. (…) In the discotheques, there are
neither bands nor music-hall shows. Boys and girls, alone or with others,
crowd around a dance floor the size of a handkerchief to talk and dance,
breathing in the latest hits by their idols of the hour: the Beatles, Richard
Anthony, Petula Clark, Alan Barrière, Johnny Halliday, France Gall, the
Rolling Stones and the rest. This is the triumph of the record (directly
imported from France) over bands unable to update their repertory at the
same pace. Because, in this way, we are more free, preferring originals to bad
imitations. (La Patrie 1965, 6)2

The vinyl record, here, is an agent of synchronization, binding time and

space. It guarantees that Montreal is hearing the very same music as Paris
at roughly the same moment, rather than awaiting the slow assimilation of
that music into the repertoires of orchestras performing covers. As well,
the record carries within it the auratic presence of celebrity, of a song’s
original performer, rather than sacrificing that presence for the liveness of
the anonymous club musician, an experience now stripped of any value. In
this, and other accounts, the freshness of the record would be set in con-
trast to the stale labours of ageing, bored nightclub musicians (La Presse
1970, 15). In a musical culture where music from elsewhere often arrived
through the intermediary of the local cover band or the cabaret orchestra
(often performing translations of English songs into French), the disco-
thèque offered contact with the original version of songs. Somewhat para-
doxically, then, the discothèque made the record rather than the live
musician the guarantee of presence and authenticity.
In the five years that followed the opening of La Licorne, dozens of
other clubs opened in Montreal. We may trace several processes whereby
the discothèque as cultural form rippled across the terrain of public dis-
course and attached itself to local systems of celebrity and creative expres-
sion. Three developments pulled the culture of the discothèque towards
the centre of Montreal’s public life, imbricating the phenomenon within
the complex, overlaid networks of Quebec’s entertainment culture during
 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 35

a period of that culture’s significant expansion. One of these was the cir-
culation of a range of pedagogical interventions—in newspapers, in maga-
zines, and in clubs themselves—instructing Montrealers on the origins of
the discothèque, where to find them in the city, how to dance and what to
wear. This pedagogy extended beyond the expected coverage of passing
trends; it cast the discothèque as a complex, aspirational space requiring
multiple forms of preparation and prior knowledge.
The most basic form of preparation involved learning how to dance
currently popular steps like the Watusi. A key figure in instilling such
knowledge in Montrealers was the New York-based dancer and teacher
‘Killer Joe’ Piro, who had served as dance instructor at the Manhattan
club the Palladium in the 1950s and early 1960s. Piro was brought to
Montreal in 1964 for the opening night of the discothèque Manny’s, and
he would return on several occasions for similar events. In the same year,
Piro, with his Discotheque Dancers troupe, undertook a tour of depart-
ment stores across Canada, providing dance lessons as a means of cross-­
marketing new fashions to be worn at discothèques (The Gazette (Montreal)
1965, 4; Fritz 1964, 4; Kilgallen 1964, 36). In 1966, when the Gazette
newspaper introduced the first eight books in its Modern Living Library, a
manual for ‘Discothèque Dances’ was sold alongside guides to interior
decoration and Jewish cooking (The Gazette (Montreal) 1966, 38).
A second dynamic within Montreal’s discothèque culture of the 1960s
was its attachment to broader systems of celebrity, and those of music
celebrity in particular. If it was common in Montreal, as in so many other
cities, for media and social elites to be seen in discothèques, a large num-
ber of members of Quebec’s entertainment star system actually invested in
such venues, in many cases incorporating their name within that of the
club. Singers Joel Denis (with Disco à Jo-Jo) and Donald Lautrec (Chez
Donald Lautrec), and actress/singers Dominique Michel (Zouzou) and
Denyse Filiatrault (Epoca) all announced or opened discothèques during
the period 1967–1970 (Tele-Radiomonde 1967a, 19; Tele-Radio Monde
1969, 8). The affiliation of celebrities with discothèques ensured that the
latter’s openings were high-level gatherings of other celebrities, whose
presence attracted coverage within the gossip columns and social pages of
Montreal’s many newspapers and entertainment magazines (Tele-­
Radiomonde 1967b, 16). This dynamic pulled the city’s discothèques into
the very centre of its popular culture, at a time when an expansion of
broadcasting outlets and recording companies bolstered Montreal’s status
as centre of Québéc’s increasingly mediatized cultural effervescence. In
36 W. STRAW

Montreal, as in so many other cities in the 1960s, the discothèque became

a space in which the city performed and contemplated the spectacle of its
own extravagant urbanity.
A third dynamic, likewise common in other places but of great impor-
tance in Montreal, was the involvement of high-profile designers and
architects in the structure and look of the city’s discothèques. Eleanora
Diamanti and others have traced the influence of radical movements within
architecture on the design of the Italian discothèque in the late 1960s and
1970s (Diamanti 2017). Montreal participated within a broader interna-
tional interest in discothèque design, but this was given local inflections by
the burst of architectural activity which accompanied the construction of
the Expo ’67 site, the completion (in 1967) of the city’s first metro (sub-
way system), and a wave of building of commercial and government build-
ings during the same period. In Montreal, the designer associated with the
most high-profile discothèque projects was Jean-Paul Mousseau, who had
begun as an abstract painter and subsequently worked on a key station in
Montreal’s new Métro system, among many other projects. Articles in
Montreal’s daily newspapers, and in specialized design magazines like
Architecture/Concept set discothèque design within the broader emer-
gence of a modernized Quebec design culture whose primary other exam-
ples were public works projects and corporate skyscrapers (Architecture/
Concept 1969, 38–43; Saumart 1969, 15).

Narratives of Decline and Rebirth

Writing of a later period in the history of New York City’s disco culture,
Tim Lawrence quotes music journalist’s Brian Chin’s bemoaning of the
‘ceaseless proclamation[s]’ of disco’s death that would mark this period
(Lawrence 2016, 105). In fact, such proclamations had accompanied the
expansion of Montreal’s discothèque culture since its very beginnings, in
the early 1960s. Announcements of disco’s death quickly followed
Montreal’s first wave of club openings and were made at regular intervals
in the 20 years that followed. The frequency of these obituaries had much
to do with the contempt of so many journalists and cultural elites for the
institution of the discothèque and the musical forms with which it was
typically associated. This contempt would only grow as the 1960s gave
way to the 1970s, and as the appeal of fashionably designed spaces gave
way to the conviction, on the part of so many journalists, that the disco-
thèque represented a capitulation to passing trends with little staying
 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 37

power. The eagerness to declare the discothèque dead would become

almost epidemic in the 1970s, when such proclamations could draw more
easily on a disdain for assembly line records and nameless, faceless record-
ing artists.
Already, in the very aftermath of the opening of La Licorne, we find
predictions about the imminent death of the discothèque as institution. In
1965, the author (‘Fritz’) of the ‘On and Off the Record’ column in the
English-language newspaper The Gazette laid out the reasons why disco-
thèques were doomed in Montreal:

DISCOTHEQUES NO GO-GO HERE: They are still thriving in New York

and elsewhere, but the discotheque fad has failed to catch on in Montreal;
and more and more spots which tried them are switching to other forms of
entertainment. The younger set which patronized them created a problem
for licensed operators, who had to institute door-checks to keep out under-­
age would-be patrons. Those that did pass muster for the most part lingered
all evening over a single drink or two, effectively silencing cash registers. The
better-spending middle-aged and older crowd didn’t take to the acrobatic
antics of the frug and its myriad variations. The take hasn’t been sufficient,
even at reduced entertainment cost, to make the experiment worth-while.
Hence the decline of the discotheque hereabouts. (Fritz 1965, 4)

In 1966, without directly responding to the Gazette, the French-­

language newspaper La Patrie ran an item titled ‘Les discothèques ne sont
pas mortes’ [‘Discotheques are not dead’], pointing to the imminent
opening of three high-profile clubs with significant backing behind them
(La Patrie 1966, 2). By 1971, when the wave of discothèque openings
which had marked the 1960s could well appear to have run its course, a
newspaper article could still protest that, if discothèques were supposedly
dead, ‘someone forgot to bury them’ (The Gazette (Montreal) 1971, 45).
Indeed, the stability of Montreal’s discothèque scene in 1970 was com-
pared to the uncertainty of that in New York City, where ‘the focus of
attention seems to change so quickly that a place that’s crowded one
weekend is literally empty the next’ (The Gazette (Montreal) 1970, 39).
In fact, Montreal’s disco culture of the 1970s was characterized by a set
of overlapping temporalities. In the first half of the 1970s, a perceived
decline of the city’s discothèques unfolded against the backdrop of other
signifiers indicating disco culture’s international reorganization and ascen-
sion. Those who diagnosed a decline often did so in moral terms, finding,
38 W. STRAW

in the discothèques of the early 1970s, an increased sexualization and

moral degradation. In 1971, entrepreneur Gilles Archambault, a partner
in both the original La Licorne and the extravagantly designed Mousse
Spacthèque (which had opened in 1967), reopened and renamed the lat-
ter as the Sexe-Machine. Archambault called upon a well-known Montreal
cartoonist to design Sexe-Machine as ‘a part-Clockwork Orange, part-­
Fellini fantasy with topless waitresses and plastic breasts’ (‘When
Discotheques Reshaped Montreal, Told with Rarely-Seen Photos’ 2018).
Press coverage of Sexe-Machine stressed the prevalence of nudity within
its walls (Weekend Magazine 1974, 7–10).
Narratives of the long history of Montreal’s nightlife since the 1930s
too frequently locate the moral endpoint of that history in the perceived
debasement and abjection of the post-burlesque strip club and sex show.
This framing rarely acknowledges the role of such places as new spaces of
congregation for subaltern communities, such as the city’s increasingly
militant gay community, or as venues for the emergence of practices of
drag performance. It was the case, nonetheless, that a rise in media report-
ing on night club murders and criminal gang wars in Montreal in the early
1970s set the city’s bars and discothèques against a backdrop very differ-
ent from that of the chic, fashionable 1960s. As I note elsewhere, the
photojournalistic representation of Montreal’s bars and nightclubs of the
early to mid-1970s, in lurid tabloids like the weekly Allo Police, con-
structed a topography of night-time menace very different from the cele-
bratory nightlife maps and design magazine spreads which represented the
discothèques of the previous decade (Straw 2021).

The Montreal Disco Explosion

Against this backdrop of the discothèque’s perceived loss of cultural sta-
tus, the period 1973–1975 nevertheless saw a reconfiguration of the city’s
disco culture around a set of new phenomena discernible in other cities in
North America. These included the emergence of new musical styles, a
newly enhanced role for the club DJ, and the ascension of the 12′ single
and remix as both professional tool and cultural commodity. Within these
shifts, the discothèque, as a distinctive kind of space, became less talked
about than ‘disco’ as a musical form with its attendant forms of sociability
and spectacle. A key event in this reconfiguration, as suggested, was the
opening in 1973 of the Limelight disco (Pemberton 2016; ‘Lime Light
Disco’ 2015). Located amidst a cluster of gay bars, and with a record
 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 39

library largely acquired from contacts in New York City, the Limelight
formalized the shift, in Montreal discothèque design and purpose, from
European to American models.
While the story of the Limelight and its transformative role in Montreal
nightlife has often been told in mainstream media (Cross 2016), coverage
of Montreal’s rise to importance as part of the economic expansion of
disco music at a transnational level was largely confined to the music
industry specialty press. In the absence, as yet, of trade magazines special-
izing in the dance music industries, the U.S.-based Billboard became a key
chronicler of Montreal’s emerging status as disco capital in the mid-1970s.
An unsigned article in its February 1, 1975, issue, ‘Discos Break in
Quebec,’ offered early recognition of the role of Montreal clubs in spur-
ring sales of ‘soul/r&b’ singles. Citing Richard Glanville Brown, the
Montreal-based national director of publicity for Polydor Records, the
article noted that the commercial successes of “Pepper Box” by The
Peppers, “Do It (‘Till You’re Satisfied)” by B.T. Express; and Gloria
Gaynor’s “Never Can Say Goodbye” ‘have had their beginnings in clubs
such as Dominique’s; the Speak Easy; Limelight; Marlow’s; Valentino and
the 2001 Disco in Montreal’ (Billboard 1975, 72). One week later,
Billboard’s Canadian correspondent, Martin Melhuish, enumerated a
series of quite extraordinary sales figures: that “Soul Makossa” by Many
Dibango had sold 6000 copies in Quebec with virtually no radio play; that
George McCrae’s 1974 hit “Rock Your Baby” had sold 8000—10,000
copies in Montreal before adoption by radio playlists, and then gone on to
sales of 175,000 in the Quebec market, and that Polydor had shipped
15,000 copies of the B.T. Express single “Express” in response to positive
feedback from Montreal jukeboxes and discothèques (Billboard 1975,
60). This wave of activity had apparently begun only six months earlier.
Two years later, in its January 29, 1977, issue, Billboard would feature
a 22-page ‘spotlight’ on Quebec music. While this supplement was not
devoted exclusively to disco, it was nevertheless full of self-congratulatory
advertisements from disco labels and distributors, lengthy accounts of
Montreal’s success as a disco city, and focused articles detailing the infra-
structural role of media, clubs labels and studios in sustaining that success
(Billboard 1977c). Between 1975 and 1977, the networks and founda-
tions on which Montreal disco rested and through which it would flourish
had quickly taken form.
In 1976, Dominique Zgarka and George Cucuzella, key figures in the
disco scene who occupied a variety of mediating functions, launched the
40 W. STRAW

first disc jockey record pool (the ‘Canadian Record Pool’). That same
year, in partnership with a new, disco-focused television programme (Disco
Tourne) on Quebec’s privately owned television network, TVA, they held
the first annual Canadian disco awards in Montreal. A key dynamic during
this period was the movement of record industry personnel into the launch
of small disco labels and the local production or distribution of disco
records. In some cases, employees of the Canadian subsidiaries of interna-
tional music industry majors left these to form independent companies
servicing disco markets (this was the case of Pat Deserio, who had worked
for CBS and moved to become a partner, with George Lagois, in the
disco-centred Empire Records) (Billboard 1977a, 54). In other cases,
independent distributors who had previously focused on other genres of
music became key figures in the importation into Montreal of disco
records from elsewhere. As early as 1975, Variétés de l’est, a long-time
Quebec rack jobbing operation, began buying disco records from a
New York-based independent distributor, selling these within Montreal
and across Canada (Billboard 1975, 72). Further transnational relation-
ships included the importation of rhythm tracks from Alabama’s Muscle
Shoals studio band for use in records released by the Montreal label
Parapluie (Billboard 1977b, 101; The Gazette (Montreal) 1976, 39).
In the latter half of the 1970s, Montreal’s disco culture drew strength
from a constant back and forth between its various undergrounds—the
networks which linked record stores, labels, distributors, disc jockey asso-
ciations and tipsheets—and a variety of public phenomena which set disco
at the centre of the city’s night-time effervescence. The latter included the
high-profile opening, in 1978, of a branch of the Paris-based discothèque
chain Régine’s and a series of articles, in American newspapers, heralding
the city’s status as disco capital (New York Times 1979, 9; Chicago Tribune
1979, H5). An article in the national English-Canadian Financial Post,
under the title ‘Sweet Music for Investors as Bubble Keeps On Growing’
spoke of the economic viability of Montreal’s discothèques and the stabil-
ity of the membership-fee-based business model employed by Régine’s
and other clubs (Financial Post 1978, 18).
Other developments undermined the otherwise ubiquitous exuberance
which surrounded Montreal disco culture in the second half of the 1970s.
In 1974, Montreal’s police department released a document claiming that
half of the murders in the city during the previous year had taken place in
nightclubs (The Gazette (Montreal) 1975, 3). At a discothèque named Le
 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 41

Dôme, in 1976, two men were killed amidst a larger wave of night-time
killings (The Gazette (Montreal) 1976, 1). A more long-term set of issues
reached public attention in 1977, when major police raids on a gay bar called
Truxx resulted in the arrest of 145 customers in what was the largest mass
arrest in Canada since World War II (The Gazette (Montreal) 1977b, 3). The
Truxx case dragged on, amidst complaints of police harassment, until 1979
(The Gazette (Montreal) 1979, 7), and stands as a key moment in a history
of gay activism against police oppression that would continue through the
1990s (Crawford and Herland 2016; Podmore 2015; Podmore and
Chamberland 2015).

A Scene Survives
As I have suggested elsewhere—echoing many other commentators—
Montreal’s key role as a production centre for mid-1970s disco music had
much to do with its capacity to mediate between the forms and styles of
European and American versions of disco (Straw 2008). In 1977, a lengthy
report in the Gazette celebrated the city’s disco culture as emblematic of
the broader interweaving of European and American sensibilities which
has long functioned as a stereotypical explanation of the city’s distinctive-
ness. Noting that Montrealer’s were amongst the world’s most avid buyers
of disco singles, journalist Juan Rodriguez suggested that

[l]ocal audiences were more attuned to the European sounds, in which

florid, echoed string arrangements blend with the cooler rhythms of
American disco records. That’s not the only way Montreal blends the flavors
of the American styles it lives so close to with the European lifestyle it wants
to emulate. The success of the disco scene rests in that mix. The fever of the
American night scene combines here with a more refined, European pen-
chant for evening entertaining. (The Gazette (Montreal) 1977a, 39)

If this cultural duality is one of the clichés through which Montreal

markets itself to the world, it is nonetheless verifiable that, in the move-
ment of disco records through the world, Montreal was a key hub through
which European tracks found their way to New York and other U.S. mar-
kets, and through which the sounds of Italo disco and other European
variants entered the musical languages of North American disco. The same
perceived lack of a local soulfulness which led Montreal labels to import
rhythm tracks from a studio in the American south would leave Montreal
42 W. STRAW

producers and labels open to the Hi-NRG and synth-pop sounds which,
by the early 1980s, rendered Montreal dance music distinct from that
being made elsewhere in Canada or the United States.
By the end of the 1970s, as music industry trade publications and the
general press spoke with increased frequency of disco’s unravelling, the
Montreal scene seemed to reach its highest levels of success. To be sure,
observers of the scene began to note the emergence of musical currents
which threatened to displace disco—new wave, in the first instance, and
the more eclectic cluster of styles named ‘Dance Oriented Rock’ on the
other. In 1979, I attended an event promoted as a ‘punk rock disco’ at
McGill University, and, by 1980, journalists such The Gazette’s John
Griffin were speaking of a ‘demise of disco’ and triumphant return of rock,
to be glimpsed not only in the ascendancy of punk and its successor forms,
but in the resurgent popularity of such artists as Bruce Springsteen and
Led Zeppelin (The Gazette (Montreal) 1981, 36). In 1979, panicked
downtown Montreal clubs revised their music policies. The Limelight
introduced 20% New Wave musical content, while Disco 1234 and Oz,
prominent downtown discos, moved to full New Wave formats the follow-
ing year (The Gazette (Montreal) 1979, 3; The Gazette (Montreal)
1980, 57).
Tim Lawrence’s account of New York City club life in the 1980s shows
the degree to which diagnoses of disco’s demise obscured the continuities
and strengths of dance music in the early years of that decade (Lawrence
2016). If Montreal observers, in 1979, anticipated the withering of the
disco explosion, this was also the year in which the number of Canadian
radio stations playing disco music reached 90 (Billboard 1979b, 66). It
was the case, as well, that several of the clubs which had dropped disco for
New Wave quickly realized that this music’s younger customers were
unlikely to spend money at the same levels as the more multi-generational
clientele of the discothèque. By 1980, the Limelight was announcing
investments of $250,000 in efforts to win back the disco crowd, while
Club 1234 and others which had migrated to post-punk dance music were
reinventing themselves as British-style pubs or updated forms of the chic
discothèque. As late as 1983, the Toronto-based newspaper The Globe and
Mail published a lengthy account of a journalist’s visit to the Limelight in
which, it was claimed, one could find evidence of disco’s continued sur-
vival (The Globe and Mail 1983, E1). Still, a search for ‘disco’ in the online
archive of Montreal’s Gazette newspaper finds that, after 1983, most hits
 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 43

were for classified advertisements by individuals looking to sell their disco

hardware.
Many of the key labels and personnel who had emerged within
Montreal’s disco scene in the mid-1970s would remain active in dance
music through the 1980s and beyond. The city would produce a wave of
early 1980s synthesizer pop/dance bands, with Men Without Hats reach-
ing international stardom and others, like Rational Youth, achieving long-­
term cult status. As I have shown elsewhere, 12″ singles of the late 1970s
and early 1980s by long-time Quebec musician and producer Pierre
Perpall, recording under a variety of names, would be retrospectively
installed as important fore-runners of techno, even as they were regularly
mistaken for examples of Italo disco (Straw 2008).
The most broadly based success of Montreal dance music after disco,
however, was that of the highly synthesized style known as Hi-NRG. In a
1993 interview, the Britain-based Ian Levine, perhaps the most prominent
international producer of this music in the 1980s, noted that the hard,
synthesized beat of tracks from Canadian labels—largely Montreal-­
based—had been one response to the growing expense of the ‘big string
disco sound’ typical of major label productions (Tope 1993, 20–21). A
quite reputable Wikipedia canon of the Hi-NRG sound shows the steady
success of Montreal-based artists working in this style right through the
latter half of the 1980s: Lime, “Your Love” (1981), Claudja Barry, “Work
me Over” (1982), Lime, “Baby, We’re Gonna Love Tonight” (1982),
Claudja Barry, “For Your Love” (1983), Miquel Brown, “He’s a Saint,
He’s a Sinner” (1983a), Miquel Brown, “So Many Men, So Little Time”
(1983b), Tranx-X, “Living on Video” (1983), Lime, “Unexpected
Lovers” (1985), Suzy Q, “Computer Music” (1985), Claudja Barry,
“Down and Counting” (1986) (‘Wikipedia: List_of_Hi-­ NRG_artists_
and_songs’ 2019).
Often reissued or remixed, and newly cherished, records such as these,
which were often dismissed as symptoms of disco’s retreat and Montreal’s
abdication of the title of ‘disco capital,’ now stand as evidence of continu-
ity and renewal in the city’s dance music culture. In their use of promi-
nent, sometimes grandiose synthesizer flourishes these records are even,
on occasion, read against the backdrop of Montreal’s other distinctive
taste culture of the 1970s and early 1980s: that which made the city a key
launching pad for European progressive rock (La Presse 2013).
44 W. STRAW

Disco: Underground and Overground

I have argued elsewhere that the history of the discothèque might be writ-
ten as much through the lens of European culture (with its chic Parisian
clubs and Mediterranean dance venues) as from perspectives which follow
its emergence through a set of mutations in the club life of New York City
(Straw 2008). An even broader internationalization of disco histories, of
the sort represented by this volume, is obviously more welcome. The
‘problem’ of a Europe-centred history for cultural analysts is that it is not
so obviously (or not yet) the story of underground struggles by identitar-
ian communities to build spaces of encounter. Nor is it so clearly a story of
the transformative interweavings of musical traditions, of the sort which
may structure histories of disco music in New York. If U.S.-centred histo-
ries of disco may organize themselves around these heroic processes, they
also, however, organize transnational disco culture in terms of a geograph-
ical centre in which the music is defined and a set of peripheries in which
the music (thus defined) is imitated, lightly inflected, debased or always
arriving a little too late.
The challenge of writing histories of disco in places like Montreal, then,
is that such histories are not always the histories of musical undergrounds
in any direct or exclusive sense. In Montreal, disco was about the building
of new mainstream entertainment forms, in which relationships between
entrepreneurs, designers and architects, language groups, ethnic commu-
nities and areas of the city came to be reordered. In this reordering, sexual
communities might find new spaces of public expression, and racially dis-
tinct musical communities might come to inhabit new kinds of proximity.
Both these developments were often driven by commercial imperatives
which swept up older traditions of show business, launched new careers
and set something called disco at the centre of media networks which were
quick to absorb it as something like a cultural dominant.
The history of disco in Montreal is in significant ways about the fate of
popular culture in an urban centre which is, on the one hand, outside of
the major centres of popular culture (New York, Hollywood and Paris)
and, at the same time, itself the cultural metropolis of a circumscribed
cultural territory (that of the province of Quebec). The Francophone cul-
ture of Montreal during the disco period was minor vis-à-vis that of
Anglophone North America, yet dominant within Quebec, where it was
embedded within a range of cultural institutions (such as highly successful
media networks) whose capacity to magnify new cultural phenomena
 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 45

across multiple platforms was significant. At the same time, the city’s
Anglophone population was minoritarian within Montreal, but dispropor-
tionately represented within Montreal’s downtown disco culture, which
ensured high-level coverage of disco in the city’s English-speaking media.
Further, Montreal’s disco culture, like that of New York City (as Tim
Lawrence has described it), involved significant numbers of people rooted
in Italian immigrant communities (Lawrence 2016, 64), whose position-
ing between Anglophone and Francophone populations of long standing
(and whose high rates of bilingualism) facilitated their role as intermediar-
ies. And, in a process I have described elsewhere, disco’s success in
Montreal pulled certain black Québécois musicians out of the background
roles of session musician or background singer, to which pre-disco trends
in Quebec popular music had relegated them, and into the limelight of
new supergroups, like that assembled for the compilation La Connexion
Noire or solo performer-producer careers like that of Pierre Perpall (Straw
2008). One effect of Montreal’s disco culture was a redistribution of the
visibility of these populations across the stages of public life.
In the 1960s and 1970s, then, Montreal’s disco culture was in many
respects a machinery of visibility, producing a spectacle of downtown exu-
berance which had been in remission in the city since the decline of the
much-celebrated Golden Age (from the 1920s through the early 1950s)
of Montreal’s cabaret and dance hall scenes. Dance music cultures are very
often about the knitting together of invisible undergrounds, and this
would be partially true of Montreal’s from the mid-1970s onwards. In
specific times, and in particular places, however, dance music cultures are
one of the resources through which a city performs itself as a spectacular,
festive space.

Notes
1. These playlists and mixes may be found at http://psyquebelique.blogspot.
com/2013/02/psyquebelique-­presente-­disco-­spatial.html and https://
www.mixcloud.com/retro-­n rg/montreal-­s ound-­h i-­n rg-­e lectro-­8 0s-­
canadian-­d isco-­n on-­s top-­m ix-­7 7-­m ins-­1 977-­1 984-­c anada-­d isco/,
Accessed 15 January 2019.
2. All translations are henceforth the author’s unless otherwise stated.
46 W. STRAW

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 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 47

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 MONTREAL, FUNKYTOWN: TWO DECADES OF DISCO HISTORY 49

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———. 1976. Express. Musart.
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———. 1983b. So Many Men, So Little Time. Record Shack Records.
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 Dancin’ Days: Disco Flashes in 1970s Brazil

Ivan Paolo de Paris Fontanari

In 2019, over 100,000 Brazilians saw the musical O Frenético Dancin’

Days.1 A major international production taking its title from the famous
Rio de Janeiro discotheque Dancin’ Days, and in part written by its mas-
termind Nelson Motta, the show nostalgically but energetically recalled
the musical and visual codes of the disco era. The staging of the musical
coincided with a strong conservative turn in the country’s politics marked
by the 2018 election of President Jair Bolsonaro who, despite being a
democratically elected president, came to power in a context not dissimilar
to that of the military dictatorship 40 years earlier. In the late 1970s, when
Brazil was transitioning from the toughest phase of the military dictator-
ship, the emergence of disco seemed to form part of a new and naïve
movement of personal liberation. Despite the decades that have since
passed, and the impact disco and subsequent musical genres have had on
the national psyche, a patriarchal worldview still persists in Brazil, and
disco continues to serve as a crucial metaphor for individual freedoms.
Although disco had a huge media impact across the channels by which
music and music cultures were consumed in Brazil, it first appeared in the

I. P. de Paris Fontanari (*)

UFFS – Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul [Federal University of Fronteira
Sul], Chapecó, Brazil
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 51

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_3
52 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

country at a time when music travelled exclusively through physical

records and musicians. Brazilian discotheque owners and DJs travelled
abroad to experience disco first-hand, and then returned home and shaped
local audiences in line with North American and European musical reper-
toires, trends, and DJing techniques. Disco would soon express an array of
local manifestations, mediated by local tastes and acquiring different
meanings across various class, gender, and racial identities. Some of these
incarnations acquired fame beyond the physical audiences of Brazilian dis-
cotheques, and etched themselves into the wider Brazilian collective mem-
ory: the TV show Carlos Imperial, the disco movie Sábado Alucinante
(‘Hallucinating Saturday’2), the soap opera Dancin’ Days, disco records
such as Tim Maia’s Disco Club, and the image and sound of Brazilian disco
divas like Gretchen are all examples of this, and were collectively respon-
sible for shaping the mainstream idea of disco based on corporeal and
sensorial self-liberation in the face of restrictive dominant values. The
resulting paradigm, which both drew from and was adopted by the gay
scene, would eventually influence Brazilian underground gay clubs, from
which a new Brazilian electronic dance music scene would emerge a
decade later. Beyond its adoption as an underground ethos, the prolifera-
tion of material relating to Brazilian disco online illustrates how disco was
integrated within the Brazilian media and cultural industry at large, its
memory and visibility cherished and preserved in the decades that followed.
Right from its emergence, disco was responsible for creating a shared,
cosmopolitan cultural sensibility among a large segment of Brazilian
youth, from the white, metropolitan educated middle classes to the multi-­
ethnic, suburban working poor. The authoritarian government brought
by the 1964 coup, and sponsored by conservative elites, worked hard to
annul the social reforms of the previous Goulart government. Suppressing
civil rights, and exerting military control over institutions, they imposed
cultural censorship and persecuted oppositionists. By the late 1970s, how-
ever, the regime had begun to loosen its grip, preparing the country for a
gradual return to democracy in 1984. Though many discotheque habitués
positioned themselves against conservative politics, there is no clear evi-
dence of direct military intervention in the Brazilian disco scene; never-
theless, in what was still a highly conservative climate, those who were not
aligned with the regime could easily find themselves persecuted for their
progressive views. In this sense, the discotheque was a kind of escape valve:
a place to cultivate non-conformist identities and lifestyles from which
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 53

new forms of personal interaction and worldviews could eventually be

crafted.
This chapter explores how disco circulated as a music, a sensibility, and
a lifestyle in 1970s Brazil, paying particular attention to its symbolic func-
tion in fostering new class, gender, and race identities in the country. I
posit the emergence of a ‘disco body’—a new-found consciousness in
which, through dance, the body becomes a locus of pluralisation of the
self—to trace the story of Brazilian disco from its initial middle-class and
elite adoption, through its popularisation via television, to its rise in other
social milieux. Like other dance music settings with analogous ritual func-
tions, disco and discotheques allowed people to temporarily depart from
their regular selves, attracting those who—for whatever reason—felt ‘out
of place’ in their respective places of social belonging. As I argued in my
study of periphery DJs (Fontanari 2013a), the body as a site of ‘pluralisa-
tion of the self’ performs a dual function: on the one hand, it inscribes
onto the dancing body an otherness (e.g. social, sexual, racial) experienced
through the body itself; on the other, it allows the dancing body to travel
into another space, world, or milieu. This idea of the body as a site of both
inscription and exploration resonates with the heterotopian reading of
disco underpinning this collection: in the physical and cultural space of the
discotheque, dancers become ‘others’ due to the radical changes they
experience between the outside world and the inside of the discotheque,
thus ‘pluralising themselves’. While this pluralisation is intrinsically tied to
an emic notion of self-liberation and occurs on an individual level, its
effects are ultimately political—for this reason, I stress the triangulation
between sensibility, lifestyle, and worldview throughout this chapter. In
the disco body, a new ethos is thus performed, and dominant identities are
contested, particularly patriarchal notions of gender, class, and race.
While scholarly work on Brazilian disco is still very much in its early
stages,3 studies in parallel but related Brazilian contexts confirm the read-
ing of disco I am proposing here. Velho (1998) has offered a dense
description of white, middle-class young adults living in Rio in the early
1970s who dramatically balanced an ‘alternative’ lifestyle based on sexual
liberation and recreational drug use with the social and financial con-
straints of family life. Likewise, in a study exploring the Brazilian New Age
movement, Soares (1994) has highlighted the importance of ‘individual
liberation’ from moral and family constraints imposed onto a specific
milieu socialised in the Catholic tradition. It is reasonable, then, to suggest
that the whole disco ‘package’ appealed to the emerging Brazilian urban
54 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

middle class: its values and practices appeared liberating in relation to the
old patriarchal and military restraints, connecting disco enthusiasts to new
cosmopolitan lifestyles.
This chapter begins in 1976 in the New York City Discotheque
(NYCD), the first true disco experience to occur in Rio de Janeiro; from
this starting point, I focus on the role and achievements of the aforemen-
tioned Nelson Motta, a key player in the introduction and diffusion of
disco in Brazil. Specific sections will consider the first and second incarna-
tions of Motta’s nightclub, Dancin’ Days, and another section will inves-
tigate the soap opera Dancin’ Days, also masterminded by Motta, which
aired on the influential TV network Globo between 1978 and 1979. As
the chapter traces the various iterations of the Dancin’ Days brand, it also
focuses in on the role of the Dancin’ Days ‘house band’—the waitress-diva
group the Frenéticas—and their track ‘Dancin’ Days’, which served as the
soap opera’s credit music and remains the most famous Brazilian disco hit
to this day, with a look into the symbolic resonance of its lyrics. In the final
part of the chapter, I offer some remarks on the political dimension of the
‘disco body’ as a relevant mark of class and racial distinction, in the hope
that future research can build upon this.

The Beginnings: The New York City Discotheque

By setting up the New York City Discotheque (NYCD) in Rio de Janeiro
in May 1976, owner Carlos Wattimo and DJ Ricardo Lamounier intro-
duced the discotheque paradigm to Brazil. A year earlier, Wattimo—an
ex-US army major—had been running the Ipanema Discotheque in
New York City where Ronnie Soares was the DJ. New York symbols could
be found throughout his new Rio club, in its music, architecture, fashion,
décor, and menu, as well as its name. The entrance door had the Empire
State Building and the Statue of Liberty sculpted in its frame; the New York
phonebook and New York road signs were also scattered around the club.
‘The New York’, as it was known, offered a number of hot dishes, all with
English names; whisky and vodka were its signature drinks, served by 15
uniformed waitresses matching the current beauty standards (Abbade and
Junior 2016, 16–19).
The NYCD marked the first appearance of a disc-jockey who played
records on turntables—a so-called discotecário—in a Brazilian middle-class
nightclub, but music from gramophone records had been common for
some time at poor working-class social dances. As early as 1959, radio
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 55

technician and vinyl salesman Osvaldo Pereira had served as a proto-DJ at

downtown Sao Paulo social dances, where he played a mix of foreign
records by Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra and domestic ones by Bolão and
Eduardo Lincoln, among others. These events presented poor black youth
with an affordable alternative to the luxurious venues with live orchestras
playing to white elites (Assef 2003, 23). The middle classes, however, had
no such options. Before the arrival of disco, live MPB, bossa nova, and
jazz music were the standard night entertainment, which remained chic
and expensive, and which were mostly an elite bohemian pastime, catering
for heterosexual couples wishing to dance cheek-to-cheek to romantic
songs.4 The NYCD changed all this: dressed in an extravagant lurex over-
all, DJ Ricardo Lamounier played funk and soul records from the likes of
Diana Ross and KC and The Sunshine Band.5 His Bozak mixer and two
Technics turntables, set up in a mezzanine booth from which he faced the
crowd, made him the club’s main attraction. The disco repertoire that
echoed from the club’s powerful sound system—which Wattimo had
brought over from the US—invited people to dance alone through ran-
dom liberating movements, in contrast to the previous routine of dancing
in couples. The lighting system included a disco ball and colourful cannon
lights that flashed in a darkened room full of mirrors, and the overall
atmosphere created a unique experience of time and place, which further
reinforced the newly experienced corporeal effects of disco music.
The NYCD soon became a symbol of social prestige; famous Rio soccer
players visited after their matches, and renowned musicians, actors, and
models were among its habitués, sharing their evenings with anonymous
crowds. Reports from the club regularly appeared in local newspapers, and
the city’s most prestigious high schools organised their graduation dances
there. However, by 1978 the NYCD was no longer the only disco option,
as by then virtually every Rio nightclub had turned into a discotheque. As
larger and more affordable nightclubs emerged, the NYCD was no longer
the place to be seen, and its crowd began to slowly shift its loyalties
(Abbade and Junior 2016, 17, 47, 114). The NYCD was the first Brazilian
nightclub set up on the US model, but the club that turned disco into a
national phenomenon had a more complex history—one involving an
interplay of people, music, ideas, and aesthetics that gave shape to what
came to be understood as disco in Brazil.
56 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

The Frenetic Dancin’ Days Discotheque

The two English words ‘Dancin’ Days’ undoubtedly remain the most
evocative expression of the Brazilian disco era. They refer simultaneously
to two local discotheques, a TV soap opera and its soundtrack, and a
famous disco track recorded many times by various artists. These different
iterations of Dancin’ Days fed off each other across various media, address-
ing different audiences and establishing distinct ways of experiencing
disco—but one person, Nelson Motta, was behind each and every one of
them. Raised in an elite intellectual social circle, Motta came from a pres-
tigious artistic family background. His grandfather was the intellectual
Cândido Mota Filho, one of the founders of Brazil’s modernist move-
ment, and we will meet his cousin Ricardo Amaral later in this chapter due
to his own contributions to Brazil’s nightlife. In the late 1960s, at the age
of 23, Motta became a writer for the influential Rio newspaper Jornal do
Brasil, interacting with youth who would later become recognisable cul-
tural figures in the fields of music, cinema, theatre, photography, litera-
ture, and journalism. Given that Brazil was going through the hardest
period of its military dictatorship at the time, Motta had the power—as he
himself recognises—to make those artists visible, had he wished to. He
chose instead to ‘shed light on new talents and give voice to outcasts and
transgressors who spread novel cultural and artistic liberties’, most of
them white, elite, or middle-class youth from Rio de Janeiro and, to a
lesser extent, Sao Paulo (Motta 2014, 15–20).
Embedded in the established national pop-cultural vanguard of the
1960s and the 1970s, Motta and his friends served as local guides to visit-
ing foreign rock stars like Mick Jagger and Bob Marley on their tours
across Brazil. In 1976 Motta launched his own first big musical enterprise,
the open-air rock festival Saquarema, Sol, Som e Surf (‘Saquarema, Sun,
Sound and Surf’) at a well-known surf beach, featuring both established
and up-and-coming Brazilian rock artists. Bad weather prevented the live
recording of the event for a planned documentary film, leading to Motta’s
financial collapse (Motta 2014, 93–96). Despite this failure, back in Rio
de Janeiro Motta was invited to develop a marketing strategy to attract
customers to the recently opened and still little-known luxurious Gávea
Shopping Mall. Given the venue for four months, he first imagined run-
ning a hippy rock club, following the emergence of the alternative-­
psychedelic fad he was involved with at the time. Motta had already
noticed a strong appetite among Rio’s youth for fresh global music trends:
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 57

As soon as the psychedelic wave was launched in San Francisco, people in

Rio de Janeiro were aware of it and boldly claimed they were experts, even
though they had no idea what it was really about. Anything to avoid being
perceived as an outsider: a purple wooden shoe is psychedelic, hot asphalt is
psychedelic, a clearance sale is psychedelic, nail polish is psychedelic […]. It
was necessary to consume and jump on the bandwagon to show that we
were not underdeveloped, or so we thought; in fact, by doing this we were
just proving the exact opposite. (Motta 2014, 21)

However, after talking to his cousin, a disco enthusiast from New York,
Motta changed his mind and went to New York to witness its booming
disco scene first-hand, and concluded that disco would be a better invest-
ment. He returned home with a huge disco ball, light effects, and plenty
of disco records, determined to set up a local discotheque modelled on
those he had just seen. His instinct proved correct, as the opening of
Frenetic Dancin’ Days in August 1976 was a huge success. Among the
700 attendees were media professionals capable of turning the club into a
prestigious venue and attracting new visitors, but the diverse crowd also
included left-wing militants, psychotherapists, discreet police observers,
surfers, journalists, and a wide assortment of celebrities such as actress
Sonia Braga (who would later star in the eponymous soap opera) and
movie producer Glauber Rocha, as well as the MPB and tropicalist musi-
cians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil (Motta 2014, 99–100, Motta
2000, 295, Assef 2003, 56). DJ Don Pepe played funk and disco hits
throughout the night, interrupting his set only to make way for a live per-
formance by Rita Lee, ex-frontwoman of the psychedelic rock band
Mutantes. Through his social capital and media influence, Motta mastered
the cultural codes both of the artistic elite and of the urban audiences he
targeted. Acting as a cultural mediator, he was able to introduce musical
novelties intertwined with pre-existing local values, making them more
easily accepted. Within a week of its launch, the venue reached its full
capacity, a feat it would maintain week on week until the club closed three
months later.
According to Motta, ‘the environment was so sexy and liberal that the
dark stairs of the empty mall were full of groans of both straight and gay
couples, while others preferred the dark corners under the discotheque
bleachers, hidden by the curtains’ (Motta 2000, 297). This hedonistic
lasciviousness, paired with a careful mix of established, ‘safe’ cultural codes
and cosmopolitan appetites, was not exclusively the domain of
58 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

discotheques or disco music, of course—it fitted into the wider and more
complex movement for (sexual) liberation evident in other cultural mani-
festations of the time, for example pornochanchada movies6—but it was
crucial to the Frenetic Dancin’ Days discotheque’s legendary status, and
to opening the door to deeper social and cultural innovations.

The ‘Frenetics’
One of the key attractions of the Frenetic Dancin’ Days discotheque was
the multi-racial female group the Frenéticas (‘The Frenetics’) made up of
six club waitresses, all of whom were previously unemployed actresses,
singers, and dancers. Halfway through the night, they would stop serving
tables and step on stage to sing and dance to a few rock songs by the likes
of Rita Lee or the Rolling Stones, after which they would return to their
regular duties. This interplay of rock and disco recurred in Motta’s musical
entrepreneurship, as he saw the genres as complementary to each other; it
also remained typical of the manner in which disco circulated in Brazil, as
depending on the audience being addressed, the music genres and cultural
codes associated with disco changed.
Due to their popularity, the Frenéticas’ interludes over the course of the
evening gradually became longer and longer, until they stopped waiting
tables altogether and became the main attraction of the night (Motta
2000, 297). They soon recorded their first album, simultaneously released
by Atlantic Records in Brazil, the Netherlands, Germany, and Portugal,
and appeared on TV shows in the same sensual clothes they wore in their
disco performances, quickly becoming national stars. From 1977 to 1983
they released five albums and seventeen singles, all filled with songs which
spoke of happiness, individual liberation, and sexual allure.7 Rather than
just copying the original American disco divas, the Frenéticas were
regarded as a true local phenomenon, inspired by the Brazilian and
Portuguese nineteenth-century burlesque genre teatro de revista tradition,
which they updated to a modern rock and disco atmosphere (Motta
2000, 302).
Dressed in tight-fitting lurex body stockings and sporting high heels
and over-the-top make-up, the Frenéticas’ outfits accentuated their sex
appeal and reinforced the role of the disco body as a site of transformation
and self-pluralisation. In their performances, the bodies of the members of
the Frenéticas were a vehicle for disco values. The costumes they wore
evoked extravagant, almost carnivalesque imagery, and were derived from
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 59

Dzi Croquettas, a smoothed out female version of the cutting-edge gay

dance troupe Dzi Croquettes, who had comically interpreted Brazilian
music during the 1970s. Dressed in costumes covering only their genitals,
the original Dzi Croquettes played with gender identities by showing their
masculine, hairy bodies in extravagant female outfits. The Frenéticas heav-
ily borrowed from this aesthetic, but did so in a way that was both more
and less conservative in how they represented women and their role, per-
forming a kind of ‘drag without drag’ which exaggerated the female body
and showed it in a new light. Mixing dance, singing, sensuality, and ambi-
guity, they questioned gender identities not by presenting the female body
as a feminised site, but by freeing women from patriarchal representation
and domination, an urgent endeavour in Brazil’s social context, within
which just a few years earlier women would not go out if not accompanied
by a male partner. This complex layering of gender identities, both subver-
sive and conservative—from drag and back, with the highly sexualised but
tongue-in-cheek performance of women performing men performing
women—produced joyful, comical, and at times cutting, sarcastic perfor-
mances. While they were clearly opposed to the dictatorial suppression of
individual liberties, they set up a non-verbal and highly coded representa-
tional game which might have liberated insiders, but which was also con-
fusing to the outside eye, which made them harder to censor (Dzi
Croquettes, 2009).
As well as intervening in gender norms, the Frenéticas made sophisti-
cated cultural comments on class, as the very idea of waitresses stepping up
on stage in the middle of the evening to perform represented a major shift
from many perspectives. It subverted the traditional stage/dance floor
hierarchy which discotheques had introduced to middle-class Brazilian
nightlife, and similarly blurred the borders of class and race, represented
by the multi-ethnic composition of the band: the waitress/diva switch
resonated strongly in a country like Brazil, where social inequalities were
closely linked to skin colour. The way in which the Frenéticas shifted in
status at different stages of the night can thus be interpreted as a kind of
dramatisation of the multiple transformations enabled in the heterotopian
night/club towards a pluralisation of the self—in social, racial, and sexual
terms—of the social actors involved.
These features all helped to create an ambiguous environment in the
Dancin’ Days discotheque which was sometimes normative and hierarchi-
cal, and at other times liberated and egalitarian. Following Turner (1974),
we might then posit the Frenetic Dancin’ Days discotheque as a liminal
60 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

space par excellence: such ambiguity is an attribute of all liminal situations,

as found in many tribal rites of passage, but also in certain urban settings.
The parties at Dancin’ Days could be seen as an example of a site that
allowed the re-evaluation of meanings being put in practice (Sahlins 1990)
as much as the redefinition of those who were there. While epitomising
Brazilian disco, the Frenéticas also managed to subvert the old perceptions
of gender, class, and race that marked Brazil in general and the dictator-
ship era in particular.

The Second Dancin’ Days

Following the closure of the original Dancin’ Days, the whole club crew—
from musicians to bouncers, with whom Motta readily shared his profits—
were happy with its success. Motta was asked to revive the club but initially
resisted doing so, wishing to preserve its memory rather than exploit its
success. He changed his mind two months later, when the directors of the
company running the cable cars, stores, and restaurants of Rio’s Urca Hills
presented him with an offer he could not refuse: a twelve-square-mile
location with a bar, a restaurant, and an amphitheatre with a grand
650-foot-high vista of Rio and—most importantly—no neighbours.
Motta, from whom Globo Television had already bought the Dancin’
Days trademark rights for their upcoming show, agreed to take it on, and
TV commercials gave the new discotheque much-needed promotion,
turning the once exclusive nightclub into a big business. Globo also asked
Motta to produce musical vignettes for its forthcoming soap opera, which,
once released, would become the third Frenéticas hit of the year (Motta
2000, 305–307).
The new Dancin’ Days club had all the elements in place to repeat the
success of its predecessor and become a new ‘summer dream’; yet accord-
ing to Motta, it ended up being a ‘complete disaster’, mostly due to poor
logistics. The opening in the summer of 1978 featured a guest perfor-
mance by the now-famous Frenéticas. As thousands wanted to see the
‘new’ Dancin’ Days, the crowd exceeded the club’s 3000-strong capacity.
The cable cars and restaurant had never experienced such demand before:
the food and water ran out soon after midnight and the restrooms col-
lapsed; long queues formed for the cable cars since they could not take
more than seventy passengers at a time. Among those angry at the organ-
isers were Motta’s old friends and patrons, and while things ran more
smoothly on the following nights, Motta never felt that the new club was
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 61

a true successor to the original (Motta 2000). The team had made more
money, but had had less fun in doing so, and by the end of the summer,
once the soap opera had ceased broadcasting, they decided to shut down
the club for good.
Much had changed since the opening of the original discotheque. The
old clientele from Rio’s South Zone was replaced by ‘unknown’ crowds
from the North Zone and the suburbs, who confused it with the actual
soap opera as they pretended to be ‘on set’, perhaps hoping to bump into
the telenovela’s star Sonia Braga on the dance floor. This second iteration
of Dancin’ Days thus represented the moment when disco in Brazil
became widely accessible through the media, reaching a wide, national
audience: what had formerly been reserved for cosmopolitan elites alone
could suddenly be experienced by everyone. The space of the discotheque
was no longer the terrain of a distinct cultural vanguard where a heteroto-
pian existence became possible, but had become a space in which audi-
ences could pluralise themselves by very literally performing—and thus
‘becoming’—the fictional characters who they watched on television
(Motta 2000, 308). This logic of hierarchical identification—by which
people identify with an upper strata rather than their own class—was iden-
tified by Roberto DaMatta (1997) as a structural feature of Brazil’s hier-
archical society, as opposed to an egalitarian one. The way in which disco
became a mass phenomenon in Brazil neatly follows this logic. In both
locations, the Dancin’ Days discotheque became a tool of individual self-­
liberation, a place which allowed people to distance themselves from their
diurnal social position—something which had remained a feature of most
urban, cosmopolitan social dance events ever since disco was first intro-
duced (Fontanari 2013a, b). Furthermore, both iterations of Dancin’
Days architecturally embodied the shift from the nightclub—with a sepa-
ration between audience and stage—and the dance floor-only discotheque
in which the roles of audience and performers coincided. While they were
heavily focused on the dancers’ experience, both discotheques had stages
and regularly hosted bands, again establishing Motta as a leading transi-
tional figure between established modes of consumption and future trends.
62 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

From Dance Floor to Small Screen: The Dancin’

Days Soap Opera
As mentioned above, by visiting the discotheque many club-goers sought
to recreate the soap opera Dancin’ Days, aired between July 1978 and
January 1979 on Brazil’s influential TV network Globo, which had bought
the prestigious name rights from Motta. The Dancin’ Days soap opera had
a tremendous impact both on the national promotion of disco and on its
link to Brazilian middle classes and elites, even though the main plot actu-
ally followed independent (and familiar) soap opera dynamics of personal
dramas, love affairs, and generational tensions between youth and patriar-
chal families. Federal censorship, which was based on and committed to
the government’s orthodox Christian values, prevented the show from
running before 10pm, and from dealing with themes like ‘family disag-
gregation due to break-up’ and ‘free love’, all linked to the main character
of a single mother. The imposed restrictions affected 25 episodes, an indi-
cation of how the liminal practices emulated in discotheques were regarded
as having the potential to become widely and dangerously subversive
(‘Globo 50 anos: censura na TV Globo’, 2020).
Whereas MPB and bossa nova music accompanied everyday scenes, a
disco-style vignette provided the background for the opening and closing
interludes of each of the series’ 174 episodes, while also complementing
the transition sequences to the copious commercial breaks. Such a unique
position within the show not only embedded the theme tune into the
audience’s psyche, but reinforced the extraordinary character of disco
music as something appropriate for weekends and for those special, liminal
moments when people could reinvent themselves. The plot was also spo-
radically interrupted by scenes shot in local discotheques that featured
some of the leading characters. On the dance floor, women danced in
platform shoes, bell-bottom trousers, bikini-style crop-tops, and loose
dresses, while men wore half-buttoned polos and t-shirts—across the
board, the style was much more down to earth than the extravagant outfits
of the Frenéticas, and much more casual than the dressed up code that had
dominated the early elite nightclubs. The posters for the soap opera, on
the other hand, sported images of bare-chested young men among other
people dressed in a relaxed style. Adhering neither to the formality of the
early nightclub nor to the liberal and orgiastic atmosphere of the real dis-
cotheque (Castro 2015; Abbade and Junior 2016), the soap opera con-
flated the various moods and class contexts of the history of Brazilian disco
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 63

up to that point, merging various waves into one ‘accessible’ and recogni-
sable environment.
With the end of the series Motta’s close engagement with disco ended,
but the impact and effects of his work proved long-lasting and wide-­
reaching.8 Dancin’ Days introduced the exotic scenario of night entertain-
ment to a huge national TV audience, and spread the global discotheque
fever across the whole country. By 1979, new discotheques were popping
up everywhere, famous Brazilian musicians like Tim Maia and Ney
Matogrosso recorded their own disco LPs, and discotheque fashion
inspired by the characters’ dress choices became broadly popular among
the youth. The programme’s fame even spread beyond national borders,
as Dancin’ Days was broadcast in forty countries, most successfully in Italy
in the early 1980s, and was most recently remade in Portugal in 2012—
thus popularising the Brazilian reworking of an imported language and
music style (‘Memória Globo’ 2020). The original soundtrack, released in
1978 by the Som Livre label, sold over a million copies, including eleven
tracks in different genres, all but one of which were by Brazilian artists
(Motta 2000, 309). An LP with a Spanish version of Dancin’ Days was
released in Peru and Venezuela in 1982, and an eponymous compilation
came out on RCA in Italy in 1982 which featured eleven Brazilian and
Italian disco tracks.

‘Come Into This Party’: The Dancin’

Days Soundtrack
The theme track from the soap opera’s opening and closing credits became
the most famous Brazilian disco hit (Motta 2014, 103–104). Unsurprisingly,
Motta was involved once again, and had a decisive influence on the track’s
style; he also wrote the lyrics, which reflect the ethos that dominated
Brazil’s early discotheques. The instrumentation was typically ‘disco’: a
continuous and regular beat marked by a cymbal along with alternating
parallel bass and snare drum, backed by conga beats in sixteenth notes.
The melodies were played either by brass or string arrangements. Both the
style of instrumentation—already well known in funk and soul music—
and the lyrics were designed to invite people to dance and sing along:

Open your wings

Unleash your beasts
Let yourself go
Come into this party
64 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

Take me with you to

Wherever you go
I wanna see your body
Beautiful, light and loose

Sometimes we feel
We suffer, we dance
Without wishing to dance

In our party everything’s allowed

It’s allowed to be someone like me,
Like you

Dance well
Dance bad
Dance non-stop

Dance well
Dance bad
Dance even
if you don’t know how to dance.9

The overall structure allows the rhythm to fit strictly to the beats and
instrumentation, helping the dancer to intensify their experience of libera-
tion on the dance floor. The music and lyrics, along with the overall socia-
bility that evolved in Dancin’ Days both in its discotheque and soap opera
forms, reveal a kind of libertine, almost orgiastic atmosphere, although it
remains a firmly exclusive and glamorous one—thus resembling the ambi-
ence of famous US discotheques like Studio 54.
The lyrics, brief and direct, allude to a particular mode and meaning of
the experience of disco dancing, in which the Frenéticas take on a kind of
narrator-mediator role, inviting people to join them in a hedonistic, self-­
transformative, physical performance. The first verse directly addresses the
dancers, suggesting that they ‘liberate’ themselves from their inhibitions
and join the party. Then, moving into the role of seductresses and evoking
personal freedom, the Frenéticas offer themselves to be taken by the
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 65

dancer wherever she/he wishes to go, reaffirming the role of the body—
‘beautiful, light and loose’—as a site for potential self-transformation. The
following stanza switches to a more realistic tone, referring to the binary
differentiation between the two parallel universes inside and outside the
discotheque: the inside is a wonderful, celebratory, creative, and authentic
place, while the outside is marked by ‘suffering’ and ‘beasts’ to be
‘unleashed’. The fourth stanza returns to the optimism of the ongoing
party at the ‘discotheque’, highlighting its inclusive character and offer of
the opportunity to be true to oneself or indeed to oneself-as-other, freed
from the social masks used in everyday, unauthentic interactions. The cho-
rus reinforces the spontaneous, democratic, polyphonic aspect of disco
dancing. The fact that no special skillset is needed likens the experience
more to a transcendental ritual than to a formal social dance event.
Importantly, the female voice has a varied agency in the song as, in
turn, narrator and seductress, who first appraises limitations of everyday
social life and then offers permission and liberation. Although it was writ-
ten by a man, the performance of the song was perceived by the public as
feminine, with the Frenéticas seen as ambassadors of social and sexual
liberation. We hear a group of female voices addressing ‘you’, as if that
group of women had already liberated themselves from patriarchal norms.
A collective of waitress-divas of different skin colours taking ownership
and granting permissions over the liminal, heterotopian space of the dis-
cotheque was a momentous gesture in the context of Brazil’s stifled gen-
der politics at the time, and although it didn’t change the structure of
gender relations, it certainly supported the later move towards a more
egalitarian perception of gender roles in Brazil.

Disco and Race

Disco emerged in Brazil in a context dominated by MPB, Jovem Guarda,
and Tropicália music, each of which had its own identity and all of which
differed greatly from the modes by which disco was experienced. These
genres were related to pre-existing national music traditions, to aesthetic
innovation and the adoption or refusal of international influences, to vary-
ing degrees of opposition to the military regime, and, finally, to the ways
in which the body was used by fans and musicians alike (Dunn 2009).
Apart from an engagement with funk and soul by a minor lineage of Jovem
Guarda black artists such as Tim Maia and Jorge Ben, disco had no explicit
aesthetic connections with any of these dominant music trends—although,
66 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

as we have seen, it wasn’t uncommon for Jovem Guarda and Tropicália

artists to be regular discotheque attendees (Motta 2000, 2014.). It is
therefore clear that white middle-class youth saw disco as an altogether
different musical experience because of the importance it afforded to
dancing and, by extension, to the liberation of the self through physical
movement and expression. This was a novelty in the circles Motta mingled
with, and which he represented—university graduates who were knowl-
edgeable about global popular culture, who felt connected, physically or
symbolically, to North American and European art and fashion, and who
were mostly from white middle-class and elite circles.
A brief consideration of disco’s ethnic-racial dimension, however,
throws a slightly different light on the genre’s practices, and reveals disco
to have been less innovative than it might have originally sounded to its
middle-class fans. This is because for the multi-ethnic working-class youth
from the metropolitan suburbs, the introduction of disco followed a path
already taken by two other imported US genres, funk and soul, known
together as ‘black music’ in Brazil. Indeed, disco was rooted in—and was
perhaps even just another name for—the funk and soul music played
throughout the 1970s at social dances attended mostly by poor black sub-
urban youth.
This notion of ‘black music’ had a different meaning, as for these poor
black Brazilian youth, disco became a symbol not—or not only—of per-
sonal and sexual freedom, but of their own blackness and of an emerging
international black identity, just like funk and soul had been before. While
to the white middle classes, disco challenged the dominant conservative
mores and gender roles, to the multi-ethnic working-class youth it was
both a source and an extension of their racial identity. This is precisely the
reason given for the failure of the Brazilian music industry’s investment
in local soul-funk artists: ‘if there is a good audience for funk in Brazil, it
has not [got] enough income to buy LPs’ (Vianna 1988, 31). The busi-
ness strategies of the music industry, of which disco was a product, were
defined in economic terms, segregating a large population of consumers
unable to afford musical products. Vianna (1988) also describes how
those same suburban youth who were unable to buy LPs attended black
ballrooms on the outskirts of Rio and Sao Paulo at weekends. These ven-
ues would later gave birth to the funk carioca and Brazilian hip hop scenes,
crafting some of Brazil’s greatest musical exports precisely from a genre
neglected by the music industry.
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 67

Indeed, in the 1970s, the radio host and the master of ceremonies Big
Boy and Ademir Lemos began organising a series of social dances in Rio
de Janeiro called Bailes da Pesada (‘Heavy Social Dances’), where the DJs
mixed soul, rock, and pop tracks within the same set; likewise, FM radio
stations were extremely important in diffusing disco music beyond disco-
theques (Assef 2003, 112). At the time, Lemos was regarded as the best
DJ in Rio, and distinguished himself by playing original records imported
from Europe that made his sets unique. He was also the first Brazilian DJ
to employ mixing techniques on the turntables. The cover of a 1970 com-
pilation of his favourite club hits without breaks between the tracks fea-
tured Lemos’ face, with a black power hairstyle and wearing African-Brazilian
necklace beads.10 Soon, other crews organised similar bailes black (‘black
dances’) in peripheral communities, and the Black Rio movement, as these
dances came to be known, grew exponentially.11 Their musical repertoire,
in turn, gradually narrowed. Once favouring samba and Jovem Guarda’s
rock, suburban working-class youth from the outskirts later turned to
‘black’ genres like American soul and funk along with their Brazilian ver-
sions by artists like Sandra de Sa and Tim Maia, who recorded his Disco
Club LP in 1978, although a large part of his other compositions could
also be considered to be ‘disco’ music.12
Bearing in mind the dominant presence of black singers and musicians,
blackness was evident in disco music and dance to the point that it was
seen as a label created to describe funk and soul music to a white public.
According to Motta (2007), Tim Maia never considered disco as ‘white
music’, but instead saw it as complementary to black soul music (Fontanari
2013a; Vianna 1988; Motta 2007). As disco and discotheques established
ever stronger roots in Brazil during the late 1970s, the music at black
dances became strictly ‘disco’. Dancers at the suburban dances and in the
downtown discotheques danced to the same (disco) repertoire (Vianna
1988, 31; Motta 2007, 160). The meanings they attached to it varied,
however.
While the appeal of disco music successfully reached across social classes,
discotheques remained reserved for the middle classes. Poor working-class
youth could neither afford the transport to get to them nor the entry fee.
In fact, considering their smaller size and capacity, downtown disco-
theques could not have survived in the suburbs even if they had been
affordable to low-income patrons. This is why the low-cost venues in Rio
aimed at poor youth always had a much bigger capacity and were located
far away from downtown clubs, following the dominant socio-geographic
68 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

patterns of Brazil where the farther the place is from the city centre, the
lower its income and the less white the population (with the notable
exception of the racially and socially segregated favelas which are physi-
cally close to Rio’s mid- and up-scale neighbourhoods) (Telles 2004, 199).

Conclusion
Ricardo Amaral, Motta’s cousin and an influential Rio club entrepreneur
who had a deep influence on the Brazilian music industry, has pointed out
how the New York City Discotheque introduced lasting changes to the
Brazilian nightscape.13 With its no doorkeeper policy, which prevented the
pre-selection of who could get in, the NYCD radically changed Brazilian
metropolitan commercial nightlife from one which had previously been
expensive and exclusive to a more egalitarian scene (Abbade and Junior
2016, 6, 16–17). Various discotheques provided the middle classes with a
comfortable, middle-ground option between formal, conformist, pricey
nightclub-restaurants and crowded, peripheral, black social dances in the
suburbs (Assef 2003, 58). The emergence of discotheques thus reflected
the consolidation of an urban, middle-class lifestyle in Brazil that nurtured
individualistic, liberal, cosmopolitan, and hedonistic values.
The fact that by this time Brazilian youth had already experienced
twelve years of military dictatorship that censored anything which chal-
lenged conservative mores—including gatherings of young people—only
intensified disco’s heterotopian effect. With no other comparable sexual-
ised dances aimed at the white urban population, the contrast between
everyday life and discotheques could not have been greater. To them,
disco challenged the patriarchal family values enforced by the church and
the dictatorial state, fostering the rise of individualism in urban centres
and allowing them to have direct and indirect experiences of self-­
pluralisation. In a modern though still highly hierarchical society, disco-
theques acted as safe places for the liberation of the body. The dance floor
experience in downtown Rio discotheques in the late 1970s was reported
to have the same atmosphere as the North American ones, where ‘every-
thing was allowed’—from sexual encounters to heavy drinking and cocaine
use—magnifying a liminal, heterotopian experience of place and time.14
Disco’s impact on gender practices was twofold: it fostered a gay-­
friendly environment, and it also provided middle-class women with new
nightlife opportunities free of the previously necessary male accompani-
ment.15 At the same time, in less individualistic and more communitarian
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 69

suburban settings, the story was slightly different, revealing nuances in

disco experiences related to class and ethnicity. There, disco played the
same role previously allotted to funk and soul, and was later replaced in
turn by funk carioca. Experienced through collective choreographies,
disco among the poor multi-ethnic youth reinforced their black/racial
identity, highlighting their social and racial spatial segregation from the
downtown middle-class disco crowds.
As a whole, disco introduced new ways of performing and experiencing
music. Before its arrival, live music in Brazilian clubs was intellectually
appreciated, and not intended for dancing. With disco, a new relationship
between performer and audiences came into being, as was highlighted
decades later by research into electronic dance music scenes (Tagg 1994).
Disco DJs epitomised this change in music performance, as although they
had not yet ‘left the booth’ for the stage, a change which only occurred in
the 1990s, they were considered responsible for the success of the party.
DJs like Ademir Lemos were icons of the clubs in which they played, and
in Rio nightclubs DJs acquired loyal audiences who admired them as
unique and creative personalities with their own musical identities, and
who even ‘followed’ them when they moved to another discotheque
(Abbade and Junior 2016).
Motta’s two versions of Dancin’ Days successfully transitioned the
Brazilian white middle class from 1960s rock counterculture to disco. He
managed this shift from multiple angles: music and visual codes, dance,
self-expression, sexuality, gender roles, the local youth’s eagerness for
international novelties, and the mainstream media, while also folding into
disco the previous widespread appetite in Brazil for rock music. Still, dis-
cotheque crowds were eclectic by design—as was reflected in the very
name of Motta’s club, which was supposedly inspired by the 1973 Led
Zeppelin hard rock track—a reference that Motta’s social network was
familiar with (Motta 2000, 294). Many rock musicians and fans were also
part of the discotheque public, which suggests that despite the aesthetic
and musical differences between the two genres, rock and disco were simi-
lar insofar as they challenged the dominant social perceptions about race,
class, bodies, sexual freedom, drug use, or gender relations—all of which
traditionally implied a high degree of segregation and inequality.
Now a fixture in Brazil’s urban mythology, to its audience at the time
disco constituted a kind of spontaneous, private rebellion against authori-
tarian views of gender, race, and class. The focus on the body and the
music not only made available but celebrated and positioned the body
70 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

itself as a liminal site: a threshold space through which a pluralisation of

the self could be performed in the night, with the hope of it eventually
becoming a diurnal reality. While disco may not have directly contributed
to the return of democracy in Brazil, it was certainly a signal in the form
of a small flash of personal freedom which brought an illusion of individual
liberty to middle-class disco-goers. Forty years later, though in a quite dif-
ferent way and context, its aesthetics still sound appealing and its variety of
potential meanings seem only to increase, evoking memories of different
generations and pointing towards possible new formulations of a dance
culture and a dance system of values.

Notes
1. O Frenético Dancin’ Days (2019), a musical by Nelson Motta and Patrícia
Andrade, was directed by Deborah Colker. The musical was billed as ‘the
ideal place to relive the glorious years of disco music and celebrate the
1970s decade’.
2. All translations are henceforth the author’s unless otherwise stated.
3. The only existing account of Brazilian disco was recently written by jour-
nalists Celso Junior and Mario Abbade, whose brother was a discotheque
habitué, and I draw on their work here; other relevant information used in
the present investigation was found in non-fiction books on the history of
Brazilian DJs (Assef 2003) and Brazilian funk (Vianna 1988), as well as in
the biographies of some of Brazil’s key disco players, from TV presenters
to musicians (see Amaral 2010; Castro 2015, 2016; Couto and Fabretti
2015; Motta 2000, 2007, 2014; Imperial 1973, and Monteiro 2008).
4. MPB stands for Música popular brasileira (Brazilian Popular Music), a
movement initiated in the mid-1960s by middle-class young urban musi-
cians drawing on samba and Brazilian rural music traditions to develop
socio-politically engaged songs with elaborate poetry, melodies, and har-
monies (Dunn 2009).
5. Testifying to the kind of music played at NYCD, seven LP compilations
under the NYCD name were released from 1976 to 1979, containing
favourite club hits by North American funk and soul artists such as Stevie
Wonder, Eddie Kendricks, The Jackson 5, Diana Ross, The Richie Family,
Grace Jones, Gibson Brothers, Rare Earth, Sylvester, and so on.
6. The popular Brazilian cinematic genre pornochanchada provide a fitting
comparison with, and unsurprisingly flourished at the same time as, disco.
It refers to a series of erotic comedies which explored themes like extra-
marital affairs, flirting, dating, gay sexuality, psychoanalysis (which had
become fashionable at the time among white urban middle-class people),
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 71

and the intrinsic tensions between sexual liberation and the conservative
constraints of the middle-class family.
7. The albums were Frenéticas (Atlantic 1977); Caia na gandaia (Atlantic
1978); Soltas na vida (WEA 1979); Babando Lamartine (Warner Bros
1980); and Diabo a quatro (Top Tape, 1983). These titles symbolise the
Frenéticas’ public identity as women performing the role of ‘body libera-
tors’. Caia na Gandaia (‘Let yourself go’) is a colloquial Brazilian
Portuguese expression, which also appeared in their lyrics (see Sec. “The
seConD DanCin’ DaYs”). Soltas na Vida (‘Women free in life’) may refer
to the identity they publicly advocate for themselves. Babando Lamartine
(‘Drooling Lamartine’) has multiple meanings: it could mean that the
Frenéticas were poetically drooling over the Brazilian composer of satirical
sambas, Lamartine Babo, whose family name is also analogous to the
Portuguese verb ‘babar’(‘to drool’). ‘Babar’ –– the infinitive of ‘babando’
in colloquial Portuguese –– also means ‘to revere’, but for people who do
not know the composer, it can also refer to the famous drink martini as a
‘Drooling Martini’. Both meanings evoke a sexualised sense of humour
which is notable in the Frenéticas’ work. Diabo a quatro (‘Devil by four’)
is an old popular expression in Portuguese referring to creating chaos or
making a mess; here ‘quatro’ clearly refers to the four (devil) members of
the Frenéticas, thus emphasising their culturally critical position against a
patriarchal, conformist image of woman.
8. Motta claims that after closing the second Dancin’ Days discotheque, he
grew tired of disco and wished to turn to Brazilian music instead. At the
well-known Rio nightclub Canecão, he later set up the Latin-style disco-
theque Tropicana fully decorated in tropical themes, with live Latin music
(salsa, merengue) performed by a big band dressed in a tropical style. Their
performance, however, was coldly received, and the club reached full
capacity only when former NYCD DJ Ricardo Lamounier took over the
turntables and the Frenéticas performed on the stage.
9. For reference, the original lyrics are: ‘Abra suas asas/ Solte suas feras/ Caia
na gandaia/ Entre nesta festa./ Me leve com você/ Pra onde você for/ Eu
quero ver seu corpo/ Lindo, leve e souto./ A gente às vezes/ Sente, sofre,
dança/ Sem querer dançar./ Na nossa festa vale tudo/ Vale ser alguém
como eu/ Como você./ Dance bem/ Dance mal/ Dance sem parar./
Dance bem/ Dance mal/ Dance até Sem saber dançar.’
10. Assef 2003, 39; Le Bateau Ao Vivo, Top Tape, Brazil, 1970. The tracks on
the compilation featured North American rhythm ‘n’ blues, soul, funk,
country music, and rock ‘n’ roll artists. Downbeats are emphasised with
claps and tambourine on many tracks, as well as brass instrument phrases
and vocal choirs on the choruses. Rhythm is also emphasised by acoustic
guitar beats.
72 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

11. Funk Santos, quoted in Assef 2003, 47. Funk Santos was a self-­proclaimed
admirer of Ademir Lemos.
12. Tim Maia, Disco Club, Atlantic, Brazil/Portugal, 1978. Maia died in 1998
at 55, having recorded 32 albums during his 42-year-long career. Inspired
by North American funk, soul, and rhythm ‘n’ blues, he had a deep influ-
ence on Brazilian music, particularly musicians and producers identified
with ‘black music’. His compositions have been continuously re-recorded
and sampled by numerous other musicians. Tim Maia’s Disco Club was re-­
launched in Brazil in 2001 (WEA) and 2011 (Abril Coleções), and in the
UK in 2018 (Mr. Bongo/Atlantic). A biographical movie, Tim Maia,
based on Nelson Motta’s book (2007), was released in 2014.
13. In the late 1960s, Amaral ran the Sucata nightclub in Rio de Janeiro, which
was a home to young musicians who would later become MPB icons, like
Elis Regina and Wilson Simonal (Motta 2014, 17). Years later he set up
discotheques Club A in New York and Le 78 in Paris, and Papagaios Disco
Club in Sao Paulo in 1977.
14. Another drug frequently used in Rio’s discotheques was Mandrix, a kind
of sleeping pill taken with alcohol to produce a state of euphoria and diz-
ziness. Assef 2003, 56; Motta 2014, 102. Mandrix is also known as ‘drake’,
mandrax, or quaaludes.
15. Abbade and Junior (2016, 6, 19) quote O Globo 1976 article where the
NYCD female restroom guard declared herself ‘scared’ of the fashion
where ‘woman kisses woman’.

Bibliography
Abbade, Mario, and Celso Rodrigues Junior. 2016. A Primeira e Única New York
City: A Discoteca que Iniciou a Era Disco no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Autografia.
Amaral, Ricardo. 2010. Vaudeville—Memórias. São Paulo: Leya.
Assef, Claudia. 2003. Todo DJ Já Sambou: A História do Disc-Jockey no Brasil. São
Paulo: Conrad.
Castro, Ruy. 2015. A Noite do Meu Bem: A História e As Histórias do Samba-­
canção. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
———. 2016. Chega de Saudade: A História e As Histórias da Bossa Nova. São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
Couto, Gerson, and Fábio Fabretti. 2015. Gretchen: uma biografia quase não
autorizada. São Paulo: Ilelis.
DaMatta, Roberto. 1997. Carnavais, malandros e heróis: para uma sociologia do
dilema brasileiro. 6th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco.
Dunn, Christopher. 2009. Brutalidade jardim: A Tropicália e o surgimento da
contracultura brasileira. São Paulo: Editora UNESP.
 DANCIN’ DAYS: DISCO FLASHES IN 1970S BRAZIL 73

Fontanari, Ivan Paolo de Paris. 2013a. Os DJs da Perifa: Música Eletrônica,

Trajetórias e Mediações Culturais em São Paulo. Porto Alegre: Sulina.
———. 2013b. DJs as Cultural Mediators: The Mixing Work of Sao Paulo’s
Peripheral DJs. In DJ Culture in the Mix: Power, Technology and Social Change
in Electronic Dance Music, ed. Bernardo A. Attias, Anna Gavanas, and
Hilegonda C. Rietveld, 247–268. New York and London: Bloomsbury.
Globo 50 anos: censura na TV Globo. 2020. https://teledramaturgiaglobo.word-
press.com/category/dancin-­days-­2/. Accessed November 6, 2020.
Imperial, Carlos. 1973. Memórias de um Cafajeste. Rio de Janeiro: CEA.
Memória Globo. 2020. https://memoriaglobo.globo.com/entretenimento/
novelas/dancin-­days/. Accessed November 6, 2020.
Monteiro, Denilson. 2008. Dez! Nota Dez! Eu sou Carlos Imperial. São
Paulo: Matrix.
Motta, Nelson. 2000. Noites Tropicais: Solos, Improvisos e Memórias Musicais. Rio
de Janeiro: Objetiva.
———. 2007. Vale-Tudo: O Som e A Fúria de Tim Maia. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva.
———. 2014. As Sete Vidas de Nelson Motta. Rio de Janeiro: Foz.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1990. Ilhas de História. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.
Soares, Luiz Eduardo. 1994. Religioso por natureza: cultura alternativa e misti-
cismo ecológico no Brasil. In O rigor da Indisciplina, 189–212. Rio de Janeiro:
Relume-Dumará.
Tagg, Philip. 1994. From Refrain to Rave: The Decline of Figure and the Rise of
Ground. Popular Music 13 (2): 209–222.
Telles, Edward. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in
Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Turner, Victor. 1974. O processo ritual. Petrópolis: Vozes.
Velho, Gilberto. 1998. Nobres e anjos: um estudo de tóxicos e hierarquia. Rio de
Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas.
Vianna, Hermano. 1988. O Mundo Funk Carioca. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.

Discography
Frenéticas. Frenéticas. Atlantic, 1977, LP.
———. Caia na gandaia. Atlantic, 1978, LP.
———. Soltas na vida. WEA, 1979, LP.
———. Babando Lamartine. Warner Bros, 1980, LP.
———. Diabo a quatro. Top Tape, 1983, LP.
Tim Maia. Disco Club. Atlantic, Brazil/Portugal, 1978, LP.
Various. Le Bateau Ao Vivo. Top Tape, Brazil, 1970, LP.
———. New York City Disco. Top Tape, 1976, LP.
———. New York City Discotheque 2. Top Tape, 1977a, LP.
———. New York City Discotheque 3. Top Tape, 1977b, LP.
74 I. P. DE PARIS FONTANARI

———. New York City Discotheque 4. Top Tape, 1978a, LP.

———. New York City Discotheque 5. Top Tape, 1978b, LP.
———. New York City Discotheque 6. Top Tape, 1979a, LP.
———. New York City Discotheque 7. Top Tape, 1979b, LP.

Films, TV and Theatre

Alvarez, Raphael and Issa, Tatianna (Dirs.). 2009. Dzi Croquetes. Canal Brasil e
Tria. (Documentary).
Braga, Gilberto (Dir.). 1978–1979. Dancin’ Days. Rede Globo. (TV Programme).
Cunha, Cláudio (Dir.). 1979. Sábado Alucinante. Atlântida
Cinematográfica. (Film).
Imperial, Carlos. 1978–1979. Programa Carlos Imperial. TV Tupi/TVS/TV
Record. (TV programme).
Lima, Mauro (Dir.). 2014. Tim Maia. Globo Filmes. (Documentary).
Motta, Nelson and Andrade, Patrícia. 2019. O Frenético Dancin’ Days. (Musical).
 Gimmick! Italo Disco, Copy
and Consumption

Flora Pitrolo

Italo disco—a functional dance music characterised by a synthesiser-heavy

driving sound, a steady beat, strong melodic content and highly emotional
pidgin English lyrics—has sparked increasing curiosity over the past
decade, both in Italy and abroad. The term ‘Italo disco’ was first used to
sell Italian records in Germany in the early 1980s, gradually took hold and
was, for a while, forgotten; but in the past ten to five years, a proliferation
has taken place in fan materials, specialised reissues and club nights across
Europe and beyond. Alongside this, scholars have begun to interrogate
the genre. Amongst others, Will Straw (2008), Kai Fikentscher (2009)
and Dario Martinelli (2014) have analysed its sonorities and its local and
‘glocal’ characteristics, asking questions about Italo’s musical properties
and about its transnational appeal; Paolo Magaudda (2003, 2016) and
Philippe Birgy (2018) have shared important reflections on its modes of
production and circulation. More vernacular accounts and theorisations,
such as Francesco Cataldo Verrina’s Italo Disco Story (2014), complete the

F. Pitrolo (*)
Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing,
Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 75

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_4
76 F. PITROLO

picture of a genre that continues to fascinate for what it allows us to

uncover in musical, social and philosophical terms.
Academic and non-academic discoveries have illuminated how the
seduction of Italo disco is rooted in the world it evokes: romance, desire
and glamour dominate in a highly stylised, imaginary world inhabited by
rich Americans who exist in the mono-temporal dimension of a warm
summer night. While the sitedness of the word ‘Italo’ might identify this
world with Italy abroad, Italo disco—which for a long time didn’t label
itself as ‘Italo’ at home—is consciously engineered to sound non-Italian.
Complexly and compellingly then, Italo disco can be considered a
Foucaultian heterotopia in the sense that it constructs a mirror-space
grounded in local reality but also forcefully foreign to it, sharing charac-
teristics of both ‘real’ and ‘mythic’ space: even in its denomination, the
genre overlays a space of hyperlocality with a space of fantasy, with the idea
of ‘Italy’ acting as both the music’s origin and its mythic destination. As
such, Italo functions as ‘a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the
real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are
simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted’ (Foucault 1984, 3).
The music offers a dimension not unlike the world of tourism sold by
private beaches, clubs, hotels and amusement parks on the Italian Adriatic
riviera, which is the world that Italo referenced, originated from and cir-
culated in: as with other forms of disco chronicled in this book, escapism
and aspiration play an important part in this music culture, which made
available the fantasy of glamour, luxury and romance for everyone.
Italo disco’s current popularity has also demonstrated that the genre’s
unoriginality plays a significant part in its appeal: as Angus Harrison put it
in his ‘Bullshitter’s Guide to Italo Disco’ for Vice Magazine, ‘imagine
someone had made a B-movie of the entire disco genre’ (Harrison 2015).
The fact that Italo disco always feels like a copy—due to its ripped-off
chord progressions and melodies, repetitive production values, kitsch
faux-English lyrics and faux-American singers—has paradoxically become
its trademark. The product of a delicate moment of transition for the
country, identified by historians as years of individuality and hedonism as
a reaction to Italy’s violent 1970s marked by political agitation and count-
less episodes of terrorism, Italo disco’s ideology of mass fantasy is reflected
in its conditions of production: there is a lot of it (an estimated average of
three releases a day between 1982 and 1988), it all sounds the same (pro-
ducers sustained this glut by continuous processes of rearranging, octave-­
shifting and vocal-swapping the same material), and any DJ can play it and
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 77

mix it (the vast majority of Italo disco is essentially pre-beat-matched, with

long, ‘modular’ intros and outros that flow seamlessly into each other at
roughly the same tempo, making for a satisfying dance experience in any
context, regardless of skill).
Italo disco as a banal, mass product is the subject of this chapter, which
dissects the cultural, political and emotional landscape that makes Italo
disco the music of a time and a place that appears to continuously evade its
time and place. The first part of the chapter provides some contextual
information, seeking to paint the geographical, socio-political and eco-
nomical backdrop against which Italo disco comes into being; here I also
frame the problem of Italo’s Italianicity building on the work of fellow
scholars and advance some hypotheses regarding the genre’s simultaneous
hyperlocality and hyper-foreignness. The heart of this chapter is taken up
by two sections which reflect on first and second wave Italo disco, framing
the first as a ‘culture of the copy’ and the second as ‘the age of seriality’.
Across these two sections, I extend on the work done on the genre previ-
ously and offer some new reflections by critically analysing Italo’s develop-
ment between 1978 and the mid-1980s in sound, modes of production
and modes of reception. Pivoting on reflections offered by Philippe Birgy
(2018), I progressively move into a dissection Italo’s ‘iconic’ sound as the
result of a loss of both ‘body’ and ‘soul’ given by its technological musical
infrastructure and industrial productive logic, likening it to what Adorno
and Horkheimer in 1944 termed ‘a dreamless art for the people’ (Adorno
and Horkheimer 1944, 42). From here, I advance questions about Italo’s
appeal as a genre that ultimately severed its ties with both disco’s original
sound and original social and political values, wondering whether the pop-
ularity of Italo endures due to, rather than in spite of, its banality and
cheapness. In order to investigate this, my conclusive thoughts are on the
subject of the Italo lyric, which I analyse thematically and linguistically to
propose that Italo might be the expression of a felt loss: a music that knows
of its own unoriginality and whose value might lie in a melancholy
‘making do’.

The Locus of Italo: The Adriatic Riviera

In opposition to the densely populated, metropolitan, multi-racial context
that marked disco’s origins in New York City, the locus of Italo disco is for
a large part semi-rural/semi-urbanised, white Adriatic riviera. Although
the main record labels of Italo operated from Milan and, for a minor part,
78 F. PITROLO

Rome and other cities, the long stretch from Casal Borsetti to Gabicce
Mare—95 kilometres of beaches and discotheques suspended between the
sea and the (industrialising) countryside—fuelled Italo as a genre cultur-
ally and economically. Novelist and cultural critic Pier Vittorio Tondelli
used to call the riviera a metropoli balneare, a ‘seaside metropolis’, a defini-
tion that continues to prove useful for sociologists, urbanists, and also
music historians (Pacoda 2012). A sprawl in the shape of a stripe, marked
by intense brightness and intense darkness ‘like strass on the neckline of an
evening dress’:

Because if on the one side all of the nightlife shone in the heat of the sum-
mer fervour, on the other, all that existed was the darkness, the deep, the
unknown; and that road which for kilometres and kilometres followed the
Adriatic offering parties, happiness and fun, that road I had only one expres-
sion for, in the spotlight, that very stripe of pleasure marked the boundary
between life and its dream, the frontier between the sparkling illusions of
fun and the opaque weight of reality. (Tondelli 1985, 431)

Economically, the situation of Italo disco was one on the verge of great
financial wealth, and Italy’s rapid industrialisation between the mid-1970s
and the mid-1980s make the time of Italo a particularly rich and contra-
dictory time in the country’s social and cultural history. In terms of youth
culture and popular music, this moment also presents itself as a hybrid
moment poised between—as Tondelli puts it—‘sparkling illusions of fun
and the opaque weight of reality’: on the one hand, the seductions of neo-­
liberal lifestyles, the pursuit of pleasure, the rise of the petty bourgeoisie;
on the other, the ideological and social inheritance of the political battles
of the 1970s, and most starkly the final rattles of Italy’s so-called years of
lead, the years of widespread right- and left-wing terrorism which between
the late 1960s and early 1980s produced what was later famously called ‘a
low-intensity civil war’.2 Journalists earmarked this moment as the era of
the riflusso verso il privato (‘reflux’ or ‘return to the private’), painting it in
broad brushstrokes as a moment of exhaustion towards class struggle and
towards the pursuit of political aims. The riflusso generation, or so the
story goes, was tired of bombs going off in the streets and instead chose
to take refuge in the new value system perpetrated by Berlusconi’s televi-
sual empire, just nascent in those years: the accumulation of wealth, plea-
sure, beauty, and above all distraction. The term riflusso is important
because it implies a backwards flow: the hedonism of the Italian 1980s is
always inscribed in a narrative of failure and resignation more than in one
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 79

of liberation and release. Italy at this time had the largest Communist
Party in a non-Communist state, and the passage from the 1970s to the
1980s, especially in what concerns youth culture, is often depicted as the
disavowal of a political project.
Zooming into the Adriatic riviera more specifically (which again we are
taking here as the cultural locus of Italo disco although the records were
produced as well as danced to elsewhere), the thorny ideological hybridity
of this moment becomes even more cogent: designed as a resort during
fascism and rolling with the leisure industry ever since, the ‘parties, happi-
ness and fun’ of the riviera were still and nevertheless embedded in Italy’s
‘reddest’ region. Here, the conspicuous consumption of Italian and
European holiday-makers of the late 1970s and early 1980s coexisted at
this point with a solid and stratified left-wing culture whose scene was
more social barbecues and traditional popular ‘balera’ dances than cock-
tails and light-up floors; a Soviet fascination slowly accommodated an
American one, and magazines showing pictures of Russian youths having
fun at social dances, highlighting aspects of their clothes and hairstyles,
overlapped, often in the same teenage bedrooms, with publications featur-
ing rip-out posters of Simon LeBon.
While I cannot delve here into the socio-cultural complexities of its
spatio-temporal dimension, I hope to have given the reader a sense of how
Italo disco is born in a time and space that is already intensely heteroto-
pian, marked by a participation in different real and mythic regimes which
don’t always map onto one another in a coherent fashion. We can thus
liken Italo disco to Foucault’s example of the mirror as a heterotopia—an
object that exists in reality but in which ‘I see myself there where I am not’
(Foucault 1984, 4)—and liken its environs to Foucault’s example of the
boat. The Adriatic riviera in the 1980s functioned as ‘a floating piece of
space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself
and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea’ (Foucault
1984, 9).
Italo disco is very much the product, then, of extremely Italian histori-
cal, social, economic and cultural conditions, yet it somehow garners its
Italianicity by ignoring them: Italo is largely sung in English (American),
its stars have English (American) names and takes place in America—it is
full of Cadillacs, sunsets, neons, Chinese restaurants, therapists, the
Mexican border and other images, loci and practices that hardly existed in
Italy, received from music but perhaps especially from cinema, comic strips
and advertising. As others before me have argued (Fikentscher 2009;
80 F. PITROLO

Magaudda 2003, 2016; Straw 2008), and as any listener of Italo expertly
or instinctively knows, one of the genre’s most unique traits is its congeni-
tal outward-looking gaze, its bottom-line desire to ‘sound foreign’, its
rough or naive mimicking of a one-size-fits-all ‘Americanism’ which is
both functional, commercial (the original idea behind Italo was, after all,
to sell records abroad and/or to not pay import tax on foreign records)
and at the same time desiring, provincial (the idea that the best thing one
could be in the world is American, but at the same time Italian, haunts all
Italo production).
As the 1980s progressed, Italo lived through a strange reversal of the
heterotopian mirror, which turned 360 degrees to reveal Italy itself as the
fantastic world of Italo disco: Italy as the locus of the fantasy the music
describes, Italy as the imagined America the music describes. This reversal
continues to this day: Italo disco is Italian, and that’s what people love
about it, whether they love it ironically or innocently (although the ques-
tion remains of whether it is possible to love Italo disco innocently or
whether, to paraphrase Umberto Eco, one can only love Italo ironically ‘in
an age of lost innocence’—we will return to this). Italo, however, was
really meant to feel non-Italian: its gradual absorption into the language of
Italianicity—the same language as the famous Panzani pasta advert dis-
sected by Roland Barthes in his essay on connotation and denotation in
the advertising photograph (Barthes 1964)—occurred outside of Italy. As
Dario Martinelli (2014) has discussed, Italo compilations circulated and
still circulate abroad without any significant iconography other than the
red, white and green colours of the Italian flag or the blue of the Italian
national football team. Barthes’s interest in Panzani pasta deeply takes into
analysis the fact that it was not Italian; it was a French brand performing
Italianicity, and decoding this Italianicity is a French kind of knowledge,
made to be viewed from outside (Barthes 1964, 153). As a mirror, Italo
disco deflects the Italian gaze and draws upon itself the foreign gaze: it
was read as American or Anglophone/foreign/more fun at home and as
Italian/foreign/more fun abroad, and therein lay and lays its dual
fascination.

First Wave Italo Disco: A Culture of the Copy

The question of the Panzani pasta advert matters because the term Italo
disco was in itself a marketing operation—the term was allegedly coined
by Bernhard Mikulski, the owner of ZYX Records, who started using it
around 1977–1978 to distribute Italian records in Germany and the
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 81

Netherlands, and gradually came into European parlance as a genre name

in the early 1980s. In Italy, we know that in the time of its development
the expression ‘Spaghetti Dance’ was used, which lacks the seriousness of
a real genre name although it is useful in as much as (a) it points to pasta,
(b) it points to the genre as a ‘copy’ (the term is modelled on Spaghetti
Western films). As Claudio Simonetti of Goblin fame confessed to Bill
Brewster when asked whether he collaborated with British or American
musicians given all the English names on the records:

No. We changed the names! It’s like the ‘60s when they shoot spaghetti
westerns they just changed the names, even Sergio Leone had a different
name. That’s because if we had told the people it was an Italian production
nobody would trust that it was good, because no one had done it. It was
very funny. Simon Pouds, for instance, is me. (Simonetti in Brewster 2008)

Indeed, both a vernacular and a musicological debate have taken place

about whether there was such a thing as ‘Italo disco’ at all (Fabbri and
Plastino 2014). There was, there is; in fact there were two ‘waves’ of what
we could call Italo disco: a first wave, perhaps best epitomised by Goody
Music’s West Indian producer and entrepreneur Jacques Fred Petrus and
his collaborations with Mauro Malavasi, which we could single out as the
age of the copy; then, a much more widespread second wave, character-
ised by the sound we would identify as Italo disco today, which we could
term the age of seriality. First wave Italo is not quite yet ‘Italo’, nor is it
‘Spaghetti Dance’, and was simply labelled as ‘disco’. Projects such as La
Bionda, who had a hit with “One for You, One for Me” (1978), or Jacques
Fred Petrus and Mauro Malavasi’s “Walkin’ on Music” and “Fire Night
Dance” still have a ‘disco’ sound that is Black or Black-inspired, soulful,
more organic. Malavasi-Petrus projects under Goody Music were often
recoded in Italy, then the tapes were sent to US vocalists and finally sent
back to Italy to be mixed (Cataldo Verrina 2014, 108–109). As
Magaudda notes:

The connection of these Italian producers with the New York producer
Jacques Fred Petrus and their experience of new clubs such as the Paradise
Garage in NY; the ability to mix the Italian sense of melody and the soul
attitude of black American singers. Indeed, the success of these productions
has been explained as the result of combining Italian melody with American
musicality, a formula as well suited to listening as to dancing. Concerning the
musical form, Italo-disco brought Italian melody again to the fore in combi-
nation with the soul feeling of the black singers. (Magaudda 2003, 539)
82 F. PITROLO

Traits typical of an Italian pop sound and Italian production are audible in
first wave Italo, but we are still in a phase we could view as some kind of
apprenticeship. The so-called Italian melodic tradition—a fluid term often
used by musicologists to speak of the influence of Neapolitan folk song on
twentieth-century Italian pop from fascism onwards—is undoubtedly dis-
cernible in early Italo records. But at the same time, they engage in a kind
of careful counterfeiting of American disco productions, of which they
copy the sound and the style, and while certain elements of discontinuity
begin to emerge, across the board it is clear that a ‘formula’ has not yet
been found. Drawing a parallel with the booming design and fashion
industries of the time, which in the early 1980s were developing the idea
of ‘Made in Italy’ as a branding operation, we could say that a certain
‘artisanal’ expertise was at work here, in which conservatoire-trained musi-
cians brought their own to copying the ‘great masters’ of American disco:
‘for us making disco meant transforming the heritage of 1960s pop, since
the melodies of “disco disco” were less memorable’ (La Bionda in Simula
2016, 67). Also like ‘Made in Italy’ fashion and design, a declaredly entre-
preneurial matrix was at work, which is common to both waves. It is dif-
ficult, for obvious reasons, to get complete information about business
processes of the time, but we do know from various accounts, interviews
and scandals that these productions were very much motivated by com-
mercial prospects such as making money abroad, setting up alternative
distribution routes and avoiding foreign import tax; we also know that in
a producer- and label boss-led genre singers and performers were fre-
quently short-changed by exploitative contracts and meagre revenue.
Nevertheless, the Italo product began to be likened to food and fashion
exports by its own players, which is bizarre given that at least 90% of it is
in English and everyone had English names. But in this cusp-panorama,
what was ‘Italian’ was again Italianicity, the Italian style—which, again,
boiled down to melodic sophistication:

We have always sold melody because none of the other countries produced
it—apart from the Germans, but their stuff was impossible. The British
didn’t understand us at the time because we were too far ahead of them.
We used to dress the melody a certain way: we dressed it in Italian taste,
and Italian taste is better than anybody else’s. Indeed, people consider “I
Like Chopin” a sophisticated product abroad. It took me a lifetime to
make people understand that Italy isn’t only spaghetti, pizza, olive oil and
mozzarella. It’s also Armani, Versace, all of these people! (Naggiar
in Cataldo Verrina, 67)
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 83

Dance music was beginning to look like a great investment: the disco-
theques of the 1970s in cities such as Milan, Rome and Florence were by
now solid establishments, and an expansive network of architecturally
flashy venues was blossoming across more provincial and coastal regions.
Moving hand in hand with the tourism industry (many only worked in
high season) these were businesses set up by big investments which needed
to keep their musical offer fresh week on week. Many of these were still
discoteche in the strict sense of the word: the manager would buy the
records, the DJ would come and play them. Daniele Baldelli—who would
become the star of Baia degli Angeli, where he played going up and down
in a glass elevator—recounts that for his previous gig at Tabù Club he was
initially taken on as a metti-dischi, a ‘record-putter-onner’, and had to ask
‘to have his pocket money increased so he could buy some new records
himself’ (Zagor Treppiedi 2014). First wave Italo—epitomised by the fig-
ure of Jacques Fred Petrus—set up not only a commercial bridge but also
a cultural one between US and Italian dance music, and motivated a whole
world of labels to join the game. Another early example is Freddy Naggiar’s
Baby Records, founded in 1974, which was already doing big business by
pressing artists such Albano e Romina and pop sensation Pupo, whom
Naggiar had recruited ‘like the government recruits civil servants, by plac-
ing an advert in a magazine’ (Billboard 1976). Pupo abandoned Naggiar
early on over financial disputes—but Naggiar collected many of these
kinds of scandals over the years. Nevertheless, he was another astute and
internationally minded businessman, whose network and knowledge gave
him a long-sighted vision of music as an industry; he turned to Italo
around 1979–1980, and by ‘dressing the melody up’ became one of the
genre’s biggest players.

Second Wave Italo Disco: The Age of Seriality

Second wave Italo was something else, and it is this second wave sound
that we know as Italo disco today. Martinelli has summarised its ‘particular
sound’ according to five general axioms, which I will return to across the
chapter: (1) ‘a rigid four-in-a-bar rhythmic pattern’; (2) ‘repetitive bass
riffs’ (vs. ‘inventive, soul-derived’ ones); (3) ‘a supremacy of catchy and
melodic elements’, paired with Italian-style mixing (with the voice in
front); (4) ‘full access to state-of-the-art music technologies, particularly
synthesisers’; (5) ‘lyrically, a tendency to write meta-songs’: ‘to address the
song itself and its social functions’ (Martinelli 2014, 211–212).
84 F. PITROLO

A survey of the traits Martinelli helpfully discerns, and even a superficial

listen of records from the two waves, reveals how musically speaking they
don’t have very much in common at all. Although it is built on first wave
Italo’s cultural and commercial infrastructure, second wave Italo’s proto-­
Hi-­NRG sound is more indebted to early UK new and synth wave acts
(such as Mute’s Yazoo or Depeche Mode, or The Human League). The
Italo sound, in turn, successively got folded into the mid- to late 1980s
12” sound of Factory, Belgian New Beat and even EBM, and then into
forms of Eurodance proper. This is unsurprising given Italo’s cultural
milieu in which, as Albert One unironically notes, ‘less than half of the
people understood anything about music’ (Carpani in De Iulis 2011), but
many of those who did had a rock or prog musical background and new
romantic aesthetic tendencies: in subcultural terms, there is a direct line
between rock/prog and new wave, which passes through punk and then
post-punk, skipping disco qua disco completely. Maurizio Dami aka
Alexander Robotnick was a guitarist who fell in love with Kraftwerk;
Giorgio Fioroni and Leonardo Pancaldi of Amin Peck met in bands play-
ing at the Communist Party’s Festa dell’Unità festivals in the mid-1970s;
Italo super-producer Roberto Turatti, who started his career as the drum-
mer in Enrico Ruggeri’s new wave project Decibel, admits that as a rocket-
taro he had no intention of setting foot in a discotheque until a friend
dragged him along—the fact that ‘all the girls were so clean and dressed
up’ changed his mind for good (Cataldo Verrina 2014, 128).
The hybrid musical landscape second wave Italo embedded itself within
is also made apparent by the multitude of murkily licensed cover versions
of songs which act as a filler to pre-mixed Italo LPs (or were the original
Italo songs filler to the covers?) which constituted Italo’s main form of
circulation beyond the discotheque: covers of tracks by Mike Oldfield,
The Police, Falco, hits by Pink Floyd and even soul standards like Stand
By Me, are thrown in as party fodder alongside Italo tracks by the likes of
Brand Image, Valerie Doré, Styloo. On the subject of the house party, it is
also worth mentioning that the target audience of such records was hugely
varied, and the eclecticism of the mix is also part of a ‘something for every-
one’ mainstreaming logic, able to capture all tastes and also, crucially, all
age groups. Freddy Naggiar’s Baby Records explicitly aimed its Mixage
and Bimbo Mix compilation series to teenagers and even children, broad-
casting adverts for them in children’s TV programmes via the cartoon
character Cin Ciao Lin known as ‘il cinesino’ (‘the little Chinese man’);
the records carried the imprint ‘Disco TV’ on the cover, which made them
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 85

slightly more expensive to buy, thus offsetting the cost of advertising. The
use of the medium of television alongside radio is yet another marker of
Italo’s commodification, which ran well beyond the audience of the dis-
coteca: beyond those who would be consumers of music or nightlife. The
explicit targeting of children, which is widespread also in the music itself
(the most notable example of this is Spagna’s super-project Baby’s Gang,
but we can also think of how P. Lion’s “Happy Children” speaks in the
name of children, amongst others), is interesting in both commercial and
aesthetic terms, and more work deserves to be done on the figure of the
child as both consumer and image to be consumed in Italy’s dance culture
of this time. Musically speaking—by way of Martinelli’s third axiom on
melody and production—we could also classify the sweet melodies that
characterise a vast strand of second wave Italo (Savage’s “Only You” is a
prime example) as ‘childish’; this ‘stream’ was then inherited by a range of
other Euro-musics of the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially in
Eastern Europe.
Returning to the commercial logic we have identified as central to both
waves, it is here that we witness a move from ‘copying’ or ‘mimicking’
American disco in more or less discrete productions (it might be useful to
think again here of the ‘Spaghetti’ nomenclature implying a copy of an
established and already coded American genre) to the seriality of the for-
mula and even automisation: from an artisanal logic to an industrial one.
In interviews gathered in Pierpaolo de Iulis’s Italo Disco Documentary
(2011), Discomagic boss Severo Lombardoni explains how at the height
of his career a typical day at the studio would involve making five or six
records, sending up to 60 records a month to press; Paul Mazzolini (oth-
erwise known as Gazebo) explains that the slowness of international
majors—who were presumably not fully aware of the business opportunity
Italo represented, due also to the nightlife and private radio industries that
depended on it3—motivated the whole Italo machine to write, record,
press and distribute the records independently, since they had an infra-
structure that could move through the entire process in a few days. A
spreadsheet circulated in the Italo disco community forum on Discogs a
decade ago calculated an approximate figure of 7,000-10,000 titles
released between 1982 and 1988 in Italy alone classified as Italo disco.4
This means that, as I prefigured earlier in this chapter, we can realistically
imagine a production of three–four records a day: an enormous produc-
tion for a single European country and even more so for a single country
in a single genre.
86 F. PITROLO

The ‘industrial’ mode of production of Italo has been picked up on by

other commentators with fascinating outcomes. Magaudda, for example,
notes that Italo precociously adopted what he terms ‘forms of postfordist
flexibility’ applied to musical production (Magaudda 2016, 97).
‘Precocious’ is a key term here, for it also stresses how subsequent forms
of dance music adopted such a model of production, the key aspect of
which is a new centrality of the producer rather than the singer. The
extreme schematisation of the form of the Italo track—with its dependable
four-on-the-floor rhythm pattern cruising steadily along between 110 and
120 BPM, its modular intros and outros providing at least 30/40 seconds
of naked drum machine, its verse-bridge-synthline structure in which the
chorus abdicates to the melodic element and the break is taken over by the
octave shift—allowed producers to rapidly whip ideas into shape, and this
rapidity of the production line is central to Italo’s paradoxical inventive-
ness. Within this rigid structure, the producer/label boss (the two profes-
sionalities often overlapped) became a kind of Midas who could make
something out of almost nothing. Cataldo Verrina explains how
Lombardoni used to listen to a few seconds of all of the demos he received,
and although he did give generous advances to the tracks he immediately
believed in, he would ‘generally used to take everything, and something
would come out of it’ (Cataldo Verrina 2014, 224). Discomagic’s strategy
was risk-taking: by flooding the market something would eventually pay
for the heaps of records that would fall into oblivion, and the time and
money spent on each was so meagre that it made good business sense. The
centrality of the producer also brings with it a waning of authorality, or at
least of identification with the pop star. A debacle famously ensued across
the Italian press when it surfaced that in the case of Den Harrow the
‘singer’ was not the singer at all but a model lip-syncing to the pre-­
recorded track; but this was the case for a huge amount of Italo acts, and
it is interesting to note producers often use the verb interpretare to speak
of singer/models, which is the Italian verb used in acting to mean ‘playing
a role’: Stefano Zandri ‘played’ Den Harrow. With this comes the fact that
when we listen to Italo, we don’t really know who we’re listening to: the
romantic presumption of the pop song as autobiographical to he/she who
sings it is effectively undermined across the genre, although judging on
the fandom of icons such as Den Harrow (which is why the scandal was
important in the first place) or Gazebo (for whom Naggiar pushed a fake
biography according to which he was the son of a Lebanese diplomat), it
was also quite happily ignored by its listeners. Presumably the Italo
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 87

consumer was quite content in a logic of consumption, and the ‘reality’ of

the image mattered less than what Marx would have called the ‘fetish-­
character’ of the all-consuming consumable good.
Philippe Birgy delves even deeper into Italo’s automisation, charting
how progressive technological democratisation and miniaturisation—
which he richly intercepts in his discussion in the figure of the preset and
later, in the rise of MIDI—both formed the backbone and provoked the
aesthetic disqualification of Italo as a genre (Birgy 2018, 17). According
to Birgy, alongside its commercial logic, it is Italo’s technological land-
scape that is responsible for its serial sound and progressive jettisoning of
the ‘“spiritual essence” of disco (its constitutive “soul” [in English] ele-
ment)’, and of its “human expressiveness”’ (Birgy 2018, 16). The clock
surpasses the human somehow: we always know what comes next, and
therein lies the genre’s capacity to grant satisfaction, to provide gratifica-
tion. We might venture that Adorno and Horkheimer’s nightmare of mass
industrial culture is fully realised in Italo disco—their 1944 description fits
our discussions over the past few pages like a glove. I quote at length:

This dreamless art for the people fulfils the dreamy idealism which went too
far for idealism in its critical form. Not only do hit songs, stars, and soap
operas conform to types recurring cyclically as rigid invariants, but the spe-
cific content of productions, the seemingly variable element, is itself derived
from those types. The details become interchangeable. The brief interval
sequence which has proved catchy in a hit song, (…) [is] like all the details,
[a] ready-made cliché, to be used here and there as desired and always com-
pletely defined by the purpose [it] serves within the schema. To confirm the
schema by acting as its constituents is their sole raison d’être. (…) [I]n light
music the prepared ear can always guess the continuation after the first bars
of a hit song and is gratified when it actually occurs. (Adorno and
Horkheimer 1944, 42)

One man’s nightmare is another man’s dream, and our current pop land-
scape marked by ready-made digital production and autotuned voices—
which nevertheless represents a revolutionary democratisation of art and
a rich pluralisation of musical expression—would surely be deemed even
more horrifying if seen from the 1940s. Within our fully industrialised
culture however Italo continues to provide something special in its plas-
ticity, and is not only taken seriously but cherished by its fans. As I move
towards the end of this chapter, my last reflections are devoted to
attempting to understand how Italo disco nevertheless extends its grip
88 F. PITROLO

onto listeners and dancers, ask questions about its mass affective charge
and look briefly at the Italo lyric as a key to the genre’s sentimental
unoriginality.

Conclusion: The Italo Lyric

and Impossible Originality

Let us return to the humorous but very serious idea of the ‘B-movie of the
entire disco genre’: working from artisanal to industrial, from craft to aut-
omisation, we have established across this chapter that all Italo, as a genre,
is undoubtedly derivative. At the same time though, we could also posit
that Italo disco is also all original. As a mature genre—by 1984/1985—
Italo copies nothing other than itself, and every Italo record sounds like
every other Italo record: it sounds unmistakably Italo. As a form of ‘func-
tional’ dance music, the repetition of the formula and modularity of the
tracks is no bad thing, and indeed is what determined its continuous suc-
cess until it ran its course as a product in the ever-evolving marketplace of
dance music and dancing trends. As a form of pop music (because Italo is
both Mr. Flagio’s “Take a Chance” and Gazebo’s “I Like Chopin”, simul-
taneously a music for adult encounters in lascivious discotheques and for
starry-eyed dreaming in a teenager’s bedroom), its formulaic nature gets
judged by a different measure: atmosphere without words, words without
meaning, sex without body, body without organs. Birgy again notes:

Although it has been so often described as cheap music, in bad taste, with-
out presence, dematerialised, incorrigibly immature and obsolete due to the
immoderate borrowing it made of the tropes of certain obsolete genres (the
sentimental song, the variety song), it nevertheless provided recorded musi-
cal material on which the activity of night clubs depended. (Birgy 2018, 18)

Birgy closes his reflections by stating that whatever aesthetic judgement

one might impose upon it, Italo has at least the merit of having held the
fort, keeping a whole nighttime economy going while ‘waiting for some-
thing better’ (Birgy 2018, 18). It’s a seductive hypothesis—however I am
mindful of the fact that two forms of judgement overlap here (the dance
music vs. the pop music view I describe above), as well as of the fact that
the same critics of Italo disco probably wouldn’t locate the ‘something
better’ in successive forms of Italian dance music, although ‘better’ is of
course a fluid term. Above all though, I am more interested in
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 89

interrogating the enduring and widespread fascination towards Italo Disco

by asking questions now about the affective world it speaks of and to. If
despite having been continuously shunned as ‘disposable music’ Italo
Disco continues to be hugely popular, shouldn’t we wonder if its appeal
lies precisely in its disposability? Can we theorise something like a produc-
tive loss of aura here, or what philosopher Mario Perniola after Benjamin
calls ‘the sex appeal of the inorganic’ (Benjamin 1935a; Perniola 2004a,
b)? In other words, can we say that Italo’s aura is garnered because of and
not in spite of it being very much a work of art in the age of mechanical
reproduction (Benjamin 1935b)?
In an essay about the pumped village folk euro-electro of Disco Polo,
Daphne Carr calls Italo ‘the first truly popular form of European Dance
Music’ and retrieves a now lost piece by Alex Nikitin circulated in the
highly vernacular space of a Europop internet forum circa 2000: ‘Italo
singles always sounded like they were dead cheap. I think this is their
appeal (…) The banality of them makes them strangely moving, some-
how’ (Nikitin in Carr 2007, 274).5 We could, and perhaps should, read
Birgy’s previously quoted loss of ‘the spiritual essence of disco’ in Italo,
which he reformulates as both ‘constitutive soul element’ and ‘human
expressiveness’, as a loss of Blackness, or what Martin Monro has discussed
as technologically enabled but physically, socially and culturally experi-
enced ‘decoupling of rhythm and race’ in dance music:

Historically, rhythmic performances in the Caribbean and the broader

Americas have been future-oriented means of imagining a different, better
time to come, and if we see in the present a decoupling of rhythm and race,
it is perhaps at least in part because history itself has lost its own forward
momentum, its own rhythm of change and renewal. (Monro 2016, 14)

With this ‘decoupling’ comes, perhaps most crucially, the loss of disco’s
foundational discourse, depicted by Tim Lawrence as ‘countercultural’ in
the deepest sense and synthesised by Lawrence ‘as rupture through rap-
ture’ (Lawrence 2003, 52). The loss, that is, of the possibility of hedonis-
tic liberation from systematic policing and oppression, the invention of
other forms of community, the reaffirmation of subaltern solidarity in the
face of capitalist modes of economic and social control, the centrality of
pleasure as a value, the spatial dimension of the discotheque and the tem-
poral dimension of the night as one of improvisation and—hopefully—
rehearsal of joyful modes of living otherwise. As Daphne Brooks and
90 F. PITROLO

P.A. Skantze have put it in a recent conversation about what they term
‘sonic encouragement’ in the wake of Black Lives Matters, we could cat-
egorise disco’s political élan as ‘ludic solidarity in the catastrophic: that’s
the Black radical tradition, right there’ (Brooks and Skantze 2021). This
establishment of an alternative value system and the collective labour
entailed by its realisation carries with it a set of intents which Tim Lawrence
singles out in the epilogue of this volume as also mapping onto the project
of the Italian autonomia movement of 1977, which provides a parallel to
disco as a social and political project. Antonio Negri notes that:

In Italy—the only country in Europe—the [1977] movement affirmed itself

as a social force for a long time, developing a potential which in time entirely
demonstrated the meaning on the historical innovations of 1968. It carried
an absolutely innovative strength. In 1968, other than words, all that was
left of the deepening of cultural criticism, the modification of systems of life,
the constitution of communities was a series of often ineffective declarations
of intent: but all of this became reality in 1977. (Negri 1997, 632)

In asking questions about the movement’s demise, Negri continues: ‘we

lost because of a lack of intellectual extremism. Whereas our adversaries
were certainly extremist in how they used new productive possibilities to
isolate us, marginalise us and destroy us’ (Negri 1997, 634). The theorisa-
tion of Italo as a dance culture in the wake of the autonomia movement is
beyond the scope of my work here—although I do invite the reader to
think back to the socio-cultural backdrop I sketched out at the start of this
chapter as well as to move to Tim Lawrence’s reflections on the parallels
between disco and autonomia at the end of this very volume. However I
make this movement from technological and racial decoupling and from
the New York dance floor to the experimental Italian Left to propose that
more than a straight ‘aspirational’ music of newly found post-ideological
pleasure, we might intercept the moving banality of Italo in the perfor-
mance of a kind of felt loss: of body, of discourse, of community, of possi-
bility; and its rigid rhythm, its synth-lines and, importantly, its faux-English
lyrics as the modes by which this loss if made to be felt.
Indeed, the Italo lyric is the one axiom of Martinelli’s which I have not
explored so far and also the element of Italo disco which, in Adornian
terms, supplies ‘the specific content of productions, the seemingly variable
element’ vis-à-vis the almost wholly schematic, automised, modular ‘rigid
invariants’ of the music. It is true that a great part of Italo lyrics reflects a
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 91

tendency towards the meta-song in which the song ‘talks about itself and
its social functions’ such as ‘invitations to dance, arguments in favor of the
song’s rhythm, descriptions of the kinetic abilities of certain musical
instrument, etc.’ (Martinelli 2014, 212), and key tracks in genre’s history
such as Doctor’s Cat’s “Feel the Drive”, Fun Fun’s “Happy Station” and
B.W.H’s “Livin’ Up” fall neatly into this description. But it is also true
that, for the most part, a particular tonal quality is at work in how the Italo
song talks about itself, and this is desiring and dejected in equal parts,
marked by some kind of longing but also by some kind of ache. We might
single out three principal thematic paradigms: (1) a spatial paradigm,
about the sensorial space of the urban night and the discoteca, as well as
various (foreign) geographical spaces; (2) romantic relationships, usually
complex and unfulfilled because of either some kind of broken promise or
looming threat; (3) downright social commentary, and pessimist and/or
existentialist invitations to dance.

1. Spatial Italo
We might group here songs about the dimension of night: Diego’s
“Walk in The Night”, Brian Ice’s “Talking to The Night”, Valerie
Doré’s “The Night”, Giusy Dej’s “Walking in the Night”, Mike
Cannon’s “Voices in the Dark” but equally other lighting condi-
tions such as Peter Richard’s “Walking in the Neon” or Limit
Eccitation’s “In The Dark”, amongst many others. The night is
varyingly presented as space of threat and mystery and of romantic
(im)possibility and/or self-realisation: Giusy Dej’s walking is ‘walk-
ing far from you’, Mike Cannon remembers when he spent his time
alone playing in the dark until ‘one night in the bar I saw something
spark’, and Limit Eccitation provide the haunting chorus ‘In the
dark/screaming to’. Indeed, RAF’s “Self Control” should also be
mentioned here: ‘In the day nothing matters/It’s the night, time that
flatters’.
We can also add to this category tracks such as Ryan Paris’s
“Dolce Vita”, Sandy Marton’s “People from Ibiza”, Helen’s
“Zanzibar” or indeed Crusin’ Gang and Baby’s Gang’s respective
songs titled “America”. In general the Italo lyric does not take place
in the foreign location: it either wants to go there (Baby’s Gang
want to go to the ‘wonderland’ of America, lamenting ‘I can see you
only on my TV’) or is caught up in a game of make believe (Ryan
Paris proclaims to his lover ‘we’re living like in la dolce vita’, and as
92 F. PITROLO

the track progresses we realise this has a fast-approaching expiry

date; Helen’s song alternates knowingly between situating its erotic
action ‘deep down in Africa’ and proclaiming that ‘it’s just
like Africa’).
2. Romantic Italo
Celebratory love songs do occur in Italo: Lamé’s “You’ve Got the
Night” and, despite its title, M&G’s “When I Let You Down” are
both songs of fulfilled and fulfilling romantic relationships (indeed,
the fact of ‘letting down’ seems to be a good thing in the latter:
‘When I let you down inside/My soul will be your home/My heart will
be your dome /Take me high/Take me baby/When I let you down). But
most part love is unrequited, impossible or simply ‘difficult’ in the
Italo lyric.
In general, when the lyric is about love, it is also conscious of its
horizon: the lover’s potential rejection haunts classics such as
Savage’s “Only You” (‘Don’t push me aside/don’t leave me to die’),
Gazebo’s “Masterpiece”, with its whiffs of 1950s Hollywood glam-
our (‘We had a tango too much/you said you’d keep in touch’), or “Do
You” by Duke Lake (whose lover ‘breaks his lines of fantasy’: ‘But you
won’t listen, won’t listen any late/There’s something missing, and now
you just can’t wait’).
Other times, some kind of vague catastrophe is on the cards: in
Sensitive’s “Driving” an encounter ‘on the road’ with a ‘blondie
blondie chick’ ends in the ominous ‘night is coming/all is fine if you/
got something to find’; in Fancy’s “Bolero” the lovers are ‘strangers
down a lonely lane/driftwood on the stream of life’.
More modern couple-type problems are the topic of Brand
Image’s “Are You Loving?”, where a dispute about the evening’s
plans ends in a questioning of the whole relationship (‘Weren’t you
supposed to go to the discotheque and shake your body all the time/I
would be glad to stay inside my living room, the sunny things far from
my mind’); Ken Laszlo’s “Hey Hey Guy Guy”, one of the few
openly gay Italo tracks, begins with a phone conversation between
Ken and what must be a male prostitute. When asked ‘Yeah, hey guy,
tell me about your manicure’, Ken simply answers: ‘I love you and I
feel the groove’; finally, the two conclude that ‘everything is the
same as all’.
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 93

3. ‘Social’ and existentialist Italo

Many of Italo’s invitations to dance exist on a backdrop of existen-
tial dread: Paul Paul’s “Good Times” are so necessary because ‘feel-
ings can die’ and ‘illusions die without feeling’, and their “Burn On
The Flames” laments ‘I’m waiting too much/I’m wasting my time/
Looking at shadows on the wall of my room’; Fokewulf 190’s “Body
Heat” comes from a place in which ‘in the centre of the city/in the
darkness of the night/there is no light’.
Thematically ‘social’ tracks, usually dystopian, can also be inserted
in this category: examples might be Den Harrow’s “Future Brain”,
replete with a music video showing babies being given computer
brains (‘It’s insane to program everybody’s love/But you’re to blame
‘cause you don’t know how stupid you are’) and Alex Valentini’s tale of
pointless love in “Beautiful Life”, which charts a progressive disil-
lusionment ending in misanthropy in which he falls in love, gets
drunk and ‘fall asleep with a whole lot of griefs’. In the hugely suc-
cessful “Vamos a la Playa” by Righeira (a La Bionda production),
the seaside the listener is beckoned to is a place where ‘the bomb has
exploded’ and ‘the radioactive wind messes one’s hair up’ and
instead of ‘stinking fish’ there’s only ‘fluorescent water’.6 A special
place here should be reserved to P. Lion’s “Happy Children”,
amongst the Italo canon’s sweetest, most famous and most ominous
tracks. In the track P. Lion describes a world marked only by war,
money and work, in which ‘the life runs without happiness’: ‘Everyday
dreams/To go to a better life/But they remain only dreams’. The cho-
rus recites: ‘You are the children/Your life will be very hard/You are
the children/You’re singing every day’ before a playful, jolly saxo-
phone seeps in.

Of course these categories are fluid and overlap; but what emerges is that
the most forcefully ‘meta song’ aspect of the Italo lyric is that it seems to
know about the social and cultural world it inhabits and about its role
within it: the Italo lyric knows about its own commodification, seriality,
technological dependence, unoriginality, disposability. Two tracks of
Gazebo’s are particularly interesting in this regard. In “Love in Your Eyes”
the synthesiser has to compete with Gazebo’s lover, whose screams stop
him from hearing the monitor, and a love story is only just a question of
‘input/output’: ‘You are just a damn Sequencer/Moving to the beat/Living
with a synthesizer/Cold as a repeat’. The closing track on Gazebo’s album,
94 F. PITROLO

surprisingly entitled “Gimmick!”, sees Mazzolini in crisis trying to finish a

song for a market-driven label that wants ‘A gimmick here/And a gimmick
up there/Just like a painting rule’. At the end he speaks the words ‘Well,
this is my demo, I hope you like my songs …’. Just like a painting rule, the
gimmick-character of the Italo track leaves no space for ego nor genius,
adhering strictly to a predetermined representative and sonic order. The
song is a self-propagating unit of signification, a ready-made, flat-packed,
modular and adaptable to the context.
Finally we should consider the single most ‘original’ aspect of the Italo
lyric, namely the fact that it is for the most part in the English language,
of which it makes a particular use. English is not the language Italo is
made or even thought in, but it is the language it is performed in, con-
sumed in and thus also felt in. This is crucial, because it is felt ‘as (an)
other’, that is, in a language that its makers don’t really speak and that its
dancers, for the most part certainly, don’t really understand. As such, Italo
lyrics—so long and laborious, so full of images and tropes, so over-­
written—reveal themselves as also ultimately mute, since they can only
very partially communicate in the world in which they come into being.
English is essential to Italo and what we could term ‘Italo English’ is
essential to Italo sounding like itself. On the one hand, it is a repository of
endlessly creative subaltern linguistic invention, a kind of pidgin which
might even bring with it some kind of political function: it invites itself to
a globalised table. But at the same time, Italo English is the genre’s trait
that most prominently shows up the cheapness of the copy, its position as
wannabe, the tourist who sooner or later will have to go back home. Again
the paradoxical situation here is that the Italo lyric develops its original
trait by its being deeply unoriginal: as if the Italo track knew originality was
no longer a possibility. Returning to Umberto Eco’s well-known adage of
the question of irony in the age of lost innocence, which I posited at the
beginning of this chapter, Italo might indeed be like the lover who wants
to tell his cultivated other half he loved her madly but can’t ‘because he
knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words
have already been written by Barbara Cartland’. Eco continues:

Still, there is a solution. He can say ‘As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love
you madly’. At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly
that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have
said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost
innocence. If the woman goes along with this, she will have received a dec-
laration of love all the same. (Eco 1994, 67–68)
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 95

The ‘all the same’ might be the affective dimension of Italo disco, what
Dick Hebdige called ‘making do with the nonetheless’ typical of the post-­
utopian 1980s (Hebdige 2006, 239). As a dance culture now and then,
Italo might be seen to overall provide a kind of comfort: it may not mean
anything; it may already have been done better by someone else but it
does the work. A dreamless art for dreamless people which just about con-
tains enough to continue to dream, continue to love, continue to dance.

Notes
1. Unless otherwise stated all translations are henceforth the author’s own.
2. This definition was given by Giovanni Pellegrini, the president of a parlia-
mentary commission instituted years later to investigate the events of the
1970s. The years of lead include a period that begins with a series of epi-
sodes in Rome and Milan between 1968 and 1969 (the most prominent
being the fascist bomb attack in Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969) and end-
ing with another fascist bomb attack on Bologna station on August 2nd
1980, which killed 85 people. While ‘black’ terrorism is responsible for most
of the deaths of the years of lead, ‘red’ terrorism was also widespread; the
most well-known organisation were the Red Brigades, who kidnapped and
consequently executed ‘by popular tribunal’ the Demochristian President of
the Republic Aldo Moro in May 1978.
3. The Italian radio landscape of the late 1970s and early 1980s is also funda-
mental to the rise of Italo Disco as a genre and as a business. Private radios,
which have always been called radio libere, ‘free radios’, arose in the
mid-­1970s after a liberalisation act passed in 1974 which curtailed RAI’s
state monopoly on the airwaves, effectively opening up FM frequencies to
private broadcasting. Hyperlocal but with names often sporting the terms
‘international’, ‘world’ or ‘sound’ (in English), these were funded by local
advertising, their main feature was the phone-in, and they devoted enor-
mous amounts of airwave to Italo records. It is worth also contextually men-
tioning that the precedent of the ‘free radios’ brought about another act
which, in 1976, extended the liberalisation of the airwaves to the sphere of
local television; this is crucial to the story of Berlusconi as tycoon, whose
first venture was the hyperlocal Telemilano in 1978.
4. The spreadsheet is attributed to Discogs user Leon Pronk and its data is
discussed under the ‘Italo Disco statistics & price trend research’ thread of
the Italo Disco forum: https://www.discogs.com/group/
thread/536543#5301550
5. In view of Carr’s chapter we might annexe to this discussion Italo’s endur-
ing influence and popularity in Eastern Europe, which has persisted con-
96 F. PITROLO

tinuously in the time before Italo became appreciated in Western Europe

and in the States. As Carr herself has pointed out, it is significant that Disco
Polo’s first far-reaching hit was Top One’s “Ciao Italia”; released in 1989, it
tells the story of a holiday romance in Italy and return to Poland, the ‘wind
in the green hills’ communicating at a distance with ‘a pebble on the beach’.
While the topic of how Italy is configured both ironically and unironically in
Eastern European musics subsequent to Italo disco (a topic inaugurated by
Martinelli’s previously cited work) deserves discussion beyond the scope of
this chapter, we might see phenomena such as “Ciao Italia” as a third
360-degree swing of the heterotopian mirror, in which once again the image
of Italianicity is refracted and made a locus of escapism ‘within and with-
out’. In addition to this, at the time of writing, I feel it is important to at
least mention popular Russian TV show Vec ̌ernij Urgant’s 2021 new year
celebration: entitled Ciao 2020!, the programme was staged as a faux-Italian
disco TV show of the 1970s/1980s featuring contemporary Russian hits
re-arranged in Italo style and sung in semi-sensical Italian. The variety show
as a whole, performed entirely in pidgin Italian, attests to an existing main-
stream idiom and to a continuing interest and identification, though satiri-
cal, with Italo disco as a cultural object in Eastern Europe.
6. The lyrics, written by Carmelo La Bionda with Stefano Righi, are as follows:
‘Vamos a la playa/ la bomba estalló/ las radiaciones tuestan y matizan de
azul. / Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh oh oh… / Vamos a la playa/ todos con som-
brero. /El viento radiactivo/ despeina los cabellos./ Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh
oh oh… / Vamos a la playa /al fin el mar es limpio./No más peces hediondos/
sino agua fluorescente./Vamos a la playa, oh oh oh oh oh…’

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Discography
Alex Valentini. 1985. Beautiful Life. International RAI Records.
B.W.H. 1983. Livin’ Up/Stop. House of Music.
Baby’s Gang. 1985. America. Memory Records.
Brand Image. 1983. Are You Loving?. Il Discotto Productions.
Brian Ice. 1985. Talking to The Night. Memory Records.
Crusin’ Gang. 1985. America. Cruisin’ Records.
Den Harrow. 1985. Future Brain. Baby Records.
Diego. 1983. Walk in The Night. Memory Records.
Doctor’s Cat. 1983. Feel the Drive. Il Discotto Productions.
Duke Lake. 1983. Do You. Memory Records.
Fancy. 1985. Bolero. Metronome.
Fokewulf 190. 1984. Body Heat. Market Records.
Fun Fun. 1983. Happy Station. X-Energy Records.
Gazebo. 1982. Masterpiece. Best Record.
———. 1983a. I Like Chopin. Baby Records.
———. 1983b. Masterpiece (LP Album). Baby Records.
 GIMMICK! ITALO DISCO, COPY AND CONSUMPTION 99

Giusy Dej. Unknown Year. Walking in the Night. Disco In/Durium.

Helen. 1985. Zanzibar. Discomagic.
Ken Laszlo. 1984. Hey Hey Guy Guy. Memory Records.
La Bionda. 1978. One for You One for Me. Baby Records.
Lamé. 1985. You’ve Got the Night. Golden Sound.
Limit Eccitation. 1987. In The Dark. Technology/Discomagic.
M & G. 1986. When I Let You Down. Sensation Records.
Mike Cannon. 1983. Voices in the Dark. Memory Records.
Mr. Flagio. 1983. Take a Chance. Squish.
P. Lion. 1983. Happy Children. American Disco
Paul Paul. 1983. Good Times. Discomagic.
———. 1985. Burn on The Flames. Market Records.
Peter Jacques Band. 1978a. Fire Night Dance. Goody Music Records.
———. 1978b. Walkin’ on Music. Goody Music Records.
Peter Richard. 1985. Walking in the Neon. Good Vibes.
RAF. 1984. Self Control. Carrere.
Righeira. 1983. Vamos a La Playa. Compagnia Generale Del Disco.
Ryan Paris. 1983. Dolce Vita. Discomagic.
Sandy Marton. 1984. People from Ibiza. Ibiza Records.
Savage. 1984. Only You. Discomagic.
Sensitive. 1984. Driving. Gong Records.
Top One. 1990. No Disco No. 1. Caston.
Valerie Doré. 1984. The Night. Merak Records.

Filmography
De Iulis, Pierpaolo (Dir.). 2011. Italo Disco Documentary. Ascoli Piceno: Rave Up
Multimedia.
Urgant, Ivan et al (Dirs.). 2020. Vec ̌ernij Urgant: Ciao 2020! Moscow: Pervyj kanal.
 Japanese Disco as Pseudo-International
Music

Yusuke Wajima

Introduction
Compared to other foreign music genres such as jazz, rock, and hip-hop,
disco music in Japan seems to have a striking and unique localised charac-
ter. For example, disco tunes such as Boney M’s “Bahama Mama” (1979)
and Yoko Oginome’s “Dancing Hero” (1985), a cover of Angie Gold’s
Hi-NRG hit “Eat You Up”, have been enjoyed across the country during
the bon dance festival in summer, a community-based traditional ritual
centred around welcoming and celebrating the spirit of ancestors. Many
kindergarten and primary school children have danced to the German act
Dschinghis Khan’s homonymous song, and to Hideki Saijo’s cover of
Village People’s “Young Man (Y.M.C.A.)” (1979)—oblivious to its status
as a gay anthem—as a recreational activity on their sports days. No other
foreign music has been accepted into these local and vernacular settings.
However, unlike other imported musical genres in Japan, disco music has
received scarce serious critical attention, and very few exhaustive record

Y. Wajima (*)
Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 101

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_5
102 Y. WAJIMA

guides or musician biographies are available. All in all, while disco music
in Japan has enjoyed surprisingly widespread local popularity, it lacks the
critical acclaim and the sense of authenticity that other foreign music
genres enjoy.
The aim of this chapter is to examine this apparent discrepancy, focus-
ing on the historical and industrial contexts of disco culture in Japan, and
taking two types of disco records as examples: the first group are disco
records produced in Japan that were promoted and sold as if they were
imported, and the second comprises imported disco records whose popu-
larity was limited in Japan. I call these records ‘pseudo-international’
because although they were accepted as ‘international’ music by the
Japanese audience, their status as ‘international’ music was actually only
valid in Japan. By doing so, I not only add another account of the global
diffusion of disco, but also offer a new viewpoint on the relationship
between ‘foreign/international’ (yogaku) and ‘domestic/national’
(hogaku) music. I also address the related issues of authenticity and locali-
sation that have characterised the narrative of popular music history
in Japan.
Most scholarly works on Japanese popular music have focused on the
local reception of ‘foreign’ music, which has mostly been ‘Western’ music.
Although English texts are limited, a substantial number of academic
monographs and articles have been written on the Japanese reception of
diverse music styles, from jazz (Atkins 2001), rock (Bourdaghs 2012), and
hip-hop (Condry 2006) to reggae (Sterling 2010), salsa (Hosokawa
1999), tango (Asaba 2017), and Andean music (Bigenho 2012). In each
of these cases, a strikingly similar process of reception is found (Wajima
2015b): a given musical style is introduced by a small group of aficiona-
dos, most of whom are highly educated, and a small number of whom
occasionally become professional critics. Their opinions are frequently
based on foreign literature, and often precede the importation of recorded
music and live performances; they seek to aesthetically and intellectually
‘correct’ the understanding of music with culturally and geographically
distant origins. These aficionados often act as mentors of musicians or as
leading musicians who are often simultaneously curators and critics. They
are concerned with addressing difficult questions about how Japanese
people can appreciate and practice music of ‘distant’ origins (Bigenho
2012). Such a reception, which is largely based on written texts, often
produces an attitude of devotion. It also almost inevitably generates a
romanticised view of ‘foreign’ music that essentialises the difference
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 103

between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’. Such a serious, self-reflexive, or even

self-critical attitude to any ‘foreign’ music—whether it is Beethoven and
Wagner from the nineteenth century or the techno and dubstep of today—
is so common that it seems to be the most defining feature in modern and
contemporary Japanese music criticism (Wajima 2015b, Minamida 2019).
In contrast, I raise two points here concerning the relationship between
‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ music in Japan, taking ‘pseudo-international’
disco as an example. First, the spread of foreign music in Japan has been
strongly conditioned by the availability of recorded music in the foreign
music sections of the domestic record companies that formed oligopolies
in local markets. These companies were the gatekeepers before large-scale
international retail stores such as Tower Records and HMV penetrated the
local market and major multinational record companies absorbed domes-
tic companies in the 1990s. For those gatekeepers, ‘foreign music’ was
principally a commodity aimed solely at the Japanese market, and thus it
does not necessarily accurately reflect international trends. This led to the
establishment of distinct cultures of foreign music that were relevant only
in Japan. A well-known example of this has been the so-called big in Japan
phenomenon (Lynskey 2010), referring to musicians who are hugely pop-
ular in Japan but not in other countries, the most remarkable examples
include rock bands such as the Ventures, Cheap Trick, and Mr. Big.
As I discuss in this chapter, Japanese disco had many ‘big in Japan’ (or
even ‘only in Japan’) records/artists alongside those who ‘faked’ a foreign
origin even though they were really made in Japan. In addition, a genre
called Eurobeat, which would become the most popular style in Japanese
disco culture in the mid- to late 1980s, a period often referred to as the
second disco boom in Japan following the first boom in the late 1970s,
can be seen as a specific case of a genre itself becoming ‘big in Japan’
(Wajima 2015a).1
In Japanese disco culture, several instances of ‘pseudo-international’
music—a term meaning either domestic productions faking foreign music
or foreign music accepted only in Japan—are to be found. Indeed, the
phenomenon interests disco music more than other genres such as jazz,
rock, folk, or hip-hop, arguably due to the disco audience’s relative lack of
interest in the intellectual pursuit of authenticity in the genre and their
acceptance (or even enjoyment) of its hybridity and artificiality. In this
chapter, I analyse this characteristic of Japanese disco not as a clue to inau-
thenticity, but as a product of the formative process of Japanese popular
music culture in the 1970s and 1980s, a period when the dichotomy of
104 Y. WAJIMA

the foreign and the domestic was questioned, challenged, and

rearticulated.
To a certain degree, these features of Japanese disco in the 1970s and
1980s might be related to the general characteristics of the genre itself. As
it is most closely related to dancing and socialising, disco music does not
fit contemplative listening patterns, and critics and fans of allegedly more
‘serious’ genres (most notably rock) have expressed disdainful opinions of
disco as vulgar and musically simplistic. On the other hand, disco fans do
not generally care about critics and in actual fact these specificities seem to
apply to dance music as a whole and not exclusively to disco. However, the
Japanese reception of the electronic dance music of the 1990s renamed
‘club music’ rather than ‘disco’, followed a more conventional pattern that
focused on authenticity as derived from the place of ‘origin’, and was
marked by sophisticated musical criticism from those with privileged access
to certain musical scenes in the West—experiences that would often lead
to subcultural elitism (see, most notably, Noda 2001). Therefore, the
striking hybridity and ambiguity between the foreign and the domestic,
and between the subcultural and the commercial, at play in Japanese disco
of the 1970s and 1980s should arguably be considered in its own light.
Thus, in this chapter, I elucidate some of the contexts that made Japanese
disco a hybrid and ambiguous phenomenon, oscillating between the for-
eign and the domestic, by focusing on the cultural role of the music indus-
try, or ‘the culture of production’ as popular music scholar Keith Negus
put it (Negus 1999), to help to form specific youth subcultures.
Thus, this chapter hypothesises that the disco records produced in the
1970s and 1980s in Japan significantly changed (and perhaps even over-
threw) the conventional distinction between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ pop-
ular music, and challenged the supremacy of the former. This anticipated
the structural shift in Japanese popular music which later occurred in the
1990s, where ‘J-pop’—the neologism referring to ‘highly Westernised’
pop (Ugaya 2005)—became an inclusive term for mainstream popular
songs produced in Japan, replacing the older Japanese word ‘Kayokyoku’,
and the allegedly highly Westernised domestic productions that over-
whelmed foreign music both in commercial and ideological terms. I also
show how highly localised dancing styles were established in close relation
to Japanese disco, and that they intermittently reappeared even after the
decline of disco culture per se.
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 105

An Early History of Disco in Japan

First, I should provide some background and summarise the historical and
geographic characteristics of discotheques in Japan. The first venue, suit-
ably named Discotheque, was opened in 1965 by a renowned veteran
dance teacher, Saburo Nakagawa, which suggests that it was introduced
and accepted as a conventional studio and hall for social dancing rather
than as a nightclub (Nakagawa 1977). By the early 1970s, two Tokyo city
districts began to characterise disco culture: Shinjuku and Roppongi.
Shinjuku is still a popular entertainment district for young people, espe-
cially students, and it was regarded as the capital of counterculture and the
student movement in the 1960s. The first discotheque in the area is said
to have opened in 1966: The Other started as a music cafe that specialised
in R&B but soon set up a dance floor for customers.2 Each cafe had a
specific musical orientation and a specialist foreign genre, ranging from
classical, tango, and jazz, to rock, and such cafes were indispensable
sources of foreign music knowledge and music taste-establishers for young
Japanese people.
While discos were found almost everywhere near universities and col-
leges, the Shinjuku area had a much more diverse and popular clientele;
located alongside Waseda University, one of the most famous and large
private universities in Japan, it had hosted a black market in the early post-­
war period and was a prostitution zone until the end of 1950s. From the
mid-1970s onwards, many discotheques began to attract teenage custom-
ers—who were often regarded as delinquents—with their inexpensive
admission fees, often including free (but extremely low-quality) food and
drinks. It is noteworthy that in these Shinjuku venues, various ‘step dances’
(choreographed dancing set to particular tunes) were invented by the staff
and shared by visitors; although these often varied from one venue to
another, they were occasionally designed in one venue and then transmit-
ted to others (Korn 2002, Katsumoto 2006). These choreographed step
dances, in contrast to ‘free’ or improvised dances, would become one of
the most typical characteristics of disco dancing in Japan.
In contrast, the Roppongi area has built up a reputation for its celebrity
status, mostly due to its Westernised atmosphere which persists today.
Many recollections both by industry insiders and by visitors point out the
difference between the popular and teenage-oriented Shinjuku and the
more sophisticated and relatively adult Roppongi (Korn 2002; Emori
2008; Iwasaki 2011; Nakamura 2018). The well-known Mugen club
106 Y. WAJIMA

opened in 1968 in Akasaka (a 15-minute walk from Roppongi) and was

frequented by celebrities including poets, novelists, and artists who were
fascinated by its psychedelic artistic lighting, in-house female dancers, and
live bands from the United States and the Philippines playing African
American soul, funk, and R&B music. With the US and other foreign
embassies as well as local US Army facilities, the area had a ready-­made
international clientele; a few discotheques therefore emerged, including
AI Emori’s Afro Rake Club and Don Katsumoto’s Soul Embassy Club—
mentioned later, which were favoured by the African American customers
who played a crucial role in importing and popularising brand new musi-
cal trends (Emori 2008). From the mid-1980s onwards, in contrast to
venues devoted to ‘authentic’ African American soul music, luxurious and
musically eclectic venues began to open in greater numbers, with older
and wealthier customers than those of Shinjuku’s clubs. These places,
which played Eurobeat, were often regarded as typical consumerist venues
in the so-called bubble economy era.
Both in Shinjuku and Roppongi, the relationship between disco and
gay culture—especially its identity politics—went virtually unrecog-
nised, except for a vague influence on appearance and dancing styles.
This lack of recognition was in spite of the fact that Shinjuku had Japan’s
largest gay population and reportedly even a few gay bars with dance
floors as early as the late 1960s. It was not until the late 1980s that
some clubs started hosting regular ‘gay night’ events. In 1994, the leg-
endary Delight club was opened in Shinjuku, soon becoming an icon of
the gay movement which flourished during the 1990s (Sunagawa 2015).
As is discussed later, Japanese disco culture was often related to hetero-
sexual promiscuity among so-called deviant youths in Shinjuku, inter-
racial relationships between African American men and Japanese women,
and the capitalist and consumerist dynamic between wealthy men and
sexually active women in Roppongi (Iwasaki 2011). This obvious lack
of attention to gay culture and identity, which was firmly at the centre
of the disco movement in the United States, is arguably one of the most
problematic aspects in the process of import and re-contextualisation of
disco music in Japan.
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 107

The Making of ‘Sexy Bus Stop’: The Industrial

Context of Pseudo-International Japanese Disco
An instrumental disco track entitled “Sexy Bus Stop” by Dr. Dragon &
The Oriental Express was released by the Japan Victor record company
(henceforth JVC) in March 1976, and became an instant hit. Though
initially promoted as foreign music, it was actually produced in Japan, hav-
ing been composed by a popular songwriter under a pseudonym, and per-
formed by skilful session musicians using an ad hoc band name. The
process by which the record was produced and promoted established the
formula for other disco tunes produced in Japan. The track was born
through the interaction of three different actors: the foreign music branch
of the JVC label, the Tokyo discotheque scene, and a domestic record
production system relying on newly emergent freelance songwriters. To
understand the track’s significance in the history of popular music in
Japan, the agency of each of these actors should be explored in detail. I
particularly focus on the role played by a staff member of a record com-
pany in bringing them all together.
Satoshi Honda, a young member of the section promoting foreign
music in Japan Victor, played a key role in this production. He was born
in 1947 in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, and remained
there until he graduated from Hokkaido University. Although he had
established a career as an amateur drummer in the bars and clubs of down-
town Susukino, he entered JVC as an engineer, but soon moved to the
music section upon an eager request to his boss. He then became a mem-
ber of the section that promoted foreign music, where the main project at
the time was promoting ‘new soul’, a music category invented by JVC to
promote licensed Motown and Avco/H&L records. JVC’s foreign branch
was ‘at the bottom’, as Honda later recalled (Shinozaki 2017a, 166), since
JVC’s contracted foreign labels lacked any major folk and rock stars, the
bestselling genres at the time. In addition, Japanese fans of African
American music, who were enthusiastic but relatively small in number, had
a strong inclination for ‘rootsy’ sounds such as country blues from the
1920s and 1930s3 and the so-called southern soul of Atlantic and Stax
records (Sato 2015, 49). This meant that the smooth and sophisticated
sound of Motown and Avco was largely ignored, and a new market had to
be explored to sell their catalogue. Honda then identified the newly
emerging discotheques as the targets of the new music’s promotion.
108 Y. WAJIMA

The promotion targeting ‘new soul’ discotheques generated the first

hit, in 1974: “The Bump” by The Commodores, along with the dance of
the same name. This song marked the emergence of JVC’s marketing
strategy, which was well informed by trends in discotheques. Though the
track was included on the Commodores’ album, Honda insisted on releas-
ing it as a single because of the popularity of the new dance, in which
dancers bumped each other’s hips, among African American military per-
sonnel stationed in the Yokota Base in the western suburbs of Tokyo.
Then, he started to promote the single in person to discotheques all
around Japan to inform them of what was going on in Tokyo, and to glean
information on local trends and preferences from the north to the south.
His list of customer discotheques ‘started with 150 venues then counted
300, and reached 500 or 600 at the end’, as he recalls (Shinozaki
2017a, 167).
Then, Honda started to approach mass media outlets. Rather than
focusing on specialised music magazines, which were usually the most
effective way to promote foreign records, Honda turned to the lifestyle
magazine Weekly Playboy (a spin-off of the Japanese edition of the monthly
Playboy in the United States), and to the evening TV show “11 P.M.”,
both of which were popular among young male audiences due to their
heterosexually suggestive content. To boost the popularity of both the
track and the dance “The Bump” in the Tokyo disco scene, he emphasised
sexy and voluptuous imagery of female disco dancers. Honda recalls that
he was asked by the director of the TV show to ‘recruit topless Japanese
female dancers and African American male dancers to be aired on TV’
(Shinozaki 2017a, 167). He managed to do that, after which discotheque
and dance items became popular on the programme. This instance argu-
ably demonstrates the highly racialised and sexualised undertones of disco
culture in the early to mid-1970s.
At around this time, the second key person entered the picture. Ai
Emori, an illustrator who made the cover art for “The Bump”, which
depicted a light-skinned female dancer and a dark-skinned male dancer
with big afro-textured hair, was actually the person who informed Honda
of the popularity of “The Bump” dance in the first place. Emori was also
a skilled dancer and was the manager and DJ at the Afro Rake disco-
theque. Born in 1948 in Tokyo, Emori was an enthusiastic soul music
lover who frequented clubs in Shinjuku and venues around Yokota Base
during the early 1970s. In his day job as a comic artist, he occasionally
drew and wrote articles that introduced African American popular culture
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 109

to the Japanese youth. Emori first met Honda when he asked him for
information and materials on the soul music released by JVC for an article
he was writing (Emori 2008, 80). They instantly became friends, and
when Emori began working professionally as the manager of Afro Rake in
1974, the venue was credited as a co-sponsor of the radio programme Soul
Freak along with JVC. This innovative promotion of “The Bump” was the
first fruit of their collaboration. Articles carrying Emori’s photo reported
that Afro Rake was the home of the new Bump dance craze. Emori himself
danced to “The Bump” on the “11P.M.” TV show.
Although Emori left Afro Rake in 1975, he went on to establish the All
Japan Soul Disco Association together with a few peers in the discotheque
business, with the aim of sharing information and new trends on the scene,
with Honda acting as ‘something like an observer’ (Emori 2008, 129). He
also formed the Nesy Gang (later Nesy Gang Special) dance troupe to col-
laborate with Kool and the Gang when they visited Japan for the first time
in 1975. This group became ‘the first professional soul dance troupe in
Japan’ (Emori 2008, 133–135). Through these initiatives, his relationship
with the record industry became even closer. Emori’s typical (stereotypical
by today’s standards) illustrations were used as the cover art of various soul
records, not exclusively for JVC’s ‘new soul’, becoming a distinct visual
marker of the contemporary African American music in the mid- to late
1970s in Japan.
Following the success of “The Bump”, Honda and Emori began pro-
moting a new dance, “The Hustle”, to enhance the sales of JVC’s fresh
disco releases like The Stylistics’ “Can’t Give You Anything But Love” and
Van McCoy’s “The Hustle”. The former is considered to be the group’s
signature tune by the Japanese audience, even though it has never been
released as a single in the United States. Although the latter’s cover art was
not drawn by Emori, instead using the art for the US single release, the
liner notes on the flip side featured his illustrations of the basic steps of
“The Hustle” dance. Using the All Japan Soul Disco Association’s net-
work, they went on a nationwide campaign organising dance workshops
and local dance contests. The winners of these contests competed in the
All Japan Hustle Contest, which was held in Shinjuku. In the course of the
promotion, Honda began to call himself Hustle Honda, and frequently
appeared in the media under that nickname (Emori 2008, 145–149;
Shinozaki 2017b, 175).
Finally, after the great success of “The Hustle” came the “Bus Stop”,
which would become the next disco fad prompted by the popularity of
110 Y. WAJIMA

tracks like The Fatback Band’s “Do the Bus Stop”. The problem, how-
ever, was that JVC had no records in their back catalogue which fitted the
rhythm of the new dance. Consequently, Honda decided to produce one
himself, even though he was a member of the promotion section and not
involved in musical production, a move that was quite uncommon
(Shinozaki 2017b, 175).
Honda asked Kyohei Tsutsumi, one of the most popular songwriters
throughout the 1970s, to compose a suitable tune for a dance that could
be performed to “The Bus Stop”.4 He was deemed to be the right com-
poser for JVC’s “Bus Stop” project because he was regarded as one of the
most Westernised songwriters: he had already worked with international
soul/disco acts, gradually incorporating Philly-soul-tinged arrangements
in his tracks and emphasising the lush strings and sophisticated harmon-
ised vocals with a funky rhythm section. Tsutsumi’s sound hadn’t hitherto
necessarily been targeted at discos, but was widely accepted in the main-
stream pop scene of teenyboppers called ‘idols’.5 Produced by Honda in
collaboration with Emori and Tsutsumi, “Sexy Bus Stop” was released in
March 1976. A largely instrumental tune with sporadic female choruses, it
was reminiscent of “The Hustle”. Although there were no claims that it
was made abroad, nothing implied that it was made in Japan either. The
cover art of a black female dancer was typical of Emori’s touch, and illus-
trated dance choreography instructions, again by Emori, were printed on
the back with the liner notes—which was probably seen as virtual proof of
a foreign music record since domestic music records usually lacked such
details. The commentary by S.H. (perhaps an acronym for Satoshi Honda)
largely explained the “Bus Stop” dance and its rivalry with “The Hustle”
in the United States. The tune was only referred to in passing, as follows:

“Sexy Bus Stop” was presented and favoured at the Disco Forum held at
Roosevelt Hotel, New York at the end of this January hosted by Billboard.
It features a catchy melody with the Oriental tinge which has recently been
prevalent. All in all, the rhythm is most suitable for dancing “The Bus Stop”.
It was recorded by studio session musicians similar to MFSB. It is composed
and arranged by Dr. Dragon. (The Oriental Express 1976)

The list of proper names explicitly implies that “Sexy Bus Stop” is an
American song. The statement that it was ‘presented and favoured at the
Disco Forum’ might have been true, though perhaps a little exaggerated,
since Honda participated in the Forum as a successful promoter who sold
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 111

half a million copies of Van McCoy’s single “Hustle”. The reference to an

‘Oriental tinge’ is also noteworthy; musically speaking, the impressive
intro riff and the main melody were played in a stereotypically ‘oriental’
pentatonic scale lacking the fourth and seventh notes, showing the obvi-
ous influence of Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” and Banzai’s “Chinese
Kung Fu”, both of which were quite popular at the time as a reflection of
the popularity of Bruce Lee’s movies. In addition, the middle part fea-
tured two Japanese traditional instruments, the koto (a plucked string
instrument) and the shakuhachi (a bamboo flute). Interestingly, the popu-
larity of stereotypically ‘oriental’ disco tunes in the West created a context
which implied that “Sexy Bus Stop” was ‘foreign’ and ‘international’, hid-
ing its Japanese origins.
Another important characteristic of the “Sexy Bus Stop” record that
might have greatly influenced Japanese disco culture was Emori’s illus-
trated dance instructions on the record sleeve. While “The Hustle” record
sleeve only showed six basic beat steps, “Sexy Bus Stop” included a fully
choreographed routine with seven measures (28 beats), which were to be
repeated until the end of the song. As mentioned earlier, choreographed
dancing to a particular song, called ‘step dance’ as opposed to ‘free dance’,
was already common, but specific choreographies differed from venue to
venue. In contrast, it was assumed that printed choreography would func-
tion as a form of authorisation, and would help to standardise the dance
moves favoured by disco participants. Another important point in chore-
ography is that the 7-measure length of the routine does not correspond
to musical structures based on 4-measure musical elements; when a cer-
tain musical element is repeated, a different movement of the choreogra-
phy is performed. This intended discrepancy between the music and the
choreography is broadly found in bon dance. Though any direct connec-
tion between the two is unclear, an influential blog by a veteran DJ on
Japanese disco history suggests that choreographed ‘step dance’ in
Japanese disco was inspired by bon dance choreography, emphasising the
fact that Don Katsumoto, another co-founder and the first chair of the All
Japan Soul Disco Association, was born and raised in the city of Gujo,
which is famous for its intensive all-night bon dancing.6
A month after the release of “Sexy Bus Stop”, a cover version with
Japanese lyrics was released by Yuko Asano, a teenage singing idol who
frequently appeared in Weekly Playboy pin-ups. While Japanese covers of
foreign pop songs had been an important aspect of the simultaneous pro-
motion of foreign and domestic records during the late 1950s and
112 Y. WAJIMA

mid-1960s, the practice gradually declined after the flourishing of folk and
rock, which were both regarded as forms linked with serious self-­
expression. After the release and success of the “Sexy Bus Stop” track,
however, Japanese covers of foreign pop songs, many of which were linked
to disco, were revived and became an important source of success in the
mainstream domestic record market.
Two months after its release, an article in a sports newspaper (Nikkan
Sports, 11 May 1976) made the shock revelation that “Sexy Bus Stop” was
actually made in Japan! The subheading text asking: ‘For fans who believed
it is foreign music, is it a swindle? Or …?’ indicates that the question of
whether the record was actually ‘foreign’ or ‘domestic’ in its origins was a
matter of crucial importance to the audience. The article scandalously
reported that the instant hit, which had quickly sold about 100,000 units,
was actually composed by Tsutsumi. In turn, Honda adopted a ‘so what’
attitude, replying that the producers ‘have never declared that it is foreign
music’. The article continued by explaining the rationale: a ‘pseudonym of
“Dr. Dragon” was used aiming not at the Japanese market but the inter-
national one. The fact that offers for dealership from record companies
from five Western countries have already poured in proved this.’
Furthermore, the song was stated to be ‘an antithesis to the supremacy of
foreign music prevailing among the Japanese audience’, and Tsutsumi
admitted this, saying ‘if the composer were credited as Kyohei Tsutsumi, I
don’t think it could achieve such success’.
A few days later, a similar article appeared in Weekly Playboy (1 June
1976). Considering the magazine’s close relation to Honda, the article
may well have been prearranged by him to utilise this exposure as a pro-
motional tool. Nick Okai, a colleague of Emori in the Nesy Gang dance
troupe and a staff member in the well-known soul discotheque Get in
Shinjuku who had actually invented the choreography for “Sexy Bus
Stop”, commented that the track ‘is more sophisticated’ than other
Oriental disco tunes, further claiming that it was ‘familiar with Japanese
people’s feelings. In our venue, it’s very popular among youth between 15
to 18 years old.’ This was followed by a comment from a male high school
student, who stated, ‘I don’t personally like domestic kayoukyoku (main-
stream pop song) because they are childish, but some have wonderful
instrumental intro before teenyboppers start to sing. “Sexy Bus Stop” has
that exact feeling and it’s enjoyable to listen to.’ While his words show
contempt for the ‘childish teenyboppers’ supposedly singing in Japanese,
some awareness of the sophistication and excellence of Japanese sound
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 113

production also comes through. Moreover, these comments show that

adolescents under 18 years of age comprised an important group in the
disco scene. Overall, this mini-scandal seemed to enhance, rather than
damage, the popularity of the song.
Honda’s production continued this trend later on. His next project was
Funky Bureau, another Japanese band with a funkier sound than “Sexy
Bus Stop”, fronted by a Jamaican lead singer who had lived for a while in
Japan. The band’s output of three singles and an album from 1976–1977
was based on compositions by Tetsuo Suse. Unlike Tsutsumi, Suse was
not a professional songwriter—instead, he was a professional musician
who performed live with his soul band in nightclubs in Shinjuku, Akasaka,
and in venues around the U.S. Yokota Base. The liner notes for the first
two singles, “Boogie Walk” and “Disco Jack”, still hid the domestic proj-
ect origins, and mentioned only that the lead singer was Jamaican. In
contrast, the liner notes for the subsequent album, Boogie Train, proudly
stated that the project was made in Japan: ‘Who can ever imagine that
Funky Bureau which released two hits is a Japanese band? But it’s genu-
inely Japanese’. Similarly, the liner notes for the following single, “Clap
Your Hands Together”, stated:

Though the lead singer Mitchel Blackman is a black person from Jamaica,
other instruments were recorded by excellent Japanese musicians. In addi-
tion, this and other songs from the album were composed and arranged by
Japanese musicians. Since Japan is the second largest music market [after the
U.S.] in the world, it is no wonder and in fact rather late that such an inter-
national band appeared. I believe that in the near future Japanese sound will
create worldwide sensations in the disco and pop scene.

The liner notes for the album offered some context: ‘Once Japanese disco
fans appreciated foreign music only. [But] the surprise of “Sexy Bus Stop”
and following hits … seems to have broken the national border. Or rather,
they are about to be imported to foreign markets.’ The remark was backed
up by the fact that ‘since German based Silver Convention and Donna
Summer conquered the American market, it is certain that the US record
industry is highly interested in foreign products and waiting for them with
open arms’. Though it is uncertain exactly when the Japanese music mar-
ket became the world’s second largest, a position it retains even today,7 the
interesting thing is that a large proportion of domestic musicians had a
deep desire for international success.
114 Y. WAJIMA

Thus, Honda began the next project to sell Japanese disco overseas in
1978. Under the names The Eastern Gang and Bella and the Original
Eastern Gang, he produced five singles and two albums from 1978 to
1980. A smooth style featuring strings and female choruses reflected the
obvious influence of the Silver Convention and European disco records.
These works prompted Emori to take a different path from Honda due to
the former’s loyalty to African American soul and funk. The artworks of
the Eastern Gang records were not by Emori, and mostly featured illustra-
tions and pictures of sexy white women. The liner notes of the album The
Flasher, released in January 1979, proudly boasted ‘Breaking news!!
Distribution confirmed in 19 countries in the world’ at the top, and stated
that ‘Since “Sexy Bus Stop”, numerous Japanese products have been pub-
lished overseas’—although none of these were ever hits in the US, so ‘as
an insider of Japanese disco, I do hope Japanese products achieve big suc-
cess in the US disco charts. To that end, I will support domestic produc-
tion more than ever.’
Unfortunately, the Eastern Gang did not meet this ambition, but the
fact that continuous efforts were made to sell domestic records overseas is
quite important, since it greatly contributed to the ‘Westernisation’ of
Japanese popular music in terms of the formation of a danceable, soft,
smooth, and sophisticated mode of pop, which more recently enjoyed that
long-awaited worldwide popularity under the newly coined genre term
‘Japanese city pop’. In the 1980s, the main composer for the Eastern
Gang, Tetsuji Hayashi, would become a prominent songwriter in this
style, writing Mariya Takeuchi’s first hit, “September”, and Miki
Matsubara’s “Stay with Me”, both of which are now regarded as city pop
classics. It is noteworthy that Hayashi started his career in the Eastern
Gang, where he developed his own songwriting and arrangement style.
In fact, what is now called city pop had a significant connection with
Japanese disco. Or, to be more specific, some of the records produced in
the context of Japanese disco in the late 1970s and early 1980s have now
been recontextualised and reclassified as city pop. Tatsuro Yamashita, one
of the most highly praised city pop artists, along with his wife, Mariya
Takeuhi, and his former bandmate, Taeko Onuki, first gained popularity
when one of his tracks, “Bomber”, rather unexpectedly hit discotheques
in Osaka, the second largest city in Japan. Until this sudden breakthrough,
his music had been accepted only by a small circle of music enthusiasts in
Tokyo. However, following the success of “Bomber” in Osaka’s disco-
theques, his disco/funk-tinged tracks such as “Ride on Time” and
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 115

“Sparkle” began to attract a wider audience. The theme of Mariya

Takeuchi’s world-famous internet meme “Plastic Love”, which was origi-
nally released in 1984, was a casual love affair at a discotheque. Even
though it is unlikely that those artist-oriented city pop tunes were all that
popular in discotheques in Japan—because many DJs apparently held the
view that songs played in discotheques had to be in English—it is certain
that the music now known as city pop was largely informed and inspired
by discotheques.
Following Honda’s efforts, and certainly pushed by the popularity of
disco culture in general since the success of Saturday Night Fever, other
record companies started producing domestic Japanese disco while also
promoting obscure foreign disco records exclusively for the domestic
Japanese market. Many of these were novelty tracks like “Disco Otomisan”,
a disco cover of an old 1950s Japanese-styled pop tune sung in Japanese
with a heavy American accent by Ebonee Webb, an African American band
from Memphis who had stayed for a while in Japan to perform at a night-
club. The Spinach Power’s “Popeye the Sailorman” is historically impor-
tant, as the first hit by music producer Daiko Nagato. He established his
own production company, Being, with the money he earned from that
record and would later conquer the music market in the 1990s together
with Avex records, as is discussed in the next section. The Being system
thrived in the 1990s, when clients (in many cases advertising agencies)
could order a specific type of music for commercial films or TV pro-
grammes (especially dramas and animes), and Nagato’s staff musicians
would perform it under various pseudonyms (Ogawa et al. 2005). As
such, it was a system which resembled the project-oriented domestic disco
production process led by Honda.

The Reception of European Disco: From Candy Pop

to Eurobeat

The success of Silver Convention and Donna Summer paved the way for
Japanese disco to take a different direction than following African American
soul and funk. Those electronic European disco records were promoted
under the term ‘the Munich sound’, regardless of where they were pro-
duced, based on a strategy invented by JVC’s Sato Osamu, Honda’s boss
and the originator of ‘new soul’ marketing. In 1978, Sato and Honda
produced an enormous hit called “Hello, Mr. Monkey” by Germany’s
116 Y. WAJIMA

Arabesque, which was obviously influenced by ABBA. The song was

among those promoted by small publishers and labels at MIDEM, the
international music networking event held annually in Cannes, France.
Honda played the song at a discotheque named Chester Barrie in Shinjuku
and received highly enthusiastic feedback; Sato then bought the distribu-
tion rights for Japan for US $2000 USD, and sold them for more than
20 billion yen (approximately US $400–500 million then), according to
Honda (Shinozaki 2017b, 76–177). Another record Sato brought from
MIDEM enjoyed huge success as well; this was Dschinghis Khan’s self-­
titled song, which was an obvious imitation of Boney M’s “Rasputin”,
again from Germany.
Following Arabesque’s unexpected and extraordinary success, other
Japanese record companies started to promote similar pop disco featuring
female vocals, mostly sourced from Europe: these acts included the Nolans
from Ireland, the Dooleys from the United Kingdom, Santa Esmeralda
from France, the Neoton Family from Hungary, and D.D. Sound from
Italy, among others. This trend was given a new term, ‘candy pop’, to
signify pop disco with a steady and light beat, catchy hooks, and flashy
instrumentation, most of which was licensed relatively cheaply from small
publishers and promoted only in Japan, outside their home countries. This
method proved extremely lucrative, especially with a promoter like Honda
who knew the scene well and had credibility among insiders in the busi-
ness. It seems that by this point in time, the close association of disco and
African American soul music, which had been crucial in the early to
mid-­1970s, had faded away. Later, a retrospective book on the 1970s
disco culture focusing on the African American influence lamented that it
was a ‘truly cursed period for the real soul enthusiasts’ (Korn 2002, 120).
The popularity of candy pop expanded from clubs to the streets. A dis-
tinct subcultural youth group called the Bamboo Shoot Tribe
(Takenokozoku) emerged in the pedestrian precinct in Harajuku, two
kilometres south of Shinjuku. They were named after the Takenoko
(Bamboo Shoot) boutique, established in 1978, a shop which sold cheap
but glittering outfits like oversized vests, extremely wide trousers made of
neon-coloured polyester satin, and big ribbons or long headbands of simi-
lar material. These outfits were initially popular among disco-goers in
Shinjuku, and soon they started to dance in the street near the boutique.
It was not uncommon for people to dance on the street in Harajuku on
Sunday afternoon, then head to discotheques in Shinjuku at night
(Nakamura 2018, 44). At its peak, more than 2000 teenagers reportedly
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 117

danced, attracting audiences of tens of thousands of sightseers on Sundays

in the early 1980s, along with other subcultural groups such as American
1950s style dancers known as ‘rock ‘n’ rollers’ and, later, several amateur
rock bands. The dancers were divided into discrete groups and each
formed a circle to dance to candy pop and related domestic pop music,
which they played on portable radio cassette recorders. Their dances were
thoroughly choreographed to a particular song, and the choreography
tended to emphasise the movement of the upper half of the body, differing
from the ‘step dance’ of 1970s disco. While often seen as a social problem
in relation to the prevalence of motorcycle gangs and school violence at
the time—both because the motorcycle gangs’ organisation and appear-
ance resembled those of the Bamboo Shoot Tribe and because there may
have been a direct connection between the two—the Bamboo Shoot Tribe
is unique in the history of youth subcultures in Japan in that virtually no
direct influences from foreign cultural trends were to be seen in its music
taste, fashion style, or dancing. Its remnants can be faintly traced in the
contemporary Kawaii culture represented by, for example, Kyari Pamyu
Pamyu, who emphasises the influence of the street culture in Harajuku. In
addition, it is noteworthy that the affordable and portable technology of
radio cassette recorders, mostly made in Japan, offered them their own
convenient sound systems.
From the mid-1980s onwards, disco music in Japan changed signifi-
cantly with the emergence of Eurobeat as a genre of foreign music con-
sumed almost exclusively in Japan. The term Eurobeat was actually not
invented in Japan, but was derived from the category temporarily used in
the United Kingdom’s Record Mirror magazine’s charts from November
1985, substituting for the term Hi-NRG. Even though the magazine
abandoned the term and went back to Hi-NRG in May 1987, it has sur-
vived ever since in Japan. As the name suggests, it basically derived from
the Hi-NRG and Italo disco songs that had achieved worldwide success in
the mid-1980s; but, I argue here that it should also be understood as a
direct successor of candy pop in various ways. Musically, the two share
some common characteristics including their simple and catchy melodies,
formulaic functional harmony, clear song structure with clear repetitions
of verse and chorus, and steady four-on-the-floor beats without complex
syncopation and polyrhythms. More importantly, they have much in com-
mon in the industrial context of their formation as genres, and in their
shared cultural status as pseudo-international music. In both cases, the
record industry almost fabricated these genres, at first making do with the
118 Y. WAJIMA

available foreign musical material, then later deliberately generating the

distinct dance subcultures of those genres.
A discotheque chain, Maharaja, and two record companies, Alfa and
Avex, were responsible for the formation of Eurobeat. The opening of the
flamboyant discotheque Maharaja Tokyo in 1984 is often considered to be
the symbolic moment of the second disco boom, associated as it was with
the hedonistic and ostentatious culture of the ‘economic bubble’ of the
late 1980s, in contrast to the first boom in the late 1970s that was often
related to youth delinquency (Nakamura 2018; Iwasaki 2011). The asso-
ciation between Maharaja Tokyo and Hi-NRG/Eurobeat was so strong
that the manager of the Masaru Narita venue released some Japanese cov-
ers of key Eurobeat tunes associated with the venue, including “Give Me
Up”, “Into the Night” (both by Michael Fortunati), and “Turn Around
and Count 2 Ten” (by Dead or Alive) as a singer in 1987. The venue was
notorious for its celebrity-driven policy, in stark contrast to the teenage-­
oriented budget venues in Shinjuku. Located at Azabu Juban, near
Roppongi but with no public transport nearby, customers were forced to
come by taxi or private cars and were forced to follow a strict dress code
(no jeans, no sneakers, no open-heeled footwear, etc.). Extremely expen-
sive VIP rooms were filled with wealthy men, sometimes mockingly known
as ‘bubble gentleman’, surrounded by ‘sexy ladies’. Up to 71 similar-­
affiliated Maharaja venues soon opened one after the other across the
country.
Maharaja’s adult-oriented policy might be interpreted as a reaction to
the amendment of the Law Regulating Adult Entertainment Businesses in
1984, which strictly prohibited the entrance of anyone under 18 years,
and banned operations after midnight. In contrast, venues in Shinjuku
reacted to the law amendment in a riskier way, by modifying their opening
hours to begin earlier in the afternoon and even in the morning over the
weekend, to attract teenage visitors (Nakamura 2018). Here, the differ-
ence between Shinjuku and Roppongi was reorganised according to age
rather than the respective musical tastes in each district.
In spite of Maharaja’s celebrity-driven policy, the venues, and the music
they played, Eurobeat seemed to be regarded as culturally and musically
vulgar by visitors of the newly emerging small venues called ‘clubs’, which
were distinguished from discotheques by their emphasis on the connois-
seurship of newly imported dance music genres such as hip-hop, house,
and dancehall reggae. In a sense, these smaller specialist venues were also
products of the law’s amendment, as they were licensed not as
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 119

discotheques or dance halls but as bars and restaurants, and as such were
allowed to operate after midnight. This legal distinction between disco-
theques and smaller ‘clubs’ led to the decline of the former and the rise of
the latter in the 1990s, after the economic bubble had finally burst.
Maharaja also popularised a particular way of dancing called “parapara”,
which resembled the dance of the Bamboo Shoot Tribe; however, the
lower body movements were reduced to simple and monotonous side-
steps, and the upper body moves became more complicated. It was ini-
tially performed by the male staff of the venue as a kind of parlour trick
and eventually spread among regular (mostly female) customers seeking to
display their celebrity status in the venue. The term “parapara” is said to
be derived from a chant yelled along with the synthesiser riff of Trans-X’s
“Living On Video” (Nakamura 2018, 39), a track originally popular in
youth venues in Shinjuku in 1984 which soon became associated with
Maharaja and Eurobeat. Even after the decline of Maharaja-styled disco-
theques in the 1990s, “parapara” survived and was sporadically revived as
a teenage girls’ subculture dance called gyaru (“girl” or “gal”).
Turning back to the record industry, it was Alfa that first played an
important role in popularising Eurobeat. Alfa was established by com-
poser and music publisher Kunihiko Murai at the end of the 1960s,
became a record company in 1977, and formed a business partnership
with A&M Records the following year, not only selling A&M products in
Japan but also promoting their domestic rosters in the United States, a
strategy similar to Honda’s. Although the partnership with A&M records
was a crucial source of income for Alfa’s foreign music section, in 1986,
A&M broke it off after Murai left the company for unknown reasons,
which led to a managerial crisis at Alfa. Then, remembering the unex-
pected but enormous success of Quincy Jones’s “Ai no Corrida” in 1981,
the company fought back against its difficulties by contracting numerous
independent labels specialising in electronic dance music, or anything sold
as such, one after another, ranging from PWL of synth pop, FLEA of Italo
disco, and even Mute of industrial/post-punk. The first hit to be pro-
duced by this new direction was Samantha Fox’s “Touch Me”. Then, simi-
lar pop tunes, most of which were obscure, were compiled and released on
cassettes and CDs. The first compilation entitled That’s HI-NRG, released
in 1985, was renamed That’s Eurobeat the following year and serialised,
with a total of 44 volumes released up to 1994. Some of the tracks on
these compilations were covered by Japanese singers to achieve main-
stream success. This trend was initiated by “Dancing Hero” by Yoko
120 Y. WAJIMA

Oginome in 1985 (a cover of Angie Gold’s “Eat You Up”, which was
released under a Japanese title translated as “My Lovely Hi-NRG Boy”),
followed by Akemi Ishii’s “Cha-Cha-Cha” (by Finti Contini, 1986),
Babe’s “Give Me Up” (again by Michael Fortunati, 1987), and numerous
others. The latter two were Italo disco, which became a main supplier of
the Eurobeat pipeline in the 1990s. These covers emphasised choreogra-
phy inspired by dance floor routines.
In turn, Avex was responsible for the survival of Eurobeat from the late
1980s through the 1990s when an eclectic and pleasure-seeking disco cul-
ture was replaced by a more genre-conscious and authenticity-seeking
‘club culture’. It was also responsible for the emergence of a dance pop
style within the ‘J-pop’ market, which was a new term popularised in the
early 1990s signifying more ‘Westernised’ domestic pop music that has
now become mainstream (Ugaya 2005).
In 1985, Avex boss Masato Matsuura (born 1964), a university student
and frequenter of discos in Shinjuku who was fascinated by Hi-NRG,
started a part-time job in a record rental shop, an emerging form of music
consumption, with the sole purpose of listening to as many disco music
records as possible without paying money to buy them. He installed a
counter specialising in imported disco records and started his original
store chart. Soon, he had started a wholesale trading company specialising
in imported discs. He directly contracted overseas (mainly Italian) disco
producers to produce a mixed CD he would then sell wholesale to rental
record chains. Instead of providing licensed dealership for foreign labels in
Japan, his method of offering European producers original tracks aimed
exclusively at the Japanese market and importing finished products broke
the conventions of Japanese record companies. The new media of CDs
also made it easier to import finished products, as they were lighter and
easier to duplicate than vinyl records (Matsuura 2018).
Avex soon started domestic production, with Tetsuya Komuro as the
main producer/composer. He had been a leader of the synth pop band
TM Network, which was quite popular in the late 1980s, but his numer-
ous later works recorded sales of over a million in the mid-1990s. Komuro’s
typical sound had much in common with candy pop and Eurobeat as it
emphasised high-register female vocals and flashy synth riffs. In addition,
Namie Amuro, who would become a pan-Asian pop diva, achieved her
first success, covering the Eurobeat tune “Try Me” by prominent Avex-­
contracted Italian producer Dave Rodgers.
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 121

Alongside its highly successful domestic production, Avex has contin-

ued its signature Eurobeat compilation series entitled Super Eurobeat,
which by 2018 totalled as many as 250 volumes. As noted above, disco
culture itself declined in the 1990s, and Eurobeat was played only in a few
venues specialising in “parapara” dancing; however, Eurobeat found a new
niche by the end of 1990s as a subculture of car customisation (Mizukusa
2001). Through intensive tie-ins to the highly influential animation and
video game series “Initial D”, which had the theme of street racing in
customised cars, AVEX’s Eurobeat tracks became a favourite soundtrack
for members of that subculture, and thus became fairly popular in rural
areas and suburbs. An “Initial D” anime series and games also powered
the fast and powerful Avex vehicle’s advance into the East Asian market
before other Japanese companies did.
In the early 2000s, Eurobeat and “parapara” dancing expanded their
popularity among other fan clusters, from the original devotees of the
gyaru subculture: anime fans in Japan and overseas. The trigger for this
was the opening theme of the anime series “Detective Conan”, which
featured animated “parapara” dancing by the protagonist. The CD fea-
tured a diagram of the choreography by Hirokazu Miyaji, the manager of
Twinster, and this was used as the basis of “parapara” dancing among
gyaru tribes. The song “Love is Thrill, Shock, and Suspense” was pro-
duced by Being and sung by Rina Aiuchi (2000), who had formerly been
associated with Avex. Following its success, various companies started to
release many compilations of anime songs, old and new, for “parapara”
dancing with Eurobeat arrangements, and these became known as “anip-
ara”. Accordingly, as Japanese animation began to be seen as a typical
Japanese cultural form, the “parapara” dance was performed in cultural
events promoting Japanese pop culture overseas. Here, it seems that a
complex interaction between local and global was at work: imported disco
culture was domesticated by the mediation of the music industry and
youth subculture to generate the dance of “parapara”; in turn, it was glob-
ally received as a typically Japanese cultural expression in relation to anime.

Conclusion
This overview of Japanese disco has focused on the functioning of the
music industry, the patterns of change in venues, and the relationship
between the two. The gatekeepers of the music industry from the 1970s
to the early 1980s shared two motivations. The first was the commercial
122 Y. WAJIMA

aim to effectively promote their licensed foreign records, often indepen-

dently of overseas trends. The second was a cultural aim: they pushed for
Japanese products to be accepted abroad (especially in the United States),
as the second biggest economic power in the world. On the one hand, this
led to the production of domestic disco which ‘faked’ the foreign idiom,
and, in some cases, was expected to be an export product aimed at the
international market carrying the honour of being ‘made in Japan’. On
the other hand, the deluge of ‘buy cheap, sell high’ Euro disco led to the
new label of Eurobeat as a specific category of foreign music accepted
exclusively in Japan. These instances paved the way for the establishment
of J-pop in the mainstream—this Japanese popular music genre is highly
Westernised, but does not necessarily slavishly admire, or have an inferior-
ity complex towards, foreign music (yogaku) anymore.
I have tried to show how Japanese disco production challenged the
hierarchical dichotomy of the foreign and the domestic in the Japanese
popular music world. However, the ambition to be globally accepted was
often transformed into the badge of honour (or fantasy) that Japanese
popular music had already been highly Westernised compared to music
from other foreign contexts. Nevertheless, this self-confidence is meaning-
ful only within Japan. This sort of inward Westernisation or internationali-
sation, which could easily become a cultural conservatism without
historical perspective, seems to be one of the most significant characteris-
tics, and flaws, in what has been called ‘J-Pop’ since the 1990s (Ugaya 2005).
However, the situation is changing now. Japanese disco aimed at the
international market and other disco-tinged pop tracks of the late 1970s
and early 1980s have recently attracted an international audience under
the new term of ‘city pop’, and Eurobeat as a domestically produced for-
eign music genre has found another international niche in Japanese visual
culture. ‘Pseudo-international’ musical styles are now recognised as typi-
cally Japanese in ways which differ from what was originally intended. This
has made us reconsider the authenticity of Japanese popular music not in
terms of an imagined distinction between the foreign and domestic, which
in reality is only valid within Japan’s borders, but in terms of transnational
interaction, which is always reflexive and contingent between industry,
discourses, and practices in historically and geographically different
moments.
 JAPANESE DISCO AS PSEUDO-INTERNATIONAL MUSIC 123

Notes
1. Although the aforementioned romanticised foreign music discourse appears
to oppose such phenomena, it is often complicit with them in inventing a
distinctively Japanese foreign music culture, since critics tend to rely on ide-
alised notions of a particular musical genre rather than on actual information
and context about its real origins.
2. Ever since the 1920s, Japanese young people have favoured music cafes
where recorded music was played on high-quality audio equipment for a
relatively inexpensive admission fee (Hosokawa and Matsuoka 2004).
3. For example, the LP entitled The Classics of RCA Blues: 1927–1946, which
was compiled in Japan under the supervision of famous critics, became an
instant classic. On the Japanese reception of ‘rootsy’ African American
music, see Higurashi (2010).
4. Tsutsumi first entered the music industry in 1963 as a director in the foreign
music section of Japan Gramophone. By 1967, he had become a freelance
songwriter when the local popular record production system underwent a
dramatic change. Within the vertical integration management structure
established in the 1930s, not only singers but also lyricists, composers, and
session musicians were bound by exclusive contracts to a certain record
company. This, however, was all about to collapse and be replaced by a new
system wherein music publishers and entertainment agencies shared copy-
rights and co-produced master discs, employing freelance songwriters and
session musicians to create them. Tsutsumi belonged to the first generation
of the new system and is arguably the most successful example of it.
5. In 1974, Tsutsumi wrote the soul-disco track “Nigai Namida” (“Bitter
Tears”) with Japanese lyrics, which was performed by the American female
trio The Three Degrees. They had achieved considerable popularity in Japan
with the song “When Will I See You Again”, which became an instant hit.
This happened before their worldwide success due to their participation in
the 1974 Third Tokyo Music Festival, a large international song contest
aiming to be a ‘Eurovision in the East’ organised by Tokyo Broadcasting
Service (TBS). Since they did not release a new single in the United States,
CBS Sony, the Japanese agent of Philadelphia International Records,
planned a project that would exclusively target the Japanese market. The
novelty of African American women singing in Japanese on Japanese TV was
probably at least partly responsible for the success (Shinozaki 2017c,
232–234).
6. The blog is accessible at https://funkydisco.jimdo.com/disco-­step/.
7. Azami suggests that this was already the case in the late 1960s when CBS in
the United States and Japanese Sony established the joint venture CBS Sony
(Azami 2016, 177). The phrase ‘the world’s second largest music market’
124 Y. WAJIMA

was also used two years later in the title of the feature article in Billboard
(May 26, 1979).

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 Disco, Dancing, Globalization and Class
in 1980s Hindi Cinema

Gregory D. Booth

Disco in the Hindi cinema demonstrates two fundamental features, both

of which emerge from the industrial and cultural position of popular cin-
ema in Indian culture. First, the most widely recognized embodiment of
disco in India was a combination of the image and dancing of actor Mithun
Chakraborty and the music composed by and attributed to composer/
producer Bappi Lahiri. Second, although the musical content of the songs
that India’s film and music industry categorized as disco was a mix of
original content and borrowings from American or European models, any
stylistic alignment with foreign versions of disco was purely coincidental.
The first of these two features exemplifies one of the ways that Indian
popular music culture has long been distinct from many popular cultures
of the globe due to its dependent position within the framework of the
Indian commercial cinema. The second feature aligns with one of this
volume’s themes: that the sounds and meanings of disco, as a musical style
and as a genre, were transformed every time the genre label and its received

G. D. Booth (*)
Ethnomusicology, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 127

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_6
128 G. D. BOOTH

meanings were taken up by another culture. This study of disco in India’s

culture industry during the 1980s shows how these two features had their
foundations in the unique popular-media culture of India.
Disco as a popular fascination was absorbed into the practices and logic
of the film/song industry; but in the hands and voices of a small number
of musicians, it also represented the first modern challenge to the domi-
nance of film song. This challenge was only partially successful; but it took
place just as India was beginning to shed some of its post-colonial ideolo-
gies and just as it was beginning to emerge from its post-colonial eco-
nomic (and cultural) isolation. In addition to these primarily musical
issues, disco and disco dancing became enmeshed in the cinema’s con-
structions of masculine heroism and its representations of western popular
culture. Finally, the conjunction of disco with India’s slow emergence
from the shell of economic nationalism defined its place in India’s cultural
history. This study reports the results of extended ethnographic and archi-
val research in India in the field of popular music and culture.

Disco—The Label as Fetish

Particular elements of disco’s western-based iconography and some of its
musical features were fetishized in India as symbols of western-based
modernity. Earlier stylistic features, and some of the ideological implica-
tions of jazz and of rock ‘n’ roll (or beat music as it was most commonly
called in India), had preceded disco as musical manifestations of western
modernity in Indian popular culture; but neither achieved the named,
mass cultural presence that disco achieved in the 1980s. Disco’s Indian
identity was located in the Hindi language and the lower socio-economic
classes that came to dominate the Hindi cinema audience from the 1980s
through the early 1990s. Because of these factors, disco achieved a much
broader, mass-audience identity. Its appeal was such that one journalist,
writing under the pseudonym ‘Ali’ in Volume 30 of the film industry’s
trade journal, Screen in November of 1981, could argue that ‘disco also
worked its magic in Gandhi-ji’s India. Within a short while it was disco,
disco everywhere.’ As this journalist argued, disco was India’s ‘new reli-
gion’ and actor Mithun Chakraborty its ‘demi-god’ (Screen 1981). Given
that ‘Ali’ was writing in the past tense in 1981, disco was clearly and
already a popular culture presence, at least in India’s two (or three) major
northern metropolises (Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata).
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 129

The presence of disco in urban culture prior to 1981 is hinted at in a

song scene from that year featuring Mithun Chakraborty dancing to music
credited to Bappi Lahiri. The song scene, “Aao baadshah” (“Come on,
king”) from Sahhas (“Courage”, 1981)1 introduces Chakraborty as a new-
comer in a nightclub/discotheque who is inveighed into a dance contest
with an opponent who, as another character explains, has won the title of
‘disco king’ for four years consecutively. The background music playing
underneath this dialogue was performed on an electronic keyboard using
the melody from the Rolling Stones’ 1965 hit, “(I can’t get no)
Satisfaction”. In the song and dance scene that follows, Chakraborty—
who had yet to master the dance moves of his primary western model,
Michael Jackson—literally dances his opponent into the ground.
Through the 1980s, the northern Indian metropolises had venues
often called discotheques or discos. These were elite sites for social danc-
ing, the normalized consumption of alcohol and a mixing of genders all of
which were absent from the social realities of most Indians and which were
frequently represented as outcomes of the influences of ‘the west’. Thus,
whether Chakraborty defeats an early disco dancer or a dancer in a disco-
theque remains unclear; but for all practical purposes, the two meanings
became increasingly conflated in later usages and manifestations.
Many of the sets for the Hindi cinema’s disco song scenes are indeed
nightclubs or discotheques, filled with flashing lights, elaborate dance
floors and filled most often with young, frequently well-dressed Indians
socializing in ways that were only dreams for many in the audience. Most
had never been to a nightclub of any kind; a very large number would have
had no experience with mixed-gender social dancing; even their experi-
ences with and exposure to western popular music culture were minimal
(Booth 2014). This meant that most Indians had never heard any foreign
exemplars of disco. As long as the sounds were more or less those of west-
ern pop (any western pop) and as long as they were accompanied by the
images of western dress, instrumentation and behaviour—the iconogra-
phy of western exoticism and modernity—those sounds were understood
to be ‘disco’ in the Indian context. It was the commercial cinema that
constructed the music and, just as importantly, the images of disco. More
than any specific musical style features, the word ‘disco’, along with icons
gleaned from mediated representations of global popular culture, became
fetishized symbols of western exoticism and modernity.
The extent of disco’s popular fetishization was made clear in what
might be considered the first formal declaration of the term’s importance:
130 G. D. BOOTH

the title song from the 1982 film Disco Dancer. This film’s musical and
cultural impact have been popularly attributed to composer Bappi Lahiri
and actor Mithun Chakraborty. This pairing of actor and composer, with
frequent changes in the identities of other key players, was one of the most
consistent features of Hindi film disco.
At the opening of “(I am a) Disco dancer”, a guitar-wielding
Chakraborty, dressed in silver and black lamé, invites his audience to sing
with him. The audience in this scene is seated in an auditorium-style space
rather than a nightclub and gives every appearance of being a middle-class
and explicitly family audience with married couples and children. The only
dancing in the audience is done by a young girl who appears to be no
more than ten years old. Many of the women wear saris (in this cinematic
context, saris symbolize a likelihood that their wearers are married).
Although it must have numbered nearly 1000 people, this is not an audi-
ence that is, or is intended to be understood as, a youth audience: it is not
made up of single college students from whom film-makers might have
generated romantic situations and imagery.
After an instrumental introduction, Chakraborty begins by leading this
group in what must be called a cheer, rather than a song. Beginning with
‘Give me a ‘d …’, Chakraborty leads the crowd in spelling out the word,
‘… i-s-c-o’, which is also spelled out in blinking, coloured lights across the
back of the auditorium. The music of “(I am a) Disco Dancer” that fol-
lows this introduction features a prominent horn section and a funk-style
bass line; a drum-set is audibly present, but less so than a set of congas. If
one wished to align the song with a western musical style, one might sug-
gest that it was in the style of upbeat funk. Chakraborty is accompanied by
four male actors, in matching costumes, who begin the scene as guitar
players but who—like Chakraborty himself—quickly abandon their guitars
to dance. The horn section, in contrast, is all female. These actresses,
dressed in matching shorts and blouses, provide a level of erotic display
and like their male counterparts are also present to form the dancing cho-
rus for the scene. One of the most important realities of music culture in
India and in the Hindi cinema is that actors were rarely musicians. For the
majority of the Indian audience, however, actors were the faces and bodies
of the songs to which they mimed: “Disco Dancer” was, and still is, a
Mithun Chakraborty song. It is not generally connected to the name and
face of singer Vijay Benedict, who did not become a star as a result of his
many disco recordings. In the 1980s, Benedict rarely performed the song
in a live context or before an audience.
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 131

In another early fetishization of the term disco, a fantasy Indian train

station (complete with a dancefloor of coloured, flashing tiles) is trans-
formed into ‘Disco Station’ in a song of the same name from the film
Haathkadi (“Handcuffs”, 1982), once again with music composed by
Bappi Lahiri. Actor Reena Roy is featured dancing in a modern, but unar-
guably Indian costume; she watches young couples embracing as they
emerge from an arriving train, as if the very term supported the revolution
in social mores that many younger Indians may have longed for. In this
frankly bizarre picturization, Roy’s immediate chorus is made up of six
male dancers, dressed in white singlets with black raincoats and hats and
armed with flashlights who pursue and dance with her. A larger chorus is
made up of actors initially representing college students, variously and
casually dressed, as well as dwarves dressed as station staff (conductors,
ticket takers, coolies), school children in uniform, and extras wearing dis-
torted human and animal masks. Synthesizers play a more prominent role
in “Disco Station” than they do in “Disco Dancer”; but once again, the
music might be more closely aligned with funk (or perhaps rock) than
with disco.
Even at what must be considered the end of disco’s dominance, the
idea and the genre label (rather than the sound) of disco were still being
fetishized as the globalized modern. The last big disco hit in the Hindi
cinema came in a song that allegedly combined disco with bhangara, an
explicitly Indian folk/pop genre associated with Punjab. “Disco bhang-
ara” (“Disco and bhangara”) from Gangaa, Jamunaa, Saraswathi (1988)
highlights stereotyped and visual distinctions between bhangara and disco.
When urged to dance to disco, actor Amitabh Bachchan’s character
demurs: ‘what, in these clothes?’ referring to his sweater/jumper and
trousers. Those urging him on provide him with black leather jacket, trou-
sers and boots (partially referencing the imagery of Michael Jackson’s
1987 hit “Bad”) and the glittering sliver glove that had come to be associ-
ated with Jackson’s performances of “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982). In the
song’s lyrics Bachchan boasts that he will show viewers a ‘new rhythm’ and
a ‘new dance’ and also that he will sing ‘just like Michael Jackson’.
Disco’s Indian ideology, based on western or global modernity and
youth culture, and its iconography were more consistent than its sounds.
When the sounds of Indian disco did align with those of western versions,
this was often made possible, ironically, by the same situation that allowed
the term to be used so broadly: the isolation of the Indian music and film
industries of the 1970s and 1980s (at least) from the world economy of
132 G. D. BOOTH

the global music/media industry. That isolation made it possible (if not
technically legal) for Indian musicians to borrow freely (in all senses) from
the musical content of western popular culture, including disco.

Disco in an Isolated Culture and Music Industry

For much of the 1980s, India’s popular music industry was only remotely
connected to the global music economy. Neither Hindi films nor film
songs had a significant legal commercial presence outside India. A small
export trade in legal discs and cassettes and in legitimate prints of com-
mercial films took place primarily between India and the United Kingdom
and the United States. Trade in the reverse direction, from the west to
India, was equally limited and perceptible only in the major metro-centres
and even then, primarily for a largely elite, English-speaking audience. Not
only was the Indian mass audience largely unfamiliar with western popular
music; many of the composers involved in the production of popular film
music also had relatively little direct experience with the performance or
production of the musical styles of British, European or American popu-
lar music.
The first widespread impact of disco in Indian music culture was the
result of these conditions, which (among other outcomes) completely had
inhibited the development of a viable popular music culture in India (out-
side the context of the cinema) and suppressed the distribution of western
popular music. These conditions also help us understand why the first
explicitly disco hit in Hindi, the song, “Aap jaisa koi” (“Someone like
you”) from Qurbani (“Sacrifice”, 1980), was the work of composer Biddu
Appaiah who, albeit of Indian heritage, was making a living as a musician
and producer in Britain’s pop music scene of the late 1970s. Appaiah made
clear to me that, growing up in Bengaluru (Bangalore) in southern India,
he felt very isolated from the western pop music he preferred.

We didn’t have music in India in those days. There was one national [radio]
station, called Akashwani, which nobody, but nobody listened to it. … If I
wanted to hear foreign popular music, I had to tune into the Binaca Hit
Parade on Radio Ceylon. I would spend six days in anticipation waiting for
Sunday, and then more times than not all I would get would be static, or
some faint echo of what was the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, or some-
thing. (Personal communication with the author, 2010)
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 133

Although many people did listen to Akashwani—the government-owned

All India Radio—Appaiah’s comments echo those of many others of his
age whose preferences were for western pop. After an early attempt at a
career as a pop singer in India, Appaiah moved to London in the late
1960s, where he worked his way into Britain’s popular music scene, pro-
ducing recordings by the Japanese group, the Tigers, and by Carl Douglas,
including the latter’s 1974 hit, “Kung Fu Fighting”. Appaiah had no con-
nection to the closed world of the Mumbai film industry and no interest
in the culture of the Hindi cinema. Nevertheless, when Hindi film pro-
ducer and actor Feroze Khan sought him out and invoked mutual connec-
tions to Appaiah’s hometown to persuade him to work on Khan’s
upcoming film, Appaiah composed and recorded one song, “Aap jaisa
koi” for Khan’s Qurbani.
The Qurbani soundtrack included five songs in total; but the other four
songs were composed and produced by the very popular Mumbai music
directors/brothers known as Kalyanji-Anandji. Those songs were recorded
in Mumbai film music studios with vocals by playback singers including
Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhosle and Kishore Kumar. “Aap jaisa koi”, on the
other hand, was composed and recorded in London. The song was sung
by an unknown 15-year-old Pakistani/British girl named Nazia Hassan.
The two creative processes could not have been more separate, as Appaiah
has explained: ‘I never discussed this with Kalyanji-Anandji; I didn’t know
them, or even know who they were. I was in England doing my thing. I
wasn’t interested [in the Hindi cinema]’ (personal communication with
the author, 2010).
The “Aap jaisa koi” song scene featured actress Zeenat Aman as a
nightclub singer in a red-sequined, backless gown dancing on a small
nightclub stage complete with a coloured-tile floor and flashing lights. By
1980, Aman herself—who had studied at a United States university in the
1960s—was a symbol of a sexualized, western modernity, in the Hindi
cinema of the 1970s, in films such as Hare Rama Hare Krishna (“Hail
Rama, Hail Krishna” 1971) or Heera Panna (1973). The backing band
that is shown on the stage with her consists of a group of female musicians
(aside from the male set-drummer) who are dressed in silver boots and
what can only be described as one-piece bathing suits. The drummer is
shirtless and wears an “afro” hairdo or wig. Such hairstyles, always on male
actors with dark or darkened skin, appeared from time to time in the Hindi
cinema of the 1980s as symbols of an ambiguous exoticism emerging from
134 G. D. BOOTH

Indian perceptions of a range of global popular cultures with roots in an

African heritage.
The musical and technical expertise that Appaiah had acquired in his
15 years in Britain and Hassan’s exposure to and absorption of western
pop made “Aap jaise koi” unique in South Asian popular culture of the
time. With its dance-based, 4/4 beat (approximately 108 BPM) and its
synthesized effects and timbres, the song played a significant role in
Qurbani’s success as the highest grossing Hindi film of 1980. While data
on soundtrack sales are not publicly available, sales are understood to have
been exceptionally high in India and in Pakistan (Hassan’s country of
birth). Given the state of Indian film music recording studios in 1980, the
song’s arrangement and production values must have been a revelation to
most Indian ears.
Appaiah composed songs for a second Hindi film (Star, 1982), again
with vocals by Nazia Hassan and her brother Zoheb, which included the
distinctive disco hit, “Boom, boom”. However, while the Indian film
industry had always been prepared to import musical content and stylistic
elements from the west, it was less prepared to tolerate industrial competi-
tion from South Asians living abroad. Star, featuring young and relatively
unknown actors, was a flop and, despite Qurbani’s success, neither Nazia
Hassan nor Biddu Appaiah was successful in penetrating the oligarchic
world of the 1980s Hindi cinema. The success of “Aap jaisa koi” did raise
public awareness of disco and industrial awareness of the appeal of the
practices and norms of the western music industry, especially around the
idea of what India called the ‘non-film’ album. Increased awareness led to
increased borrowings from western productions and western practices;
but the outcomes of these two different kinds of borrowings were quite
distinct.

Western Content in an Indian Setting

Shortly after the release of Qurbani, more sounds of disco appeared in
Shaan (“Elegance” 1980). “Pyaar karne wale” (“One who loves”) is a late
example of what the Hindi cinema historically called a cabaret song scene,
in which an actress performs as a singer and sometimes dancer for patrons
in a glamorous nightclub setting. Although it is something of a generaliza-
tion, cabaret scenes are often distinguishable from later disco scenes by the
behaviour of the audiences: cabaret audiences most commonly sat sedately
at their tables watching the performer, who was almost always a female
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 135

singer/dancer; disco audiences more frequently danced or at least stood

before a stage listening with some signs of enthusiasm.
R.D. Burman, the most popular and innovative composer of Hindi film
songs throughout the 1970s, composed much of the music for “Pyaar
karne wale”; but he also borrowed content from a western model. Burman
had great interest in musical sounds from outside India and frequently
borrowed content as well as style and instrumentation. The song’s synthe-
sizer bass line and the 4/4 drum beat, along with aspects of song struc-
ture, appear to have been copied from Donna Summer’s 1977 release “I
feel love”. The song’s melody seems to have been newly composed; it
certainly has more melodic identity and direction than Summer’s original.
“Pyar karne wale” exemplifies Burman’s successful integration of original
and borrowed elements in the production of a song that certainly carries a
western flavour, but that remains fully Indian. Commonly, when the
sounds of filmi disco bore a close resemblance to western disco, such
alignment was the result of direct borrowings. It is not clear what propor-
tion of the Indian film audience realized that they were listening to copies
or interpretations of western hits. My anecdotal research suggests that the
proportion was quite small, at least outside Mumbai and Kolkata. Some in
the press were aware of this practice, however, and Burman was sometimes
criticized for his borrowings. Bappi Lahiri’s identity was still more explic-
itly connected in the Indian press with what some called “inspirations”
based on western models.
Two of Lahiri’s biggest disco hits used substantial amounts of musical
materials borrowed from western pop songs. Two years after the success
of Disco Dancer, Lahiri, Mithun Chakraborty and director/producer
Babbar Subhash worked together again on the action film, Kasam Paida
Karne Wale Ki (“I swear by my mother”, 1984). This film featured the
song scene, “Jeena bhi kya hai jeena” (“What is life without you”), which
was picturized on Chakraborty dancing with actress and singer Salma
Agha. Chaitanya Padukone, writing in the short-lived trade/consumer
magazine Playback>>> and Fast Forward, has suggested that for Indians,
the London-based Agha projected the ‘image of a liberated, totally west-
ernized singer’ and that ‘in Salma, one saw the potential of bringing the
Hindi music scene closer to the erotic western pop culture’. Nevertheless,
Padukone continued by noting that ‘the industry effectively channelled
her into films as a singing/actor’ arguing that in the mid-1980s an inde-
pendent pop culture ‘had yet to emerge in India’ (Padukone 1988). It was
through films and song scenes such as these that disco in India evolved
136 G. D. BOOTH

into the dominant label for a culturally constructed ideology that was
based on the adaptation of imported western popular culture. In the early
1980s especially, film culture remained the only platform from which the
symbols of that ideology could be projected to an Indian mass audience.
More importantly, the practices and structure of Indian film culture also
determined the human and iconographic categories from which those
symbols could be constructed.
“Jeena bhi kya hai jeena” shows that Chakraborty had refined his danc-
ing in the years since Disco Dancer, with increased attention to Michael
Jackson’s dance vocabulary. This was particularly appropriate given that
“Jeena bhi kya hai jeena” made direct use of the melodic and rhythmic
materials of Jackson’s 1982 release, “Billie Jean”. From the introductory
harmonic vamp onward, “Jeena bhi kya hai jeena” would be immediately
recognizable to anyone familiar with Jackson’s original. Nevertheless, the
differences—the changes made to the borrowed material, the additions of
new material and the changes in musical structure—are instructive and
offer a clear example of the Hindi cinema’s need to adapt rather than rep-
licate foreign musical content.
Although “Jeena bhi kya hai jeena” moves at a faster pulse that “Billie
Jean” (approximately 128 BPM and 116 BPM respectively), the former is
still longer (5.5 compared to 4.9 minutes long). “Jeena bhi kya hai jeena”
is a hero/heroine duet, sung by Lahiri and Agha. In the Hindi cinema,
duets are often longer than solo songs simply because of the need to have
both hero and heroine contribute, more or less equally, to what is effec-
tively an emotional, musical dialogue. Structurally, “Billie Jean” uses a
single melody that serves as verse and chorus; the underlying vamp that
introduces the song also provides the basis for the long (80-plus seconds)
coda or outro. Much of the music in the introduction and mukhda (the
song’s primary melody, rather like a chorus) of “Jeena bhi kya hai jeena”
replicates the accompanimental, melodic, harmonic and rhythmic material
of the original. It nevertheless adheres to the standard Hindi film-song
structure, which means that it also includes a second melody (an antara in
the language of the Hindi film song) that contrasts with the melody bor-
rowed from “Billie Jean” and that serves as a ‘verse’ (its two statements are
set to different lyrics). The antara breaks out of the harmonic limitations
imposed by the foundation vamp in “Billie Jean”, offering much greater
harmonic movement. “Jeena bhi kya hai jeena” also includes two relatively
long instrumental sections (44 and 36 seconds respectively) meant to
highlight dancing. A standard feature of film songs from the 1960s
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 137

onwards, such musical features continue to make sense in the visual, actor-­
focused practices of the Indian cinema and help us understand the indus-
trial logic that made Chakraborty, rather than any vocalist, the symbol of
India’s disco fad.
After Kasm Paida Karne Wale Ki, the same core group collaborated for
a final disco film, Dance Dance (1987), in which Chakraborty repeated his
role as the beleaguered, lower-class musician/dancer struggling against
industrial and class prejudice. “Zubi zubi zubi”, which appears as the
opening scene of Dance Dance, was modelled on the Eurodisco content of
Modern Talking’s 1986 hit, “Brother Louie”. The musical transformation
is broadly similar to that described for “Jeena bhi kyaa hai jeena”. Again,
the Indian version is faster (and longer) than the original. In many of his
disco soundtracks, Bappi Lahiri took his inspiration from a wide range of
well-known and obscure sources.2
Lahiri’s use of foreign materials aligned with the mass audience’s accep-
tance of Chakraborty as the image of Indian disco and made for a music-­
image pairing of unprecedented success. This process of borrowing,
however described, was possible because of the protective cultural and
regulatory bubble in which Hindi films and songs existed. Indian film
composers were providing Hindi film songs with varying amounts of west-
ern flavour set to Hindi lyrics for an audience that had little access to the
originals. I will discuss the changing the realities of ‘access’ below; but that
lack of access made the sources of musical borrowings invisible to most of
the audience. At the same time, the Indian results of such borrowings
were invisible to the western industry that might otherwise have objected
on legal grounds.

Disco, ‘Private Albums’ and India’s Incipient

Non-­film Music Industry
The enormous public response to the Qurbani soundtrack in 1980 was a
revelation for both film-makers and music industry executives in South
Asia. It led to three non-film pop albums on EMI featuring the combina-
tion of Appaiah’s music and the voices of Nazia and Zoheb Hassan. The
catch-all label ‘non-film’, or sometimes ‘private album’, was routinely
used within the Indian music industry to describe any popular song or
recording not derived from a film soundtrack. There were very few such
non-film recordings in the pre-globalization decades through the early
138 G. D. BOOTH

1990s. In a 2010 interview, Appaiah explained to me that the concept

itself was confusing:

After Qurbani, not one person approached me till eighteen months later,
when HMV [the Gramophone Company of India] sent one of their young
men from London, who said they wanted me to make an album with Nazia
Hassan. And he said, ‘we want it to be a non-film album.’ And I didn’t even
understand what he meant, because I didn’t realize that all albums [in India]
came from a film. (Personal communication with the author, 2010)

Like “Aap jaisa koi”, Appaiah and Hassan recorded the new LP in London.
The first of the Appaiah-Hassan collaborations, Disco Deewani (“Disco
Madness”), was released in 1981 and was literally South Asia’s first non-­
film pop hit recording. As a result of the album’s unprecedented success,
Nazia Hassan and, to a lesser extent, her brother Zoheb emerged as South
Asia’s first pop music stars outside the context of the film industry. The
public response to the Qurbani soundtrack and to Disco Deewani inspired
similar efforts by others; but most of subsequent albums had clear involve-
ment from the film music industry and, again, made frequent use of con-
tent from foreign sources.
Film playback singer Mahendra Kapoor was another early entrant into
the non-film disco field. He followed closely on the heels of Disco Deewani
in 1981 and also relied on a British recording studio. Along with Kapoor
and female vocalist Musarrat, the third “M” in the LP’s title—M3 Disco
Fantasy In Hindi (1981)—was Boney M., whose Magic of Boney M great-
est hits collection (1980) had some impact in India based on its global
popularity. The majority of the tracks on Kapoor’s release were simply
Boney M. songs re-recorded with Hindi lyrics: “Tere hum, tere hain” (“I
Am Yours”), for example, is a re-recording of Boney M.’s 1976 hit,
“Daddy Cool”. The ‘in Hindi’ part of the title of Kapoor’s album explic-
itly markets a crucial aspect of this LP’s cultural meaning. By including
this linguistic information in the LP’s title, the producers were clearly
informing prospective buyers that they were buying songs whose lyrics
they would be able to understand, unlike western pop, but like Hindi film
song. This moved disco away from the largely elite listenership whose
backgrounds included English-medium educations and who bought for-
eign pop recordings (sung in English) when they could and who listened
to Indian rock and pop bands who performed English-language covers of
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 139

western pop on the relatively sparse nightclub or dance-concert scene (an

audience that, for the most part, disdained the Hindi cinema).
The impact of the Boney M. greatest hits LP in India was considerable;
Bappi Lahiri’s extensive engagement with the world of non-film popular
music was also inspired by the ‘non-film’ orientation of the western music
industry: ‘I saw that abroad non-film was very big, so I thought I should
do that also’ (personal communication with the author, 2012). Lahiri spe-
cifically mentioned Boney M. to me in this context, implying the relatively
small size of the sample of foreign music available for the Indian audience.
Lahiri recorded the first of a series of non-film LPs in 1982, again using a
London studio (EMI’s famous Abbey Road facility). SuperRuna—Bappi
Lahiri Presents Runa Laila, featured another non-Indian South Asian
vocalist (the Bangladeshi vocalist Runa Laila).
For HMV and the Indian market generally, Disco Deewani and
SuperRuna, albeit to a lesser extent, were big hits. Biddu Appaiah pointed
out to me the commercial disparities, in the consumption of non-film
recordings especially, between the UK and India that revealed themselves
in the run-up to the release of Disco Deewani.

I got a call from the secretary of Mr. Anil Sood (then the Managing Director
of the Gramophone Company of India) saying they’ve heard the album, and
everyone loves it and they think they can sell 25,000 copies. To me that
sounded like peanuts, but to them was like ‘Wow! 25,000 copies!’. Just
before the release, Mr. Sood calls me again, and says, ‘We’re going to do
something we’ve never done before, we’re going to print 100,000 copies’
And I’m still like, ‘great, whatever. I’m 6,000 miles away, I don’t have any
sense of the reality there.’ (Personal communication with the author, 2010)

Disco Deewani was South Asia’s first pop music hit. The LP sold in Pakistan
and in the South Asian overseas communities (especially the U. K.) as well
as in India itself. Biddu Appaiah told me, ‘that album sold 3,000,000 cop-
ies of the long-playing disc. And whatever Qurbani may have done, that
album helped to solidify that kind of music and Nazia Hassan in India’
(personal communication with the author, 2010).
Indian, Pakistani and British consumers had never heard non-filmi pop
music, sung in Hindi, with the relatively sophisticated production values
that Appaiah could bring to the process. Disco Deewani did establish ‘that
kind of music’ in India; but the LP and disco generally were three to five
years too early to benefit from the first substantial wave of Indian popular
140 G. D. BOOTH

music and popular music companies that arrived in the mid-1980s, fuelled
by the emergence of a legitimate audio-cassette economy. In 1981, India’s
two music companies, The Gramophone Company and Polydor had been
licensed to produce pre-recorded cassettes for less than 12 months; total
legitimate cassette production is estimated to have been less four million
units annually, and prices (for both cassettes and LPs) remained prohibi-
tively high. The importance of disco in this context was not merely that it
was the first western style of pop music to establish itself in India, but that
it established itself through the medium and the ideologies of film song
and did so in Hindi, rather than in English. Consequently, disco had an
important audience base in the less-educated, lower middle- and working-­
class youth who became the primary in-theatre consumers of films and
film song for much of the 1980s.

Conclusion: Disco, Class and Ideology

in the Hindi Cinema

The creative and appropriative processes than produced disco in the Hindi
cinema of the 1980s and that led to songs such as “Disco Dancer” and
“Jeena bhi kya hai jeena” were not qualitatively different than those that
had produced songs such as “Kaun yeh aaya mehfil mein” (“Who is this
who has come to our party”), picturized on actor Shammi Kapoor in the
1959 film Dil Deke Dekho (“If you give your heart, watch out”). That
song was composer Usha Khanna’s borrowed version of the pop hit
“Diana”, recorded in 1957 by teen idol Paul Anka. In India, “Diana” was
largely unknown; but like “Jeena bhi kya hai jeena”, “Kaun yeh aaya mehfil
mein” re-situated the primary melodies of the American original into a
suitably filmi musical arrangement with Hindi lyrics. The melody brought
the flavour of American popular culture to the song scene, in support of
actor Shammi Kapoor’s growing career as a symbol of that culture. That
symbolism was based on Kapoor’s physical similarity to Elvis Presley, who
was widely known as a popular culture icon of the late 1950s and early
1960s. In his dancing, his hair style, his appearance and his song scenes,
Kapoor enacted an approximation of Elvis for an Indian audience whose
access to the original was severely or entirely limited by India’s protection-
ist regulatory framework and by poverty, either on a personal or on a
national level. In the same way, Chakraborty’s physical appearance and his
song scene performances made him India’s answer to Michael Jackson,
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 141

who, in the 1980s, was again the one contemporary western pop star of
which most Indians were aware.
Mithun Chakraborty’s success as the disco hero of the 1980s, there-
fore, was in part the outcome of the well-established cultural and musical
process that was one central feature of the commercial Hindi cinema, a
process in which some producers sought to offer a vision of western (but
increasingly globalized) youth culture for Indian consumption. That pro-
cess had begun even before Shammi Kapoor’s production of an Indianized,
Hindi-speaking Elvis. Although Chakraborty’s engagement in this process
was broadly similar, the nature of disco itself, together with a shifting tech-
nological, regulatory and socio-cultural context of the 1980s, allowed
disco to develop a much stronger presence in mainstream Indian culture.
I have argued that disco was an explicitly deployed genre label and that
in the Hindi cinema it was a fetishized symbol as much as it was a musical
style. Hindi film music creators had less success with the musical style fea-
tures of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, rock ‘n’ roll
never achieved a position as a named, let alone fetishized genre label.
Although Shammi Kapoor (and other actors) enacted versions of late
1950s/early 1960s rock ‘n’ roll performance style, I am only aware of one
usage of the actual term ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ in the Hindi cinema of those years:
the alleged ‘rock ‘n’ roll club’ visited by Shammi Kapoor and actress
Vyjayanthimala as picturized in the song scene “Aaja, aaja, main hoon
pyaar tera” (“Come on, come on, I’m your love”) from Teesri Manzil
(“The Third Floor”, 1966).
Ironically, it was the success of disco as a genre label in the early 1980s,
that—together with the growing impact of globalization—led to songs
that verbally referenced ‘rock’ or ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, in films such as Meri Jung
(“My War”, 1985), Ilzaam (“Suspicion”, 1986) and Main Balwaan (“I
Am Strong”, 1986). The irony, of course, lies in the fact that by that point
rock ‘n’ roll was a historical genre, as a song in Main Balwaan (with music
by Bappi Lahiri) made clear. Anjaan’s lyrics suggest that ‘pehele rock ‘n’
roll, phir aaya twist, phir aaya disco, ab break dance’ (“first came rock ‘n’
roll, then came the Twist, then disco, now break dance”). By the time
Meri Jung was released in 1985, disco was beginning to be old fashioned,
both in terms of developments in western popular culture and changes in
India and Indian film culture.
The relative success of disco as a named genre in the Hindi cinema was
in part the result of its historical position relative to globalization. In the
first half of the 1980s globalization, although still incipient, was advanced
142 G. D. BOOTH

enough that disco as a foreign genre had more Indian impact than had
rock ‘n’ roll. Nevertheless, the benefits of globalization were still confined
primarily to upper-class Indians; widespread, mass-market access to west-
ern culture was still some years away. The impact of globalization on dis-
co’s presence in India was amplified by the specific ideologies and the
material and performative culture of disco, at least as perceived and repro-
duced in India. Disco’s constituent visual focus on tailored clothes, coiffed
hair, glittering venues and carefully choreographed dance moves was more
amenable to the tastes and aesthetics of mass popular culture in India than
had been much of western rock or pop from the mid-1960s through the
1970s, which had been increasingly populated by relatively small guitar
bands and long-haired musicians whose performances and visual images
were often idiosyncratic and whose on-stage movements had little to do
with dance as the Hindi cinema understood it.
Disco offered Indian film-makers multiple opportunities to stage elabo-
rate song scenes with glittering and often revealing costumes and choreo-
graphed lines of uniformed musicians and dancers. These scenes almost
always produced a musical, exoticized and sexualized vision of modernity
based on elements of western popular culture. Just as importantly, the
explicit connection between disco and relatively structured social dancing
made disco a more cinematic genre than the guitar bands of the rock era.
Some of disco dancing’s most popular representations, such as the perfor-
mative, exhibitionist and competitive masculinity shown in disco’s
Hollywood manifesto, Saturday Night Fever (1977), entirely suited the
strictly gendered, narrative and cinematic conventions of the Hindi cinema.
The extent to which disco as a musical style focused on the song and its
arrangement, the extent to which disco singing style was dominated by
controlled vocal production, the frequent use of relatively larger ensem-
bles and lush orchestral or synthesized accompaniment also made sense for
the Hindi film music industry. Any oppositional or alternative ideological
content that disco’s popular culture might have possessed in the west was
subtle enough to be either invisible or dismissible in India. Overall, disco
was a better fit for the Hindi cinema than any earlier western popular
genre since the late 1950s/early 1960s had been, when Shammi Kapoor
enacted Elvis Presley’s industrially structured mainstream stardom.
Mithun Chakraborty’s heroism was more than an updated version of
Shammi Kapoor based on new music however. Chakraborty’s hero-­
predecessors, Shammi Kapoor and actor Rajesh Khanna—who emerged as
Kapoor’s successor to youth culture film stardom in 1969—embodied the
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 143

Hindi cinema’s idealized understanding of the relationships between mid-

dle- and upper-class Indian youth and the music, fashion, dance and
behaviours associated with western youth culture. Both Kapoor and
Khanna routinely played heroes who were respectable, middle-class sons,
but who somehow found themselves in questionable circumstances
(orphaned, abandoned, betrayed etc.). They grappled regularly with the
dilemmas of middle-class morality and with recuperating their families’
(and especially their fathers’) reputations. The conclusions of their films
were either tragic or signalled a return to traditional, post-colonial, Indian,
family values, as those were constructed in the cinema.
When Khanna was, in turn, replaced by Amitabh Bachchan in the
mid-­1970s and early 1980s, the latter’s heroism was more adult and often
more violent—but also less musical—than those of his predecessors.
Although Bachchan’s heroes were sometimes of explicitly lower-class ori-
gin, Vitali has nevertheless argued that Bachchan’s heroism was not actu-
ally representative of the ‘lumpen proletarian’ figures he sometimes played.
She has further suggested that a key element of the audience for his films
remained ‘the English-speaking, middle-class public’ (Vitali 2005, 128).
The construction of male heroism in the Hindi cinema is a complex topic,
well beyond the scope of this study. Nevertheless, Kapoor, Khanna and
Bachchan, with their various connections to youth culture, western popu-
lar music, male heroism and socio-economic class, form the historical con-
text in which Mithun Chakraborty’s fighter/disco-dancer hero must be
understood.
Chakraborty’s version of cinematic hero dominated the first half of the
1980s and was directly linked to disco; but it would be equally correct to
suggest that disco was defined by the nature of Chakraborty’s perfor-
mances. Compared to his predecessors, Chakraborty was a new kind of
action hero. On screen, Chakraborty appeared smaller and slighter and
darker than his predecessors. Although he himself was part of a slowly
growing and increasingly educated Indian middle class, he was neither
from the Panjab nor from the northern Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh,
which had been the source of a great many of the Hindi cinema’s heroes,
including the three discussed here. Although he was not the first to estab-
lish his heroism with his fists, the degree of apparent moral and social
sanction for the violence he inflicted was greater than for any earlier hero.
In addition, of course, Chakraborty frequently demonstrated his heroism
through mastery on the dance stage, as a disco dancer.
144 G. D. BOOTH

The cinematic world that Chakraborty inhabited was more cynical, vio-
lent, misogynist and sexualized than that those in which predecessors,
even Amitabh Bachchan, had been situated. His characters were less fre-
quently the sons of fathers who were explicitly upper/middle-class white-­
collar workers. Compared especially to Bachchan’s heroes, Chakraborty’s
characters’ fathers—in films such as Boxer (1984), Kasam Paide Karne
Wale Ki or Dance Dance—were often depicted as weak, failed figures. In
others, such as Disco Dancer or Aandhi Toofan (“Howling Storm”, 1985),
they are completely absent from the narrative. In films such as Pyar Jukhta
Nahi (“Love Does Not Submit”, 1985) social imbalances are sharply
drawn and are more clearly defined by the economic parameters of the
socio-economic strata. Across the spectrum of 1980s action films (includ-
ing many starring Bachchan) villainy was personal and victory frequently
marked more by the violent deaths of those villains than by the reassertion
of family status and/or the cleansing of a father’s tarnished reputation. In
Kasam Paide Karne Wale Ki, for example, in which Chakraborty was fea-
tured in the Indianized versions of “Billie Jean” (above), he inflicts bloody
death for bloody death on the villains, spurred on by actress Smita Patil
who, as his vengeful, widowed mother, explicitly encourages him to vio-
lence and retribution. Following Mukherjee’s (2017) argument,
Chakraborty (and the films in which he starred) was Amitabh Bachchan
recast for an explicitly lower socio-economic audience. In the 1980s, the
nature of Chakraborty’s heroism, the appeal of disco and the nature of its
representation all became implicated in the disparities surrounding access
to the benefits or privileges of globalization that were increasingly marked
by the 1980s.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, post-colonial India was largely con-
sumed with the struggle to build a new national identity and socio-­
economic infrastructure. The innovators and stars of India’s post-colonial
commercial cinema were all at the height of their powers and Indian fasci-
nation with Hollywood was, if not fading, then increasingly overshadowed
by the indigenous film culture, which—in the complete absence of televi-
sion or commercial radio—was India’s primary source of glamour and
excitement. Many of the country’s 3000 cinemas theatres were still presti-
gious social venues and direct access to western popular culture was largely
for those at the very upper end of socio-economic spectrum. Shammi
Kapoor’s heroism was constructed for a non-English speaking, inward-­
looking audience, one without direct access to Elvis Presley or western
youth culture.
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 145

By 1980, on the other hand, globalization was beginning to gather

speed, its impact beginning to spread beyond the higher levels of Indian
society. What is more, during the 1980s the Indian cinema began to face
real competition for viewers: the country’s first television serial appeared
in 1984, for example, on a national network that by then reached roughly
70% of the country and that was also broadcasting weekly films and film-­
song programmes. Videocassettes and players also made their appearance
in these years and made possible an entirely new, global and rarely legal
commerce in video-cassette versions of commercial films, both Indian and
foreign. For the first time, the growing number of Indians who could
afford to do so could watch movies at home (as well as on buses, in small
‘video theatres’ and other venues).
In the context of an ageing movie theatre infrastructure, the absence of
air-conditioning, the inconsistency of electrical supply and ongoing con-
cerns in some sectors of Indian society about women in public spaces,
family audiences stayed home in increasing numbers and had more alter-
natives for entertainment when they did so. For the young, mostly male
audience that preferred not to watch relatively bland family programming
or who were poor enough to be excluded from private options, movie
theatres remained the common choice. For this often disenfranchised and
largely lower or lower middle-class group, action, exotic modernity and
the erotic display of female bodies were the primary attractions. In typi-
cally circular fashion, the subsequent growth of low budget, action films,
to meet the demands of that audience further discouraged those family
groups that were still inclined to attend cinema theatres. This dynamic
contributed to Chakraborty’s position as the poor man’s hero—the
‘lumpen proletarian’ figure that Bachchan was not—and to the position of
disco as an exciting, masculine and exotically modern means of defining
heroism in the Hindi cinema.
Because globalization had its greatest initial impact on upper levels of
society, class became an increasingly important part of the definition of
Indians who could not access the original artefacts of western culture. In
the growing divide, language came to play an important role. As late as
1991, the Indian census was reporting that only 11% of the population
identified English as a second or third language (Azam et al. 2013, 338);
these authors have noted that lower socio-economic status and subsequent
levels of education naturally made for lower levels of English comprehen-
sion. Those without access included those who could not enjoy the lyrics
146 G. D. BOOTH

of English-language pop music; as an audience sector, it was a category

subject to slowly sharpening class distinctions.
Disco’s relatively ‘low class’ ideologies are reflected, at least indirectly,
in other aspects of India’s monolithic film music industry. Vijay Lazarus
was Managing Director of Music India Ltd. for much of the 1980s; this
was the Indian-owned successor to the trans-national Polydor and one of
the early developers of the non-film music market. He has argued that
Music India’s early focus on ghazals (a light classical music and poetry
genre) was an explicit bid for educated, middle-class consumers and that
such consumers were growing tired of film song. In an interview con-
ducted by Anil Chopra in the first issue of Playback>> And Fast Forward,
Lazarus suggested that film song had become dominated by disco and (as
he implies) Bappi Lahiri (Lazarus in Chopra 1986). Ghazals, or film songs
in the style of ghazals, often featured in films made for an adult market,
such as the two 1981 films, Silsila (“Chain of Connections”) or Umrao
Jaan. Disco was the music of Indian youth culture, but mostly of that sec-
tor of Indian youth who were entirely dependent on Hindi and theatres
for their entertainment.
In another view of disco’s positioning within Indian popular culture,
Mumbai’s film-makers may have accepted the necessity of disco and of
Chakraborty; but the cinema establishment does not appear to have been
impressed by it, or prepared to formally acknowledge, let alone reward, its
popularity. The extent of the establishment’s negativity towards
Chakraborty and disco is perceptible in the nominations and awards made
by the juries for the Filmfare Awards, India’s equivalent to the Academy
or BAFTA awards. Despite his domination of the Hindi box office
throughout the 1980s, Mithun Chakraborty’s first Filmfare nomination
(and first award) did not come until 1990. That award was for Best
Supporting Actor, in a role he played alongside Amitabh Bachchan, who
had been Bollywood’s reigning male hero of the 1970s, and who waged a
fitfully successful comeback career throughout the 1980s. Although
Chakraborty is now a respected elder of the Mumbai film world, he was
never nominated for Best Actor. It is just as instructive that although
Bappi Lahiri was nominated for best music director for five different
soundtracks in the awards for 1981, 1982 and 1984, only one of those
soundtracks—not a winner—was picturized on Chakraborty. Lahiri’s only
winning soundtrack, Sharabi (“Drunk”, 1984), featured neither disco nor
Chakraborty; it was picturized instead on Amitabh Bachchan.
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 147

I have described Amitabh Bachchan’s foray into disco in one of his

comeback films from 1988 (“Disco Bhangara”, above). In 1988, Amitabh
Bachchan was 46 years old and had just returned to filming after two
major health crises and a brief and unsuccessful venture into politics. His
new films, and song scenes such as “Disco Bhangara”, primarily demon-
strated his inability to portray the action hero he had been even five years
earlier. What is more, by 1988, disco itself, as a distinct and distinctly
meaningful genre, was being subsumed by the emergence of non-film
Hindi pop music generated by a growing and diversifying cassette-based
music industry. Simultaneously, disco’s exploitative and lower-class asso-
ciations were beginning to seem out of place in a resurgent Hindi cinema
that was developing a newly traditional orchestral sound and a new ideo-
logical vision of youth culture, one that would be suitable for an equally
re-engaged family audience in an incipiently optimistic India of the 1990s.
This study has demonstrated the extent to which Mithun Chakraborty
and disco as a musical and performative genre were enmeshed in the pro-
duction of 1980s cinematic heroism and more broadly the ways in which
disco in India interacted with India’s position in a globalizing world.
Chakraborty was the first actor since Shammi Kapoor to be defined so
consistently in terms of his dancing and his connection to a western musi-
cal genre; but disco was also the first such genre to dominate the Hindi
cinema. Chakraborty—who was 29 years old when Disco Dancer was
released—was a hero for the 1980s, especially the middle years from 1982
through 1988. In these years of India’s waning economic, cultural and
regulatory isolation from the global culture industry, the west, and pri-
marily American popular culture, still represented modernity, glamour and
exotic excitement and the Chakraborty-disco construction came to signify
that ideology for a sector of the mass audience that had few options. The
need for such a signification and its social and ideological position in India,
changed, however, as Indian society as a whole responded to the growing
impact of globalization, which had been held at bay in India throughout
the 1950s to 1970s. As the technological, industrial, social and political
results of globalization gained intensity, disco’s moment in the Indian sun
declined.
In the context of the popular culture of the Hindi cinema, I would be
remiss to conclude this study of disco without noting the recent remake of
Nazia Hassan’s 1980 hit, “Disco Deewani” in a song scene from the 2012
Hindi film Student of the Year. Remakes, in which old Hindi film songs are
upgraded through a process of re-recording, have been a popular
148 G. D. BOOTH

phenomenon in Hindi film music in recent years. The song scene, techni-
cally listed as “The Disco Song”, features the voices of two contemporary
film singers, Benny Dayal and Sunidhi Chauhan, merged with portions of
the original “Disco Deewani” vocal track sung by Nazia Hassan. As always,
disco is located in the midst of behaviours that have their roots in western
culture: in this scene, some combination of the reality television/talent
contest format (complete with celebrity judges) and the high school ball/
prom. In globalized India, both phenomena were thoroughly indigenized
by 2012.
Under a brightly lit theatre marquee, with a flashing “Disco Deewani”
headline, the song begins with an electronic vamp that accompanies elec-
tronically enhanced, vaguely hip-hop style vocals. This leads to a newly
composed melody that is really more a verse in the western sense than it is
a Hindi filmi mukhda. After the verse, a break leads to the invocation of a
cinematic version of audience participation: ‘You know, so sing it; now
throw your hands up and say’. The break in turn introduces Hassan’s
opening “disco deewani” vocal line, speeded up and auto-tuned to fit with
the new material. This is the only portion of the original that is used here;
but as South Asia’s first pop hit, it is very recognizable and acts as the
song’s chorus/refrain. It is symbolic of the degree of social change in
India that the scene includes a dancing couple who are explicitly gay; but
it is also ironic, if not unexpected, that disco, which began as a symbol of
western modernity for the lower, non-English-speaking sectors of Indian
society during the opening days of widespread globalization, should reap-
pear here as a symbol of South Asian prestige and nostalgia.

Notes
1. Hindi song and film titles are translated on first appearance except where the
titles consist of proper nouns only. All translations are by the author. When
not referred to in the text, the titles of the films in which a song appears fol-
low the song titles, in brackets. The songs referred to in this study can nor-
mally be found on YouTube.
2. The website produced by Karthik S., http://www.itwofs.com/, traces the
sources of a large number of Hindi film songs, by nearly 20 different com-
posers. The site notes that Lahiri was inspired by musical content from the
Buggles, Ottawan and UB40 as well as those mentioned above.
 DISCO, DANCING, GLOBALIZATION AND CLASS IN 1980S HINDI CINEMA 149

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into the Indian Soundscape. In More than Bollywood—Studies in Indian Popular
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University Press.
Chopra, Anil. 1986. Interview with Vijay Lazarus. In Playback>> And Fast
Forward Issue 1, June.
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the Global in Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur. In Music in Contemporary
Indian Film: memory Voice, Identity, ed. Jayson Beasteer-Jones and Natalie
Sarrazin, 176–191. New York: Routledge.
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Discography
Appaiah, Biddu. 1981. Disco Deewani. The Gramophone Company of India.
Boney M.. 1980. M3—Disco The Magic of Boney M. Sony BMG Music
Entertainment.
Jackson, Michael. 1982. Thriller. Epic/CBS.
———. 1984. Bad. Epic/CBS.
Lahiri, Bappi, and Runa Laila. 1982. SuperRuna—Bappi Lahiri Presents Runa
Laila. The Gramophone Company of India.
Musarrat & Kapoor, Mahendra. 1981. M3 Disco Fantasy In Hindi. Multitone.

Filmography
Ali, Muzaffar (Dir.). 1981. Umrao Jaan.
Anand, Dev (Dir.). 1971. Hare Rama Hare Krishna.
———. 1973. Heera Panna.
Anand, Mukul S. (Dir.). 1986. Main Balwaan.
Anand, Vijay (Dir.). 1966. Teesri Manzil.
Badham, John (Dir.). 1977. Saturday Night Fever.
Chopra, Yash (Dir.). 1981. Silsila.
150 G. D. BOOTH

Desai, Manmohan (Dir.). 1988. Gangaa, Jamunaa, Saraswathi.

Hussain, Nasir (Dir.). 1959. Dil Deke Dekho.
Johar, Karan (Dir.). 2012. Student of the Year.
Khan, Feroze (Dir.). 1980. Qurbani.
Mitra, Shibu (Dir.). 1986. Ilzaam.
Mohan, Surendra (Dir.). 1982. Haathkadi.
Nagaich, Ravikant (Dir.). 1981. Sahhas.
Pande, Vinod (Dir.). 1982. Star.
Sadanah, Vijay (Dir.). 1985. Pyar jukhta nahi.
Sippy, Raj N. (Dir.). 1984. Boxer.
Sippy, Ramesh (Dir.). 1980. Shaan.
Subhash, Babbar (Dir.). 1982. Disco Dancer.
———. 1984. Kasm Paida Karne Wale Ki.
———. 1985. Aandhi Toofan.
———. 1987. Dance Dance.
Subhash, Ghai (Dir.). 1985. Meri Jung.
 Dancing Desire, Dancing Revolution:
Sexuality and the Politics of Disco in China
Since the 1980s

Qian Wang

The year 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of China’s political and eco-
nomic reform. Whether contemporary China is seen as operating under
state capitalism or under socialism with Chinese characteristics, there is no
doubt that the country has transformed into a new nation. Over the course
of the past four decades of change, popular music as a cultural form has
become embedded into the daily lives of Chinese people, critically record-
ing the country’s social progress. Among various popular music genres
and styles, Chinese disco has so far failed to receive as much attention as
rock, with the latter generally seen as more politicised (Brace and
Friedlander 1992; Jones 1992; de Kloet 2001; Huang 2001). However,
while so-called Chinese rock actually refers to Beijing’s local scene during
the 1980s and early 1990s, disco became a national phenomenon in the
early 1980s, when it generated a profound social impact on the country.
According to the government newspaper Guangming Daily (Schell 1988),

Q. Wang (*)
The School of Literature and Journalism, Yibin University, Yibin, P. R. China
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 151

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_7
152 Q. WANG

disco became a symbol of political reform. When a group of university

students associated with the Tianjin Communist Youth League discussed
the image of Chinese youth in the 1980s, a student offered the bold
observation that: ‘[youth league] party member = progress + disco’. The
reporter explained that ‘progress’ referred to the continuity of reform,
while ‘disco was a metaphor for practitioners and leaders of modern life-
style’ (Schell 1988, 356). But Chinese disco did not develop exactly how
the student hoped.
A disco fever swept through China between 1985 and 1989. These
were years marked both by a surge in the production of disco music (the
‘Disco Queen’, Zhang Qiang, released 19 albums from 1985 to 1989,
and was listed amongst the most popular female singers in the world by
Time magazine in 1986), and by a proliferation of interest in disco (Zhang
1985; Xu 1987; Liao 1989). Although most criticism saw it as a vulgar
entertainment phenomenon (Jiang 1985; Han 1986; Chen 1987) disco in
these years served as an invisible catalyst, triggering the sexual revolution
and the development of indigenous popular music. This chapter thus aims
to discuss how disco has functioned and continues to function both as a
music form and as a social and cultural drive vis-à-vis the social transforma-
tion of China; in particular, we will look at what the politics of disco were,
how they evolved, and how the sexuality of disco transformed from the
1980s to the present.

Chinese Definitions of Disco

The Chinese word for disco is Disike, a term which immediately displays
western roots—because effectively, Disike does not mean anything.1 Each
character has its multiple meanings, but in general, Di means ‘to enlighten’,
Si means ‘this’, and Ke means ‘science’. These three terms together display
no cultural logic underpinning a link between this western popular music
form and Chinese traditions. Elderly people used to think that disco was
called Tisigou (‘dance of kicking the dog to death’) because of the leg-­
kicks that featured in the dance. Corrected by the young, older genera-
tions later used another term, Choujinwu (‘cramp dance’), which was a
reference to disco’s twisting body movements. As disco rapidly won over
the urban youth across the nation, Bengdi (dance disco) and Diting (disco
ballroom) also became popular terms. Beng means ‘to jump up and down’;
this spontaneity of body movement symbolised a freedom of expression
which offered a release from decades of ideological and bodily discipline.
 DANCING DESIRE, DANCING REVOLUTION: SEXUALITY… 153

Disco and disco ballrooms not only represented a modern and cosmopoli-
tan lifestyle, but were also a political gesture in the pursuit of long-banned
individualism and liberalism, and thus embodied the tensions between
modernity and tradition, politics and economy, gentility and lust. The
social turmoil of 1989 showed how these factors clashed together in the
process of globalisation and in the campaign against westernisation. Disco
in China was never just a musical genre or dance style; rather, it was a
complex cultural site within which social forces competed against each
other, producing different effects and variations in order to serve their
political, economic, cultural, and ideological purpose.
While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when disco was first formally
introduced to the Chinese public, the publication of the collection of
short stories The Person Who Can Dance Disco in 1981 proves how quickly
disco emerged in China.2 But despite its rampant popularity—for the sake
of public security and ideological control—disco was criticised for being a
symbol of artistic decadence in comparison to Chinese classical music.
Some scholars (Zhou 1981; Huang 1982; Yu 1983) labelled disco a low-
brow music harmful to arts and culture. Others blamed it for damaging
health from the perspective of medical science (Song 1983). There was
even a report claiming that a young man’s life had been completely ruined
by disco, a culture supposedly linked to hooligans, gangsters, gambling,
and crime (Hangzhou Daily 1983, 3).
A widespread enthusiasm for western democracy and political reform
had already triggered student movements in Shanghai and Beijing prior to
the 1989 upheaval, and the fact that many students were passionate fans
of disco implicitly and inevitably politicised the genre. In the years of the
disco fever, however, the government altered its strategy of control by
incorporating disco into the official culture to serve its propaganda pur-
poses. While this experiment failed to tame disco into a government-­
approved music and style, it nevertheless obliged disco to diversify,
producing unexpected variations and effects. These can be roughly divided
into three categories: political, cultural, and lifestyle-related. These were
interconnected with each other, and left distinctive legacies. Each is now
discussed in turn.
154 Q. WANG

The Political Assimilation of Disco in China

Disco in China was subject to a process of political assimilation which
aimed to revise its value and meaning, manage its cultural consumption,
and reduce conflict between control and resistance. This kind of process
often takes advantage of large-scale events that can act as a context for
assimilation, and the 1979–1989 Sino-Vietnamese War provided the per-
fect opportunity to press disco into service as a form of official propa-
ganda. Frontline soldiers loved dancing to disco music, and although this
phenomenon effectively demonstrated how influential disco had become,
it also made it possible to stage disco as a symbol of military spirit and
masculine patriotism. In his 1988 anthology Disco of Fighting for Life and
Death, the poet and writer Zhou Liangpei, who worked at the Yunnan
branch of the state-owned China Writers Association, used terms such as
Pinming Disike (‘Disco of fighting for life and death’), Maoerdong Disike
(‘Foxhole Disco’), Shouqiang Disike (‘Pistol Disco’), and Niu Jin Disike
(‘Sprain Disco’), conceptualising them as terms jokingly used by frontline
soldiers (Zhou 1988). In his poetry, Zhou portrayed the brutal war in
hyperbolic and poetic language:

Dance the Disco of fighting for life and death

Dance Disco madly

Rockets fly in supersonic speed, leave bloody trajectories

Cannons colour clouds red in the skies
Rhythm in the roar, roar in the rhythm
Disco music is resounding in the battlefield …

Fight with no fear

If we are scared to death, we will not fight
We dance the Disco of fighting for life and death
We dance the Disco of fighting for life and death

Attack, seize positions

Fight guns against guns, bayonets against bayonets
We truly dance Disco madly
We dance Disco to fight for life and death. (Zhou 1988, 23–24)
 DANCING DESIRE, DANCING REVOLUTION: SEXUALITY… 155

The kind of rhetoric we encounter in Zhou, which binds disco to the mili-
tary spirit needed to win the war, is an example of how the propaganda
apparatus used disco to establish a link between modern lifestyles and
patriotism. The journalist Wang Heping also juxtaposed the image of a
‘Disco Prince’ with the image of a commando captain in order to portray
a valiant and modern soldier (Wang 1986). Although many may find this
kind of parallel unconvincing, it is interesting to note that these images
continue to circulate in contemporary China; for example, when a dance
art school in Yancheng recently remade “Battlefield Disco” (Zhandi
Disike) into a children’s dance programme and performed it at the local
Spring Festival Gala in 2016, the official website People’s Daily Online
wrote that ‘sometimes, original creativity is an attitude: its value lies in the
concept, faith, and intellectual impetus behind that creativity’ (People’s
Daily Online 2016). This kind of comment illustrates how the 1980s leg-
acy of politicised disco still lingers in contemporary Chinese culture, and
it is likely that it will not disappear anytime soon.

The Cultural Assimilation of Disco in China

For centuries, the richness of Chinese culture has offered psychological
compensation to its citizens for the country’s political, military, and eco-
nomic turbulence. Although in his famous 1949 opening address at the
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Mao had
signalled the end of the western military presence, by announcing that
‘the Chinese people had stood up’, this was not the end of western influ-
ence, especially as throughout the 1980s foreign languages, western phi-
losophy, global politics, and popular culture all proved to hold great appeal
for the masses. Enthusiasm for the West was seen as a threat to the com-
munist regime, and disco was portrayed as evidence of China’s westernisa-
tion in terms of eroticism, immorality, and vulgarity. The scholar Le Yi
even accused disco of risking the (hypothetical) disappearance of tradi-
tional arts and culture, such as the Peking Opera (Le 1985, 32).
Because it was impossible to eliminate disco from China, a strategy of
cultural assimilation was also employed, which sought to belittle its value
and assert the government’s discursive authority over cultural production.
A notable example of this was the invention of ‘Qigong Disco’, a hybrid
form which linked disco to martial arts and ultimately to a form of exer-
cise, with the dual aim of embedding disco into traditional Chinese cul-
ture while lowering its status as a cultural product. Qigong (meaning ‘life
156 Q. WANG

energy cultivation’) is regarded as the most mysterious part of the martial

arts due to the invisibility of Qi (energy), which is deeply interlinked with
Chinese tradition and culture. It was introduced as a method of Chinese
medicine from the 1950s to the 1970s during a crisis in medical facilities,3
and became extremely widespread in the 1980s and 1990s, with over
60 million followers who practiced it every day, including politicians and
scientists such as President Liu Shaoqi and Qian Xuesen, the father of
Chinese rocketry (Cai 2017). Palmer has argued that the religious dimen-
sion was an important factor for the formation of ‘Qigong Fever’, and that
at its apex it essentially became a spiritual movement (Palmer 2007). The
fact that the ‘Qigong Fever’ overlapped with the disco fever provided a
reasonable excuse to link the two together, thus downgrading disco in the
hierarchy of arts and culture and balancing the conflicts between tradition
and modernity, and local and global culture. Qigong tutor Wen Jiaxiu, for
example, received governmental research grants and presented papers on
Qigong Disco, lecturing hundreds of trainees in Guiyang, which was being
reported as an innovative method of exercise in 1989 (Tian 1989, 70).
Another striking example of the attempted integration of disco into
Chinese culture can be found in some Peking Opera artists, who under-
stood that young people in China were attracted to western popular music
because of its melody and rhythm, and thus tried to win them back by
modernising the art-form, quickening the rhythm, and adding stereo-
typed disco beats. These kinds of experiments were often condemned—
some critics argued that they provoked the disappearance of the Peking
Opera’s ‘aura’ and damaged its authenticity and heritage—but they were
still pursued on an official level (Enxiao 1986, 46–47). The 1990 CCTV
Chinese New Year Gala featured a children’s programme, Peking Opera
Disco, which demonstrated the extent to which the government wanted to
incorporate disco into official culture. Likely following official instruc-
tions, the wood drum dance drawn from the Miao culture was referred to
as Dongfang Disike (‘Oriental Disco’) by Chen, who saw the dance’s per-
formance in the USA as a victory of Chinese culture (Chen 1990,
175–179). Other comparisons were more absurd; Fu used the same
‘Oriental Disco’ label for Sa’erhe, a drum-beating dance performed at
Tujia nationality funerals, positing a similarity between the two (Fu 1994,
43). Unsurprisingly, the creation of this kind of concept only looked like
an attempt at political correctness, and generated no real cultural impact.
 DANCING DESIRE, DANCING REVOLUTION: SEXUALITY… 157

Disco Lifestyles
In the 1980s, disco symbolised the lifestyle of the wealthy West to Chinese
people. Lin praised the diversity and modernity of the lifestyle in
Guangzhou, where disco ballrooms and musical bars provided advanced
cultural consumption in daily life (Lin 1985, 35–36). The modern disco
lifestyle required that fans wear their best clothes when visiting Shanghai’s
Disco ballrooms, where working-class people could dream of experiencing
the atmosphere of expensive hotel discotheques (Schell 1988).
Shen believed that disco—along with, incidentally, blue jeans—should
not be regarded as signs of decadence from the West, but that instead the
Party and society at large should try to understand the public’s wish for a
change of lifestyle (Shen 1985, 34). Indeed, ten textbooks on how to
disco dance were published in the immediate aftermath of its introduction
into Chinese culture (Shi et al. 1985; Hua 1985; Sun 1986). However,
the emphasis on how to dance soon shifted to how to exercise by dancing
to disco, a shift mostly aimed at middle-aged and elderly women. Between
1987 and 1989, over 20 books on disco, disco exercise, and health were
published with names such as Jianshen Disike (‘Fitness Disco’) or Yundong
Disike (‘Exercise Disco’) (examples are Zhao and Deng 1987; Wang 1988;
Zhang et al. 1989). While this glut of publications might not have trans-
formed the image of disco from a lustful westernised form of entertain-
ment to healthy local exercise, the campaign—which crucially passed disco
from the urban youth to the elderly—planted the seeds for the eventual
transformation of Chinese disco in the 1990s and 2000s.
The government thus facilitated the progressive desexualisation, de-­
romanticisation, and ageing of Chinese disco. Disco exercise programmes
were broadcast on TV, with their associated CDs produced and circulated
throughout the 1990s. All these phenomena played a part in disco’s sub-
sequent correlation with Guangchangwu (‘square dancing’) in the two
decades that followed: a form of communal exercise organised in public
spaces every morning and evening, square dancing grew into a national
phenomenon practiced by middle-aged and elderly women across China.
In spite of these developments, disco remained a driving force in liber-
ating ordinary people’s lives in terms of their gender, sexuality, and rela-
tionships. As such, it was a force feared by the government but welcomed
by the general public. Sexual politics had been tightly controlled by the
government since 1949: relationships and marriage status were scrutinised
at work, and any public discussion of sexual pleasure was prohibited as a
158 Q. WANG

sign of dangerous capitalist degeneration, leading to a highly desexualised

and de-gendered society. Three decades of sexual repression had made
people desperate for love, romance, and physical contact, and disco offered
them the chance to experience these things, for the benefit of both the
body and the soul. Borrowing a phrase from the title of Tim Lawrence’s
pivotal volume on the history of American dance music culture in the
1970s (Lawrence 2003), we could say that in China too, love saved
the day.

The Sexualisation of Disco

Disco initially came to China as a heterosexual culture, and indeed the
term ‘homosexuality’ was unknown to the general public of the 1980s.4
By the 1990s, gay disco ballrooms temporarily provided spaces for homo-
sociality in few cities (Fu 2012). While disco did not produce an LGBT
subculture in China, it did have a significant impact on the changing sex-
ual cultural landscape of the 1980s. Ferrer (1999) argues that disco and
ballroom culture enabled the Shanghainese to join the global sexual spec-
tacle in the consumption of ‘foreign sex’—musically, culturally, and physi-
cally (Ferrer 1999).
Zhu offers a portrait of China’s disco scene in his novel Disike Gongzhu
Zhi Lian (‘Love of the Disco Princess’, 1987), where the story is framed
by symbols of the West: disco, ‘sexy ladies’, ballroom singers, Marlboro
cigarettes, cafés, wine, western cuisine, painters, art, museums, exhibi-
tions, Romain Rolland, Michelangelo, New York, and so on. This was an
imaginary world, which ordinary people at the time had no opportunity to
travel to experience themselves, but which fuelled a strong and widespread
desire to ‘reach out’. In these terms, disco became a medium, a bridge,
and a magic mirror providing a form of entrance into the global commu-
nity. The names of some of China’s ballrooms—Kiss, Dream of Love,
Buyecheng (‘Sleepless City’), Haomen (‘Rich and Powerful Clan’),
New York, and Barcelona—also attest to this desire.
Turning to the music, Chinese disco was a simple combination of com-
pletely western disco music paired with Chinese lyrics. In comparison with
the masculine vocal and symphonic style of revolutionary or propaganda
songs, disco was fresh and modern, a feel epitomised by Zhang Qiang’s
high-pitched, soft, girly voice, the use of electronics, and delicate melo-
dies. The rhythm of disco awoke long-suppressed physical instincts, and its
 DANCING DESIRE, DANCING REVOLUTION: SEXUALITY… 159

intimate, seductive, erotic movements invisibly accelerated the sexual rev-

olution and challenged the sexual politics of China in the 1980s. Pan and
Huang identified that changes in this decade manifested in sexual philoso-
phy, sexual representation, sexual behaviour, sexual relations, and femi-
nism (Pan and Huang 2013).
Disco, dance culture, and ballrooms played a unique role in redefining
attitudes to music, the body, and social life in this sexual revolution, in
ways which fundamentally rewrote the rules of romance, marriage, and
family for subsequent generations. Perhaps the power of disco can even be
traced in what Wu has singled out as four surges in the number of divorces
between 1949 and 1989: while the first three were politically driven by the
government, the last one, in the 1980s, was driven by ordinary people
whose desire for love and freedom might have been nurtured in discos,
and who needed to act upon it in their everyday life (Wu 2006). Following
the desexualised and de-gendered environment of China from 1949 to
1979, disco music became the song of the siren, seducing the masses to
follow a path to their own heaven and to enjoy the long-lost voluptuous-
ness of music, sexualising their mundane lives to ready them for a
new world.
Chairman Mao’s famous Yanan Talk in 1942 set the tone of a cultural
policy whose primary task was to strengthen the new communist state’s
ideological control. Music and dance were revolutionised and masculin-
ised to serve patriotism and nationalism, in the form of Geming Gequ
(‘revolutionary songs’) and Yangbanxi, the Modern Peking Opera. The
song and dance epic Dongfanghong (‘The East is Red’), which played in
cinemas from 1965 onwards, also offers a perfect example of the official
marriage between music, dance, and politics in China at this time. It was
not until the 1980s that the first incarnations of a more seductive popular
music were introduced to mainland audiences, via Hong Kong and
Taiwan. The Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng was criticised for being ‘deca-
dent’ and ‘voluptuous’, but she still became a national idol. However even
going beyond Teng’s melodic and soft ‘voluptuousness’, disco was aurally,
bodily, and visually sensual, and portrayed a strong sense of lust which
greatly appealed to the urban youth.
The gathering of people in public spaces mainly for social dance in
couples (Jiaoyiwu) became a perceived threat for the government at the
time. In June 1980, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of
160 Q. WANG

Culture prohibited all dance parties in public places, such as parks, squares,
restaurants, and streets. The announcement stated:

This type of dance parties has caused many problems to public security.
Some people dance disgracefully, lustfully, and immorally. Dancing places
are disordered. Hooligans fight with each other, molest and insult women,
and steal other people’s belongings, which often leads to the dancers’ death.
The general public are firmly against it, and ask for prohibition (…) cheek
to cheek, chest to chest, and body rubbing against body must be prohibited.
(Li and Zhu 2009)

This attempted prohibition of dance culture was ill-advised, and in any

case, the increasing popularity of disco effectively made it impossible. In
May 1983, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Culture
made another announcement which attempted to contain immoral and
indecent dancing, by which work units and individuals were banned from
organising dance parties. As was to be expected, however, this prohibition
was inefficient, and only served to transfer such parties from the public to
the domestic sphere. Here, erotic dances such as Heidengwu (‘dancing in
the dark’, where people could freely and safely grope each other in the
dark) and Tiemianwu (‘cheek-to-cheek dancing’) rapidly proliferated, in
turn stimulating an increase in extramarital affairs and sexual freedom.
Perhaps realising that it was unable to take control over these practices in
a practical sense, the government was eventually forced to change its poli-
cies: the ‘Notification on Strengthening the Management of Dancing
Parties’, which was jointly released by the Propaganda Department of the
Central Committee of the CPC and by the Ministry of Public Security and
the Ministry of Culture, shifted the tone from prohibition to limitation,
and allowed four ballrooms to open for foreigners and overseas Chinese in
Beijing. In April 1985, the municipal government of Tianjin released the
‘Interim Procedures for the Management of Dancing Parties’, which
finally acknowledged the legitimacy of ballroom businesses and dance cul-
ture. At this point, ballrooms mushroomed all across China, giving disco
the opportunity to reach its peak. Ballrooms and dancing parties officially
became a social place for dating, and work units organised weekly dance
parties for their employees. A well-known dance tutor, Yang Yi, recalled
these changes in Beijing:

Many young ladies did not dare to dress up and get made up in daily life. At
work units, a fashionable hairstyle was enough to make people class you as
indecent. They had to wait for a dancing party organised by their work unit.
 DANCING DESIRE, DANCING REVOLUTION: SEXUALITY… 161

Then they could then dress up and get made up casually for the party, but
in fact, this casualness was the result of several days of careful planning. (Li
and Zhu 2009)

Regardless of whether ordinary people were fully aware of what was hap-
pening, disco music, dance, parties, and fashion functioned together to
boost sexual drive and public foreplay and to ‘sex up’ their mundane lives
in the 1980s. This sexualisation was natural and personal, but also social
and political, and as such, the multi-level nature of its process reflected the
complex overall transformation of China.

Desexualisation of Disco
On the opposite side of the spectrum, disco was being desexualised in rela-
tion to traditional morality, indigenous culture, and communist ideolo-
gies. Because it was impossible to change the music and still call it disco, a
practical approach was to control the lyrics in order to filter out indecent
content. Three Chinese covers of Modern Talking’s 1986 hit “Brother
Louie” exemplify how disco was desexualised and rebranded as a music of
love and romance in order to mask its overtly sexual content and still make
it entertaining to the general public. The original, released by the German
duo, spoke about two men competing for a woman’s love.

Sandy Lam, “Liansuo Fanying” (“Chain Reaction”, 1986)

As China’s window to the outside world, Hong Kong was the hotbed of
Chinese disco in the 1980s. Local DJs Alex and Patrick Delay remixed
western disco hits (especially Italo disco), which since 1986 had been
released by Face Records in the highly influential series Hollywood East
Star Trax (Hedong) and Master Mix (Mengshi), and imported into China
by the Guangzhou branch of the China Record Corporation since 1987.
Hedong and Mengshi educated and entertained mainland musicians and
audiences, and left indelible marks on society and on individuals.
Mixed with another hit by Modern Talking, “Cheri, Cheri Lady”
(1985), “Chain Reaction” was a Cantonese cover performed by the female
pop star Sandy Lam. Written by Richard Lam, the lyrics expressed a femi-
nist attitude towards love and lust, with the female voice taking control
over her desire.5 In the 1980s Cantonese popular music dominated the
mainland market, and almost every Hong Kong pop star could have easily
162 Q. WANG

won millions of mainland fans; however, “Chain Reaction” was only pop-
ular in the Cantonese-speaking Pearl River Delta metropolitan area.

Li Yong, “Nüwu” (“Witch”, 1987)

The disco album Nüsheng (“Goddess”) was released in March 1987 in
China, with its predominant themes of sexual liberation and burning lust.
The track “Witch” is about a fairytale-style romance; it was performed by
the male singer Li Yong, and was never a hit. While in comparison to other
songs “Witch” was not explicitly sexual, in the title track “Goddess” and
the track “Lust”, lyricist Wang Jifu explicitly stressed the pleasures of love
and sex.6
“Goddess” portrayed a romantic picture of making love, and meta-
phors about breasts and genitalia could not hide its sense of sensuality;
“Lust” appealed to the general shift towards sexual freedom and accep-
tance which had taken place during the period of reform in the country.
The theme and content of this album were explicitly focused on love, lust,
and freedom, a stance which was tolerable during the ‘utopian’ period of
the 1980s, but later seen as evidence of westernisation and ideological cor-
ruption in the later campaign attempting to eliminate the obscene, the
indecent, and the erotic from Chinese popular culture. “Lust” was sung
by Liu Huan, one of China’s leading popular musicians and also the per-
former of “You and Me” with Sarah Brightman, the theme song of the
2008 Beijing Olympics. Liu is famous for his gentility, a key quality in
Chinese tradition and classic aesthetics. His involvement in the 1980s with
a rather ‘lustful’ strand of disco is just one of the factors that, in retrospect,
demonstrates the pervasiveness of disco fever three decades ago.

Deng Jieyi, “Ludeng xia de Xiaoguniang” (“A Little Girl Under

the Streetlight”, 1987)
The female singer Deng Jieyi’s “A little girl under the streetlight” was one
of the biggest disco hits of the 1980s. This song appeared on the compila-
tion album Fever 1987 I (1987), which stayed in the top three of the
album charts for three years. Musically, it was sexy and seductive with a
stereotypical disco beat, rhythm, and electronic sound; the lyrics, however,
were completely desexualised, describing a gentle relationship of care,
love, and responsibility between a kind stranger and a little girl.7 The
 DANCING DESIRE, DANCING REVOLUTION: SEXUALITY… 163

mismatch between the ‘sexy’ music and the desexualised lyrics did not
hinder this song’s popularity.
The different levels of popularity of the three covers discussed here can-
not easily be explained from the perspective of style or taste, but it is obvi-
ous that the story of a little girl under the streetlight would have no
problem with the censorship and promotional systems controlled by the
government, which might have been the reason for its prominence.
The desexualisation of disco was not solely engineered via the elimina-
tion of erotic lyrics; its function and market were also reset, as the afore-
mentioned promotion of disco as a form of exercise for middle-aged
people demonstrates: this was the age group who had earlier experienced
the politicisation of dance in the form of loyalty dances to Chairman Mao
(Zhongziwu) during the Cultural Revolution, and who were later involved
with the emergence of square dancing in the 1990s. The year 1989 marked
the sorrowful end of a golden age of liberty and diversity, and the social
trauma of 1989 drove the younger generations away from political inter-
ests. Disco music, dance, and ballrooms were still popular, but the disco
fever dwindled in cities, moving to less densely populated metropolitan
areas, such as county towns. The introduction of other forms of entertain-
ment, such as Hollywood blockbusters, also distracted young people away
from disco in the 1990s. In the aforementioned context of square danc-
ing, middle-aged and elderly women became the loyal practitioners of a
form of disco—but this was no longer the same disco that had kindled
desire in young people in the 1980s. Indeed, popular music, ethnic music,
and propaganda music had been remixed in the disco style for square
dancing; examples of this are Zuixuan Minzufeng (‘the most dazzling folk
style’), Zouxikou (‘Go West’), and Nanniwan (‘Nanni Bay’), which were
played for square dancers all over China every day, much to the disgust of
the club dancers, who regarded western disco as the original and authentic
form of disco music.

Resexualisation of Disco
The accumulation of cultural exchange and a flurry of academic studies
since the 1990s have allowed Chinese people to gain a better understand-
ing of western cultures and homosexuality, including the LGBT origins of
disco (Li and Wang 1992; Li 1998; Zhang 1994; Fang 1995). Although
homosexuality was deleted from the state’s list of psychological diseases in
2001, Shanghai Pride was approved in 2008, and LGBT communities
164 Q. WANG

have challenged the government’s position through different approaches,

LGBT politics are still not legal in China (Engebretsen and Schroeder
2015). In this climate of political restructuring, cultural activism with a
political edge is a practical, and more importantly a safer, approach to push
forward the LGBT agenda, and disco offers gay men a method of perfor-
mativity which is both a form of nostalgic entertainment and an act of
political protest. In some Chinese cities, disco-themed nights are currently
being organised on a regular basis by bars and clubs such as REDDOG
and the cosmopolitan Sanlitun Soho in Beijing, which runs its ‘Disco
Fever’ party every Friday. REDDOG’s LGBT Parties are promoted with
‘we are proud of LGBT’ posters, making it clear that the establishment
does not hide its identity. Empowered by mobile media platforms such as
WeChat, REDDOG attracts a group of Chinese and foreign clubbers, and
also provides free courses offering to teach clubbers how to dance sexily
and fashionably every month. The creation of a scene which strives for
sexiness, fabulousness, and glamour aims to reclaim disco, taking it back
from its middle-aged domain which younger clubbers consider mechani-
cal, boring, and lifeless; now, fashionable men and women, and stunning
drag queens, are trying to remake it as energetic, passionate, and sensual
as it once was.
The government allows these parties to happen, but also keep a close
eye on the public and private spheres in which they exist. In order to con-
trol LGBT influence in public, police officers and IT company employees
monitor online information constantly, sensitive topics and content are
deleted swiftly, and the government takes action to terminate any offline
activities whenever it deems it necessary. Consequently, business owners
and activity organisers have to exercise a degree of self-censorship to avoid
prompting raids and crackdowns. The performativity of LGBT identities
thus often becomes a kind of self-entertainment in places which are open
but also underground. REDDOG, for instance, is open to everyone, but
it is also underground in the sense that it is not widely publicised, and
therefore not well known to the public.
The fact that businesses such as REDDOG keep a low profile and do
not involve themselves with political movements as a general rule has
accelerated the development of a depoliticised pink economy in China.
While disco has become an important part of the contemporary LGBT
lifestyle, the pink economy also drives this lifestyle towards a kind of
depoliticised consumerism rather than a set of politicised cultural activi-
ties. A notable example of this is the Beijing Queer Film Festival, which
 DANCING DESIRE, DANCING REVOLUTION: SEXUALITY… 165

had strong activist slant, and which has been banned since 2015. Artists
and activists still organise it, but at present, the festival can only be hosted
in the arts centres of foreign embassies. This cultural policy produces a
bizarre situation in which disco is simultaneously a mass culture (in the
form of square dancing) and a subculture (in the form of club parties), and
the government has employed administrative means to treat these two
groups differently: square dancing is actively promoted as a positive life-
style, a dedicated square dancing TV channel broadcasts daily, and local,
regional, and national square dancing contests are organised. Meanwhile,
the club scene remains excluded from governmental events or support.

Conclusion: Waiting for the Next Revolution

Disco has been intertwined with the politicisation of Chinese popular cul-
ture since the 1980s, and given its current status, it is likely that it will
continue to engage with future social movements. Although its western
origins are no longer a political issue, its sexual politics remain contested;
a clear example of this are drag queen performers borrowing the concept
of Fanchuan (‘cross-dressing’) from Peking Opera to enter into the main-
stream market, then being criticised for staging a ‘perverted’ cult of male
femininity. The main political difference between the 1980s and the 2010s
is that while the pursuit of sexual excitement in the 1980s was part of a
process of naturalisation, aiming to liberate the long-repressed enjoyment
of love and sex, today’s pursuit of sexual stimulation is a process of sociali-
sation which demands the recognition of the equal human rights of LGBT
communities. Disco remains unable to escape from the restrictions of het-
eronormativity inherent to communist ideologies and traditional morali-
ties and cultural practices, but it continues to challenge this hegemony in
order to achieve potential social change.
Zhao’s children’s book Xiage Jiemu Disike (Next Programme Disco,
1997) allows us to look back and reflect on the unpredictable fate of disco
in China. In it, Zhao employs disco as a symbol of western modernity in
order to subtly belittle its power and stress the importance of the Chinese
tradition, which the book urges children to inherit in the name of devo-
tion and patriotism. The year 1997 was deeply significant because of the
UK’s handover of Hong Kong back to China and the related shift from
capitalism to socialism. By then, the disco fever was long gone, and the
new wave had not yet flared up, but disco was still being referred to as an
important marker of the era, in areas ranging from children’s education to
166 Q. WANG

political ideologies. In this sense, disco has been deeply rooted in China’s
culture and society for decades. Disco will always have opportunities to
thrive, as has more recently been evidenced by pop star Yang Kun’s album
Disco in 2010, Zhang Qiang’s comeback album No Question of Disco in
2013, and the 2015 vocal hit “Ordinary Disco” (Putong Disike). By now,
the Chinese government is highly experienced in managing cultural poli-
tics. Under the circumstances of tight control over LGBT and queer poli-
tics, the question of whether disco has the power to help to bring the next
sexual revolution is unanswerable as yet; however, as the earliest Chinese
disco hit Platform (Zhantai) has it, disco is a ‘long, long platform’ of
sexual revolution—a place where passengers come and go, and where the
next journey is always about to start.

Notes
1. The term Disike has been translated as Dishigao in Hong Kong in the
Cantonese dialect.
2. This book is a collection of 12 short stories aiming to portray the new look
of China since the economic reform. The use of the title of one story as the
book title demonstrates how novel and exciting disco was to the general
public at that time. For more details, see Xie (1981).
3. For examples on theories on Qigong as medicine, see the theories and meth-
ods outlined in Zhang and Sun (1988).
4. There were plenty of terms referring to homosexuality in mandarin and
dialects for centuries, but referring to homosexuality as Tongxinglian and
gay as Tongzhi/comrade did not become common terms until the second
half of the 1990s.
5. The lyrics of “Chain reaction” are as follows:

Because I met you, my heart could no longer be calm

Because I met you, I felt reaction with my eyes, ears, nose, throat, and skin …
Don’t you fight it baby, love is chain reaction, like an explosion …
Every time when you kissed me gently,
I felt my body temperature burning up for you
I felt my pulse screaming for you
Fire alarm was going to ring, I saw stars in my eyes …
I could not control the chain reaction
My little finger and my mind were reacting constantly
I could not control the chain reaction
My nevi and my pelvic bone were reacting strongly. (Lam 1986)
 DANCING DESIRE, DANCING REVOLUTION: SEXUALITY… 167

6. The lyrics of “Witch” are as follows:

Hey, you are an innate witch, not a fairy in disguise

You have that mysterious charm
Hey, you are a true witch with ultimate self-confidence
You never care about other people’s praise
Whenever you say those charming spells
I feel that the world is such a wonderful place. (Li 1987a)

The lyrics of “Goddess” are as follows:

Night, enchanted night

Moonlight is like the flowing spring
I am reading misty poetry in front of bed
When you slowly take off your thin clothes
Goddess, my Goddess, you look like a white jade sculpture …
Snow mountains stand tall and erect, glittering and bright
The land is fertile, flat, and soothing. (Li 1987b)

The lyrics of “Lust” are as follows:

Primitive adolescence awake

It hits the heart of human beings
It brings eternal hunger from the uncivilised age
Oh lust, It had been condemned long long time ago
It had been judged as an original sin
Oh lust, It had been repressed a long long time ago
It had been defined as a principal sin
Poor human beings struggle in depression
And want to be freed from all restrictions. (Liu 1987b)

7. The lyrics of “a little girl under the streetlight” are as follows:

Hey, there is a little girl crying under the streetlight

Nobody knows where she comes from
Hey, the little girl is crying sadly
Nobody knows whether she was abandoned by someone
Or where she should go now?
Dear little sister, please stop crying
Where is your home? I will send you back
Dear little sister, please stop crying
168 Q. WANG

I will warm up your heart with my love

Oh, do not be sad and do not cry, your mom is waiting for you at night
Oh, do not be sad and do not cry, I will send you home at night. (Deng 1987)

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170 Q. WANG

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 Non-stop, I Want to Live Non-stop: The Role
of Disco in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia

Jakub Machek

For the entire state socialist era in Czechoslovakia, which lasted from 1948
until 1989, the authorities viewed all cultural—and especially musical—
influences from the West as suspicious, if not downright dangerous. New
popular Western music was generally condemned and banned, and its fans
were sometimes even persecuted. In contrast, disco music was positively
received by musicians and critics. Moreover, from the time it was first
heard in Czechoslovak discos it was tolerated by the authorities, who
regarded it as a kind of controlled diversion with an educational purpose.
As was the case elsewhere in the world, the global genre was localised, but
its global scope also played an important role in disco’s local popularity.
For participants in the scene, this was a chance to experience a cosmopoli-
tan and global culture that was often cordoned off from local practices.
Big discos were places where young people could taste both the high life
and this global culture (Farrer 1999, 149–150).
In this chapter, I show why disco was so readily accepted by the
Czechoslovak authorities and wider society, and illustrate its role in the
late socialist period. At the same time, I explore the meanings that disco

J. Machek (*)
Department of Media Studies, Metropolitan University Prague, Prague, Czechia

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 173

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_8
174 J. MACHEK

took on, and how they were negotiated among the authorities, musicians,
and young, enthusiastic crowds of dancers and listeners. My analysis
focuses on the discourses about disco which are to be found in Czech
music and popular magazines, as well as in official cultural policy journals1
and administrative guidelines and regulations. I also draw on interviews
with individuals with first-hand knowledge of the Czechoslovak disco scene.
Following Richard Dyer, this chapter assesses whether his three impor-
tant characteristics of disco—eroticism, romanticism, and materialism—
also apply to Czechoslovak disco. Hence, the discussion explores whether
the socialist disco can be seen as ‘a riot of consumerism, dazzling in its
technology, overwhelming in its scale, lavishly gaudy in the mirrors and tat
of discotheques’, where dancers can access a world beyond the everyday
through this experience of materialistic excess and romance (Dyer 2006,
104–108).

Post-Invasion, ‘Normalised’ Czechoslovak Society

in the 1970s

During the de-Stalinisation era of the 1960s, political and cultural restric-
tions had gradually been relaxed in Czechoslovakia. While the public wel-
comed Western culture, the authorities were slow to allow it into the
country. Nevertheless, the continued easing of restrictions resulted in a
blossoming both of high art and of popular culture in line with broader
world trends. This culminated in the late 1960s, when Czechoslovakia had
fully opened up to Western influences and quickly adapted to the latest
developments, especially in popular music.
This path was suddenly blocked in 1968, when Warsaw Pact troops
invaded the country and installed new authorities. Their goals were to
restore communist order, subdue the public, and prevent free develop-
ment. Quickly sensing the impossibility of restoring the old Stalinist
model, which had relied upon repression and public enthusiasm for build-
ing socialism in the 1950s, the authorities sought to build a new consensus
in order to regain the support of the people. As Paulina Bren writes, the
regime opted to give ‘its citizens a modicum of self-realisation within the
area of consumption’ (Bren 2002, 126). As ‘compensation for the lack of
independence permitted in politics (…) [c]itizens were encouraged to
define and locate themselves in a private world’ (Bren 2002, 126–127).
Western-inspired popular culture was thereby used as a tool to establish
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 175

some degree of popular acceptance of enforced domination. Propaganda

shifted its focus to modes of popular culture production, which were care-
fully prescribed and controlled. Although some participation in commu-
nist rituals and ceremonies was still required, the core of each person’s
existence was their private life. A substantial gap therefore arose between
the official ideology and private lived experiences of materialism and
(restricted) consumerism.
Tight controls were again imposed on the media, and all cultural pro-
duction was carefully planned to suit the government’s ideological needs.
Musical activities were regulated and restricted, and musicians had to
obtain official permission to perform publicly. Cultural policy writers neg-
atively described the history of music up until that point as overly influ-
enced by Western capitalism. The pop music of the 1960s was dismissed as
nihilistic, commercial, anarchic, escapist, and displaying Western, anti-­
socialist tendencies (Železný 1977, 161, 225). In 1974, all professional
musicians had to undergo a ‘retraining examination’: this involved being
examined in musical theory, but they were also questioned about their
personal political views (which were expected to be in accordance with
official Marxism-Leninism), and had to perform part of their repertoire
before the commission. The examination shrunk the national musical
scene considerably, with only just over half (about 53 per cent) of all active
musicians passing the test (Vaněk 2010, 392).
The Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party repeat-
edly turned its gaze to popular music: its members discussed and attempted
to decide the course that popular music should take, and to shape its role
in society. Their demands stressed the overcoming of negative Western
models, as the chairman of the Union of Czechoslovak Composers and
Concert Artists, Lubomír Železný, explained: ‘In the long run, we must
strive to create musical entertainment that remains popular because it is
creative and fresh-sounding and does not compromise on the need for
artistic value and ideological engagement’ (Železný 1977, 161).2 Socialist
popular music, he argued, should promote ‘feelings of optimism as well as
higher human and social values such as love for one’s native land, nature,
socially beneficial work, and the pursuit of human knowledge’ (Železný
1977, 225). However, these requirements only really existed at the level
of repeated official declarations—in practice, no-one had any idea how
they could be met.
Uncertainties about the prescribed form of post-invasion popular
music, alongside the fear that their songs would stray beyond the abstract
176 J. MACHEK

remit of socialist entertainment, led musicians to produce what was

labelled ‘bubble gum’ music in the early 1970s. These songs had simple
catchy melodies, and childish, nonsensical lyrics. As the new regime was
consolidated and musicians grew more accustomed to mandatory state
involvement by the mid-1970s, mainstream pop output became more pre-
dictable. Pavel Klusák offers a taxonomy of the main types of pop songs
that dominated radio and television programming and record labels’3
releases in the 1970s: songs with explicitly political lyrics, odes to happi-
ness, the joys of living, and the glory of the nation, and—most popular of
all with audiences—songs promoting resignation, passivity, and a placid
existence (Klusák 2018).
At the same time, the country’s music critics, audiences, and even the
musicians themselves regularly observed a Czechoslovak pop music indus-
try in crisis due to its loss of contact with Western musical development,
the limited access to it for younger musicians, and the featureless nature of
its lyrics. In short, mainstream music production had lapsed into a period
of dullness and stagnation. In this context, the emergence of disco, which
was instantly popular with young disco-goers, was seen as a much-needed
breath of fresh air. The disco sound was welcomed and quickly emulated
by almost all mainstream pop music stars across the generations. The
notoriously slow-to-adapt recording industry started releasing disco EPs,
and radio and TV programmes broadcast disco beats. The rapid accep-
tance of a new Western genre so closely linked to capitalist and consumer-
ist ways of life, and carrying an eroticism forbidden by puritanical
authorities,4 may seem quite surprising today. Disco, after all, did meet
none of the state’s prerequisites for socialist popular music. Moreover, it
emerged between two repressive campaigns targeting musicians and fans
of other new Western genres. In 1976, members of the underground
music scene centred around the band Plastic People of the Universe were
arrested and put on trial, and some were imprisoned for months. Later, in
1983, the punk and new wave boom of the early 1980s was stifled through
more moderate repressive measures.

The Disco Decade

The first to discover disco music were young disco-goers. As had been the
case elsewhere, the popularity of this new kind of venue preceded the cre-
ation of the genre. Discos started to appear in Prague in 1967 in venues
like Reduta, Music F club, Arocola club, and D-club. They played a wide
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 177

variety of music ranging from rock (and later hard and glam rock) through
actual pop hits to old Schlager music. At first they were organised by youth
groups and university clubs, but they later found a home in cafés and wine
bars, where they pushed out existing bands. The first disc jockeys were
mainly music publicists and critics who owned personal collections of
actual foreign recordings (Tůma 1985, 8), and over the next few decades
this would remain the most important qualification for all aspiring DJs.
Access to foreign products was limited, and most means of obtaining
Western recordings were of dubious legality (Havlík 2012).
By the mid-1970s, disco music had taken over discos. Reports of the
trend in the music press described young disco-goers as enthusiastic early
adopters: people who ‘immediately grasped that this was entertainment
geared to their needs. They influenced the playlist and determined disco
music’s basic features’ (Tvarohová 1986, 58). Period surveys also suggest
that discos were mainly the domain of the youngest generation; the most
frequent attendees were aged between 15 and 17, with attendance rates
dropping sharply among those aged 25 (Hepner and Mar ̌íková 1975, 87).
As the popularity of discos and disco music soared among young peo-
ple, disco became central to their identities as something that distinguished
them from older generations. The trendy Western music and dance style
offered them a hidden pocket of post-invasion normalised society where
they could leave the reality of a late socialist society and culture into a
world resembling the West. The Czechoslovak youth welcomed the new
dance style as the antithesis of the mainstream culture that pervaded the
media and public space.
Disco’s deep role in these young people’s lives is made clear by the
personal listings in the youth lifestyle magazine Mladý sve ť (‘Young
World’). These listings began to appear in 1979 and were a mainstay of the
publication over the next decade. Advertisers generally mentioned disco in
their personal introduction and positive attributes: it was clearly regarded
as a sign of hipness. Disco thus formed a key part of personal identity (e.g.
‘Disco-boy, 21/175 [cm], seeks a girl for shared adventures’), and was the
most important aspect of leisure time and social gatherings (‘Two good-­
looking [guys], 20 years old /167[cm], 168 [cm], who love to dance,
seek 2 good-looking disco-devils. Photos essential’). Occasionally, the
word boldly appeared on its own with a seemingly self-explanatory mean-
ing: ‘Two [guys] looking for two girls from Prague under 20. Disco’
(Mladý sve ť 1979). It was not until the second half of the 1980s that list-
ings mocking disco began to appear. These were posted by heavy metal
178 J. MACHEK

fans in particular as disco’s appeal faded, at least for members of other

subcultures. To illustrate this point, we can compare two Mladý sve ť per-
sonals: the first is a 1979 advertisement which included disco in a list of
hobbies linked to other music genres (‘Two sincere [guys], 18/170 [cm],
civil engineering students, seek cool friends. Hiking, guitar but also disco’
(Mladý sve ť 1979), and the second is from 1988 expressing open disdain
for the genre: ‘Don’t let it bite, disco’s a parasite’ (Mladý sve ť 1988).
As most of the mentions of it in the examined periodicals show, disco’s
popularity with the younger generation was a spontaneous grassroots phe-
nomenon. Music journalists observed the disco fever sweeping through
the Czechoslovak youth. Their reviews of disco tracks often alluded to
young tastes, particularly their preference for Western music: ‘Young peo-
ple in discos will confirm whether Discobolos’s rhythms are as good to
dance to as the foreign originals’ (Melodie 1977, 297). Indeed, musicians
and critics were generally positive about disco’s appeal to the young, in
sharp contrast to their views on the popularity of local hard rock bands like
Katapult and Citrón among young apprentice labourers. That the fans of
these local bands were mostly male teenage apprentices was seen to con-
firm the crudeness and poor quality of their recordings, which apparently
appealed only to uneducated, ignorant listeners. Reviewers and other
musicians derided these bands for their unsophisticated music and lyrics.
To track the duration of the disco craze, we can draw on the Kramerius
digital archive, which includes scans of Czech periodicals and some books
from the time.
As shown in Graph 1, searches for the word ‘disco’ in individual years
revealed only a few references in the Czech press in 1975 and 1976, fol-
lowed by sharp rises in 1977 and 1978 and a continuously high frequency
from 1979 until about 1987. A significant decline then set in as the disco
scene died out in the late 1980s.
The first references to disco music described the genre abroad and its
popularity among dance-crazed Czech teenagers, along with reflections
on what disco’s rise could mean for the Czechoslovak music industry.
Critics expressed their hopes of change and the reinvigoration of the local
scene: ‘Modern [i.e. disco] bands and singers could replace the dominant
mainstream sound’ (Melodie 1978, 233). After the 1968 invasion, the offi-
cial stance had been to reject Western commercial models and seek inspira-
tion from other socialist states, a position reinforced by the deliberate lack
of coverage of Western music in the Czechoslovak media. Later, however,
Western disco was hailed as a positive development, and as something
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 179

Řada 1
180

135

90

45

0
1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

Graph 1 Appearances of the word ‘disco’ in newspapers and journals in the

Kramerius online archive5

which might reverse the aforementioned decline in mainstream music pro-

duction, as František Horáček stated in a review of a Discobolos EP:

Wherever the disco wave is headed, the fact is that its arrival in our mono-­
culture has contributed significantly to the exposure and criticism of its
opposite, which is still stagnating on our recording scene, regardless of any
musical developments. (Melodie 1977, 297)

The First Generation

Unsurprisingly, disco soon caught on among many singers and musicians,
who saw it as a potential way to resolve the crisis in the mainstream music
industry. Almost all of them were quick to board the disco train. Particularly
in the early years of the Czechoslovak disco craze, the vast majority of
disco music consisted of locally produced cover versions. This followed an
established trend, as since the 1960s, Czechoslovak singers had often
recorded covers of popular foreign hits with alternative Czech lyrics. Since
the original foreign recordings were inaccessible to most of the popula-
tion, this use of their melodies guaranteed local artists a measure of popu-
larity. It also ensured airplay by broadcasters, who could not play the
originals because of strict quotas on Western content.
180 J. MACHEK

The oldest track of the period to be considered a disco song is Alena

Tichá’s 1976 cover of Abba’s ‘Mamma Mia’. The main output started to
follow in the spring of 1977, when almost every pop star of the era
recorded a disco number. Most of these mainstream performers—from
the country’s most popular singers, Karel Gott, Naďa Urbánková, and
Hana Zagorová,6 to the rock bands Olympic and Bacily—had launched
their careers in the more liberal 1960s. A few newborn stars of the 1970s,
including Jir ̌í Schelinger and Jana Kratochvílová, jumped on the band-
wagon as well. Even Milan Chladil and Yvetta Simonová, who had both
originally found fame back in the 1950s, released disco songs in 1978.
The number of disco recordings rose and rose over the next few years,
but despite this trend most late 1970s disco output brought no real change
to mainstream Czechoslovak pop. The new disco songs did not signifi-
cantly depart from previous releases by their performers, whose broad rep-
ertoires ranged from cantilenas to folk-style music. At best, the disco
sound slightly enlivened and diversified their range. The only new ele-
ments were the addition of the four-on-the-floor disco rhythm and disco-­
characteristic Philly strings and synthesiser sounds. Other features,
including performance style and staging, remained unchanged. The new
lyrics, which were mostly sourced from the same few authors, covered the
same neutral, upbeat, or humorous topics as in the pre-disco era; they
were entirely divorced from life on the dance floor and the experiences of
the younger generation. This is perhaps clearest in the 1979 television
performance of ‘Jsou to nervy’ (‘It’s nerves’), a cover of The Village
People’s ‘In the Navy’, which featured four singers who had been stars in
the early 1960s (Silvestr 2012). The whole performance was shot in the
style of an Estrada-type TV show, with the older men in tuxedos sur-
rounded by cabaret dancers, singing about the problems of ageing. Only
the groove hinted at the disco origins of the song.7
During these years, the Czechoslovak pop music star system remained
closed, with only a small select group of entertainers allowed to appear on
air and release recordings. The small number of approved popular artists
meant that their releases tended to sell well and occupy the airwaves from
morning to night. Large audiences were guaranteed, a situation that
changed little over time. Under these conditions, there were very few
chances for new disco specialists to break through. Indeed, because of the
need for expensive and hard-to-obtain Western recording equipment, new
talent could not directly emerge from the disco fan scene; the only possi-
ble path involved gradually emerging through established structures by
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 181

playing in the backing bands of individual stars. This was the route taken
by all the singers and projects who were interested in producing disco
music in the 1970s and 1980s. For the purposes of the present work, we
will identify the artists of these two eras as the first and second generation
of Czech disco singers and producers, respectively. In fact, the first genera-
tion consisted mostly of older mainstream pop stars, and only two success-
ful projects focused specifically on disco, ORM and Discobolos.
The appeal of disco sounds, especially cover versions, led to the heavy
radio rotation of Czechoslovak disco songs (Melodie 1978, 78), but it did
not ensure their positive critical reception. While reviewers appreciated
young disco dancers and their favourite Western hits, they had little respect
for the local recordings. Cover songs were seen as particularly question-
able, as critic František Horáček commented, referencing their
overabundance:

[Producers] doggedly believe that the young listener, perfectly familiar with
the original of this new global release (it has long been available on reel-to-­
reel tapes), has been eagerly awaiting local covers, but at best they’re an
embarrassment if not a joke. (Melodie 1978, 233)

For these reviewers, the main problem with Czechoslovak disco was the
low-grade technical quality of local studios whose obsolete recording
equipment could not achieve a similar sound to the originals. Added to
this were composers and arrangers focused solely on slavish imitation. The
endless attempts of almost every pop performer in the country to use
disco to preserve or revive their career prompted more jabs from Horáček:

The others are caught up in the labyrinth of ideas of local producers and
performers about what modern disco should look like. In practice, the
drummer beats four-on-the-floor, and the old warbling organists boast that
they already master the synthesizer. Pavel Novák is now performing like this
and maybe we’ll soon see the Moravanka [a famous brass band] as well.
(Melodie 1978, 9)

In the second half of the 1970s, the Munich sound flooded discos across
Europe, including Czechoslovakia (Tůma 1985, 36), with the band Boney
M becoming especially popular in Eastern Europe. Critics, however,
detected a certain brass band quality to songs like ‘Rivers of Babylon’
(Melodie 1978, 247), a tendency even more pronounced in the Czech
182 J. MACHEK

version sung by Karel Gott (Melodie 1979, 105). This is likely to have
made the recording feel more familiar to central European audiences.
Only two disco projects of the period were regarded as acceptably pro-
duced and edging closer to foreign disco. The first, Discobolos, was a
studio band formed by brothers Karel and Jiří Svoboda. Karel was an
important songwriter and hit-maker of the 1960s whose success later con-
tinued right into the twenty-first century, while Jir ̌í mostly composed film
soundtracks. The two joined forces just as disco was emerging in
Czechoslovakia to produce disco songs that combined live recordings
with electronic mixing and mastering. Discobolos was the backing band
on several EPs and also released two albums under its own name. The first,
an eponymous record which came out in 1978, featured original songs by
the brothers, while the second, Disco/Sound (1979), presented disco
arrangements of Karel’s older pop-style songs. These recordings won criti-
cal praise for their technical flair and originality. Even the professional
music journal Hudební rozhledy, which specialised mainly in classical
music, commended their use of technology in their version of disco
(Hudební rozhledy 1979, 507). The highest compliments were reserved
for the approach to recreating a Western sound, but in fact, in 1979 their
records were already considered rather outdated compared to Western
disco development (Melodie 1979, 65). Despite the acclaim, these songs
were more likely to play on the radio than in discos, as later commentators
on disco would point out (Tvarohová 1986, 26).
The same was true of the duo known as ORM (an acronym for
Organisation, Recording, Music), who have recently been rediscovered by
crate diggers and restored among the all-but-forgotten pioneers of Eastern
European synthesiser music. Members Petr Dvořák and Pavel Růžička
launched their music careers in backing bands, which in turn allowed them
to purchase Western electronic equipment and build their own modern
recording studio. They created instrumentals for radio, short scientific
films, TV programmes for children, and commercials before experiment-
ing with disco sounds under the moniker Petr and Pavel ORM (Tůma
1979, 212). Rather than forming another backing band for popular sing-
ers, they eventually recorded their own compositions with guest singers
from Kamelie, a female duo with whom they also made several albums in
the 1980s. Their debut LP, Discofil (1979), featured original instrumental
and vocal compositions, combining synthesisers with live recordings.
There was also the positively welcomed LP Hve ž dolet 06 (‘Starship 06’,
1979), on which several singers and bands from the first disco generation
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 183

recorded compositions by Bohuslav Ondráček, a songwriter, hitmaker,

and innovator associated with the top tier of popular music in the 1960s.
He was especially well known as a founder and producer of the trio Golden
Kids (Blüml 2017, 217, 123), who for a while had digressed from his
more rock-oriented efforts.
Despite these achievements, subsequent writers on disco observed that
the Czechoslovak projects that focused on disco in the late 1970s suffered
from various limitations. Writing in the official handbook for future disc
jockeys in 1985, Jaromír Tůma, a disc jockey and member of the commit-
tee for selecting new DJs, noted that ‘[these] recordings […] were not
entirely satisfying artistically or sometimes even technically’ (Tůma 1985,
28). The move to create a ‘Czech disco sound’ in the late 1970s had led,
he claimed, to disenchantment, as many Czech songwriters turned away
from disco in annoyance (Tůma 1985, 28, 29), because the Czech version
never gained sufficient popularity among dancers (who preferred foreign
tunes) or listeners (who preferred foreign tunes and the local cover
versions).

The Second Generation

The group referred to here as the second generation of Czech disco per-
formers consisted of singers and (to some extent) producers who were
mostly newcomers in the 1980s. This generation was closer in age to
actual disco fans than the first generation had been. By the time these
performers shot to fame, disco had overtaken the mainstream music scene
and popular culture in general. It was recognised as the dominant form of
entertainment for young people and was fully accepted as part of youth
culture by the authorities and the public; it also featured in the official
festivities at the Spartakiad, the giant gymnastics event that drew more
than half a million gymnasts. When Pioneer, the state youth organisation,
announced it was holding a contest for a new song, it requested entries in
the form of two-part choral arrangements or disco songs for children aged
10 to 13 (Mladý sve ť 1983, No. 14, p. 2). The newspaper Naše pravda
(‘Our Truth’) (1986) reported that many older people felt they were liv-
ing in a disco era (1986, 18. 11., p. 2). By 1982, there were 150 profes-
sional and about 300 amateur DJs across the country, who organised
around 20,000 disco events annually for 5 million participants (Tvarohová
1986, 59). Another survey in the second half of the 1980s confirmed
184 J. MACHEK

disco as the favourite music genre of young people in the 15–18 age
group, with the support of 63 per cent of those surveyed (Č ísla 1988,
330). ‘Disco’ was clearly a buzzword of the era. It appeared in the context
of everything from spas to organised holidays and was used to name a wide
range of new products from cigarettes to perfumes, a vegetable-flavoured
yoghurt, and a popular brand of biscuits. During the 1980s, state and
cooperative companies began producing disco wear, and disco dancing
was also promoted as a healthy sport that accelerated weight loss.
Starting in the early 1980s, the initial inspiration from Germany was
replaced by a style commonly labelled Italian disco which, according to
Tvarohová, combined traditional Italian melodies with disco rhythms
(1986, 23). The resulting mix was so popular and seductive that it domi-
nated the Czechoslovak music industry and discos throughout the 1980s.
The new generation of Czechoslovak disco performers continued to
form part of an established pop music ‘mafia’ in which unofficial managers
surrounded singers and musicians and ushered them through the media
and recording industry (Matějíček 2012). These managers were on the
lookout for talented young artists who might be transformed into the pop
stars of tomorrow. The way these disco stars’ personalities, performing
styles, fashion sense, and sometimes even song-writing were represented
in the media reflected the younger generation’s ideas about the disco
world, and was expressed in the colloquial language of the younger gen-
eration. They sang over a disco beat about topics like being on the dance
floor, love, and enjoying life—all despite the constraints of late socialism.
The most successful of this group of newcomers were the duo Stanislav
Hložek and Petr Kotvald, whose biggest hit, ‘Holky z naší školky’ (‘The
girls from our kindergarten’, 1983), reeled off a long list of girls’ names,
accompanied by a catchy melody. But the key figure of 1980s disco with
the so-called Italian sound was Michal David, who had spent a few years
in Italy as a child and later become an accomplished professional jazz pia-
nist. David quickly joined Kroky (‘Steps’), a popular band led by František
Janeček, known as one of the godfathers of Czechoslovak pop. From
there, David rose to pop stardom, becoming known as the voice of the
younger generation and a high-profile communicator of its ideas, desires,
and laments under late socialism.
Many of David’s lyrics in the 1980s addressed a range of experiences
common among the young generation, from drinking Coca-Cola (only
available in limited supply) to pursuing a happy life and falling in love.
Two of his hits are worth highlighting here since they distil the themes
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 185

common to his lyrics. The first, ‘Non-stop’ (1983), focuses on the recur-
ring misunderstandings between young people and their parents, captur-
ing the anxieties and desires of the generation that wants to ‘live non-stop,
beautifully and non-stop’. As the 1980s have been described as a period of
crisis—marked by the growing disappointment of the youngest generation
in particular, who were not intimidated by the experience of the 1968
occupation which they were too young to remember—the lyrics can be
perceived as an attempt to present the younger generation’s dissatisfaction
with late socialist society as a regular generational gap, rather than a spe-
cific problem with the whole establishment. This generational gap is
expressed in terms of family alienation: ‘I must not cross my dad, I’m just
a disco idiot to him /I’m just a baby to my mum/ My brother only cares
for his job/he’s became a big boss and snob/ They have no idea who I
am’. The song was included in Vítr v kapse (Wind in the pocket, 1982), the
most popular of a series of films reflecting, more or less critically, the lives
and situations of young people. In the lyrics David played the role of com-
mentator, explaining what was going on in accordance with the authori-
ties’ careful control of the tone of the film. The second major hit was
directly commissioned by authorities to accompany the girls’ exercise rou-
tines at the 1985 Spartakiad. ‘Poupata’ (‘Flower buds’), a song which
remains popular today, blended disco with brass band music and lyrics that
described the bright future awaiting Czechoslovak youngsters: ‘Today you
have a beautiful fate, walking into tomorrow, living and blooming’.
The ageing mainstream pop stars of the 1970s mostly used the disco
sound to revive their stagnant musical production. Their disco repertoire
was based on covering global hits supplemented with new lyrics which
were unrelated to the younger generation and their lifestyle. In contrast,
the music industry of the 1980s followed up on a few unique experiment-
ers seeking to create their own original disco compositions. With the help
of new, young singers, they came up with music which was convenient for
the young mainstream audience, and which shaped the disco sound as
youth-related music that could be utilised both commercially and propa-
gandistically, as well as for entertainment. Unlike most of the previous
generation’s disco output, these 1980s songs are still popular with audi-
ences today, probably thanks to their less artificial expressions of the every-
day feelings of ordinary listeners compared to the 1970s songs. That said,
the overall attitude of Melodie’s critics to the two periods can be summed
up as running in the opposite direction, rejecting of most Czech attempts
to make disco. The 1980s songs were particularly rejected, and indeed
were usually not reported at all. Meanwhile, the real life discotheques
went their own way.
186 J. MACHEK

Discourses About Socialist Disco

As we have seen, acceptance of Western musical genres was by no means
automatic in socialist Czechoslovakia. It is possible to identify two dis-
courses that shaped disco’s treatment in the national media. While the first
emanated from the authorities, the second came from journalists, includ-
ing those outside the music press. Surprisingly, there was no cross-debate
between these discourses; they played out in parallel in the pages of news-
papers and magazines without interfering with one another. In addition,
as we will see, there was the reality of discos themselves, which differed
from the claims of either discourse.
My approach to these different discourses about disco is based on
Alexei Yurchak’s critical account of life under late socialism, with particu-
lar reference to his notes on the shift from semantic to pragmatic discur-
sive regimes, when the form of representation is replicated but its meaning
is changed (Yurchak 2003, 481–482). In practical terms, it was necessary
to perform unavoidable and ritualised formalities in post-invasion
Czechoslovakia, in the sense that music critics were periodically expected
to produce texts—specifically editorials and features—which fulfilled the
state’s demands for renewed proof of a magazine’s ideological correctness.
Once these pure formalities had been met and the ideological space had
been marked out, however, authors could start to probe a work’s meaning
in the way that Yurchak (2003, 498) describes. In other words, they were
able to write about music relatively freely, offering criticism or praise at
their discretion. Hence, their writing was not strictly ‘ideological’, but was
‘often explicitly linked with some ideological symbols and meanings’
(Yurchak 2003, 499).
The authorities’ positions were presented in the pages of official cul-
tural policy journals and across all kinds of other magazines. Readers were
updated about the findings of the meetings of official bodies, including
the boards of the Communist Party central committee and the organisa-
tions charged with arranging the national or local musical life based on the
authorities’ decisions. Shortly after the disco boom began, the official cul-
tural journal Tvorba (‘Creation’) set out an official interpretation of disco
music based on Western Marxist theory. In it, disco was seen as ‘a way of
stunning and fooling young people’; as such, it was claimed to instill a false
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 187

sense of freedom. Disco was also seen as a symptom of the spiritual crisis
in American society: ‘The young […] are drunk on commerce, and disco
music’s monotonous rhythms become a drug for them’ (Tvorba 1979,
No. 4, 14; No. 29, 19).
The same publication went on to share ideas about how socialist disco
might be different. In a letter published in its pages, reader Miloš Vojta
argued that socialist discos should not be commercial enterprises where
human beings were subject to market forces; rather, they ‘should serve
humanity and enrich emotional life and spiritual wealth’. Discos were to
be measured by socialist aesthetics and ethics. Their role was to engage,
educate, and nurture young people and to help shape their taste (Tvorba
1979, No. 38, 24).
On the other side of the non-existent ideological debate were music
magazine editors, who were constantly attempting to defend and protect
the disco genre, which they believed had the power to resuscitate the ail-
ing domestic pop music scene. With this goal, they described the positive
impact of disco using well-known ideological jargon, or what Yurchak
(2003, 501) called ‘recognisable pragmatic markers that unmistakably
linked these texts with the space of ideology’ (Yurchak 2003, 501). Disco
was thus claimed to be the music of young working-class Americans (with-
out any reference to its supposed lulling of young people or instilling of a
false sense of freedom in them). Similarly, the dance floor was presented as
a space of rejuvenation after a busy working week (Melodie 1978, 308),
while discos offered entertainment for young people that was fully con-
trolled by the authorities: ‘Well-contained youthful fun’ (Kve ť y 1976, No.
21, 37). Going to the disco, these editors argued, gave ‘young people the
chance to introduce themselves, not just dance’; the ‘diverse sounds
undoubtedly help[ed] create a relaxed social atmosphere’ (Hudební
rozhledy 1979, 527). Moreover, dancing developed physical skills. Disco
music’s novelty and innovation were always emphasised in these edi-
tors’ pieces.

The Real World of Discos

The discos of communist Czechoslovakia were part of a larger movement
to defend and promote the undisturbed operation of Western-influenced
entertainment. As such, they were part of an ideological game taking place
in the country. At a time when musicians and singers had to undergo the
retraining examination described earlier in this chapter, the spontaneous
188 J. MACHEK

development of discos did not escape state management, and careful

efforts were made to control disco spaces. The operating guidelines pre-
pared in 1977 included a qualifying examination for DJs similar to the one
devised for musicians. As a result, only certain approved and officially reg-
istered disc jockeys could hold disco events. Unauthorised, underground
discos were liable to be shut down, a goal that was never fully achieved,
especially in the countryside. DJs who had received the state qualification
were known as ‘announcers of social entertainment’ (Blüml 2016, 13),
and had to complete relevant training courses, including exams on music
theory and Marxism-Leninism, as well as demonstrating their practical
skills. They were only allowed to play original recordings, a rule that
barred the use of music recorded from foreign TV or radio shows (as was
the practice in other socialist countries), and disregarded the difficulty and
expense of obtaining Western recordings. Domestic reissues of those
recordings were sporadic and delayed. All DJ selections also had to be
drawn from an approved repertoire list (Tůma 1985, 4, 5).
One important way of promoting disco was to emphasise its educa-
tional potential, presenting it not only as a dance style but also as a sophis-
ticated form of education and entertainment, where education took
precedence. To meet these standards, the ideal socialist disco needed to do
more than stream music continuously; it had to offer a range of edifying
and entertaining activities. Newspaper and magazine reports on various
venues recommended various ‘enhancements’ including reading out the
latest news and hosting quizzes on current political and social issues or
discussions of the recordings being played (Krůta 1976, 9). Other tips for
organisers included inviting guests from interesting occupations (e.g.
actors or firefighters), screening geography-themed documentaries on the
stage as backdrops (Kotlář 1979, 45), and running sports competitions. In
one example of the latter addition, one of the most popular Prague discos
awarded a prize (free entry to the next event) to the disco-goer who com-
pleted the most push-ups (Mladý sve ť 1977, No. 6, 3).
However, these ideals likely substantially departed from the reality.
Even the official handbook for future disc jockeys stressed that some
requirements were hard or near impossible to fulfil. In particular, the duty
to ensure that more than 50 per cent of the playlist came from local record-
ings or recordings from other socialist states was questioned (Tůma 1985).
Various authors note the shortage, if not complete lack, of good-quality
local disco recordings. Czech songs might have been played in the slow-­
dance part of the programme, but they would not have been suitable for
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 189

the fast-tempo disco section. The exclusive use of music from an approved
list is also doubtful, as following this rule would have compromised both
the uniqueness and cutting-edge modernity of DJs’ live sets.
The following general notion of how Czechoslovak discos actually
operated under late socialism is based on a small sample of former scene
participants who were surveyed by the present author and his students.
Even this inconclusive data reveals the existence of a wide range of discos.
Furthermore, the survey results suggest that the ideal socialist disco was
most likely a pure abstraction, rather than a reflection of reality.
The consensus among the respondents was that Czechoslovak record-
ings were quite rarely played at discos. If they featured, then this was most
likely to have been in the slow-dance sets. The only places where
Czechoslovak tracks might have received more play time were rural discos,
whose unofficial DJs were more likely to have lacked access to foreign
recordings. Sometimes, in order to meet the compulsory socialist music
quota, DJs played these songs quietly during intermissions. Rural DJs also
sometimes relied on tapes of foreign records. None of the interviewees
remembered quizzes or competitions, let alone readings from newspaper
articles at discos. They recalled that very occasionally there were guest
performers or skits depending on the type of disco involved. Disco events
organised by the Socialist Youth Union took place in the afternoons, and
were closely supervised and alcohol-free. Other discos were run for profit
out of nightclubs, bars, and restaurants; participants drank Coca-Cola if it
was available, or else lemonade. Alcohol consumption was more likely at
rural discos or at late night discotheques in bars, cafes, and hotel restau-
rants. Discos in larger cities were so popular that it was not possible to
enter without paying an extra entry fee (a bribe) to staff on the doors. The
most renowned discos attracted not only a young crowd, but also a layer
of society representing a sort of socialist nouveau-riche made from semi-­
legal and illegal business, along with foreign tourists, and prostitutes. On
the other hand, the discotheques organised by the Youth Union and the
small town venues were the domain of young people under the age of 18,
as people in slightly older age groups were already starting families at
that time.
Small town discos were attended by teenagers with all kinds of musical
preferences (from hard-rockers, through mainstream pop, to highbrow) as
there were usually no alternative entertainment options in these places.
Also, the style of the visitors showed a wide range of inspiration, from
long-haired hippies to mainstream fashion trends based on denim, loose
190 J. MACHEK

shirts, and fashionable T-shirts whose slogans were ideally complemented

by a plastic bag with Western advertising. According to Petr Bílek, a comb
and ID should stick out of the pocket. Since most fashion goods were
unavailable to ordinary citizens without Western currency, discotheque
fashion was usually made or refined at home, from sewing and dyeing gar-
ments to setting hair using water mixed with sugar.
Unlike American DJs who tried to immerse dancers in a continuous
flow of sound and rhythm, their Czechoslovak counterparts interspersed
disco tracks with announcements, repeating the name of each song and its
interpreter, often giving extensive information. Some disc jockeys even
chanted slogans or made wisecracks. The disco music was also interrupted
by breaks for drinking and socialising, and by slow-dance sets. This was in
line with the practice elsewhere in Europe, where calls for all-night, non-­
stop discos only made an impact very slowly (Lawrence 2006, 138).

Conclusion
This chapter has outlined the most important features of the disco craze
that gripped Czechoslovakia during the late socialist period. Clearly,
acceptance of this Western genre was linked to the nature of the post-­
invasion society, which was open to the culture of materialism that disco
embodied. Materialism and consumerism were part of the lived experience
of this society, even though they ran contrary to the official ideology. At
the same time, the conservative authorities were more likely to accept
mainstream popular culture than other, more radical genres, and the cop-
ied mainstream European disco sound was seen as a safe way for the popu-
lation to be inspired by Western trends without necessarily negatively
influencing youth, as the authorities feared in relation to punk and new
wave music. Disco’s roots in gay and Afro-American communities
remained unknown to most Czechoslovak audiences.
In one sense, disco was the new youth culture that promised to revital-
ise the local pop scene with just a hint of Western capitalist entertainment.
However, it was also seen by the state as a safe form of entertainment that
could be contained within certain tolerated limits, something that was not
true of punk or new wave music. Moreover, while there were materialistic
and hedonistic elements to Czechoslovak disco, its hedonism was rela-
tively tame, and a far cry from New York’s disco extravaganza. Further,
disco was adapted to the conditions of socialist Czechoslovakia and to
local cultural traditions. In this form, it was simultaneously a way of
 NON-STOP, I WANT TO LIVE NON-STOP: THE ROLE OF DISCO… 191

defining the youngest generation and part of an official mainstream cul-

ture that was accessible to all generations, even being paired with tradi-
tional brass band music.
Finally, it is probably most accurate to talk about two different
Czechoslovak disco scenes. The first took place on the dance floor, where
nearly all tracks were foreign and almost no local disco music was played.
The second scene encompassed the local recordings that were—and in
some cases still are—popular with audiences. These formed part of the
mainstream pop that existed outside Westernised discos.

Acknowledgements This chapter is the result of the Metropolitan University

Prague research project no. 68-01 ‘Political Science, Culture, Media and
Language’, which was conducted in 2019 supported by a grant from the
Institutional Fund for the Long-term Strategic Development of Research
Organisations. The author wishes to thank Honza Blüml for his ongoing willing-
ness to share his extensive knowledge of Czech popular music as well as all inter-
viewees, especially Jaromír Tůma and Petr A. Bílek.

Notes
1. Tvorba (‘Creation’), the main journal of this kind, was a politics and culture
weekly published by the Czechoslovak Communist Party. The journal
played an important role in promoting party policy.
2. All translations from the Czech are henceforth the author’s own.
3. As a result of the federalisation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, three state-­
owned record labels existed: the main, federal Supraphon, the Czech
Panton, and the Slovak Opus.
4. These same authorities had denounced the pop music of the 1960s as vulgar
and pornographic.
5. The Kramerius collection does not include issues of Mladý sve ť from 1982
and 1986, which significantly affects the results for these years. The spike in
references to disco in 1987 is partly due to the premiere of the local disco
film Discopříbe ȟ that year. The affected columns are shown here in grey.
6. These three stars were the winners of the Zlatý slavík (‘Golden Nightingale’)
music award in 1976 and 1977. The award, based on a survey of Mladý sve ť
readers, was and remains the most important nationwide ranking of
pop stars.
7. It is worth contrasting this cover version with the original version of the
song recorded by the Village People in 1978 (Village People 2008).
192 J. MACHEK

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Havlík, Adam. 2012. Západní hudba v Č eskoslovensku v období normalizace. Master
diss., Charles University Prague.
Hepner, Vladimír, and Iva Maříková. 1975. Pru ̊zkum postojů c ě ské verě jnosti k
populárním zpe v̌ áku ̊m. Praha: Ústav pro výzkum kultury.
Klusák, Pavel. 2018. Podivný showbyznys: Propaganda, agitace a absurdita v české
pop-music 70. a 80. let. Č eský rozhlas Vltava, 13.7. [Streaming Audio]. https://
vltava.rozhlas.cz/podivny-­showbyznys-­propaganda-­a gitace-­a -­a bsurdita-­v -­
ceske-­pop-­music-­70-­a-­80-­let-­6951623.
Kotlár ̌, Alois. 1979. Diskotéka: nejen tanec. Zápisník 23 (21): 45.
Krůta, Jan. 1976. Mystérium diskoték, aneb Máme guláš, co s ním. Mladý sve ť
18 (37): 9.
Lawrence, Tim. 2006. In Defence of Disco (Again). New Formations 58: 128–146.
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devadesátých let dvacátého století. Master diss., Charles University Prague.
Tůma, Jaromír. 1979. Z hudby půjde hlava kolem. Co skrývá pojem Petr a Pavel
ORM. Melodie 17 (7): 212–213.
———. 1985. ABC diskotéky. Praha: Ústav pro kulturně výchovnou činnost,
KKS Ostrava.
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lární hudby 70. let. Master diss., Charles University Prague.
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———. 1986. Articles and entries from Naše pravda. Zlín: Okresní vedení KSČ
ve Zlíně.
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———. 1988. Articles and entries from Č ísla pro každého…. Praha: SNTL.
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It Was No More. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (3): 480–510.
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161, 15(7): 225.

Discography
David, Michal, and Kroky Františka Janečka. Poupata. Praha: Supraphon, 1985,
7” single.
———. Non Stop. Non Stop. Praha: Supraphon, 1983, 7” single.
Discobolos. Discobolos. Praha: Supraphon, 1978, LP.
———. Disco/Sound. Praha: Supraphon, 1979, LP.
Hve ž dolet 06. Praha: Supraphon, 1979, LP.
ORM. Discofil. Praha: Supraphon, 1979, LP.
Tichá, Alena. Mámo, zle je. Praha: Supraphon, 1976, 7” single.

Filmography
Silvestr 1979 – Milan Chladil, Karel Štedrý, Milan Drobný, Waldemar Matuška –
Jsou to Nervy. YouTube video, 3:12. Posted by ‘MonikaJanka,’ January
23, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ncEiGXoSZw. Accessed
January 2020.
Soukup, Jaroslav (Dir.). 1982. Vítr v kapse.
Village People – In the Navy OFFICIAL Music Video 1978. YouTube video, 4:01.
Posted by ‘Village People,’ September 22, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=InBXu-­iY7cw. Accessed January 2020.
 Yugoslav Disco: The Forgotten Sound
of Late Socialism

Marko Zubak

‘I didn’t expect this from Yugoslav television!’ exclaimed Swedish TV pre-

senter Åke Wihlney while announcing the screening of Ružic ̌asti žur (Pink
Party), an exceptional late socialist Yugoslav TV production, a sort of
video-soundtrack based on Boban Petrović’s disco-funk LP Žur (The
Party, 1981) which was partly recorded in New York. The nocturnal shots
of lascivious dancing where attractive young bodies responded to synco-
pated grooves had apparently caught the experienced presenter slightly
off-guard. Swedish television had just acquired the broadcasting rights for
the show at the Cannes Midem festival, a leading trade show for the music
industry. This seemingly tiny step in Yugoslav-Scandinavian relations
proved important for the preservation of this quintessential product of
Yugoslav disco, whose status, effects, and legacy lie at the heart of this
chapter. In a move that symbolised the general fate of the Yugoslav disco
era stretching from the late 1970s into the early 1980s, the original pro-
duction was ultimately erased from the archives of TV Belgrade, now
Serbian Television.

M. Zubak (*)
Department of Contemporary History, Croatian Institute of History,
Zagreb, Croatia

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 195

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_9
196 M. ZUBAK

Caught unawares, surprised, Wihlney summed up the wider lack of

knowledge of this interesting episode in Yugoslav popular culture, which
transcended Cold War borders. Western ignorance of exotic music scenes
situated at the other end of the ideological spectrum should hardly come
as a shock, even though, as was the case in 1980s Yugoslavia, that ideology
was already diluted. What is surprising, however, is that this disco scene is
nowadays virtually unknown even in the milieu in which it originated, in
the former Yugoslavia and its successor states. Whereas typical connois-
seurs of Yugoslav pop music are familiar with the kind of images that baf-
fled Wihlney—which were common in the late socialist mediascape—the
label Yu disco would give them reason to pause. If anything, the period is
remembered for a different music, for punk and new wave, which are
widely accepted as the artistic peak of Yugoslav rock. Willingly left out of
the popular canon and of collective memory—in an intellectual climate
which favoured punk and new wave as carriers of the country’s self-­
representation—Yugoslav disco fell into oblivion quite soon after its emer-
gence. It was rediscovered only recently by a community of vinyl
archaeologists who picked through stashes of second hand vinyl looking
for forgotten dance records. Listening to thousands of tracks, they found
signs of a disco beat across various Yugoslav productions from the late
1970s and early 1980s—tracks which had previously been largely ignored
or placed under different labels—and consequently coined the retrospec-
tive term ‘Yu disco’. In fact, a lot of these tracks are what across this chap-
ter I term ‘disco-ish’: crossover tunes that were obviously influenced by
strands of Western disco music but often only half-adopted them, blend-
ing the disco sound with the musician’s own stylistic background. In any
event, these ‘archeological’ discoveries raise important questions: To what
extent is the retroactive reappraisal of a musical heritage useful? Can it tell
us something about the actual music and its context? The present chapter
provides a positive answer to this dilemma by tracing this long-forgotten
sound back to other cultural and social traits of the era.
With the help of archival material and personal testimonies, I draw a
line from these scattered sonic traces to the historically existing scene,
even one as fragile and unsure of itself as Yugoslav disco was. Far from
being a mere fashionable genre tag invented by local hipsters driven by the
desire to find yet another area of ‘retromania’, this chapter argues that
Yugoslav disco is a sound around which a wider narrative can be con-
structed, designating a whole culture consisting of all of the key elements
which the notoriously complex term ‘disco’ in its original form requires.
Namely, it refers respectively to the historic musical style marked by a 4x4
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 197

beat (as found in disco music), to the specific spaces designed for the
reproduction and collective enjoyment of disco music (discotheques), as
well as to the practice of free-style dancing cultivated therein (disco danc-
ing) (Lawrence 2006, 128). In fact, it is possible to go further and treat
the elusive genre of Yu disco as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk with many
associated expressions, which in addition to the music include a distinct
aesthetics and worldview. Contrary to the prevalent local tendency of
treating disco as a superfluous or meaningless fad, I argue here that
Yugoslav disco can be seen as a reflection of major late socialist transforma-
tions: a ‘musical box’ of sorts, which conveyed the era’s aspirations and
neuroses, decadence and contradictions.
In this chapter I will reconstruct this ignored moment in Yugoslav pop-
ular culture, treating disco as a musical niche and a lifestyle practised in the
unique settings of discotheques. It is a moment full of remarkable charac-
ters, many of whom were quickly forgotten at the time, while others
remained associated with other artistic styles—ranging from Roma dance
champions to opera singers-turned-disco stars, from hostile music critics
to ambitious disco managers. Indeed, the story of Yugoslav disco is largely
one of its oblivion and recent rediscovery, and this chapter follows that
same structure.1 I begin by dissecting the conflict inherent in the term
‘socialist disco’, and root its amnesia in existing discourses of socialist pop-
ular music, arguing that uncovering the mechanisms that stand behind
this amnesia is all the more important since they reveal inadequate
approaches to the socialist era as a whole. I then demonstrate the manner
in which disco was rediscovered, and celebrate those who came across it
and have aided its re-circulation. The second part of the chapter turns to
the manner in which local disco unfolded. After first sketching the import
of Western disco, I follow the dynamics by which it was appropriated on
two distinct levels, in the music scene, and on the dance floor, always keep-
ing in mind the culture’s embedded pairing of music and visuals, real
experiences and media constructs.

Contextualising Yugoslav Disco: A Contradiction

in Terms?

Writing under a telling pseudonym in 1980, a young journalist from

Zagreb youth union’s weekly Polet unwittingly pointed to the contradic-
tion with which every study of socialist disco must begin. Unlike its con-
temporary punk or even rock ‘n’ roll counterparts, disco had little in
common with the original egalitarian values of socialism.
198 M. ZUBAK

We have a phenomenon of a sort. Poor kids choose the cultural values of

quasi-intellectual hippies, while the well-to-do youth identifies with the
populist disco sound. Zagreb dance floors provide grotesque scenes where
one becomes the “star of the night” not because of dance moves, but due to
the cubic inches of the car parked outside…. (Fiksi Travolta 1980, 19)

Recent readings of disco have rightly pointed to its early, progressive ori-
gins, and appreciation of its sexually and ethnically empowering features is
by now a given (Lawrence 2003; Echols 2011). Yet, the disco which cap-
tured Yugoslavs in the late 1970s was by and large the one which new
readings oppose, and which, for that matter, also opposed socialist ideals
in almost every way, as a hierarchical, celebrity-driven, consumerist emana-
tion of the exploitative capitalist music industry.
How, then, was disco domesticated so smoothly in a setting with which
it allegedly had so little in common? In truth, late socialist realities were far
from the outdated Cold War notions of the communist world across the
whole of Central and Eastern Europe, let alone just in Yugoslavia, a coun-
try which was always considered to present a sort of exception to the rigid
communism found elsewhere in any case. Due to its early detour from the
Soviet Union’s control, the country embarked on its own distinct socialist
road, guided by a new ideology of self-management that aspired to return
power to the workers (Mezei 1976). While essentially a variant of Marxism-­
Leninism, self-management proved semantically elastic, which made it an
effective weapon in the gradual democratisation of the country. Ideological
relaxation was paired with the economic reforms of the 1960s which
included market mechanisms within the state-planned economy, creating
a hybrid economic structure. The country’s unique geopolitical status as a
non-aligned country also led to a great openness to the West, whose
imprint was further boosted by freedom of travel and a growing Yugoslav
workforce doing temporary work abroad, mostly in Germany. An ever-­
stronger federalisation, in turn, highlighted regional and national differ-
ences which were already strong, effectively decentralising the country.
Belgrade was the capital, but other important political, cultural and enter-
tainment centres also existed, including Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Sarajevo.
All these radical changes have led some scholars to approach Yugoslavia
as if it were a capitalist state (Katalenec 2013). To do so, however, ignores
the strict one-party rule by a leadership not afraid to exert political power
over its citizens. In fact, the ongoing liberalisation resulted in turmoil in
the early 1970s, when democratic reforms similar to those of the ill-fated
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 199

Prague Spring were abruptly halted by the indisputable authority of

President Tito. Youth politics in particular came under attack, as student
movements echoing the global 1968 uprisings were suppressed, setting
clear limits to possible political action. Yugoslavia thus entered the decade
of disco in a sort of schizophrenic state in which Marx and Coca-Cola
went hand in hand (Jelača et al. 2017; Vučetić 2018). Only not conjointly,
as Jean-Luc Godard envisioned in his epic cinematic portrayal of the post-­
war Western generation Masculin Féminin (1966), whose inter-title
‘Children of Marx and Coca-Cola’ encapsulated the youth’s ongoing
simultaneous pursuit of politics and pop-culture. Instead, in Yugoslavia,
there were two realms: one in which it was hard to deviate, and another
hosting deviations which were not only tolerated, but actively pursued,
often using official jargon which made their acceptance easier. If direct
politics stood for the former, pop culture epitomised the latter. Popular
music, in all its variants, was among its most important elements from
early on.
By the late 1970s, all the ingredients needed for the warm reception of
disco were thus already in place in Yugoslavia, some for well over a decade.
The country’s rich and ever-expanding music industry (Vuletic 2011) was
heavily influenced by market forces and pro-Western tastes. Next to estrada,
the term that designated the mainstream musical and entertainment scene
and industry with its major festivals, stars, and glamour, several strands of
rock also had their own events and ethos (Škarica 2005). From 1961,
Yugoslavia also participated in the Eurovision Song Contest, and foreign
artists occasionally visited on tour (Vuletic 2007). Record labels spread
across the country, a sign of a growing appetite for Western styles, and
radio and TV gave music ever-growing airtime. A range of print media
outlets, from cultural glossies to tabloids, covered music in a manner that
illustrates this aforementioned schizophrenia (Zubak 2018b, 35). Since
their income depended on sales, publishers were almost forced to attend to
their readers’ evolving interests, creating a range of commercial magazines
similar to their Western counterparts whose profits were used to subsidise
socially responsible journals, published according to the letter of the law.
Seen from this perspective, Wihlney’s surprise at Ružičasti Žur perhaps
seems a little naive. Had he spent a summer holiday on the Adriatic coast
among the flocks of foreign tourists who danced on hotel terraces, drinking
foreign spirits and engaging in sexual encounters, he would have been far
less shocked. Indeed, disco provided a typical soundtrack for such summer
extravaganzas, as a distinguished Belgrade journalist observed in 1978:
200 M. ZUBAK

The disco sound is the real deal—for losing one’s sense of self. The end
result is that at the best place for having fun, on our beautiful, blue Adriatic,
you have the worst nights out. Outside there’s moonlight reflected on the
sea, cheap wine, and the prettiest girls ever; but none of this matters when
the disco sound leads us under the nearest hotel roof, crowded like a railway
station… we leave that little part of ourselves that we brought along on holi-
day (…) Maybe it’s just that we don’t know how to have fun anymore.
Being one of a crowd is a virtue. (Tirnanić 1978)

Tirnanić’s comments, flavoured with the scepticism typical of a high-

brow take on disco, reveals the ubiquitous presence of disco at the time—
which today has been forgotten and is revealed only through media
archives. This amnesia is embedded in the existing discourses, both local
and Western, of socialist popular music.

Neglect and Rediscovery of Yugoslav Disco

It was March 1980, and the disco fever that shook socialist Yugoslavia had
already passed its peak, but Belgrade photojournalist Dragan Timotijević
thought it was not too late to jump on the bandwagon. ‘Belmondo’—as
he was known due to his resemblance to the actor and to a brief biographi-
cal interlude in Paris—decided to up the ante. In an exemplary showcase
of late socialist cultural entrepreneurship, he gathered together four high-­
school teenagers to form a female vocal-dance group called Cice-Mace
(Pussy Cats). The fact that none of the group excelled at singing or danc-
ing did not bother him. On roller skates, wearing glittery jackets and shiny
shorts, they looked fabulous and captured what disco should represent.
Cice-Mace staged a few photo sessions, including a spectacular ride in an
open-air jeep through the centre of Belgrade, to promote their upcoming
album, which contained a few forgettable disco-ish songs. This brief spell
of media attention never bloomed into a successful career, however, and
Cice-Mace disappeared from the scene as fast as they emerged, becoming
no more than a bizarre incident in local popular culture.
Around the same time, talented Skopje trombone player Kire Mitrev
commenced on a musical journey of his own. After spending the early
1970s at Belgrade Musical Academy and playing in the Radio Television
Belgrade Big Band he went to study composition and arrangement at the
famous Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA. He returned to Belgrade
eager to test his newly acquired knowledge with local audiences. He
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 201

formed the KIM band, assembling a talented group of musicians and sing-
ers, which went on to release two exceptional disco-funk albums in the
early 1980s, labelled ‘jazz-rock’ at the time. Their richly produced sound,
which was filled with horns, dense jazzy arrangements, and delicate back-
ing vocals, was of an exceptional quality that worked far beyond the bizarre
appeal of Cice-Mace, for whom Mitrev had arranged a couple of songs.
KIM’s groove has also aged well, as evidenced by the new life of ‘Frka’, a
track that Mitrev originally composed for rhythm and blues veteran
Zdenka Kovačićek and which a few years ago became an unexpected
regional club hit in a version by Nipplepeople. At the time it was created,
though, KIM’s sound failed to live on the dance floor, perhaps because the
country was already in love with another sound, that of punk and new
wave. In many respects, the stories of Cice-Mace and KIM illustrate the
story of Yugoslav disco more broadly, which encompassed media stunts as
well as skilful musicians. Coming from diverse backgrounds and with dif-
ferent ambitions, these two acts demonstrated a great sonic diversity of
local disco that was certainly among the reasons that made it difficult to
identify. Populating contrasting musical landscapes, Cice-Mace and KIM
also shared one common trait in that until recently, both were largely for-
gotten, left to gather dust in the obscure corners of record collections and
popular history.
The extent to which disco is missing from the conventional accounts of
Yugoslav popular music makes it legitimate to ask if it ever really existed at
all. The local discourse on popular music developed across several streams,
none of which featured disco prominently. Despite the early translations of
music scholars like Simon Frith (1986) dating back to the socialist days,
Yugoslav popular music scholarship remained relatively underdeveloped;
its place was taken by a strong tradition of music journalism which had
been going strong ever since the emergence of the first specialised maga-
zines in the 1960s (Vučetić 2010). With privileged access and inside infor-
mation, music journalists were in the best position to produce knowledge,
and from early on took the lead in this process, often breaking new ground.
In fact, the now-standard narrative of Yugoslav pop-rock history was
established within this circle. It charted the rise of rock culture in a familiar
three-stage progress, from direct importation through imitation to the
creation of a genuinely local idiom. After breaking out of the initial narrow
milieu of privileged youth with access to Western goods, rock culture
gradually acquired a mass following, and peaked at the end of the 1970s
with the rise of punk and new wave, when it finally caught up with the
202 M. ZUBAK

West, as creative individuals married artistry with social commentary and

were met with an appreciative audience and the support of the music
industry (Glavan 1983, 15).
This narrative set in so firmly that it remains valid and recognised to this
day. An entire generation of music critics have given their best efforts to
conserving punk and new wave’s legendary standing in the collective
memory. They learned their trade from the UK publications New Musical
Express and Melody Maker, available first by post and increasingly via retail.
Educated in this tradition, they also proved willing to adopt the tropes of
their Western mentors, adjusting them to local acts—whether reprimand-
ing them for not keeping up with global trends or praising them when
they did. For example, self-fashioned Malcolm McLaren wannabes claimed
in the late 1970s that the best punk east of London was being played in
Yugoslavia (Zubak 2018b, 230), and this view received occasional confir-
mation from abroad. Their views on the subversive potential of punk were
given theoretical (and, conveniently, Marxist) buoyancy by volumes such
as Dick Hebdige’s subcultural classic Subculture. The Meaning of Style,
translated only a year after the original (Hebdige 1980), giving strong
impetus to the local subcultural studies which emerged from the 1980s
(Tomc 1989; Prica 1991; Perasović 2001). Those music critics who dic-
tated the musical discourse and would occupy key places in the industry
drank from these same sources. Coinciding with the creative highs of the
Yugoslav scene when punk and new wave matched musical innovation
with social relevance, disco never stood much of a chance to gain their
respect, particularly when they were impressed by the dismissive tone of
early Western commentators who initially approached US disco with hos-
tility, snubbing it for its alleged anti-intellectualism and lack of subversive
potential. With its progressive, sexual, and racial aspects still unknown,
disco was often treated with disdain and portrayed as an exploitative prod-
uct with no artistic value.
At the same time, academic research on socialist popular music was
traditionally framed in oppositional or counter-cultural terms. Rock was
praised for its major contribution to the downfall of the regime, and
acknowledged as the core ingredient of a subversive youth culture which
challenged authoritarian rule and the supposedly hostile state (Ryback
1990; Ramet 1994). Such a biased perspective, that prioritised lyrics over
music and experience, left much of the scene outside of the focus of inter-
est, thus cutting out not only disco, but the entire culture on which it
rested: the mainstream music scene, the so-called estrada. Of academic
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 203

interest were subversion and engagement, not entertainment or fun, with

Western experiences somehow deemed inapplicable (Mazierska 2017, 3).
As a result, the rift between the rock scene and the mainstream deepened,
with the latter supposedly serving the regime and faithfully reflecting offi-
cial views of what socialist music should be like. In truth, scholars ascribed
to pop-rock music an overly political dimension that it didn’t necessarily
carry in all of its manifestations. While this observation holds true for the
whole of socialist Europe, it is particularly the case with Yugoslavia, where
the authorities facilitated the proliferation of pop music styles and accepted
rock as their ally. This paradigm has only recently been challenged by a
new wave of studies which paint a more complex picture of how main-
stream scenes changed attitudes and affected tastes (Mazierska 2017;
Beard and Rasumussen 2020).
With these traditions, both local and Western, working hand in hand,
disco’s recognition had to come from the outside. Finding and under-
standing Yugoslav disco required a fresh approach free from the biased
notions of those who had historically been its gatekeepers. The initiative
came from below, as unexpected actors managed to circumvent existing
discursive constraints. In what is now an over a decade-long project, a
group of ex-Yugoslav music aficionados, colloquially known as ‘crate dig-
gers’, have acted as informal researchers to breathe new life into a plethora
of lost and neglected disco tracks which had hitherto remained under
the radar.
The work of crate diggers differed from what had come before. They
uncovered unknown and literally unheard-of tracks by marginal artists,
but also looked for atypical tunes by acclaimed musicians which had been
recorded in their early careers and in weird artistic excursions. They
searched through production scores and soundtracks seeking recognisable
disco beats. Apart from adding new elements, they re-evaluated existing
traditions according to new preferences. In this endeavour, they enjoyed a
great advantage as, unburdened by previous knowledge and value judge-
ments, they were able to re-contextualise old tracks, and place them in
new contexts, under previously unused labels. Disregard for traditional
rules and an affinity for different musical qualities than those imposed by
the gatekeepers allowed them to absorb tracks from seemingly unrelated
traditions into the same canon (Vályi 2013). Such unorthodox takes on
the old repertoire, which effectively re-configured Yugoslavia’s musical
past, created strange yet sonically meaningful entities.
204 M. ZUBAK

This fresh ethos, which is interested in distinct rhythmic patterns, has

helped diggers to discover not only disco, but other genres as well, includ-
ing funk and electronica, that had remained outside the histories of
Yugoslav pop-rock for similar reasons. Depending on the selected criteria,
a new canon of Yugoslav disco has thus been created, filled with a variety
of dance tracks. A number of new channels have helped to disseminate and
popularise these findings. First on the internet and increasingly in official
releases, this elusive genre has been effectively codified because online
music services have facilitated the uploading of these personal genre nar-
ratives from below, both anonymously and by those adding their own
curatorial stamp. YouTube thematic channels, Mixcloud playlists, DJ sets,
and edits have all worked to legitimise the genre. Music databases such as
Discogs, in turn, have implemented those new tags, taking the lead from
record stores in spreading new classifications. Today, this process of legiti-
misation is almost complete. With compilations such as Jugoton Funk Vol.
1—A Decade of Non-Aligned Beats, Soul, Disco and Jazz 1969–1979
(2020) and Socialist Disco. Dancing Behind Yugoslavia’s Velvet Curtain
1977–1987 (2018) in particular having now been released by historical
and re-issue record labels, it is time to write Yu disco’s cultural and social
history.

Importing Disco
Disco arrived in Yugoslavia in waves, taking much less time to take root
than rock ‘n’roll had previously. Its narrative picks up pace in the summer
of 1978, when two intertwined events—a tour by Boney M and the
Yugoslav premiere of Saturday Night Fever—turned both public and
media attention to the new phenomenon, causing a flood of reflections
and comments.
None of this was in fact new, as both information on disco and the
actual music were already available before, sometimes even in real-time.
The country’s rich music industry had opened up to various strands of
dance sound from the mid-1970s. It soon became clear that disco consti-
tuted a profitable niche if not a goldmine, prompting record companies to
release a variety of licensed editions from the likes of Van McCoy and Isaac
Hayes through to the heroes of Euro and space disco, such as Giorgio
Moroder and Magic Fly. Dance orientation was confirmed by exclusive
contracts with specialised labels. The Sarajevo label Diskoton signed an
agreement with Tamla Motown and Ljubljana’s ZKP RTV did the same
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 205

with specialised disco label Casablanca, which led to the release of long-­
awaited albums by Donna Summer in 1980. For less demanding consum-
ers, there were (semi)-official compilations that could be played at house
parties, with lascivious covers revealing disco’s visual code.
In June 1978, German disco-Schlager sensation Boney M’s five-­concert
tour of Yugoslavia was well prepared: Zagreb’s Jugoton label had already
released many of the group’s singles, completing the project by the end of
1980 with the release of nearly all of the group’s back-catalogue, which
received the warmest of receptions from radio listeners. Boney M had
already visited Zagreb a year earlier to perform on the weekend TV pro-
gramme Svjetla pozornice (Stage Lights), after which they partied in vari-
ous Zagreb discotheques. While the mainstream media sensationally
announced the concerts, music critics were generally unenthusiastic. Even
those who were not repelled by the manufactured industrial sound criti-
cised the group’s inability to transform sports halls into nightclubs, despite
‘anaemic attempts by a few couples to create the right dancing atmo-
sphere’ (Konjović 1978). By and large, though, the fans did not care,
welcoming the sweet and infectious Caribbean sound, which was mock-
ingly called ‘the sound of “Sunday afternoon”’ after the eponymous vari-
ety TV show, Nedjeljom Popodne (Sunday Afternoon) that frequently
featured the group’s music. Sales spoke in Boney M’s favour, and their
exciting performance style and sound fit well into the local pop scene. The
country’s links with the group were symbolically sealed in 1981 when
frontman and dancer Bobby Farrell married a young Romani in Skopje
with a huge media presence, in what tabloids dubbed the wedding of the
century, and an adequate response to the recent British royal wedding of
Lady Diana and Prince Charles (Aćimović 1981). It is no coincidence that
the biggest Yugoslav disco hit, ‘Apsolutno tvoj’ by Mirzino jato, was the
result of a conscious attempt to translate Boney M’s sound.
If Boney M quickly became the favourite sound of local disco, its face
was that of John Travolta. Disco arrived in Yugoslavia coupled with images
which complemented the sound, helping to present its culture, visuals,
and values, no matter how simplified. Mirroring Saturday Night Fever’s
US marketing, Zagreb’s Jugoton released its soundtrack ahead of the
screening, and it was met with great success. Arriving in local cinemas less
than nine months after its US premiere, Saturday Night Fever stormed
through local theatres, turning disco and its hero into a national phenom-
enon. All of a sudden, it seemed as though everyone had an opinion about
the film, its music, dancing, and ambience.
206 M. ZUBAK

Reviews approached the film seriously, seeing in it the reigning American

zeitgeist, praising its rhythm, and in particular its inventive camera moves
which evoked disco dancing and enhanced the charisma of the main char-
acter (Pajkić 1978). Articles drew parallels with the local situation as the
key question was left in the air: Does disco have a place at home? Headlines
such as ‘Travoltization of the Balkans gives reason to think’ (Popović
1978) and ‘Would you let your daughter go out with Travolta?’ (Aćimović
1978) made him both a subject of analysis and a generational idol peering
out at readers from magazine covers. Journals printed his biography in
instalments, and the novelisation of Saturday Night Fever, written after the
film, also quickly sold out. In that year’s New Year TV programmes, actors
doubled up as Travolta. Vlado Gaćina played a billposter putting up post-
ers for the film on the streets of Sarajevo—he falls into a daydream in
which he is the king of the discotheque, only to be rudely awakened and
brought back to his proletarian reality in Groznica ovogodišnje vec ̌eri (This
Year’s Night Fever, 1978). On TV Belgrade, the role was given to a hand-
some lookalike who expressed hope that he would end up next to his idol
on the big screen. In the coastal city of Split, a Travolta fan club was estab-
lished, promising its members an abundant supply of merchandise.
Eventually, the term ‘Travolta’ entered everyday language, becoming a
common nickname for skilful and good-looking male dancers.
Much has been written on how Saturday Night Fever distorted the
image of disco by turning its cross-cultural and sexually transgressive traits
upside down, instead promoting a vision of heterosexual celebrity-driven
industry. But if Tony Manero distorted disco, the information failed to
reach Yugoslav viewers, who by and large were fascinated with disco’s
escapist hedonism while oblivious to the sexual fluidity of its roots. In a
rare, subversive take, Slovenian film director Boštjan Hladnik (once a stu-
dent of Claude Chabrol’s) re-appropriated these origins in one of the
phantasmagorical scenes of his feature Ubij me nežno (Killing Me Softly,
1979) that sees a deluded elderly female pulp fiction writer joining a group
of bike riders in leather suits. Together, in front of a life-size poster of
Travolta in the hallway of a Mediterranean villa, they recreate Travolta’s
hustle, albeit with a suggestive choreography with obvious gay innuendos
and allusions—a move that remained isolated and largely unrecognised.
The stunning success of Saturday Night Fever, however, encouraged local
film distributors to include a remarkable number of disco films in their
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 207

repertoire, some of which received media coverage. Within the next few
years cinema enthusiasts could see Disco Godfather, Thanks God it’s Friday,
Music Machine, Roller Boogie, American Fever, Can’t Stop the Music, and
Disco Delirio (conveniently translated as Travoltijada), all perpetuating
the image of disco as a form of fun, dancing escapism.
It was clear that by this time, disco had become an essential part of
popular culture; indeed, it seemed as though everyone had something to
say about it. The hero of Momčilo Kapor’s novel Zoe (1978a) was a Donna
Summer fan. Acclaimed cultural journalists, film critics, and a number of
music critics reflected on the new fad, debating disco music, disco culture,
the disco generation and disco ambience, and providing a framework with
which to grasp the phenomenon. A myriad of diverse articles appeared
across various journals, whose tone and approach matched their editorial
policies and target audiences. TV reviews and tabloids pushed sensational
themes, while pop-cultural and music magazines were open to more seri-
ous opinion pieces. A closer look at these texts reveals a nuanced and
increasingly diverse discourse which did not shy away from deconstructing
disco’s components, and which displayed an increasing willingness to
include new insights, turn to social analysis, and touch on issues like its
relation to other genres, major influences, and new features, even sporadi-
cally considering disco’s sexual politics, which had previously been ignored.
From the almost universal initial rejection of disco as an allegedly man-
ufactured, seemingly emotionless dance music, a few occasional favourable
texts praised the quality of more respected envoys of the genre, such as
Chic, Donna Summer, and Grace Jones. With few exceptions, there was a
general sense that good dance music had to be ‘Black music’, with rare
praise going to the genre’s industrial synthetic innovations. Soul and funk
were almost artificially separated from disco, as though DJs didn’t mix
Donna Summer with the Bee Gees. For better or worse, Saturday Night
Fever remained an image of disco that fascinated Yugoslavs. Its hedonism
and machismo were preserved in the mainstream perception, and refuted
by no more than a few critics. In the country’s actual discotheques, people
reacted equally positively to the Philly sound and disco boogie, but in the
mainstream media, disco remained a mixture of Boney M, Saturday Night
Fever, and Studio 54. In the remaining two sections, I will discuss how
disco unfolded on the local music scene and in the discotheques, keeping
in mind its multimedia manifestations and reflections.
208 M. ZUBAK

Adopting Disco
In contrast to the rich discourse that proliferated in Yugoslavia about
Western disco, when it came to its local echo, the media remained mostly
silent. In a rare commentary from the time—an aside in an overview of the
1970s—veteran Džuboks music critic Branko Vukojević briefly described
how disco played out:

The Yugoslav disco sound happened last year. The result was a miscarriage.
Filling popular hits with “a certain number of bass drum beats per minute”,
by stroking the synthesizer and adding that inevitable “piu, piuuu”, our
disco masters proved that they do not understand what disco is. I wonder if
anyone has ever danced to the products of our “disco production”?
(Vukojević 1980)

In the disco summer of 1978, the greatest music star in the country was
Zdravko Č olić, who owed part of his fame to the disco beats that increas-
ingly coloured his pop tunes. Č olić cemented his commitment to the
genre by recording the Euro disco single ‘Light Me’ (1978) in English,
intended for the German market, under the alter ego Dravco—easier to
pronounce abroad, but ridiculous-sounding at home. His international
breakthrough never materialised, but Č olić continued to sporadically
insert disco-ish tunes into his repertoire. This move was paralleled by sev-
eral other acclaimed estrada stars who tried to blend the new fad into their
work—indeed, it was in estrada that the disco flavour was particularly
strong, although this was rarely acknowledged. Some, like Duško Lokin,
went to Germany to learn from the disco masters first hand; folk-pop
singer Neda Ukraden seasoned her folkish vocals with an electro-synth
background, and major diva Tereza Kesovija created a disco medley out of
her Mediterranean chansons. Meanwhile, Eurovision contestants Pepel in
Kri sang about ‘Superman’ in full ABBA Euro disco mould. Around the
turn of the decade, it seemed as if everyone was recording disco tracks,
from Ivo Robić, who had been Yugoslavia’s response to Frank Sinatra, to
a range of newcomers and celebrities, such as TV host Suzana Mančić,
who tried to launch a music career by turning disco.
‘Disco fulfilled Warhol’s promise of 15 minutes of fame’, wrote Džuboks
writer Petar Luković, astutely detecting the genre’s aspirational essence
(Luković 1980). Simultaneously, he satirised such disco excursions scat-
tered on the B-sides of 7” singles or non-disco albums: ‘tired disco rhythm,
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 209

stupid lyrics, position 2076 on the all-time worst singles list’ (Džuboks
1979), ‘rustic disco tune, psychopathic masturbation’ (Džuboks 1980a),
‘plebeian disco song, boring, monotonous’ (Džuboks 1980b). In his leg-
endarily cruel reviews, Luković shattered the dreams of local Baccarra and
Donna Summer copycats who disappeared from the scene as quickly as
they appeared. With one exception: the Bosnian version of Boney M,
Mirzino jato (Mirza’s Flock), became an instant success with their
‘Apsolutno tvoj’ (Absolutely Yours). The song was ‘completely meaning-
less in its emptiness, but at least one could dance to it’, as Vukojević
remarked at the time (1980). The group’s leader, Mirza Alijagić, was a
singer at the Sarajevo opera, and his powerful bass voice proved capable of
reproducing Frank Farian’s vocals; backed by two female vocalists, he pro-
moted the song on several TV shows, pushing its sales to record highs.
The mixture was made bizarre, in a fashion typical of the Yugoslav take on
disco, by the fact that heavy metal guitarist Sead Lipovača produced the
song, creating the group’s recognisable sound. Lipovača was one of sev-
eral musicians and composers, including Aleksandar Sanja Ilić and Nenad
Vilović, who filled pop tunes with disco arrangements. For the most part,
their haphazard efforts at modernising estrada failed to convince audi-
ences and were typically blamed for Yu disco’s failure to compete with its
US counterpart (Vukojević 1980).
Still, this was also a moment when disco was spilling over into more
sophisticated musical realms as professional musicians with academic or
jazz backgrounds embraced the genre. Orchestral disco productions by
acclaimed film composers, such Mihajlo Mića Marković, Alfi Kabiljo, and
Zoran Simjanović, infiltrated production scores, soundtracks, and TV
commercials, from Yugo car adverts to aerobics mixtapes, stimulating con-
sumerist desires (Mimica 1983). Keyboardist Igor Savin with the backing
of the Stanko Selak Orchestra recorded an exceptional brass-packed disco
funk instrumental LP with occasional ethnic textures, Yu Disco Express
(1979), and Skopje Albanian Arian Kerliu released a lavishly produced
bilingual English/Croatian disco-boogie album (1981) with the help of
experienced New York musicians. Zagreb’s funk-rock group Clan recorded
a rare concept LP about discos and motorcycles, and Boban Petrović’s
band Zdravo played funk grooves with the help of three backing vocalists
from Zaire, all daughters of the country’s ambassador to Yugoslavia. Later,
Petrović went on to make the most consistent disco record of the era, the
aforementioned Žur (1981), along with the sole Yugoslav 12” disco sin-
gle, ‘Meteorology’. That most of these efforts rarely made it onto the
210 M. ZUBAK

actual dance floor was partly due to the high expectations of local fans,
who remained suspicious throughout. Disco, unlike rock, had to be for-
eign: ‘To Yugoslav fans of funk [or disco] they seemed unconvincing, and
musicians didn’t give them much reason to reconsider, while rock fans
despised everything related to funk/disco’ (Vukojević 1980).
It is safe to say that disco spread more credibly through fashion and
dancing than music: it was as if its outlandish dress-code was tailor-made
for estrada performers, who readily appeared in flamboyant outfits on ever
more glitzy festival podiums and in TV studios. Among them was Č olić,
who in the summer of 1978 invited the dance troupe Lokice to join him
on his nationwide tour to help him increase his disco credentials. Jovan
Ristić’s documentary Pjevam danju pjevam noću (1979) documented the
hysteria that Lokice, led by freestyle legend Lokica Stefanović, caused each
time they stepped onto the stage. Their erotic moves and glamorous out-
fits soon turned them into stars in their own right, who regularly displayed
their acrobatics on television, which proved to be the medium most sus-
ceptible to disco. Lokice also recorded a disco LP, Disco Lady (1979)—it
prompted a typical response from Luković, but their legacy has remained
intact, as they went on to become a true symbol of the Yu disco era.
Thanks to them, exciting choreography became a requisite part of all fes-
tival and TV performances, and a string of visually attractive dance troupes,
such as Elektre and DC-10, were modelled after them. But unlike Lokice,
these were led by male managers who, much like Belmondo with Cice-­
Mace, tried to cash in on the ongoing disco craze. Dance troupes such as
these posed for magazines like Start—‘schizophrenic’ publications them-
selves which published nude centrefolds alongside feminist analysis.
Indicating that disco’s visual code became the most important part of
disco, they offered them media presence as long as they would provide
attractive images (Start 1981).
Disco certainly led to the increase of female pop performers. For exam-
̵
ple, Sladana Milošević and Alma Ekmečić, both of whom were later associ-
ated with other music styles, echoed the ecstatic whispers of disco divas,
using their sex appeal to enhance their stage presence. Like many divas of
the time, the sexual revolution they enacted walked the thin line between
empowerment and objectification, and their push for female emancipation
boiled down to ‘sexy’ visuals. As a whole, Tony Manero’s brand of male
chauvinism prevailed. It was reincarnated in Goran Marković’s film
Nacionalna klasa (1979), for which Zoran Simjanović composed the
funkiest soundtrack of the era. The title song, ‘Floyd’—named after the
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 211

main character, an aspiring race-car driver—became a rare local disco-funk

hit at the time, depicting him as an irresistible seducer, a sort of real-life
Travolta: ‘Who’s that cool cat, flirting with the chicks? Floyd! Floyd!
Floyd! (He) lives crazy! He loves crazy! Who could resist this maniac?’
Testosterone was running wild, yet around the edges there was some
room for occasional transgressions that probed at gender stereotypes. An
influential example of this was the innovative TV show Beograd noću
(Belgrade at Night, 1980), featuring the artist Oliver Mandić in non-­
ironic drag singing his early disco-funk tunes, which caused a minor
scandal.

Dancing to Disco
A network of discotheques emerged in Yugoslavia a whole decade before
Saturday Night Fever, driven by semi-private initiatives or supported by
socialist youth unions. From the late 1960s onwards, clubs mushroomed
in diverse settings, from tourist resort hotels to cafes and abandoned base-
ments. Many were run by the first DJs, who merged different roles as
entrepreneurs, musical gatekeepers, and DIY engineers. They soon gained
professional status, turning into archetypical figures of the socialist music
business—the nightlife industry was still a grey area, and DJs had the
knowledge to take advantage of the system’s many loopholes (Zubak
2016). As the 1970s progressed, however, the Studio 54 paradigm—
glamorous, exclusive, debauched—shifted the focus. Impressed by his
1978 visit to the New York club, Serbian writer Momčilo Kapor wrote a
dramatic essay about the illusory space that kind of discotheque provided:

Discotheques resemble Orpheus’s discovery of the underworld. Inside,

there are only enchanted moves from the almighty wizard DJ behind the
glass cage. Those who own nothing above ground have eternity down there.
What they lack upstairs turns into an advantage downstairs; underground
everything is upside down. (Kapor 1978b)

The idea of exclusive nightclubs was certainly not alien to some disco
managers. For example, Mirko Sobota ran his venue on the outskirts of
Zagreb, accessible by car, carefully planning disco events to build up his
club’s reputation: he selected the music and guests, and redesigned the
interior for every new season. Long gone were the days when DIY techni-
cians made amplifiers and lights from scratch. Now expensive sound
212 M. ZUBAK

systems, professional lighting equipment, and other gear, including video

walls, were imported from Munich, while DJs travelled abroad every
month to get a fresh stash of new records.
In Belgrade, Boban Petrović treated nightlife as an art form. Alongside
his music career, he ran several clubs throughout the 1970s, earning a
reputation for hosting the wildest parties in town and becoming the big-
gest envoy of a developing club culture. His discotheques applied the
same model that Studio 54 would become famous for, recreating a similar
elitist atmosphere long before the rise of the notorious New York City
discotheque. However, at least in theory, at Petrović’s nightspots it was
not money that secured entrance, but attitude and the ability to appear
‘cool’—a small concession, perhaps, to the socialist context the venues
existed in. The TV show that baffled Åke Wihlney, Ružic ̌asti žur, best
exemplified disco’s liaison with affluent, self-indulgent youth. Broadcast in
the early hours of New Year’s Day 1983, it portrayed a real-life disco party
in a suburban villa, offering a surreal picture of Belgrade as downtown
New York, with beautiful pleasure-seeking youth embracing disco sounds
to form a tight community on the dance floor.
Such images of decadence and affluence were often used against disco
by its new wave and punk detractors. Translating music criticism into soci-
ological analysis, they drew a link between disco’s repetitive music and
allegedly shallow interests of its listeners, contrasted by creative and smart
punks (Stojanović 1979, 6–7). In 1979, the Zagreb youth journal Polet,
the voice of the local new wave scene, openly smeared the city’s gentrified
discotheques such as Big Ben, which denied entrance to long-haired
hašomani rockers (from haš, meaning hash), favouring the clean, well-­
dressed, supposedly monied youth šminkeri (from šminka, meaning
make-­up) who came to be associated with disco (Perasović 2001). Fiksi
Travolta’s critique painted a picture miles away from Ružic ̌asti žur:

Clothes here are not some consciously designed message or invitation for
interaction, but just [something from] a standard shop catalogue from
Trieste. Local disco-man(iacs) don’t wear clothes, clothes wear them (…)
The prevailing spirit of the petty-bourgeois youth suffocates even those
occasional sparks of pleasure which come through (…) Zagreb disco clubs
exist because of the parking lots outside, which are actually the parking lots
of their parents’ socio-economic success. (Fiksi Travolta 1980)
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 213

But reality, once again, was more complex. While journalists, informed
by their subcultural theories, tended to see youth groups as exclusive tribes
populating distinct clubs and caring only about their own music styles, late
socialist realities obliged them to share. For one, the infrastructure was not
big enough: Slovenian punk promoter Igor Vidmar remembers how he
visited the main Ljubljana disco with the singer of a notorious punk band
simply because it was the only available option. Subcultural diversification
was definitely on the rise, but discotheques as a rule catered to mixed
crowds and hosted eclectic DJ sets, even though the era witnessed the rise
of DJs specialised in dance genres like Belgrade’s Dragan Kozlica or
Zagreb’s Slavin Balen.
And beyond these subcultural rifts, dance floors were dominated by
unlikely candidates. Balen recalls how the Roma ruled the dance contests,
known as ‘Travoltiadas’, which he and so many others organised across the
country’s discotheques. One of them, the 18-year-old Hamed Đogani, has
a story worthy of a Hollywood script: he travelled to Zagreb from his
working-class Belgrade suburb to compete at the state disco-dancing
championships where he surprisingly won. After perfecting his moves over
the next few months, he went to London to represent Yugoslavia at the
World Disco Dancing Championship in 1980 (Stojsavljević 1981). The
poet Đorde̵ Matić wrote an entry on Đogani in the Lexicon of YU Mythology
(2004). It contains a conspicuous lack of biographical details, which once
again attests to the typical amnesia around disco, but in it, Matić brilliantly
singles out the love affair between the genre and the lower classes.
Remembering his classmates’ passion for dancing, he identifies a link
between disco and the urban poor, which continued long after disco, as it
was replaced by Italo disco and electrofunk. In his text, worth quoting at
length, disco—in contrast to its media portrayal—appears as an unlikely
social equaliser. His piece allows us to notice how disco facilitated social
mobility and gave visibility—and even moments of superiority—to mar-
ginalised social groups:

Our fellow citizens, from the edge, the proletariat, especially its “ethnic”
edge of Roma and Albanians, could not identify with rock ‘n’ roll, with the
issues it raised, with its style. It hardly even touched them; it was too “white”
and middle class. They needed their own sound, and when they got it, they
got it with a vengeance (…) With the spread of disco clubs, they gained their
own values, their own heroes. And, for the first time, these heroes were
exactly those who had always been at the edge and at the edge only. In the
214 M. ZUBAK

disco clubs of the 1980s, like never before, everyone mixed, dancing next to
each other. But the real heroes, the best “dancers”, were, as a rule, guys
from the margins: social—and especially ethnic. And thanks to the elec-
tronic dance sound, the centre and the periphery shared for the first time the
same music, and the same fashion as well, the same culture. Kitschy, maybe,
but they certainly felt it as “their own”. (Matić 2004, 117–118)

Conclusion
In the shadow of punk and new wave, another fascinating yet ignored
genre of music existed in socialist Yugoslavia which unlike its famed coun-
terparts remained outside the popular canon, apparently considered
unworthy of scholarly reflection. This chapter has argued its case, recog-
nising the potential of this oft-derided music to elaborate upon society,
even when its quality sometimes left something to be desired. ‘Punk is a
symptom’, as Slavoj Žižek commented once long ago as the editor of the
Slovenian theory journal Problemi, famously linking the rise of local punk
subculture to the malfunctioning Yugoslav self-management, apparently
in deep crisis, and not living up to its promises (Žižek 1981). This chapter
has claimed the same status for punk’s alleged antithesis: disco too was a
symptom of late socialism and its inherent contradictions, and indeed was,
and is, a form of music that allows a privileged view into this decadent
historical epoch. This chapter has revisited several inherent dilemmas at
its heart.
Silenced for too long, the label Yu disco was revived relatively recently
by a community of local crate diggers, as they tried to characterise specific
sounds they had come across in their search for forgotten dance-floor
gems. By uncovering a vast body of previously unknown disco tracks, they
expanded our knowledge of Yugoslav music, forcing us to adjust the exist-
ing musical narratives as well as the wider perceptions of the period. As I
have shown, they stumbled upon something bigger than the music itself.
A search through the archives reveals that these sounds did not come
stripped of context. Yugoslav disco was simultaneously a pop music niche,
an art form, a music scene, a cultural practice, and a lifestyle, and each of
these aspects is illustrative of the late socialist pop culture as a whole. The
diggers’ playlists and compilations confirm, on a musical level, some
nuanced recent insights about the nature of late socialism.
Incidentally, just as the crate diggers were embarking on their informal
research, Alexei Yurchak published his seminal study Everything Was
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 215

Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Yurchak 2006),
which changed the way we think about late socialism. His account, rooted
in post-Stalinist society, doesn’t provide an actual portrayal of everyday
Yugoslav life, but Yurchak certainly develops a language to account for the
complex realities of the era, by reclaiming agency for socialist subjects.2
For most people, even those living in the more rigid communist regimes,
life evolved beyond contrasts between ‘us and them’, and away from the
outdated binaries of conformity and dissent which have been automati-
cally used for so long in explanations of the socialist era. People used offi-
cial discourse to pursue their alternative goals, which were not necessarily
restricted to those in line with the state ideology. In this way, all Yugoslav
pop culture transgressed boundaries between official and unofficial realms,
as key actors utilised existing institutional channels and infrastructure to
promote their alternative, Westernised agenda that provided challenges on
various levels.
Due to its nuanced features, Yugoslav disco seems a particularly rele-
vant part of this vision. Its rise was an example of the explosion of market
socialism within the Yugoslav hybrid system, where capitalist motives
mixed with the socialist mission. It prospered at a time when the consumer
gap between the East and West had narrowed, with the earlier pursuit of
enlightened socialist consumption slowly losing pace and giving way to a
less ambitious wish to simply mimic the capitalist path. If the model was
showing some cracks before, then disco deepened them, representing a
sort of pinnacle where many of the processes that had begun earlier
reached a point of no return. What had been exceptional before suddenly
became mainstream; what had been previously implicit turned explicit
with disco. Indeed, disco stripped down the residual ideological façade to
its bare and true essence, and showed how far the country had gone in
allowing decadence to resurface.
Disco profited hugely from the cross-border cultural exchange which
had started much earlier. With a leading Yugoslav rock guitarist sharing a
stage in 1969 with none other than Jimi Hendrix, it is perhaps unsurpris-
ing that the early disco hit ‘Fly Robin Fly’ was penned by Yugoslav
Hungarian Sylvester Levay, who had moved to Munich to find a larger
stage. The Rolling Stones had played in the country back in 1974, which
makes concerts by eclectic soul-funk bands like Osibisa and Earth, Wind
& Fire seem natural. In a context where Hollywood dominated the film
repertoire, it is also no wonder that local cinemas welcomed disco ‘roller
boogie’ extravaganzas. Nudity being a fixture at newsstands, journalists
216 M. ZUBAK

were compelled to dwell on the androgyny of disco divas like Grace Jones
and Amanda Lear (Vrdoljak 1980). Since proto-entrepreneurs had opened
discotheques in abandoned submarines a decade earlier, it is not so strange
that by the end of the 1970s, the country’s more advanced clubs were
modelled on downtown New York discotheques.
When considered individually, not much separated the disco era from
the early 1960s, apart from the sheer speed and momentum with which
Western stimuli came and were processed on the ground. Compared to
the arrival of rock ‘n’ roll two decades earlier, this journey proved shorter
and less tentative, with only a few years passing between the enthusiastic
reception of Van McCoy’s hustle and Mirzino jato’s disco hammer.
Welcomed by the media, Yugoslavia’s entertainment industry ensured that
disco quickly left traces across the cultural scene. But, in contrast to punk,
its translation proved problematic. Staging glamour was easier on televi-
sion than in real life, and reproducing sophisticated sounds was more chal-
lenging than the raw energy of punk. While the latter appeared authentic,
local disco was, by and large, seen as fake. For this reason, major disco
players looked to the West, attempting at one point to kick-start their
disco careers abroad. Discotheque managers leaned on Western experi-
ences and cultural goods to recreate the lived experiences, just as DJs
bought fresh records in Trieste and Munich—not only to gain a competi-
tive edge over their peers, but to provide the most authentic background
to their ‘imaginary elsewhere’ (Yurchak 2006).
Nevertheless, the way disco played out perfectly matches Yurchak’s
paradigms, almost as an ideal case in point. Musically, its grooves fed from
a variety of sources and emerged at both ends of the spectrum, from
underground basements to festival podiums. The same is true of disco’s
other manifestations, from its associated visuals to dance-floor effects.
Socialist discotheques emerged both within state youth clubs and as
enclaves of private entrepreneurship. Next to the new bourgeoisie who
displayed their improved lifestyles, clubs gave unprecedented visibility to
the disenfranchised social groups who dominated local dance floors.
Overall, disco’s eclectic background, contrasting aesthetic preferences,
ambivalent cultural status, targeted audiences, and the fluid identities it
forged, eludes simplified, black-and-white dichotomies of mainstream and
counter-culture. Its funk sympathisers and estrada imitators, male chau-
vinism and gender fluidity, affluent club crowds and proletarian dance
heroes, support of mainstream media and hostility of progressive critics, all
defy such polarised notions. Instead, they all existed in the broad space in
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 217

between, highlighting the inadequacy of those dated binaries, revealing

instead/beneath complex experiences and practices.
Moreover, a look across the border confirms that Yugoslav disco was
not simply a product of the country’s unique geopolitics. Indeed, disco
had easily penetrated and populated different musical landscapes across
the Eastern Bloc, proving that by the late 1970s the Iron Curtain was
rusting. Hungarian disco queen Judit Szűcs perfectly embodied Hungarian
‘goulash communism’, while the electronic Baltic space beats of Jānis
Lūsēns and Zigmars Liepin ̧š had a strong avant-garde flavour. Seen from
this perspective, Yugoslav disco seems to be both a testament to and an
expression of the general transformation of the whole socialist world.

Acknowledgements I wish to express my appreciation to a number of musicians,

dancers, disc jockeys, film directors, scholars, crate diggers, and journalists who
shared with me their experiences and testimonies about disco and its reception,
which are at the core of this text. These include (in alphabetical order): Mirza
Alijagić, Jovan Bačkulja, Slavin Balen, Dragan Batančev, David Blažević, Vladimir
Crvenković, Duško Cvetojević, Hamit Đogani, Dejan Gavrilović, Miroslav
Gregurek, Željko Kerleta, Janoš Kern, Dragan Kozlica, Goran Marković, Kire
Mitrev, Borja Močnik, Gordan Novak, Boban Petrović, Milena Savić, Mirko
Sobota, Lokica Stefanović, Dragan Timotijević, Igor Večerić, Dušan Velkaverh,
Igor Vidmar, Predrag Vukčević, and Mihajlo Vukobratović. In addition, the writ-
ing of this chapter was helped by the support of NEP4DISSENT (COST Action
16213) and the Croatian Institute of History and its project ʻAlternative Cultures
and Grey Zones of Croatian/Yugoslav Late Socialism’.

Notes
1. Elsewhere, I have dealt in more detail with other aspects of Yugoslav disco,
such as disc jockeys, disco’s cinematography, and overall codes (Zubak
2016, 2018a, 2020). All of this builds on my ongoing research on Yugoslav
and Eastern European socialist disco culture, first exhibited as a gallery exhi-
bition in Zagreb’s Galerija SC and Belgrade’s Galerija Doma omladine in
2015 and 2016.
2. Due to its exceptional theoretical framework that draws on theories of per-
formativity, Yurchak’s study remains dominant in scholarship on late social-
ism, but it was not the only one. Since the late 2000s and especially the early
2010s a number of volumes have increasingly refuted a Cold War paradigm
of fully oppressed communist life, affirming a place for alternative everyday
realities, filled with consumption, emotions, and escapes (Crowley and Reid
2010; Fürst and McLellan 2016; Giustino et al. 2013).
218 M. ZUBAK

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Discography
Arian. Arian. PGP RTB, 1981, LP.
Cice-Mace. “Disko-baba” / “Što se to dogada.” ̵ Jugoton, 1980, 7” inch.
Clan. Motor hoću mama. PGP RTB LP, 1978, LP.
Č olić, Zdravko. Pusti, pusti modu. In Zbog tebe. Jugoton, 1980, 7” inch.
Dravco. “Light Me” / “I’m Not a Robot Man.” Atlantic, 1978, LP.
Isaac Hayes Movement. Disco Connetction. PGP RTB, 1976, LP.
KIM Band. Ne, zaista žurim. PGP RTB, 1981, LP.
———. Za kim zvona zvone. PGP RTB, 1982, LP.
Kovačićek, Zdenka. “Frka” in Frka. Jugoton, 1984. LP.
Lokice. “Dodirni me” / “Disco Lady.” PGP, 1980, 7” Single.
Mančić, Suzana. Mamin sin. PGP RTB, 1979. 7”.
Mimica, Vesna. Yu Aerobic br.1. Jugoton, 1983, cassette.
Mirzino jato. Šećer i med, PGP RTB, 1979, LP.
nipplepeople. “Frka” in Singles. Not on label, 2015, Digital Release.
Pepel in kri. Disko zvezda. In Ljubljana ’80: Dnevi slovenske zabavne glasbe, ZKP
RTVL, 1980, LP.
Petrović, Boban. Žur. ZKP RTVL, 1981a, LP.
———. Meteorology. ZKP RTVL, 1981b, 12” Single.
Savin, Igor i orkestar Stanka Selaka. Yu Disco Express. Jugoton, 1979, LP.
Space. Magic Fly. Jugoton, 1978, LP.
Summer, Donna. Bad Girls. ZKP RTVL, 1980, 7” Single.
Tereza. Disco ’79. Jugoton, 1978, 7” Single.
Ukraden, Neda. “Pisma ljubavi” / “Ljubav me čudno dira.” 1978, 7” Single.
Van McCoy, The Disco Kid. PGP RTB, 1976, LP.
Various. Philly Sound: The Fantastic Sound Of Philadelphia. Suzy, 1975, LP.
———. Disko Hitovi 5, 1979a, LP.
———. Originalna muzika iz filma Nacionalna klasa. PGP RTB, 1979b, LP.
 YUGOSLAV DISCO: THE FORGOTTEN SOUND OF LATE SOCIALISM 221

———. Socialist Disco. Dancing Behind Yugoslavia’s Velvet Curtain 1977–1987.

Fox & His Friends, 2018, 2LP.
———. Jugoton Funk Vol. 1—A Decade of Non-Aligned Beats, Soul, Disco and Jazz
1969–1979. Croatia Records, 2020, 2LP.

Filmography
Badham, John (Dir.). Saturday Night Fever, Paramount Pictures, 1977.
Crnobrnja, Stanko (Dir.). Beograd noc ́u / RTV Beograd, 1981.
Godard, Jean-Luc (Dir.). Children of Marx and Coca-Cola. In Masculin
Féminin, 1966.
Groznica ovogodišnje večeri (This Year’s Night Fever). RTV Sarajevo, 1978.
Hladnik, Boštjan (Dir.). Ubij me nežno, Vesna Film, 1979.
Kane, Robert (Dir.). Thanks God it’s Friday, Casablanca Filmworks, 1978.
Lester, Mark L. Roller Boogie, Compas International Pictures, 1979.
Marković, Goran (Dir.). Nacionalna klasa, Centar Film, 1979.
Righini, Oscar (Dir.). Disco Delirio, Consul International Films, 1979.
Ristić, Jovan (Dir.). Pjevam danju, pjevam noc ́u, Zvezda Film, 1979.
Sharp, Ian. Music Machine, Target International, 1979.
Svjetla pozornice (Stage Lights). RTV Zagreb, 1977.
Vagoner, Robert (Dir.). Disco Godfather, General International Pictures, 1979.
Vukobratović, Mihajlo (Dir.). Ružic ̌asti žur, RTV Beograd, 1982.
Walker, Nancy (Dir.). Can’t Stop the Music, Emi Films, 1980.
 The Lebanese Music Experiment: Disco and
Nightlife During the Civil War

Natalie Shooter and Ernesto Chahoud

In the mid-1970s, the international wave of disco hit Lebanon full force
and was quickly adopted into mainstream culture, and its reverberations
were to be felt throughout Beirut’s music scene for decades afterwards.
Disco music arrived in the country almost simultaneously with Lebanon’s
civil war, sparked when 21 Palestinians were murdered by militia from the
Christian Phalange party, who opened fire on a bus travelling to Tall Al
Za’tar refugee camp in April 1975. Soon afterwards, Lebanon was split
into two with a demarcation line separating the predominantly Christian
East and Muslim West districts of Beirut. Lebanon’s civil war lasted for
15 years, and disco remained one of the dominant music forms through-
out—their two histories are inextricably linked, each forming the back-
drop to the other.
Though in West Beirut—the centre of leftist movements which sup-
ported the Palestinian cause—politically engaged musicians were popular,
disco spread across both sides of the demarcation line. Saturday Night
Fever was a major hit in Lebanon’s cinemas in 1978: according to cinema
archivist Abboudi Abou Jaoude (Interview, 2018)1 it ran for around three

N. Shooter (*) • E. Chahoud

London, UK

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 223

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_10
224 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

months and, like everywhere else in the world, the biggest commercial
disco songs of the period reached huge popularity, with a handful even
translated into Arabic-language versions. ‘One Way Ticket’, ‘Señorita Por
Favor’ and ‘Voulez-Vous’ were regularly played at the city’s busiest disco-
theques Mecano and Beachcomber, located in two neighbouring hotel
resorts, Summerland and Coral Beach. Previously a live music club, the
Polynesian-themed Beachcomber reopened in 1977 as a discotheque, hir-
ing Ghassan Khazoun as its DJ. The exclusive club had a strict door pol-
icy—couples and groups only—and a dress code. The DJ booth was
equipped with Russco turntables and the dance floor was ‘waxed fre-
quently for dancing purposes’ (Interview with Khazoun, 2018).
In 1980, Gloria Gaynor came to Lebanon and performed by the pool
of the Summerland to an audience of a few thousand. Her songs were
regularly played at the hotel’s discotheque, Mecano, which came with all
the modern features—strobe lighting, a smoke machine and a disco ball.
Mohammed Tamo joined Mecano in 1979, DJing there seven nights a
week for almost 20 years. Tamo was asked to play ‘I Will Survive’ so fre-
quently during disco’s peak that he prepared a trick to play on clubbers: he
would carry an old LP inside a Gloria Gaynor sleeve, and break it over his
knee when he reached his request limit (Interview, 2018). Even during
the war Lebanon’s club life continued, with Summerland and Coral Beach
employees taking up permanent residence in the hotels and their disco-
theque customers often booking a room rather than making the risky
journey home. As Khazoun recalls:

In 1983, I was crossing to my home in Achrafieh late one night when I was
nearly abducted by militia—the next day, [Coral Beach owner] Georges
Massoud asked me to get my clothes, gave me a hotel room and I lived there
for the next 14 years. (Interview, 2018)

Though both hotels took precautions—Summerland reportedly hired its

own firefighting department and militia for protection, as well as keeping
18 freezers stocked full of enough veal, beef and smoked salmon to last an
entire summer season (Friedman 1989, 32)—they didn’t survive the war
without incidents. Located near the embassy district, an outpost of
Palestinian fighters, the hotels were bombarded with everything from
cluster bombs to phosphorus shells by Israeli forces when they invaded
Lebanon in 1982 (Friedman 1983).
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 225

Disco music was easily adopted in Lebanon as the country already had
a fully developed music industry in place, which evolved simultaneously
with the establishment of a modern school of Lebanese music, distinct
from the dominant Egyptian industry. Broadcast across the Middle East,
Al Sharq Al Adna (The Near East Broadcasting Station2) had a hand in
Lebanon’s mid-twentieth-century music renaissance. Founded in
Palestine, the radio moved its headquarters to Cyprus in 1948 during the
Nakba (meaning ‘catastrophe’), the forced exodus of 750,000 Palestinians
with the creation of Israel (Allan 2021). The radio’s director Sabri Al
Sharif brought together musicians and composers from the region to par-
ticipate in a project to ‘merge the local repertoire from the Bilad Al Sham
region with European music’ (Burkhalter 2013, 154–157). Similarly,
Radio Lebanon—founded in the late 1930s under the French mandate
(Stone 2008, 77) and taken over by the Lebanese Government in 1946—
had a significant role to play with its music department director Halim Al
Rumi giving contracts to artists in the 1950s. Brothers Assi and Mansour
Rahbani launched their prolific musical careers at Radio Lebanon, where
they first worked with singer Fairouz (Asmar 2009, 10); they formed a
lasting partnership with her, and Assi and Fairouz married in 1955. With
no other recording studio in Lebanon, artists recorded at the radio, which
became a central point for the music industry where producers such as
Voix De L’Orient label founder Joseph Chahine went to talent scout
(Interview with Abdallah Chahine, 2018).
In 1957, Assi and Mansour produced their first of many musical plays
starring Fairouz at Baalbeck Festival, an annual festival first held in 1956
at the Roman temples of Baalbeck, which hosted the likes of Ella Fitzgerald
and Miles Davis. Assi and Mansour’s large-scale productions, often por-
traying a utopia of village life and folklore traditions, contributed to the
formation of a refreshed national identity that traced its roots to before
Lebanon’s colonial occupation by various foreign powers (Stone 2008,
49–50). The Rahbani Brothers started an institution that became known
as the ‘Rahbani School’, involving the key figures of Lebanon’s music and
literary scenes including poets, singers, composers and actors/actresses
such as Said Akl, Nasri Chamseddine, Philemon Wehbe, Wadih Al Safi and
Sabah. Functioning as a music factory, the Rahbani School dominated
Lebanon’s music scene and was responsible for launching the careers of
the majority of its singers and musicians for decades, laying the founda-
tions of modern Lebanese music.
226 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

In the 1950s and 1960s, Lebanon became a ‘regional leisure and fun
destination par excellence’ (Buchakjian 2015, 256–281) with a diverse
music and nightlife scene to entertain the swarms of tourists. In the moun-
tains surrounding Beirut, hotel resorts like Piscine Aley and Grand Sofar
became centres of entertainment in the summer, holding concerts with
the region’s biggest stars. Until the civil war, Beirut’s nightlife was mostly
clustered around the city’s central districts Sahat Al Burj and Phoenicia
Street where a mixture of cabarets, hotel nightclubs and restaurants hosted
a melting pot of Oriental ensembles, belly dancers, European dancers and
live bands and singers. Caves du Roy was one of the city’s most renowned
nightlife spots, where notable figures like Frank Sinatra and Jacques Brel
rubbed shoulders with Lebanon’s high society (Buchakjian 2015, 264).
Joe Diverio, an Italian singer who performed at the nightclub daily from
the mid-1960s until 1975, remembers: ‘I met all the politicians in Caves
du Roy—presidents, prime ministers, deputies. Everybody passed through
Caves Du Roy—if they wanted to count for something, they had to come’
(Interview, 2018). In Le Paon Rouge, the Phoenicia Hotel nightclub,
Greek-Italian Alexandrian-born belly dancer Nadia Gamal had an Oriental
dance show, Fayza Ahmed and Hiyam Younes sang with orchestras at
Sahat Al Burj’s 1940s cabaret La Parisiana, and bands such as the Kozaks
and the Magic Fingers played at nightclubs Stereo, Revolution and Epi-­
Club. International musicians took up residence in Beirut too, finding
well-paid work in the extravagant shows of the Middle East’s first casino,
Casino du Liban. Many of them were also hired for studio recordings,
forming orchestras alongside Lebanese musicians on the albums of Fairouz
and Elias Rahbani.
When disco emerged in Lebanon, the country’s recording industry was
already well shaped. Many labels were established throughout the 1960s,
1970s and 1980s, reflecting the country’s position as a regional hub of
music production. Most had international partnerships with labels such as
EMI and Pathé and international labels like Philips had Lebanese off-
shoots. Established in the 1950s and partnering with EMI, Voix De
L’Orient held an early monopoly, releasing the Rahbani Brothers’ exten-
sive catalogue. Robert Khayat’s 1960s-founded Voice of Lebanon and
Duniaphon released classical Arabic and Lebanese pop. SLD joined the
industry in the mid-1960s, obtaining local distribution rights to make
pressings of hundreds of hit records from Elvis to Jimmy McGriff. In
1969, EMI set up a Lebanese branch and record pressing plant in Beirut,
but, proving a commercial failure, it closed only three years later.3 EMI
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 227

then moved its Lebanese operations to Greece and absorbed the Arab
World’s most prominent labels under its roof, with the company manufac-
turing and distributing 90% of the region’s productions. Besides Radio
Lebanon, three main recording studios existed during disco’s rise—
Baalbeck, Polysound and Al Ittihad. At the helm of the cinema industry as
the Arab world’s biggest production studio, Baalbeck was no doubt the
best equipped. Since the 1950s, hundreds of iconic albums were recorded
there by studio manager Farid Abu Kheir. Many progressive works were
given birth to at the 1974-founded Polysound, the studios of Nabil
Mumtaz, an electrical engineer turned sound engineer. Pioneering fusion
band Ferkat Al Ard’s album Oghneya (‘Song’, 1979) and guitarist
Mohammed Hegazi’s belly dance albums were recorded at dubbing stu-
dio Al Ittihad.

‘Liza… Liza’ and ‘Abu Ali’: Lebanon’s Earliest

Disco Records
The first disco record to emerge from Lebanon was Elias Rahbani’s ‘Liza…
Liza’, which was included on the 1978 album With Love… (1978b) and
released as a 12-inch maxi single (1978a). Elias already had a more than
15-year prolific music career behind him, composing and arranging for a
diverse spectrum of artists, as well as releasing under his own name. The
younger brother of Assi and Mansour, Elias wasn’t part of the Rahbani
Brothers’ musical partnership, but still contributed a number of famous
compositions for Fairouz in their 1970s plays; he launched his own inde-
pendent career and became one of the leading figures in modern Lebanese
pop. Elias’ discography as a composer and arranger for Lebanese artists is
vast and his work is wide-ranging in style, covering Oriental–Occidental
fusion, Lebanese and French pop, psych-rock and easy listening soundtracks
in the style of Paul Mauriat and James Last. His name is closely associated
with iconic figures such as singer and actress Sabah, he launched the
careers of artists like Sammy Clark and Hoda, and he was a leading figure
in a regional wave of Franco-Arab chanson music. Working with large
orchestras, he composed soundtracks for big-budget Lebanese and
Egyptian films in the 1960s and 1970s such as Ahlan Bi-Lhob (‘Welcome
Love’, 1967) and Habibati (‘My Love’, 1974). He was also one of the
first in Lebanon to write jingles for TV and radio adverts in the 1970s.
With only one TV channel, Télé Liban, broadcasting throughout the
228 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

majority of the civil war, Elias’ jingles for Rayovak batteries, Tatra dairy
and Picon cheese formed a kind of bizarre wartime soundtrack that became
‘part of the collective memory’ of the Lebanese (Burkhalter 2013,
115–123). Elias famously recycled his 1980s Barilla Macaroni jingle into
the Euro disco song ‘Wa’a Douni Wnatarouni’ (‘They Promised Me and
They Made Me Wait’) for Sabah, which appeared on her 1982 album
Wadi Shamsine(1982).
Elias also released a handful of interesting albums under his own name
prior to ‘Liza’. Released on Voix De L’Orient, his 1972 Mosaic of the
Orient and second volume in 1974 (1972, 1974) are among his most
original compositions, featuring Oriental psychedelic pop instrumentals
with heavy drum breaks and funky basslines that have been sampled by
artists like The Black Eyed Peas. It’s not surprising that Elias was one of
the first in Lebanon to contribute to the international wave of disco in
1978 with ‘Liza’: overall, his previous discography is modern in its
approach and connected to international music currents, and he was
among the first in Lebanon to start recording with synthesisers. As Elias’
son Jad Rahbani explains, ‘it was the disco era, Elias saw that disco was
popular and wanted to do something. He always wanted to try whatever
was new’ (Interview, 2018).
A fuzzy Cerrone-style cosmic disco instrumental, with a slight Oriental
flavour, ‘Liza’ has all the hallmarks of a great mainstream disco record: a
slow-build intro of electric bass and guitar loops, sweeping string lines,
erotic-style female chorus, a heavy disco bassline and a punchy four-on-­
the-floor beat. On the B-side of the maxi single is the 1960s psych-garage
song ‘From the Moon’, a slight adaptation of the song Elias previously
wrote for the Armenian-Lebanese rock band The News, along with the
romance ballad ‘Summer Love’. With a live orchestra of around 15 musi-
cians, the album and single were recorded at Polysound, with Mumtaz no
doubt putting his own stamp on the sound. Jad Rahbani explains how the
two had a close artistic and personal relationship:

They were very close friends. They spent a lot of time discovering sound
together. Elias liked to know a lot about sound, technique and recording.
He used to spend night after night with Mumtaz doing trials, recording
frequencies, perfecting the sound of the drums. (Interview, 2018)

Though ‘Liza’ sounds like it was recorded with a bigger orchestra, Mumtaz
was known to employ several cost-cutting techniques—including
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 229

recording musicians playing the string lines twice to bulk out the string
section and leaving empty tracks spare when he recorded on his 8-track
tape recorder to add in more later. Sound engineer Ziad Sidawi, who
worked alongside Mumtaz in the late 1980s, remembers his studio setup:

He had a 24-channel mixer with no name, that he built himself. He would

say it’s his top-secret weapon. He had a delay unit and a big reverb plate that
he would run sound through, which gives that signature 1970s reverb.
When you hear this, immediately you know it’s Polysound. He was famous
for this lush string sound. (Interview, 2018)

Proposed by EMI Lebanon Managing Director George Makzoumeh, the

12-inch maxi sleeve artwork for ‘Liza’ went for maximum impact and
market appeal. Matching the cover concept of international releases by
artists like Fausto Papetti and Cerrone, it features a photograph of a top-
less woman, dripping with water, wearing a gold collar around her neck.
Her arms are extended behind her head as she gazes suggestively into the
camera. Clearly lacking though in Cerrone-style photoshoot budgets, the
image is credited to Stock Photos Unlimited Inc. Indicative of Lebanon’s
liberal and open society (as well as the tasteless objectification of women
to sell records in the 1970s), ‘Liza’ is one of a handful of Lebanese pro-
ductions from the period that feature nude women on their covers.
It’s not known how many copies of ‘Liza’ were pressed: EMI Greece’s
archives were looted when the factory closed down in 1990 and many of
Voix De L’Orient’s archives were destroyed in a fire from an explosion
near its vulnerably located headquarters in Bab Idriss. But Abdallah
Chahine, who continued running the label that his late father founded in
the 1950s, until he himself passed away in August 2021, reported in a
2018 interview that Elias’ disco single was a commercial success. The
record clearly had international appeal, as it was picked up by other EMI
branches with pressings made by Pathé Marconi EMI in France and EMI
Electrola in Germany in 1978.
‘Liza’ reached the US market too, distributed to record shops, discos
and radio stations by Brooklyn-based Arabic music wholesaler Rashid
Sales Company, a family business founded by Albert Rashid, a descendent
of Lebanese immigrants. Albert’s son Stanley Rashid worked closely with
Makzoumeh to promote EMI Greece’s Arabic music catalogue in the
1970s and 1980s in the US, mostly to the country’s large Arab diaspora,
though ‘Liza’ was marketed alongside other international disco releases.
230 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

According to a series of exchanges between Makzoumeh and Rashid

which took place between September and November 1979, and which can
be found in the Zida archives, the record seemed to find some success in
the US market. In a cable dated September 24, 1979, Makzoumeh writes:
‘I have just seen your letter […] concerning your approach in new markets
such as the Manhattan Stores for the “Liza” Disco and we are extremely
pleased of the favourable response you obtained’. A few months later
Rashid writes: ‘Several discos have contacted me and spoke well of “Liza”
and will play it’. However, Rashid also suggests making an edit of the
track, which is perhaps a sign that the record didn’t take off as well as
hoped: ‘Please consider the possibilities of re-mixing Lisa Disco [sic]. I
think it could have a stronger beat as well as a break. If we can get a break
it would have more sales appeal’ (Zida archives).
The other major Lebanese disco record of the late 1970s, ‘Abu Ali’
(‘Father of Ali’) (1979), was by Assi and Fairouz’s son Ziad Rahbani—a
sign of the dominance the Rahbani family held over Lebanon’s music
scene—and was released in early 1979 as a 12-inch maxi single.4 The com-
poser, arranger and playwright’s 13-minute-long masterpiece is an Arabic
jazz-funk clubbing instrumental that was targeted at the international
disco market. Though he was only 23 when it was released, Ziad was
already an established figure in Lebanon—a controversial artist who had
become the voice of Lebanon’s left in wartime through his political plays
and songs, even penning an anthem for the Lebanese Communist Party.
Though Ziad contributed music to the Rahbani Brothers plays, such as Al
Mahatta (‘The Station’, 1973) and Mais El Rim (1975), he carved out his
own distinct identity as a playwright and director producing a series of
social realist musical plays in the 1970s and 1980s that brought him
national and regional fame (Asmar 2013, 145). Focusing on Lebanon’s
struggling working class and real-life problems, Ziad’s plays spoke to a
whole generation during the war. The songs he composed for them—set
to lush jazz soundscapes that incorporated wide-ranging styles from bossa
nova to Arabic music—became the soundtrack of the leftist movement,
and jokes and phrases from the plays became ingrained in Lebanon’s pop-
ular culture and daily language (Elzeer 2010, 196–208).
Ziad’s ‘Abu Ali’ was an ambitious music project from the start. Though
it emerged out of war-torn Lebanon in 1979, the record carried aspira-
tions to impact on the outside world. It was recorded in Greece with a
40-musician orchestra at great cost, and released on the small label Zida,
the pilot project of Armenian-Lebanese record shop owner Khatchik
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 231

‘Chico’ Mardirian. Zida—its name a play on ‘Ziad’—had a promising

start: its first few releases included forward-thinking music projects from
Lebanon’s small politically engaged West Beirut scene such as fusion band
Ferkat Al Ard’s aforementioned Oghneya (‘Song’) and singer-songwriter
Khaled El Haber’s Hin Yasmot Al Moghani (‘When the Singer is
Silent’, 1979). For a short two-year period, Zida released all of Ziad’s
creative output.
Like many of Ziad’s songs, ‘Abu Ali’ was first composed for the stage—
it was the main theme for the 1974 play Abu Ali Al Asmarani (‘Abu Ali
the Tanned’, 1974). In an interview conducted in his Hamra recording
studio Nota, Ziad recalled a conversation with EMI’s Makzoumeh that
triggered his adaptation of the two-minute song into an extended club-
bing record, with Makzoumeh making decisions on everything from
arrangement to tempo:

We worked on the theme to make it longer. I was planning to do an album

with three pieces on each side. [Maksoumeh] said “No, no, no! This is not
the wave now!”. He told me it needs to be a minimum of 12 minutes on
each side for the clubs. It took one month-and-a-half of writing every day.
(…) If you listen to the original “Abu Ali” it’s much faster. Maksoumeh
suddenly said that we should do this disco bellydance thing. I told him the
melody is much faster, but he said, “believe me, this will work”. So even the
speed of the record is not what I decided—you see how much capital can
interfere? (Interview, 2018)

Elaborately written, the instrumental features constant transitions across

its 13 minutes, with the main melody line weaving in and out. Ziad’s inte-
gration of instruments such as nay, buzuk and tabla gives the record an
Middle Eastern flavour and clear sense of origin. The B-side of the single
is also an adaptation from a play, the theme Ziad wrote for the play Mais
El Rim, and shows the same level of craftsmanship in its composition.
A large-scale and costly production, with the bill footed by producer
Mardirian, ‘Abu Ali’ and the song ‘Mais El Rim’ were recorded in Athens
at the Columbia-EMI studios with the symphony orchestra of the Greek
radio. Though some of them only had minor roles, Lebanese musicians
from Ziad’s inner circle were flown in to be involved in the project too:
the actor and singer Joseph Sakr, Ziad’s close friend and artistic collabora-
tor, had a small vocal part on ‘Abu Ali’; Issam Hajali, the founder of Ferkat
Al Ard, played a guitar solo on ‘Abu Ali’ and acoustic guitar on ‘Mais El
232 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

Rim’ and remembers Ziad’s precise approach to composing: ‘He wrote

everything. Nothing was accidental, everything was written, even the
whisper’ (Interview, 2018). Ferkat Al Ard jazz saxophonist/producer
Toufic Farroukh also featured on the record, as well as established flautist
Joseph Karkoor, tabla player Setrak Sarkissian and riqq player Michel
Baklook. On the same trip to Athens, the music for Ziad’s first album for
Fairouz, the 1979 Zida release Wahdon (‘Only Them’, 1979), was also
recorded. It includes ‘Al Bosta’ (‘The Bus’), an Oriental disco-funk adap-
tation of Ziad’s composition for his play Bennesbeh Labokra… Chou?
(‘What About Tomorrow?’, 1978).
Every intricate detail of the production of ‘Abu Ali’ was given careful
attention, even instrument selection. The bass drums—six were rented to
find the perfect one—proved a point of contention between sound engi-
neer Stelios Yannakopoulos and Ziad, who to this day believes the record
would have sounded better with a more accentuated bass drum sound:

I didn’t like the sound of the bass drum and was insisting to push it. Finally,
he said “believe me, that’s enough bass drum, there are levels here”. I wasn’t
into [recording] technique at the time, but I told him that it doesn’t sound
like it [should]—it wasn’t disco enough. He wasn’t into disco, he was into
classical music and big bands. (…) It’s the bass drum that triggers every-
thing. You could’ve had the whole thing at a higher level. (Interview, 2018)

With the careful shaping of ‘Abu Ali’ to fit the demands of the interna-
tional market and the attention to detail in its production, there were
clearly hopes the record would propel Ziad’s name beyond the Arabic-­
language market. It also carried on its back the dreams of producer
Mardirian, who made a considerable leap of faith on the record in terms of
his financial investment. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t to be—the
record failed commercially because the international market refused it. In
the late Mardirian’s archives, at the record shop Chico Records run by his
son Diran Mardirian, is a complete collection of the documentation from
Zida’s short existence between 1978 and 1980. Including sales receipts of
the record’s distribution, invoices for its production tab and Maksoumeh’s
correspondence promoting the record internationally, the documents give
a rare insight into the making of the record and shed light on why it failed
to crossover. Receipts from EMI Greece show that ‘Abu Ali’ was well cir-
culated, with copies going out to the Levant, the Gulf, North Africa,
Europe, North America and Australia.
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 233

Three main factors appear to have limited the commercial potential and
international reach of ‘Abu Ali’: piracy, its monumental production cost,
and the difficulty of categorising and marketing the record. The record
was also by an internationally obscure artist from a country in the midst of
civil war, with an Arabic-language title and, just to pigeon-hole it further,
exoticised sleeve artwork set in the desert, re-affirming a false but com-
mon belief about Lebanon. In the late 1970s, the record industry was still
struggling to adjust to the rise in popularity of the cassette and its role in
piracy. It was common practice for discotheques to purchase just one copy
of each release and make multiple pirated cassettes. Diran Mardirian
explains: ‘The local market was rampant with piracy—there were pushcart
discotheques which would pass right in front of the store playing pirated
copies of “Abu Ali”’ (Interview, 2018).
The large-scale production behind ‘Abu Ali’ and ‘Mais El Rim’, includ-
ing studio and instrument rental and musician fees, was extremely costly
and the 12-inch single went significantly over budget. An invoice dated
January 16, 1979 addressed to Khatchik Mardirian from Orchestra
Supervisor Nicolaos Tsilimbaris shows that rental of the 35-musician
Greek orchestra alone for two days of recording in January 1979 totalled
271,900 drs, the equivalent of 7552 USD at the time—a hefty bill for a
small label in its infancy (Zida archives). Diran Mardirian recalls: ‘My dad
had to call my mum to get her savings from Germany, which at the time
was 25,000 USD—we’re talking 1979 dollars. That’s just what they
needed to settle their account at EMI Greece, I don’t know what it cost
before that’ (Interview, 2018).
Despite Makzoumeh’s initial excitement about the record’s interna-
tional potential, an underground Lebanese disco/jazz-funk record proved
a hard sell within the dominant American disco market. At 13 minutes, the
song was too long for radio play—the main promotional tool of the 1970s.
The pioneering crossover of ‘Abu Ali’, straddling the genres of jazz-funk
and Oriental disco, also made the record difficult to place in a commercial
market that preferred easily categorisable genres. Discovering that the
record didn’t neatly fit into either market, Makzoumeh proposed classify-
ing it alongside Herb Alpert’s hit record Rise, (1979) and suggested it
might appeal to the ‘black market’. The Zida archives contain a number of
enthusiastic letters from Makzoumeh—pitching the record to global dis-
tributors and to the likes of Lebanese-American singer-songwriter Paul
Jabara—but the only person to bite was the US distributor of ‘Liza’,
234 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

Stanley Rashid, and even he believed the record needed adapting to make
an impact:

His was the only answer that came back positively, but with some condi-
tions. [Rashid] said that it had to be more disco and you had to remove the
jazzy influences, or if you wanted to do it jazz, you had to remix it another
way. That’s why it didn’t work commercially outside—in the production
houses it’s either this or that. (Interview with Ziad, 2018)

Still, the record gathered some success in the US. After sending out the
record to New York’s major discos and disco radio stations, a letter from
Rashid dated October 1979 reads: ‘Last night I heard “Abu Ali” on the
radio for the first time and it was a thrill for me to hear an Arabic record
being aired in New York’ (Zida archives).
In 1979, the idea to create a shorter re-mixed edit of ‘Abu Ali’, with a
more pronounced beat to better position it in the US disco market, gath-
ered momentum. An adaptation of ‘Abu Ali’ was eventually settled on,
with Makzoumeh also proposing a title change. The mastertapes of ‘Abu
Ali’ were sent across from Athens as planned and work on the third version
of the song commenced at Polysound by September 1979, as demon-
strated by invoices billing Mardirian for ‘Remixing Abu Ali’ (Zida
archives), but it never saw the light of day. According to Ziad, the project
was halted because ‘nobody wanted to produce it’ (Interview, 2018).
Not long afterwards, Ziad and Mardirian’s music partnership ended.
The cassette of Ziad’s 1980 play Film Ameriki Tawil (‘A Long American
Movie’, 1980b) was the final Zida release, after little more than two bold
years of existence. Bankrupt after the ‘Abu Ali’ episode, Mardirian exited
music, preferring to invest in more dependable operations which would
always have a market. As Diran Mardirian recalls:

He didn’t want anything to do with music anymore. He had a nervous

breakdown and the Israeli invasion happened shortly afterwards. My father
decided to go into video. It was a war-torn country, so videos were like
bread. (Interview, 2018)

Though the label was short-lived, the legacy of Zida remains—its nine
releases between 1978 and 1980 remain among Lebanon’s most avant-­
garde works. Today ‘Abu Ali’ is one of the most sought-after records in
the Lebanese discography, has received a second life among a new
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 235

generation of music lovers, and is regularly played in clubs around the

world and on radio stations such as NTS. It was bootlegged in 2014 and
officially re-released in 2019 on the reissue label
WEWANTSOUNDS (2019).

Disco Takes Root

Though in the US disco’s popularity had begun to wane by 1980, its influ-
ence on the Lebanese musical landscape productions was at its peak and
continued to dominate until the mid-1980s. Many composers and singers
produced music within the realms of disco and albums from mainstream
artists included at least one disco song, and even artists with a classical
repertoire started riding the disco wave. With a local market already
switched on to the sound of international disco, some Lebanese labels
focused their catalogue and marketing towards the genre, keen to tap into
its commercial appeal. The word ‘disco’ was incorporated into album and
track titles and shouted on record covers in large fonts over disco-themed
visuals. Mirroring the international market, a number of disco singles
came out on the 12-inch 45rpm maxi single format, targeted at club play.
Singer Jacqueline and composer and musician Rafic Hobeika teamed
up to record Arabic-language disco covers in 1980 with a group of musi-
cians dubbed the Sunshine Orchestra. Hobeika’s rearrangements of four
big international disco hits—‘I Will Survive’, ‘Señorita Por Favor’, ‘One
Way Ticket’ and ‘Pauvres Diables’, all with Arabic lyrics sung by
Jacqueline—were recorded at Baalbeck Studios and released on Voix De
L’Orient as a giant 45rpm single (1980a) and on the album
Jacqueline (1980b), with instrumentals on buzuk, violin and oud on the
B-side. At the time of the record’s release, Hobeika was well-established
among Lebanon’s music elite: the self-taught musician started out playing
violin in a cabaret in Sahet Al Burj in the mid-1950s and later worked as a
bandleader and arranger on popular TV talent show Studio El Fan (1972).
He composed and arranged for Lebanese singers such as Hiyam Younes,
Walid Toufic and famous eccentric Toni Hanna, writing his 1974 hit
‘Hidaya Hiday’ (‘Walk On By’, 1974), and his name was closely associated
with stars Wadih El Safi and Samira Toufic. Singer, dancer and actress
Jacqueline was also well-known: she was a regular on Lebanon’s entertain-
ment circuit throughout the 1960s, performing a cabaret-style show at
Piscine Aley and Grand Sofar, opening for stars like Abdel Halim Hafez
and Sabah. In the 1960s and 1970s, she acted in a string of Egyptian and
236 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

Lebanese films and she frequently filled the columns of Lebanese newspa-
pers. Though her discography was modest, the handful of pop-­dabkeh
songs she released include melodies from some of the biggest Lebanese
composers of the time.
Rafic Hobeika and Jacqueline’s 1980 releases represented a sizeable
departure from each of their musical backgrounds, and were a sign that
disco had become a truly mainstream music phenomenon. Their commer-
cial disco records, which simply repackaged international hits for the
Arabic market, were clearly targeted at mass market appeal. By the mid- to
late 1970s, Jacqueline’s career had begun to wane, and the new wave of
disco music brought the potential of fresh success. According to the late
Hobeika’s daughter Joumana Hobeika, the disco project was an attempt
to revive Jacqueline’s 1960s and early 1970s fame with something current
that was related to the international market (Interview, 2018). Likely due
to budget restrictions, Hobeika’s disco rearrangements are recorded with
a relatively modest production, with no brass section, and take a lighter,
bubblegum-pop approach. The Arabic lyrics of the songs were written by
Hobeika, loosely translated to keep the rhyme of the melody.
Visually speaking, the cover artwork of Jacqueline’s maxi single and
album, along with her 1979 compilation, features a collection of photo-
graphs of the singer on the beach in pin-up style poses in various stages of
undress: half-submerged in the water, wearing only an open-buttoned see-­
through shirt, lying on the beach, a straw hat covering her chest, and
swimming topless. Though a series of 1970s and 1980s Lebanese album
covers use female nudity as their selling point, these two releases are prob-
ably the only to feature a Lebanese artist. Nicknamed ‘Jacqueline Monroe’,
the singer was one of the earliest pin-ups in the Arab World, a regular
cover girl for popular magazines such as Al Shabaka and Al Layali. But in
an interview at her Beirut apartment, Jacqueline told us that Hobeika
persuaded her to pose topless for the record artwork—she agreed on the
premise that the photos would only be used for the records’ American
release: ‘That’s why I accepted to do them, but he tricked me—nobody
told me they’d be distributed here’ (Interview, 2018).
In the early 1980s, a mini wave of Lebanese artists started to release
disco songs as the genre became the face of commerciality in pop music.
Issam Raggi, a known pop singer who had hits throughout the 1970s,
included the disco song ‘Lakini’ (‘Meet Me’) on his 1981 album Al
Mahabba (‘Hello’, 1981). Composed by Elias Rahbani and typical of his
Euro disco style, the synth-driven song is set to a fast-paced disco beat
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 237

with a kitschy melody line hummed by a backing choir. New singers to

emerge in the pop market also tried their hand at the disco trend, such as
pop singer Maya Yazbek, whose 1980 debut album (1980) ended on
‘Disco Cocktail’, a commercial, fast-paced 10-song medley. Several records
that came out on Voice of Stars, a label that predominantly catered to
Lebanon’s large Armenian diaspora, also reflected the popularisation of
disco. Its 1980s greatest hits release (n.d.) of Armenian-French singer
Marten Yorgantz features the banging Armenian-language disco anthem
‘Discotchari’.
As Lebanese artists began to fuse the new genre with their own style,
disco music elaborated into many different shapes, creating a small, and
distinctly Lebanese, disco catalogue. Singer and composer Mohammad
Jamal made the forward-thinking Oriental disco album Doroup El Hawa
(‘Waves of Love’), a world away from his previous pop discography of the
1950s and 1960s, when he found fame as part of the Arab World’s most
popular duo, with his then wife, the Syrian-Jordanian Circassian singer
Taroub, who also went on to have her own successful music and cinema
career after they divorced (Shooter 2019). The eight-track album was
recorded at Polysound and released in 1981, just before Jamal immigrated
to Los Angeles. Composed by Joseph Hanna and arranged by Ihsan
AlMunzer, the synth-driven album features the hallmarks of disco—heavy
disco basslines and a whooping female backing chorus—but also incorpo-
rates electronic experimentations, dabkeh melodies and a reggae touch on
‘Rohty Rohty’ (‘You Left, You Left’).
Another interesting Middle Eastern disco record, albeit with a more
commercial approach, came from Mansour’s son Marwan Rahbani, whose
debut release ‘Salade Du Chef’ (1980a) came out on a 12-inch maxi sin-
gle on Voix De L’Orient in 1980. The entirely original 10-minute-long
clubbing song, recorded with an orchestra of around 40–50 musicians, is
a dizzying but well-formed mashup of rearranged Oriental and classical
melodies put to a disco beat, including Abdel Wahab’s ‘Aziza’, Mozart’s
‘Turkish March’, Miguel Gustavo’s ‘Brigitte Bardot’, the Rahbani
Brothers’ ‘Shatti Ya Denyi’ (‘Here Comes the Rain’) and two folklore
songs, alongside his own melodies.

It was the time of disco and so I did “Salade Du Chef”. At the time it was a
kind of joke. I was coming from the classical side, all of my studies were on
piano and we were always composing small concertos and symphonies, and
all of a sudden, I moved to something very different. It was a big surprise
238 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

that it turned out to be a hilarious success. People liked it—I guess because
it was original and very modern. (Interview with Marwan Rahbani, 2018)

Musicians and artists were among the estimated 990,000 people (Tabar
2010, 5) who fled Lebanon during the civil war, and many more who’d
left the country earlier for education or work stayed in their host countries
with the ongoing conflict. As a result, part of the Lebanese discography of
the 1970s and 1980s was produced outside the country. It is worth noting
the output of Lebanese drummer Raja Zahr, who produced two experi-
mental Middle Eastern disco albums in 1980 from the US, where he’d
settled after leaving Lebanon at 17 (Interview with Zahr, 2019). Though
they were recorded at California Recording Studios, they were funnelled
through the Lebanese record industry—pressed at EMI Greece and
released on Voix De L’Orient. Since Zahr was a drummer, the two albums
take an experimental approach to rhythm, and are full of percussive breaks
and a fusion of traditional Arabic rhythm patterns and Western drum-
ming. The album Disco Balady (‘Homemade Disco’, 1980a) is a kind of
drum-led Oriental disco fusion with Arabic-language lyrics. The disco
songs on the record include the high-energy opener ‘Baby’, a mixture of
disco-pop with dabkeh and belly dance, the slow-mover ‘Give Me Disco’
and ‘Maia’, a catchy Arabic disco pop song. Zahr’s other 1980 release,
Lebanon (1980b), includes disco, belly dance and nostalgic folk-pop bal-
lads featuring innovative drumming patterns and synthesisers used along-
side a live band. The instrumental ‘Drum Sequence’ is perhaps the most
experimental disco song by a Lebanese artist, driven by layers of drum-
ming and a looping bassline.

‘Belly Dance Disco’: a New Genre, Born Out

of Lebanon

Belly dance—whose Anglophone nomenclature comes from the French

danse du ventre but which is mostly known as raqs sharqi (dance of the
East) in the region—has long been a staple of the Arab world’s cultural
and nightlife scenes. Many of Beirut’s nightclubs and cabarets had belly
dance shows and starred famous Egyptian belly dancers such as Nagwa
Fouad and Nadia Gamal and a small circle of musicians built their name
on the belly dance style (Nearing 1995, 14). The genre’s popularity
peaked in Lebanon in the 1970s with labels releasing belly dance records
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 239

by artists like Setrak Sarkissian, Nicolas Dick, electric guitarists Mohammed

‘Mike’ Hegazi and Omar Khorshid and buzuki-player Matar Mohammed.
Voice of Stars was one of the labels to focus its catalogue on belly dance,
with modern adaptations of the genre appearing in the 1970s and 1980s,
as artists applied Western instruments and arrangement.
Lebanese violinist, composer and arranger Nicolas El Dick was involved
in multiple belly dance productions on Voice of Stars. He conducted the
orchestra on Cairo By Night (1974), a 1974 album of Abdel Wahab com-
positions rearranged in belly dance style, worked on similar adaptations of
Farid Al Atrache’s music and contributed to the album Aziza Belly Dance
(1975). His album Disco Belly Dance (1978) is an early fusion of belly
dance with disco forms, featuring modern adaptations of folklore songs
alongside El Dick’s own compositions. El Dick was also behind Robert
Maalouf’s 1986 album Mahdoume (‘She’s Cute’, 1986),5 writing the
music and lyrics for the Lebanese singer’s only release, which includes the
interesting Oriental electronic pop-disco ballad ‘Ana Wil Leyl’ (‘The
Night and I’). El Dick’s use of electronic rather than Oriental instruments,
an interesting drumming pattern and funk influences gives the song a
unique quality—a kind of psychedelic Oriental groove.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ihsan AlMunzer released a handful
of innovative belly dance disco albums, across which he gave traditional
melodies, with their origins in the Eastern Mediterranean region, a pro-
gressive update. The albums also feature his own compositions and mod-
ern adaptations of songs from the classical Egyptian, Lebanese and
Armenian repertoire. AlMunzer’s integration of the new music technol-
ogy available at the time, the Kawai organ, Solina string synthesiser and
Prophet 5, give the albums their unique sound. It’s this synth-laden belly
dance disco-funk style—a fusion of Occidental and Arabic music—that
came to define Al-Munzer’s music. This pioneering fusion of belly dance
melodies with disco music can be considered a truly localised form of disco
music—a unique genre born in Lebanon.
Classically trained on piano at the Lebanese National Conservatory,
AlMunzer started playing beat and rock and roll with his band Moonlight
in the 1960s and moved to Italy at the age of 21, where he studied music
and worked in restaurants as a one-man show, singing in six languages. He
returned to Lebanon and to Arabic music in the late 1970s: ‘when I came
back, I was affected with what my father liked in Arabic music. I wanted
to play Arabic music, but I was influenced by drums and foreign music.
That’s why I made this new flavour’ (Interview, 2018).
240 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

AlMunzer’s career peaked in the 1980s. He became a small-screen

celebrity as the bandleader on the TV programme Studio El Fan, had a
nightly gig at the piano bar of the Commodore Hotel—which at the time
acted as headquarters for the foreign press—and played in the orchestra of
Fairouz in her international concerts. Between 1980 and 1986, Al-Munzer
formed a partnership—which he would later describe as a kind of creative
‘monopoly’ (Interview, 2018)—with Polysound Studio owner Nabil
Mumtaz, arranging and writing the music notation for artists, conducting
the orchestra and playing the organ.6 He bought a Solina String Synthesizer
in the late 1970s when Studio El Fan creator Simon Asmar requested a
more modern sound for the show, and Commodore Hotel owner Yousef
Nazzal brought a Prophet 5 back from a trip to America for him. These
synths revolutionalised the way he composed and arranged Arabic music
and characterised the sound of his ‘disco belly dance’ releases:

The Prophet 5 was very expensive—$4000. I used to cut from my salary

each month to pay it off. It was very progressive; it has many sounds and you
can compose your own through microtuning. It allowed for Arabic tuning.
When I brought it to Nabil Mumtaz’s studio and we started to make these
sounds, it was a bomb in all the Arabic market. The Prophet 5 changed my
life… coming from the piano, I entered a whole digital world and started to
make disco music and all these bellydance records. (Interview with
AlMunzer, 2018)

In the late 1970s, Al-Munzer came to the attention of Voix De L’Orient

owner Joseph Chahine, who proposed he rearrange the traditional song
‘Jamileh’. The Oriental cosmic disco-funk song starts with a 30-second
synth intro, free of rhythm, styled on the mawwāl, before a drumming
pattern kicks in. The instrumental is built on interweaving layers of synth
and organ, a funk break and guitar riffs. The song formed the basis for the
10-track LP Belly Dance Disco (1979b), which also includes three of his
own original compositions, as well as his psychedelic Oriental disco update
of the folklore song ‘Girls of Iskandariah’ and modern rearrangements of
known songs by Elias Rahbani, the Rahbani Brothers, Farid Al Atrache
and Sayed Darwish.
In 1980, Al-Munzer released the album and 12” single Shish Kebab:
Disco Belly Dance (1980); although he had previously played organ on a
handful of Voice of Stars records, this was his first solo release on the label.
Title track ‘Shish Kebab’ is an adaptation of a traditional Turkish-Armenian
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 241

folklore melody which circulated in the Arab world via composers such as
Mohamed Abdel Wahab and Ali Ismail in the 1950s and 1960s, while at
the same time becoming an exotica jazz-pop standard by artists like Dave
Brubeck, Ralph Marterie and Bob Azzam, and also a garage rock version
by The Black Albinos. Twenty years later in 1980s Beirut, AlMunzer
reclaimed the melody, giving the instrumental an entirely new face, trans-
forming it into a synth-led disco belly dance version for the club:

It had a Turkish flavour, but I played it in the Arabic flavour. I played it with
a new rhythm, a very new speed and I made it more disco, more danceable.
I also added improvisation within the solos, which was new, and drumming.
(Interview, 2018)

With the small wave of Lebanese records from the late 1970s and early
1980s that rearranged traditional and folkloric songs from the region in
line with the modern disco sound, it seems probable that producers in
Beirut were trying to replicate the commercial success of disco hits with a
Middle Eastern touch such as Boney M’s ‘Rasputin’ and La Bionda’s
‘Sandstorm’. Producers Der Sahakian and Chahine initiated AlMunzer’s
updates of the traditional Armenian and Middle Eastern songs that
appeared on his disco belly dance albums. They were likely aiming to pro-
duce commercial music projects that targeted the international appeal of
the Middle Eastern disco sound, which is perhaps why every record comes
branded with the ‘disco belly dance’ label. Certainly these international
disco-pop hits with a Middle Eastern flavour were on the radar of Der
Sahakian, as AlMunzer’s instrumental synth-laden version of ‘Rasputin’
appeared on the B-side of ‘Shish Kebab’ and on Disco Belly Dance Volume
2 (1979a). On the same album, Al-Munzer also rearranged the traditional
song ‘Far Away’, popularised a few years earlier by Egyptian-born Greek
singer Demis Roussos. The end result of AlMunzer’s ‘disco belly dance’
productions, though, was much more progressive than the commercial
project the producers likely originally imagined: AlMunzer’s flawless musi-
cianship and taste for experimentation, matched with the forward-­thinking
approach to sound recording of Polysound owner Mumtaz, turned out to
be a magical combination.
This adoption of foreign influences in Lebanese music in the late 1970s
and 1980s is certainly not one directional, but rather part of a continual
cyclical music exchange between East and West. Years earlier, American
musicians of Armenian, Greek and Middle Eastern descent popularised
242 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

the ‘Eastern sound’ in the New York nightlife scene, playing rock and roll
and jazz adaptations of traditional eastern Mediterranean region songs. In
the 1950s, many of those musicians released records such as oudist Charles
Ganimian’s ‘Come With Me to the Casbah’ and the Armenian Jazz
Sextet’s ‘Harem Dance’ (1957). Following a similar pattern to the exotica
genre, a number of American pop and jazz bands added an Oriental touch
to their sound in the late 1950s. Martin Denny and Ralph Marterie, for
instance, both had jazz-pop adaptations of Middle Eastern folklore songs
within their repertoire and in 1959 the Markko Polo Adventurers released
LP Orienta (1959), which aimed to combine the ‘charm of the Orient’
with the ‘wit of the Occident’ (Shepherd et al. 2003, 222). Within this
wave of ‘Oriental exotica’, Eastern music was often only superficially
explored within Western music composition: Orientalist signifiers and tra-
ditional instruments were used to give a ‘Middle Eastern flavour’ to an
otherwise European style. Albums were usually accompanied with heavily
exoticised artwork—the belly dancer and the hookah pipe—as well as cli-
ché sleeve notes conjuring up stereotypical images of distant foreign lands.
Finally, surf music was also heavily influenced by Middle Eastern scales
and rhythm. Dick Dale, the late American electric guitarist, of Lebanese
ancestry, who pioneered surf with his fast-paced alternate picking style and
reverb along with his reworks of traditional Middle Eastern songs such as
‘Miserlou’ (1962),7 spoke of the Middle Eastern influence on his music in
a 1998 interview with AramcoWorld: ‘My music comes from the rhythm
of Arab songs. I applied the beat of the darbukkah to my guitar. This is
where a lot of great surf motifs originated’ (Azar 1998, 20–23).

The Music Industry’s Synth’etic Solution

to the Depravity of War

In the 1980s, Lebanon’s civil war entered a new dark period. Israel invaded
south Lebanon on 6 June 1982, keen to put into effect Ariel Sharon’s
vision for a new regional order—with a ‘Christian Lebanon under Bashir
Jumayil, an Israeli West Bank and a Palestinian Jordan’ (Traboulsi 2012,
221). Bashir Jumayil was soon elected president, but was assassinated only
one week after his inauguration. A few days later, Christian Lebanese mili-
tia moved into the Sabra and Chatilla camps and massacred 1000
Palestinians and 100 Lebanese with the aid of Israeli troops. Lebanon
spent the majority of the 1980s under Syrian and Israeli occupation; in
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 243

1984, the country suffered economic collapse following the collective

withdrawal of bank deposits as PLO fighters exited the country, the recon-
struction costs following Israeli destruction during the war, and the deval-
uation of the Lebanese lira against the dollar.
Lebanon’s music scene began to transition too, showing strains from
the wartime conditions it was running under. By the early 1980s the days
of large-scale productions and budgets were over. The pool of interna-
tional musicians available for studio recordings had long dried up with the
decline of Beirut’s nightlife industry. Central Beirut’s nightclubs and caba-
rets closed down in 1975 with the Battle of the Hotels, when Palestinian
and Phalangist militias occupied the hotels of Phoenicia Street. The city’s
two major recording studios—Polysound and Baalbeck Studios—contin-
ued to run intermittently through the 1980s, though Baalbeck was repeat-
edly looted (Borgmann and Slim 2013).
The first home studios started to appear in Lebanon in the 1980s,
offering competitive rates during the economic struggles of war. Ziad
Rahbani’s home studio By-Pass became the nexus of Beirut’s independent
scene in the early 1980s, with Abboud Saadi’s rock band the Force, Ferkat
Al Ard and experimental Assyrian group Zodo’s Band all recording there.
Ziad also recorded his mid-1980s productions at By-Pass, where he
installed a generator on the building’s roof, covered with sand bags to
protect from shelling, so work could continue during the frequent black-
outs and when the conflict engulfed the studio’s immediate vicinity.
Undercutting Polysound’s pricing significantly, the studio attracted com-
mercial recordings throughout the 1980s, with AlMunzer regularly bring-
ing the singers he was working with to record there. Meanwhile Elias
Rahbani, who had spent the mid- to late 1970s recording almost exclu-
sively at Polysound, was forced to set up a studio in his home in Antelias,
5km north of Beirut, where he recorded albums throughout the 1980s
war period for singers Tony Valière, Pascal and Sabah. Elias’ son Gassan
Rahbani, a musician and composer himself, remembers his father’s switch
to home recording:

Polysound was in West Beirut and sometimes we couldn’t cross the border
to go there. Dad had a lot of work to do and we couldn’t wait for the war
to stop so he decided to bring a mixer console, multi-track recording
[machine] and all of the effects home. The studio was set up in our living
room. (Interview, 2018)
244 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

The use of the synth became widespread in Lebanese music in the 1980s,
replacing the lush orchestras and polished production that had defined the
sound of Lebanon’s early disco releases. Though artists were utilising new
technology and reflecting international trends, the instrument also suited
wartime conditions, allowing records to be made on minimal budgets.
Disco music stayed in the consciousness of Lebanese artists for a number
of years after its international decline, with its influence still heard on pro-
ductions throughout the 1980s. The genre shaped the commercial music
landscape, morphing into a kind of keyboard- and synth-driven disco-­
influenced pop. Elias was one of the first in Lebanon to use the synth in
his recordings in the 1970s and worked almost exclusively on it in the
1980s. Able to write and record for artists solo and at low cost in his home
studio, he became a one-man production house, dominating Lebanon’s
commercial music industry.
In the early 1980s, Elias and his friend Charbel Karam set up the record
labels Cobra and Rahbania, releasing over 30 albums in their few years of
existence. The labels became the vehicles for Elias’ multiple productions
for emerging Lebanese singers and carried his distinctive sound stamp of
the period—Arabic pop with disco influences and simplistic, catchy melo-
dies on synthesisers. Part of this wartime wave of synth-driven Arab pop
by Elias is the 1982 Rahbania-release ‘Kezzabi’ (‘She’s a Liar’) (1982), the
album of Lebanese singer Al Amir Al Zaghir under the alias Le Petit
Prince. Written and recorded by Elias, the album’s title track is a memo-
rable melodic synth-driven Euro-disco-style composition with a kitschy
chorus. Released the same year, Adonis Akl’s album Mech Ader (‘I
Cannot’, 1982) also carries Elias’ characteristic style with catchy keyboard-­
driven disco-pop melodies and synthetic bass and strings. Disco influences
can be heard in Cobra-release Jina L I’ndik! (‘We Came to Visit You!’,
n.d.), the synth-based pop album of Lebanese singer Edgar Semaan,
arranged by Abdo Mounzer. Clearly inspired by the disco imagery of the
period, the album’s cover pictures the singer standing on an abstract illu-
minated dance floor in disco-style attire.
One of the most interesting disco synth-pop albums on Rahbania is by
Elias’ son Gassan Rahbani, the fourth Rahbani family member to contrib-
ute to Lebanon’s disco catalogue. Released when Gassan was only 17, the
self-titled album (1981) is a mixture of slow-moving cosmic disco, synth-­
pop and reggae with English-language lyrics. Gassan played all instru-
ments on the album, including drums, an electric piano and a collection of
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 245

synths and keyboards, with electric guitar played by Abdel Did on one
track. Gassan, who now predominantly focuses on metal, reflects:

The record was like a test, a demo. There were some ballads, some love
songs, a kind of disco, kind of underground music. I was lost. We sent it to
Paris and they pressed it at Sono Disc. When we brought it back here, it was
as if I’d won an Oscar. (Interview, 2018)

A handful of commercial disco mega mixes were released on Rahbania and

Cobra too, including Lebanese-Armenian singer Joe Nell’s ‘Disco Sound’,
arranged by Boudy Naoum and released as a 12-inch maxi, and two 1982
disco medley albums by Gassan and singer Pascale, with 30-second ver-
sions of songs such as ‘I Will Survive’ and ‘Ring My Bell’.
Keyboard- and synthesiser-driven music dominated the handful of
Lebanese labels that rose to prominence in the 1980s. Record label Voice
of Beirut released a few of Lebanon’s most interesting synth experimenta-
tions. Its release, Teddy Lane’s Remote Control (1983), is Lebanon’s new
wave synth-pop offering, complete with English-language vocals and use
of vocoders and synth. Released in 1984, Lory by Karl. S is a synth-­
pop/rock album, which features an interesting use of synthesisers, partic-
ularly on title track ‘Lory’. The label also released Sammy Clark’s 1982
album Sammy Clark Sings Elias Rahbani (1982), again featuring Elias’
distinct pop melodies. Throughout the 1980s, Lebanese pop continued
within the realms of disco and synth-pop with catchy melodies on key-
board and small productions becoming the industry standard for singers.
Mohammed Sherif’s 1984 pop song ‘Oumri Kaan…’ (‘My Life Was…’,
1984), which spent two weeks at number one, integrates experimental
synth sound effects and a distinct disco influence. Released on Voix De
L’Orient’s 1980s sub-label Byblos, Robert Chammaa’s 1983 Arabic pop
EP Btetzakariny… (‘Do You Remember Me…’, 1983) is driven by dar-
bukkah rhythm and live drums and features synth glitches and sound
effects. The polar opposite to Lebanese tarab and pop of the previous
decade—defined by its depth of emotion and poetic lyricism—these
records, with their synthesiser-based melodies and introspective lyrics,
carry an undertone of melancholy that seems to reflect the bleak land-
scape of war.
In the end, disco music was to be a major trigger for the evolution of
Arab pop music into a new era—marked by the ‘Rotana generation’ of
pop stars such as Nancy Ajram, Elissa, Haifa Wehbe, Kadim Al Sahir and
246 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

Fares Karam. The transformation of pop—from the more traditional

music style of Umm Kalthoum in the 1940s and 1950s into the more
modernised sounds of Fairouz and Abdel Halim Hafez—picked up speed
in the 1970s and 1980s with the global adoption of disco. Arabic pop car-
ried through the use of synthetic instruments and combination of Western
pop and disco with traditional Arabic music, which had risen on the back
of disco music, into the 1990s, later adding further synthetic effect with
the popularity of autotune vocals. That style, for better or for worse, has
remained the face of Arabic pop music until today.

Notes
1. This chapter is informed in large part by 19 extensive interviews conducted
between September 2018 and October 2019 with a range of musicians,
producers, DJs, record label executives, cinema archivists and other relevant
players on the Lebanese disco scene, who shared their experiences and recol-
lections and to whom the research presented here is heavily indebted: Ihsan
AlMunzer, Abboudi Abou Jaoude, Abdallah Chahine, John Deacon, Joe
Diverio, Issam Hajali, Rafic Hobeika’s daughter Joumana Hobeika,
Jacqueline, Ghassan Khazoun, Diran Mardirian, Rustom Nayel, Gassan
Rahbani, Jad Rahbani, Marwan Rahbani, Ziad Rahbani, Abboud Saadi,
Ziad Sidawi, Mohammad Tamo and Raja Zahr. To aid readability, these are
referenced throughout the text as ‘Interview, date’; if it is unclear who is
speaking, we have added the person’s name in brackets.
2. Henceforth all translations are the authors’ unless otherwise stated.
3. John Deacon, EMI Lebanon’s 1970s managing director, believed the Beirut
record pressing plant failed because of the ‘choice to manufacture only the
dying seven-inch’ when cassette piracy was rife. This is noteworthy given the
effects of piracy explored later in this chapter.
4. Though the record’s label says it was released in 1978, it actually wasn’t
recorded until January 1979—an invoice in Mardirian’s archives con-
firms this.
5. Maalouf’s vocals were recorded at a studio in Montreal, where the singer
had emigrated to, while the music was recorded by El Dick at Baalbeck
Studios.
6. During this period, AlMunzer put his distinctive sound stamp on numerous
pioneering records such as Mohammad Jamal’s ‘Doroup El Hawa’ and
Mohamad ‘Mike’ Hijazi’s ‘Ohdonni Ya Habibi’, as well as for pop artists like
Azar Habib, Sammy Clark and Nouhad Tarabie.
7. A traditional instrumental, popular in the early to mid-twentieth century
among immigrant communities in the US. It resurged in popularity when
Dick Dale’s surf adaptation was featured in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film
Pulp Fiction.
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 247

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Pluto Press.
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Asmar, Sami. 2013. Challenging the Status Quo in War-Torn Lebanon Ziad
Rahbani, the Avant-Garde Heir to Musical Tradition. In The Arab Avant-­
Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity (Music Culture), ed. Thomas Burkhalter, Kay
Dickinson, and Benjamin J. Harbert, 144–163. Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press. Kindle Edition.
Azar, George Baramki. 1998. The Sultan of Surf. AramcoWorld 49 (2): 20–23.
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Burkhalter, Thomas. 2013. Local Music Scenes and Globalization. New York:
Routledge.
Elzeer, Nada. 2010. Language-based Humour and the Untranslatable: The Case
of Ziad Rahbani’s Theatre. In Translation, Humour and Literature: Translation
and Humour, ed. Delia Chiaro, 196–208. London: Continuum Books.
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Straus & Giroux.
Friedman, Thomas L. 1983. Lebanese Patch Up the Scars of War. New York Times,
February 13. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/13/world/lebanese-­
patch-­up-­the-­scars-­of-­war.html
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summer-­1995/out-­of-­the-­ashes/
Shepherd, John, et al., eds. 2003. Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the
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East Eye, July 26. https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/
taroub-­songs-­lebanon-­singer
Stone, Christopher. 2008. Popular Culture and Nationalism in Lebanon: The
Fairouz and Rahbani Nation. London: Routledge.
Tabar, Paul. 2010. Lebanon: A Country of Emigration and Immigration. The
American University in Cairo. http://schools.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/cmrs/
reports/Documents/Tabar080711.pdf. Accessed 3 January 2019.
Traboulsi, Fawwaz. 2012. A History of Modern Lebanon. London: Pluto Press.
ZIDA Archives of Khatchik Mardirian.
248 N. SHOOTER AND E. CHAHOUD

Discography
Al-Munzer, Ihsan. Disco Belly Dance [Volume 2], Voice of Stars, 1979a, LP.
Al-Munzer, Ihsan. Belly Dance Disco, Voix De L’Orient, 1979b, LP.
Al-Munzer, Ihsan. Shish Kebab: Disco Belly Dance, Voice of Stars. 1980, LP.
Al-Munzer, Ihsan. Belly Dance with Ihsan Al-Munzer, Voice of Stars, 1981, LP.
Akl, Adonis. Adonis Akl Chante Elias Rahbani: Mech Ader. Rahbania. 1982, LP.
Alpert, Herb. Rise. A&M Records, 1979, LP.
Armenian Jazz Sextet, “Harem Dance”, Kapp Records, 1957, 7”.
Chammaa, Robert. Btetzakariny, Byblos, 1983, EP.
Clark, Sammy. Sammy Clark Sings Elias Rahbani, Voice of Beirut, 1982, LP.
Dick Dale and the Del-Tones. “Miserlou”, Deltone Records, 1962, 7”.
El Dick, Nicolas; Abdel Aal, Aboud and Abou Seoud, Hassan. Aziza Belly Dance,
Voice of Stars, 1975, LP.
El Dick, Nicolas. Disco Belly Dance. Voice of Stars. 1978, LP.
El Haber, Khaled. Hin Yasmot Al Moghani. Zida, 1979. LP.
Rahbani, Elias [And His Orchestra]. Liza… Liza. EMI Voix De L’Orient,
1978a, 12".
Rahbani, Elias [And His Orchestra]. With Love… EMI Voix De L’Orient,
1978b, LP.
Fairouz, Maarifti Feek, Relax-in. 1987, LP.
Fairouz. Mais El Rim. Voice of Beirut, 1975, LP.
Fairouz. Wahdon. Zida, 1979, LP.
Ferkat Al Ard, Oghneya. Zida. 1979, LP.
Ganimian & His Oriental Music. “Hedy Lou” in Come with Me to the Casbah,
Atco Records, 1959, LP.
Hanna, Toni. Hidaya Hiday. Voix De L’Orient, 1974, 7".
Hobeica, Rafic; Jacqueline. Disco Hits in Arabic. EMI Voix De L’Orient,
1980a, 12.
Hobeica, Rafic; Jacqueline (with Sunshine Orchestra). Disco Hits in Arabic. EMI
Voix De L’Orient, 1980b, LP.
Jamal, Mohammad. Doroup El Hawa, EMI Araby [EMI Greece?], 1981, LP.
Karl. S, Lory. Voice of Beirut, 1984, LP.
Lane, Teddy. Remote Control. EMI Greece / Voice of Beirut, 1983, EP.
Le Petit Prince. Kezzabi. [Chante Elias Rahbani], Rahbania, 1982, LP.
Maalouf, Robert. Mahdoume. EMI Voix De L’Orient, 1986, LP.
Markko Polo Adventurers. Orienta, RCA Victor, 1959, LP.
Nell, Joe. “Disco Sound”. Cobra [Year], 12” Maxi-Single.
Raggi, Issam. “Al Mahabba” / “Lakini”, Al Mahabba. Voix De L’Orient, 1981.
Sabah. Wadi Shamsine. Rahbania, 1982, LP.
Rahbani, Elias. Mosaic of the Orient, Volume 1 & 2. EMI Voix De L’Orient,
1972, LP.
 THE LEBANESE MUSIC EXPERIMENT DISCO AND NIGHTLIFE… 249

Rahbani, Ziad. “Abu Ali,” Zida, 1979, 12.

Rahbani, Ziad. “Abu Ali,” WEWANTSOUNDS, 2019, 12”.
Rahbani, Ziad. Houdou Nisbi. By-Pass Productions, 1985. Cassette.
Rahbani, Marwan. Salade Du Chef. EMI Voix De L’Orient, 1980a, 12”.
Rahbani, Gassan. Gassan Rahbani. Rahbania, 1981, LP.
Raja [Zahr]. Disco Balady. EMI Voix De L’Orient, 1980a, LP.
Raja [Zahr]. Lebanon. EMI Voix De L’Orient, 1980b, LP.
Semaan, Edgar. Jina L I’ndik! Cobra, [Year Unknown], LP.
Sherif, Mohammed. Oumri Kaan. Voice of Beirut, 1984, LP.
Wahab, Mohamed Abdel; Dick, Nicolas. Cairo By Night. Voice of Stars, 1974, LP.
Yazbek, Maya. Maja. 1980, LP.
Yorgantz, Marten. Greatest Hits. Voice of Stars, [n.d.], LP.

Filmography, TV Programs & Plays

Rahbani, Ziad (music). Abu Ali Al Asmarani. 1974. (Play directed by Vazlian,
Berj; starring Al Ashqar, Nidal and Kerbage, Antoine).
Rahbani, Assi and Mansour. Mais El Rim, 1975 (Play directed by Antoine Remi,
starring Fairouz, with music by Ziad Rahbani, Elias Rahbani and
Philemon Wehbe).
Rahbani, Assi and Mansour. Al Mahatta, 1973 (Play directed by Berj Vazlian, star-
ring Fairouz, with music by Ziad Rahbani and Elias Rahbani).
Rahbani, Ziad. Film Ameriki Tawil, 1980b. (Play).
Rahbani, Ziad. Bennesbeh Labokra… Chou? 1978. (Play).
Salman, Muhammad (Dir.). Ahlan Bi-Lhob, 1967. (Film).
Barakat, Henry (Dir.). Habibati, 1974. (Film).
Asmar, Simon (Creator). Studio El Fan, 1972 – Present.
 Disco and Discontent in Nigeria:
A Conversation

Uchenna C. Ikonne, Flora Pitrolo, and Marko Zubak

Flora Pitrolo: Uchenna, you have written extensively about

Nigerian popular music and are currently prepar-
ing a four-volume publication on its history. In
your published work, you tend to take great care
to locate the music in its context, and that’s very
important to this volume—understanding, for
starters, that the 1970s and 1980s were very dif-
ferent decades in very different places. So let’s
begin by setting the scene: socially, politically,

U. C. Ikonne (*)
Quincy, MA, USA
F. Pitrolo
Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of
London, London, UK
M. Zubak
Department of Contemporary History, Croatian Institute of History,
Zagreb, Croatia

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 251

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_11
252 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

and economically. speaking, the 1970s in Nigeria

were an eventful time.
Uchenna C. Ikonne: The 1970s in Nigeria was a time of reconstruc-
tion and upheaval. The country had gone
through a particularly brutal civil war between
1967 and 1970, so the 1970s was a time when
the country was trying to find its way back
together to be a nation once again. This coin-
cided with the oil crisis, which started in 1973,
when the Organization of Arab Petroleum
Exporting Countries enacted an oil embargo
against the Western countries that supported
Israel. While the embargo lasted only a few
months, it resulted in a meteoric rise in the price
of oil, especially in the US where there was a mas-
sive energy and economic crisis throughout the
1970s—and this environment of deprivation was
the backdrop to the development of disco in
New York City. But in Nigeria the oil crisis turned
out to be an oil boom—Nigeria is an oil-­
producing nation and had just nationalised its oil
industry after the war, so the sudden hike in the
global price of oil was a great opportunity. Nigeria
experienced a significant boost to its revenues,
and this new wealth was largely spent in a very
profligate manner that became just the perfect
context for this music that celebrated glamour
and excess to take root.
FP: Was this a new wealth, since Nigeria had just
come out of the civil war? Did the country go
from very poor to very rich very suddenly?
UI: Nigeria had been a prosperous country before,
relatively speaking. It was already a prolific
exporter of crude oil and various in-demand agri-
cultural products. But yes, it definitely became
much, much richer in the 1970s. There’s a par-
ticular quote attributed to General Yakubu
Gowon, who was the military head of state at the
time: ‘Nigeria’s problem is not the money, but
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 253

how to spend it’. I don’t know whether it’s

­apocryphal or if he really said this, but it became
a famous way to describe that time.
Marko Zubak: So what did Lagos look like in this period? How
was this oil boom reflected in the city—did its
cosmopolitanism emerge at this point or was it
already an international centre?
UI: Lagos was already a fairly cosmopolitan city and
its population was pretty international as well.
After all, Nigeria is known as ‘the Giant of
Africa’—the continent’s most populous and
dynamic country. But Nigeria also was, has always
been and still is a land of savage inequities. So the
average citizen may not have necessarily felt the
difference between life before the oil boom and
after it, but for the ruling class—for the upper
class, for people in government and those close
to them, and for the professional managerial
class—there was a tangible difference. There was
a vogue for very conspicuous consumption of
Western luxury goods, for example, and civil ser-
vants received very generous grants and bonuses
that helped upgrade and expand their middle-­
class lifestyles. In terms of the oil boom’s material
manifestation in the city itself, I would say the
most visible aspect were the very many ambitious
construction projects that went through during
that time. The government built quite a few opu-
lent buildings, such as the flamboyant National
Theatre, and a lot of new infrastructure. The pri-
vate sector also spearheaded a lot of construction
of new nightclubs, hotels, and the like. This was
also the period, throughout the first half of the
1970s, when the government continuously tried
to mount this very grand cultural festival
FESTAC, which was designed to showcase
Nigeria’s wealth and to show Nigeria as being
essentially the spiritual homeland for Black peo-
ple around the world.
254 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

FP: You say it ‘continuously tried’—did FESTAC

eventually take place?
UI: It finally happened in January 1977. I would say
that that was a turning point as well, in terms of
disco. I can’t say exactly what it was, but for the
first half of the decade there was a very strong
Afrocentric feel in the popular culture—after
FESTAC, it seemed as if the festival had been the
climax of that cultural arc and then people moved
on to other things. The cultural discourse became
less about Afrocentrism and more about conspic-
uous consumption, and it’s around then that
disco came in, full-scale anyway. I don’t know if it
has to do with the fact that 1977 was the year
that Saturday Night Fever came out, but some-
thing happened and the mood definitely shifted
towards disco music.
MZ: To what extent was disco a result of a fading
Afrocentrism and to what extent was it a transi-
tion into this US mode of consumption, with
more and more goods from the US being con-
sumed in Nigeria? Given the country’s strong
local tradition of Afrobeat and Afrofunk, I’m
interested in the relation between Nigerian disco
and this movement for African authenticity: how
were Nigerian musicians navigating an interest in
US music along with more local traditions, and
what cut of US disco were they looking towards?
UI: When we think about disco, we usually think
about music that is very slickly produced with a
lot of synthesisers, strings, and horns—a music
that is very clean in its production, and very
broad. But disco was not always that: when you
go back to the roots of disco in New York City,
what the DJs were playing was not anything that
sounded like the Bee Gees—what they were often
playing was African music, or faux African music.
Manu Dibango’s ‘Soul Makossa’ was an early
example, but then there were also faux-Afro
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 255

groups like Chakachas and people like that. I

argue that what was already going on in Nigeria
actually influenced the development of disco in
the United States; and then, by the time disco
got commercialised in America and became very
slick, that sound was imported back to Nigeria.
It’s hard to say why the Afrocentric thing fell
away. Sometimes I make the case that it had just
run its course: the Afrocentric thing was mostly
introduced by Fela Kuti, and a lot of people fol-
lowed his lead in purveying that style—FESTAC
seemed to be the culmination of everything that
Fela had been doing up until that point. But at
the same time the climax of FESTAC saw the
government attacking Fela’s home and burning
it down—if we look at the actual chronology of
events, that infamous incident happened two
weeks after FESTAC, and after that Fela seemed
to fall out of favour as a popular musician. So it’s
possible that he took the Afrocentric thing down
with him. We need to remember that Fela had a
certain boldness and self-confidence that came
from his upper middle-class origins—most musi-
cians did not have the privileges that he had, and
they weren’t willing to take the risks that he took.
So a lot of people saw what happened to Fela and
felt, ‘if this is what it’s going to lead to if you
continue going down that road, let’s go in the
opposite direction and just make music about
dancing and having fun’. So that is my theory: I
think the gradual rise of disco had something to
do with musicians distancing themselves from the
movement that Fela had essentially presided over
for the first half of the decade.
FP: If the rise of disco coincided with the decline of
Afrocentrism, is this sense of decline in any way
audible in the music? To your contemporary ears,
does it sound like music of the oil boom or does
it carry some kind of pessimistic undertone?
256 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

UI: I’d say that it was aspirational, in the same way

that US disco was aspirational. As much as
American disco celebrated glamour and beauty
and good times and the fine life, it was being pro-
duced at the time when New York City was bank-
rupt, crime-ridden, and filthy, and the US
economy was in a crushing recession. People
were just trying to project their fantasies through
disco, and in some ways that was the same thing
in Nigeria: even though the country’s economy
was flourishing, life for the average citizen was
not particularly glamourous.

The Disco Effect on the Nigerian Music Industry

MZ: Let’s move to the music: how did the disco phe-
nomenon take hold, and how did it change the
country’s musical landscape?
UI: When it comes to Nigeria, one of the most
important things about the disco phenomenon is
how it shifted the focus of the music industry
from live performance to people dancing to
records. Nigeria was already a pretty large market
for recorded music, but at the time it became
even more important. Previously, the music
industry in Nigeria had been controlled primarily
by three multinational record labels, EMI, Decca,
and Philips; there were some others, but those
were the main ones. During the 1970s you saw a
lot more independent labels and independent
majors, or independent labels that were striving
to be majors, being founded. And a lot of these
tried to construct much more technologically
advanced recording studios to produce records
that had that world-class fidelity and that big
sound that was associated with disco.
FP: Was there a pressing plant at this point in Nigeria?
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 257

UI: Initially there was one that was shared by EMI,

Decca, and Philips, and I think there was briefly a
second one somewhere, but it got destroyed dur-
ing the war. In the 1970s, you got a couple more
spring up: William Onyeabor started his own
pressing plant, and Phonodisk had one. In gen-
eral one of the most important aspects of disco as
a genre in Nigeria was how it facilitated the
expansion of the Nigerian recording industry.
MZ: Who were the people behind this new wave
of labels?
UI: Local entrepreneurs. They came into it looking at
it as a growth industry that was worth investing
in. Of course, it didn’t always turn out great for
them for various reasons.
MZ: Can you pinpoint a record that symbolises this
transition—the first record, or the first records,
you would identify as Nigerian disco?
UI: That’s hard to say! I don’t have a definitive
answer to that, but I have something close to it:
the group Blo were definitely pioneers, and began
very early in the game. Their LP Step 3, from
1975, had a distinct early disco vibe to it.
FP: And in what way does a record like Step 3 inter-
vene in the history of Nigerian popular music?
What is the public doing with these records; how
do they feel?
UI: They felt it was great! At that time one of the
ambitions of most Nigerian popular musicians
was to make music that sounded ‘foreign’—just
something that sounded like it had big, sophisti-
cated production values. Nigeria’s studios were
decent, but relatively primitive in terms of the
kind of sound people wanted: you had advanced
multitrack technology coming in, and you
wanted to have all those string sections, you
wanted to have what they would have called in
Nigeria a very ‘expensive’ sound to the music. So
whenever anybody could do that, it was ­welcomed
258 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

with open arms. As a matter of fact that’s why

during that period a lot of Nigerian artists started
recording in London, to get that sound.
MZ: Did these early disco artists mostly record in the
studio and not perform live in the clubs, or was
there a mixture of the two in the beginning? And
also on this note, were there already some famous
disco producers back then?
UI: At first there was a mixture. Blo, for example,
were a band, so they performed live. But increas-
ingly the music scene transitioned from bands to
solo artists, and that was another big develop-
ment of the disco era that seemed very new: up
until that time everybody’s idea of a musical unit
was a group of performers playing instruments,
but as the disco sound developed, it became all
about solo acts. Again, it was paralleled in some-
thing that was already going on in the United
States, when you see Michael Jackson break from
the Jacksons, Michael Cooper break from Con
Funk Shun, or Ray Parker Jr leaving Raydio. The
music industry was a lot more interested in mar-
keting solo personalities, so whenever you had a
band the lead singer would usually go solo, and
maybe the most musically prodigious members
of the group would go on to become super-­
producers. That happened in Nigeria as well. I
don’t think there were any producers who were
exclusively disco producers—at that time any-
way—but one of the main producers of disco
records was a man named Jake Sollo who had
previously been in a few prominent Afro-rock
groups: The Hykkers, The Funkees, and Osibisa.
Again he was the member with the most musical
ideas and he went on to become a producer.
Another development is that a lot of the new solo
artists, at least the ones that got the spotlight,
were educated. This was considered a novelty
because up until that time, music was viewed as
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 259

something that you did when you dropped out of

school—it was a career for the ne’er-do-wells.
But all of a sudden you had university students
and graduates going into the studio to make
records, and that made the music profession
more socially acceptable. The same could be said
for women performers: previous to that, when
the nightclub was the primary site of music pro-
duction, it wasn’t really the place a decent lady
would want to be found. In broad terms, if you
were a woman in a nightclub, you were viewed
either as a prostitute or as a potential prostitute.
Even the female performers were perceived as
part-time prostitutes, whether they actually were
or not—it just wasn’t a place where a ‘responsi-
ble’ woman would want to be. So through the
1960s and early 1970s you didn’t really have too
many women going into the music industry, but
when music became more studio-based, it seemed
that that was a safer environment for a respect-
able woman to involve herself in musical
performance.
FP: While we’re on the subject of women, is this sort
of proliferation of women in the music industry
also reflected in discotheque audiences? Were
women actually going out at night more as
a result?
UI: Yeah, at least at first, the discos too were viewed
as a more acceptable environment. Many of the
previous nightclubs were typically hotels, which
meant they were essentially nightclubs/broth-
els—we’re not talking about the Hilton or the
Waldorf Astoria! Some were better than others,
obviously, but a lot of them were basically whore-
houses. Discos were not that: discos presented a
more upscale, hygienic environment where it
didn’t really seem that you were hanging around
a seedy cathouse. That said, a lot of great music
has always emerged from such environments—
260 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

like jazz, which originally was the musical

soundtrack of New Orleans’s bordellos.

Nigerian Nightlife in the 1970s

FP: So how did this shift in both gender and level of

education change the audiences of disco? Would
you say that disco became a fundamentally
middle-­class genre in Nigeria, and if so did it
alienate working-class or poor Nigerians as
a result?
UI: I would say it did become middle class, but I
don’t think it alienated poor Nigerians, on a wide
scale at least. Some people might have had prob-
lems with it but again, disco was aspirational: so a
lot of working-class or poor people may have
looked up to it, admiring that sophistication and
the illusion of opulence as something that they
wanted to access for themselves. There were
some critics of it, of course, who may have
mocked what Fela would have called the ‘colonial
mentality’ of this: they felt that it was inauthentic
and that these were people who were probably
culturally lost, who had no sense of identity.
Black men trying to be John Travolta. But that’s
the sort of criticism that you would more proba-
bly find from the more academic set than from
the working class.
MZ: Can you elaborate a bit more on the clubbing
scene? You mentioned that there was a paradigm
shift between shady hotel clubs to ‘nicer’ discos.
How big was this new scene: are we speaking
about hundreds of nightclubs? African music was
always very rhythmic, so I imagine that dancing
would have always been a huge part of the night-
club experience—can you tell us more about
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 261

these new kinds of clubs that go along with this

new, polished, synthesised music?
UI: There had always been nightclubs in Nigeria
since the 1940s, even before that. At first, you
didn’t really have commercial clubs; what you
had was private clubs. In the 1950s, the night-
club economy expanded dramatically and you
saw several dozens of clubs in Lagos alone, clubs
of various sizes and styles, catering to different
kinds of clientele. The same expansion of the
nightlife market was happening in other Nigerian
cities too. At this time, the more ambitious night-
clubs offered floor shows featuring all manner of
entertainers: dancers, magicians, comedians, fire
eaters, contortionists, snake charmers, and the
like. Smaller nightclubs might not have the bud-
get or even the space to host such entertain-
ments, but the basic standard layout for any
nightclub, regardless of size, was a dance floor, a
bar, and a stage from which a band would supply
the music throughout the night. The nightclub
was the place to see and hear these bands, who
became celebrities and amassed large followings
that bought their records when they ventured
into the recording studio, fuelling the growth of
the local recording industry. But Lagos was
already experimenting with discotheque-styled
nightclubs as early as 1954.
MZ: Can you tell us a bit more about the early days of
Lagos nightlife, before disco?
UI: The top nightclubs in Lagos were usually run by
expatriate businessmen, most typically Lebanese.
They often modelled these spaces on famous
nightspots in American and European capitals,
borrowing names like Lido Bar, The Savoy, The
Ambassador, Kakadu, The Ritz, and so on. There
was a Greek entrepreneur called Peter
Economidas, whose club Chez Peters was
inspired by one of the trendiest joints in Paris at
262 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

the time, the Whisky à Gogo. In 1953 the Whisky

in Paris effectively became a discotheque in the
contemporary sense: rather than featuring live
entertainers performing on a stage, its entertain-
ment was centred around records played on a
jukebox that was operated by a disc jockey. The
concept was new and quickly became the place to
be seen for Paris’s most beautiful and celebrated
personalities. Chez Peters was up and running in
Lagos by 1954, so only a year later. Its downstairs
section was formatted like a standard club, with a
dance floor and a stage for bands, but if you went
up the stairs you got to the ‘roof garden’, which
was festooned with coloured lights and was pre-
sided over by a disc jockey rotating records on a
radiogram—usually foreign jazz, pop, and dance
band discs by the likes of Victor Silvester, Louis
Armstrong, Edmundo Ros. Chez Peters also cul-
tivated a reputation as the place for nightflies
who might be just a little bit cooler than the aver-
age pub-crawler. Later on—in the 1960s, when
chic discotheques started taking off in the West,
with places such as the Los Angeles Whisky a Go
Go and Arthur in New York opening up—Lagos
embarked on this trend as well. Though you
didn’t really have dedicated disco clubs, usually a
few of the more upscale standard nightclubs
would host weekly ‘disco nights’, when a DJ
would spin soul and rock records for the more
enthusiastic and fashion-forward crowds. The
first all-disco, all-the-time club in Lagos was the
Beachcomber, which opened around 1973. It
was a huge success: a world-class club with a
really international feel to it, run by a young man
named Segun Shonibare, who was also the resi-
dent DJ. After that, other venues followed in
various cities across Nigeria.
FP: So it wasn’t a Lagos-centric, elite phenomenon.
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 263

UI: Not at all, not at all! Disco was going on every-

where! Disco was going on in every major city
and town in the country. It was national.
MZ: And when people went to discos, was there an
escapist feel to it? An issue that often comes up in
peripheral disco scenes is that people went to the
disco to behave like, or even pretend that, they
were in New York. Was there this same feeling in
Nigeria?
UI: Oh yes, for sure. I think that’s the feeling that
was associated with disco anywhere in the world:
even the people dancing in a disco in Queens,
New York imagined themselves being in
Manhattan! Everybody wanted to be in the shiny
places with the beautiful people, and that’s what
disco was really about, a sense of escapism. Then
again, there is this sense of escapism in popular
music in general, but I would say especially so in
this case.
FP: To what extent did disco as a music infiltrate tra-
ditional spheres and parties, such as weddings
and the like?
UI: That’s a great question. Yes, very much so. It
infiltrated popular spaces, in the sense that if you
went to a party or a wedding or something they
would play all different kinds of music: they’d
play some disco, they’d play some highlife, they’d
play all sorts of different stuff. So it did that, but
it also infiltrated the production of these genres,
where they started adopting some of the instru-
mentation and production techniques. And you
even get names of records like Tala Disco ‘85 or
Fuji Disco—so it infiltrated in that respect too.
FP: Another question I wanted to ask you on the
subject of parties is about drugs—although I
know it’s hard to research and we can never
really know.
UI: Yes, it’s hard to say: there’s not a lot of documen-
tation and Nigerians tend to be very puritanical
264 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

about drugs. There was not a lot of access to

drugs—I don’t think cocaine was around at the
time, but marijuana was always there and I know
a lot of musicians took amphetamines of various
kinds. People took Mandrax, which is what in
other parts of the world were known as Quaaludes.
It’s a question I would love to answer myself
because it’s something I’m very much interested
in, but it’s hard to get some of these old folks to
talk about it because culturally, nobody wants to
admit that they ever did drugs. But sometimes it
does just slip out that people were taking uppers
and Mandrax.
MZ: We should also talk about the gay connection,
the gay background of disco music. Was this lost
in translation in Nigeria, as it was in so many
places? Or were there people who were aware of
disco’s LGBTQ+ roots?
UI: This is another difficult thing to talk about, and
it’s something that I’ve been trying to find
research on. You know, Nigeria is an extremely
homophobic country; it still is today. In recent
years—and when I say recent I mean the past two
or three years—you’re starting to see more of an
LGBT scene trying to rear its head, even though
in the past five years the government has promul-
gated a lot of very harsh anti-LGBT laws. These
laws are hardly, if ever, enforced—but still, they
threaten people with 14 years in jail if they’re
caught openly promoting homosexual lifestyles.
The point is to put out the public message that
there is no space for homosexual lifestyles in
mainstream Nigerian culture. So it’s hard for me
to imagine it being a thing in the 1970s, but it’s
possible: there are certain musicians in the disco
scene who I’m told were gay; one of them I had
wanted to interview but unfortunately he recently
suddenly passed away. So I don’t know: there are
some people who were gay, but it’s not some-
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 265

thing that was celebrated and it’s not something

that was accepted. In terms of the sexual libera-
tion associated with disco, as I said previously
there was a lot going on in terms of the emanci-
pation of women. When it comes to fluid sexual-
ity in terms of representation, you saw a lot more
men wearing makeup and having long hair and
wearing clothing that could be deemed ‘femi-
nine’. But whether they were actually living any
kind of alternative lifestyle or having actual sexual
interactions in real life, I don’t know.

The Role of DJs and Sound Systems

MZ: Can you tell us something about the DJs? Are we

talking about mobile DJs or only residents? Were
there any famous DJs who crowds followed when
they moved from one club to another?
UI: The first disco DJ to gain significant attention
was Tony Benson, the son of bandleader and
entrepreneur Bobby Benson, who is regarded as
essentially the founding father of Nigerian show
business. Tony Benson had been a child star, as
he was a skilled multi-instrumentalist in his
father’s group and as a teen he had been in one of
the country’s earliest rock n’ roll bands. Later,
leading his own combo, he helped introduce soul
music to Nigerians in the 1960s. He usually per-
formed with his band at his father’s club, Caban
Bamboo, and around 1968 he started dedicating
one night a week to playing the latest soul discs.
Others followed his lead—Segun Shonibare of
Beachcomber had actually learned his craft assist-
ing Benson at Caban. But the most prominent
DJ to emerge from this new wave was a guy
named Femi Oni, ‘the Disco King’, who rose to
fame in late 1969. Oni was initially based primar-
266 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

ily at a nightclub called Batakoto, but unlike

­Benson who was permanently situated at Caban
Bamboo, Oni started moving from club to club,
introducing the concept of the mobile disco-
theque. He travelled to England and Germany in
1972, returning with a state-of-the-art sound
system that allowed him to corner the market on
the burgeoning disco scene. But Oni’s reign was
not to go uncontested for long, because by the
end of 1972 he had fierce competition from a
sound system called Tower of Power Unlimited.
While Oni was just one man with two turntables
and a microphone, Tower of Power had stacks
and stacks of gear and they were more dedicated
to showmanship. The sound system was accom-
panied by a light show and vibrant sound effects
that made their sessions a more immersive experi-
ence. And they had multiple sets that toured uni-
versities, allowing Tower of Power to play various
locations simultaneously. The whole operation
was founded and run by Sam Phil-Ebosie, who
was Nigeria’s youngest commercial pilot. He had
earned his commission at 19 and by the time he
was 20 or 21 he started Tower of Power. So he
was still a young and hip dude who had the
unique opportunity to travel the world regularly,
pick up the latest records on the day they were
released in New York or London, and have them
playing on Tower of Power in Lagos the very
next day!
MZ: This airplane connection also figures prominently
in quite a few peripheral disco scenes. Some early
Yugoslav DJs were friends with local stewardesses
since they frequently travelled to places like
London and could get fresh foreign records.
UI: Yeah, I’ve also seen that a lot too, in many
places—having friends that work in airlines defi-
nitely helps!
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 267

FP: Did any DJs rise to ridiculous fame or was it

always more about the venues?
UI: Oh yes. Femi Oni was like a rock star for a few
years in the early 1970s, and Tower of Power’s
top DJ Ricky Manuwa was idolised by university
students. Many other DJs became huge celebri-
ties, so much so that a ‘Deejay Jamboree’ was
convened in 1975, like a Woodstock for disc
jockeys! Some DJs even launched recording
careers of their own: the first rap record in
Nigeria—actually the first in Africa as a whole, I
believe, ‘The Way I Feel Rap’—was cut in 1981
by a DJ called Ronnie Ekundayo, not too long
after The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’
was released. The DJs of Funk Warehouse were
also wildly popular: Funk Warehouse was a Tower
of Power-styled sound system that gave Tower of
Power some serious competition, especially
within Lagos—even though Tower of Power
maintained a higher profile nationally because
they could do multiple sets at once. Funk
Warehouse also put on a great show with a fog
machine and bubble blower—these were quite
decadent times! Another extremely famous DJ
was Alex Conde.
FP: What were the biggest foreign records in Nigeria?
What was it that people were spinning that caught
everyone’s imagination, or that was influential on
Nigeria’s own disco? Was there a specific kind of
sound from abroad that was particularly resonant?
UI: The record that really, really popularised disco
nights in Lagos clubs was Sly and the Family
Stone’s ‘Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf
Agin)’. Probably not the kind of cut that comes
to your mind when you think ‘disco’, but let’s
remember that the disco sound as we now know
it had not yet taken shape in 1970. That song
reverberated so strongly that clubs started their
own disco nights just to be able to play it over
268 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

and over. ‘Soul Makossa’ obviously was huge in

1973. But from the later disco era, almost any-
thing that was big in the US was big in Nigeria:
the very popular mainstream things like The Bee
Gees, Donna Summer, KC and the Sunshine
Band but also stuff like Rice & Beans Orchestra,
or virtually anything released on Salsoul records.
Solar Records was very popular later in the
decade; their records were so popular that Solar
opened up an office in Nigeria because it was
their biggest market—and Solar artists like
Shalamar, Dynasty, and Lakeside came and played
in Nigeria. Eurodisco was also very big, maybe
even bigger than the American stuff. Boney
M. was huge, and a lot of stuff from Germany
and Italy. Italo disco was very big in the early 80s.
FP: Can you think of any big Italo records in Nigeria
off the top of your head?
UI: Change and B. B. & Q. Band count as Italo
disco, right? Because they were both huge. ‘On
The Beat’, ‘Lover’s Holiday’, ‘The Glow of
Love’, and records like that were played every-
where. ‘Dirty Talk’ by Klein & MBO was very
popular, and ‘I’m Ready’ by Kano was big, and
pretty influential on Nigerian dance music pro-
duction in the 1980s. In the mid-80s, Baltimora’s
‘Tarzan Boy’ was played so much that it became
annoying!
MZ: So in relation to this, how did Nigerian disco art-
ists compete with these Western ones, both on
the dance floor and in terms of sales? Did local
disco receive any significant airtime, or was radio
play reserved mostly to disco coming from the
States and from the UK? Some Nigerian disco
records I’ve heard sound similar to American
disco, as if they were recorded there—sometimes
you wouldn’t even know that they were made in
Nigeria.
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 269

UI: For the most part, people preferred foreign

music. That’s almost always been the case, at least
as far as Western-influenced genres are con-
cerned. You know, with the current Nigerian
music scene that’s going on right now, the so-­
called Afrobeats scene—I always say that is the
first time in my lifetime that I can remember
Nigerian youth actually preferring their local
music to foreign stuff. So people did like the local
artists, they were fine, but they’d rather listen to
the foreign records. So sales were not huge—
some things did very well and there are a couple
of things that were big hits. But for the most
part, it was foreign music. I remember I was talk-
ing to one particular musician and he was saying
that if he could go back and live his life again he
would just record juju music or some sort of local
music. That stuff sold very, very well, because
there was no competition for it. But when you’re
doing something like disco, when people have a
choice to listen to you or listen to Van McCoy,
Van McCoy is going to win!
FP: To what extent was Nigerian disco copying for-
eign productions and to what extent was it mas-
querading as foreign? Was there any kind of
counterfeiting going on?
UI: Oh they were copying all the way! But for the
most part, they were definitely not trying to
deceive anybody into thinking it was foreign.
Nigerians wanted to sound foreign, but they also
absolutely wanted you to know they were
Nigerian. They wanted to show you that they
were a Nigerian who was able to access that
‘expensive’ sound, and was capable of recording
in the best studios in Los Angeles or London to
get it. That kind of showing off, of flaunting
one’s means—all of that was part of the aesthetic
of excess that was in vogue during this era. And
while a couple of people did do that kind of
270 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

thing—the masquerading as foreign’ thing—it

happened more in other places, like South Africa.
Roy B. Records, for example. There was this
­producer, Phil Hollis—I actually spoke to him a
few months ago—who was trying to make these
Italo records, and he had created this artist called
Margino, which sounds sort of Italian. He took
‘Dirty Talk’ by Klein & MBO and put Margino’s
female vocal over it, called the record ‘Make My
Dreams Come True’ and sold it under the label
Roy B. Records—which was the name of an exist-
ing record label in New York! So I asked him
about that, and he was like, ‘Well, you know, I
met Roy B., he was a great guy and I wanted to
make a label that was a tribute to him’. And I was
like, ‘That makes no sense whatsoever! You used
the same logo and everything!’ But the problem
with it was that over the years he helped develop
a new South African dance music sound that was
completely different from anything that was
going on in the US and Europe, and he was stuck
with the name Roy B. Records. So even if you
look at Discogs, for example, people seem to
think it’s the same label: under ‘Roy B.’ you’ll
find both the South African and the American
releases, but they were on two completely differ-
ent labels. And originally, it appears that his
intention was to deceive.
MZ: I’m interested in your mention of South Africa
and wanted to ask you if any Nigerian disco musi-
cians were influential in other West African coun-
tries, or in Africa in general. Was there some
transnational exchange of music, with Nigeria
being influential in that respect?
UI: Not a lot. To the extent that there was, it was
mostly relatively provincial, like Ghana—because
Nigeria and Ghana are like cousins. And then
Cameroon, probably, as a next door neighbour,
and Cameroonian musicians were very influential
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 271

in Nigerian disco. So there was some cross-­

pollination between Cameroon, Ghana, maybe
the Republic of Benin, Sierra Leone… but I
wouldn’t say Senegal, or Mali. Also, because
Nigeria was so economically buoyant and Nigeria
had all these great recording studios and this
large, booming music market, musicians from
other countries would come to Nigeria in search
of better professional opportunities. As one
Cameroonian musician said to me, ‘Coming to
Nigeria was like going to Hollywood for us’. So
you had a little bit of it, but it would not go as far
as South Africa or Zambia; it would probably just
be around the West African region and then
maybe a little bit of Central African Republic and
Congolese—a lot of Congolese musicians came
to Nigeria during that time too.
MZ: And as part of this cross-pollination, were people
touring in and touring out within Africa? And
indeed, were there tour circuits of international
artists coming into Nigeria and Nigerian artists
touring out of Africa?
UI: Touring out of Africa, no: there just was not the
infrastructure for that. Things have become a lot
easier in the Internet era because people are free
to discover music from around the world, but
back in those days there were a lot of Nigerian
artists trying to get played in the US and in the
UK, but how were they supposed to get on the
radio? The market was really closed and it was
hard for anybody to break through. There were a
couple of groups that tried, but nobody was
really successful with it. Coming into Nigeria,
yes: there was a particular promoter, Ben Murray-­
Bruce, who in the early 80s brought acts like
Lakeside, The Brothers Johnson, Shalamar,
Dynasty, Kool & the Gang to Nigeria. And he
wasn’t the only one—other promoters brought
over Rafael Cameron, Positive Force, and others.
272 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

But as far as Nigerian groups touring outside, no,

that was not a huge thing, although they really
wanted it to be.

Nigerian Disco Now and Then

MZ: A question I think you can bring your own expe-

rience to as someone who runs a specialised label
and has curated collections of recordings—such
as Brand New Wayo: Funk, Fast Times & Nigerian
Boogie Badness 1979–1983 (2011), and Wake Up
You!: The Rise and Fall of Nigerian Rock
1972–1977 (2016)—concerns the diggers’ per-
spective, and ‘disco’ as a retroactive label. A lot of
these scenes were not called disco at all at the
time, or they were only called disco later, so to
what extent is this a kind of imaginary genre an
imagined culture which was overlaid onto the
music by diggers?
UI: That is a fantastic question because to some
degree I feel it’s very difficult for me to take the
Nigerian scene as it was happening and try to fit
it squarely into the archetype of disco as it was
going on in the West and elsewhere in the world.
It was part of so many other things that were
happening, and you’re right: a lot of it is retroac-
tive. The boogie thing definitely is retroactive,
and ‘boogie’ in general is a retroactive label. By
the time I was in high school in the mid-1980s,
we were still calling it ‘disco’. Now ‘disco’ I
would say was not retroactive, but to be sure, it
was a label that was used very liberally: it was
applied to almost any Western-influenced pop
music at that time, and almost any kind of music
that was not ‘traditional music’ that you would
dance to at a party was just called disco. I remem-
ber when I learned about the so-called Disco
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 273

Demolition: it was probably the mid-1980s

before I realised that disco was supposed to be
dead, because we were still calling the music
disco up until the late 1980s, almost.
MZ: Perhaps you could also comment on the wealth
of Nigerian disco-ish compilations that have
come out in the past decade and a half or so, in
which you too have played a part of course.
UI: That was always a challenge for me, all of these
compilations. And they always bothered me a
little bit because I always felt that they were
curated from the Western perspective. On the
one hand, what else are you going to expect? It’s
Western people doing it, and I see nothing wrong
with them picking the music that is most relevant
to them and that they like, because it’s being put
together for a Western audience. But on the
other, it bothers me because there’s not really a
similar effort going on in Nigeria—the history is
being written almost exclusively from the stand-
point of the West. Even when you see all these
record sales online and in the description they’ll
say, ‘oh, here’s this record with this amazing
disco track on it!’ and then the other side is just
some garbage pop or highlife song that’s not
really necessary. And I’ll be thinking: that pop/
highlife song is the song that Nigerians actually
liked! That was the hit, and it was the disco side
that was just a throwaway. And the problem is
when they make a compilation and say ‘this is the
sound of 1970s Nigeria’ they pick all the stuff
that they like, and they think the stuff that
Nigerians liked is irrelevant. When I started my
label [Comb & Razor Sound] I wanted to do it
from a Nigerian perspective; and then I quickly
realised that it just wasn’t going to work because
my main market is the West, and I have to give
them what they want. So I tried to find a balance:
there were a lot of tracks that I would put in
274 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

there that weren’t necessarily what people in the

West would consider the hottest track, but I
would put it there because I felt that it just
showed some degree of the Nigerian standpoint.
But it was always a struggle for me, something I
was always very uncomfortable with.
MZ: As a side-point though, I’ve been researching
and writing on diggers in Eastern Europe, where
it also started as Westerners coming in and dis-
covering the music but now it’s mostly locals
running the show. So it’s a shame that hasn’t
happened in Nigeria so far.
UI: Well it’s happening in Nigeria to an extent now,
but even the local people are guided by what they
see in the West. Because most of them are in their
20s and 30s and they weren’t around back then—
they got turned onto this music when Soundway
and all these other labels were doing stuff. And
they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s exciting! We have that
music here, I should actually get into it!’ But
they’re taking all their other aesthetic directives
from all these reissue labels in the West, and in
some way they’re erasing the actual history and
replacing it with this new version of history as it’s
being written by people abroad. And I think this
colonial gesture of reissue cultures is almost
unavoidable here.
FP: So prior to this reissue wave of the past couple of
decades—which has really enveloped every coun-
try and every scene—when did disco go out of
vogue in Nigeria, how did that transition happen,
and, crucially, what did disco become?
UI: I guess from my perspective, it really started
going out of vogue in the mid-1980s. While we
didn’t have any definitive event like Chicago’s
Disco Demolition Day, no direct and powerful
anti-disco statement, there were rumblings of
dissatisfaction with it that had been growing for
years. If you looked at the letter columns of vari-
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 275

ous newspapers, some members of the public

were criticising what they perceived as a spiritual
emptiness in the music—the celebration of pro-
miscuity, mindless consumption, all manner of
moral laxity. It was viewed as a corruptive influ-
ence on the youth. This is anecdotal, but when I
was very young, like eight or nine years old, the
way I first learned about sex was through a friend
at school telling me that when young girls start
getting into disco, going to parties, they will
inevitably end up pregnant. This terrified me
because I listened to a lot of disco records with
my sisters (who were seven and ten) and we went
to parties—birthday parties!—and I didn’t want
them to get pregnant! He had to explain to me
that it was not the music itself that caused preg-
nancy; he went on to spell out in detail how
women get pregnant, and he made it clear to me
that the environment of the disco culture fos-
tered the activities that lead to that particular
outcome. I have to say it was clear to me even
then that he was just parroting the complaints
voiced by his parents and other older people. The
aspect of female liberation was viewed as offen-
sive in some quarters. I remember when I was a
kid, one of my teachers talked about how disco
was encouraging women to wear trousers, which
turned them into harlots!
FP: Can we trace this kind of growing moralism back
to any kind of political or economical shift?
UI: In general, there was a turning in the tenor of the
culture. We’ve already associated 1977 with the
beginning of the high disco era, but the funny
thing is that by the end of 1977, the price of oil
had dipped steeply and would continue to do so
for the rest of the decade. By the time disco was
really rising, the oil boom was already dwin-
dling—the fruits of prosperity were still there,
but they were existing on borrowed time. Most
276 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

of this prosperity never trickled down that much

to most of the masses to begin with, but as the
economy declined and austerity measures were
instituted by the government, life for the ­common
people got even more difficult. There was a rising
discontent with the profligacy and corruption of
the civilian government, and even a sort of scepti-
cism towards liberal democracy as a whole, if this
was the kind of misconduct that it enabled. So
most Nigerians actually welcomed with open
arms the coup d’état that took place on 31
December 1983, installing a strict military junta.
Perhaps not coincidentally, I recall this as being a
turning point in the broad popularity of disco.
This isn’t a retrospective assessment on my part:
I clearly remember observing it as it happened. I
was still a little kid but I felt it in 1984, going into
1985, that something was changing in the tem-
perature and tone and texture of popular music.
And I didn’t much like it.
MZ: Could you elaborate on this shift in ‘temperature,
tone, and texture’? What did you notice chang-
ing sonically?
UI: The new military dictatorship was very stern,
humourless, and regimented. Its governing phi-
losophy was based on the notion that Nigerians
as a whole had become corrupt over the course of
the prior decade, so they initiated a programme
called War Against Indiscipline to whip Nigerians
back into shape (and I mean ‘whip’ literally). The
decadence, flamboyance, extravagance of the
disco era was looked back upon as an embarrass-
ment, something the national character had to be
distanced from—there was this general sense of
belt-tightening, and it was evident even in the
music. Where you used to see Nigerian artists
shooting their music videos in London on 16mm
film, now the music videos were produced locally
on videotape. The records themselves sounded
DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 277

thinner and cheaper, with a lot of the lush musi-

cianship being replaced by the tinny tones of
Casio keyboards. In retrospect I realise that was
part of a global trend of electronics displacing
live musicians, but at the time it sounded almost
amateurish to me, and a marker of some kind of
decline.
Genre-wise, this overall change in the tone of
musical culture was evidenced in the rise in popu-
larity of roots reggae, which had a much more
austere image. Make no mistake, the music had
the air of rebelliousness and spoke out in favour
of human rights and against corruption. But it
mostly attacked the injustice going on in South
Africa, advocated for the release of Nelson
Mandela from jail, while carefully evading any
direct criticism of the Nigerian dictatorship! And
a lot of them seemed very… anti-sexual. As a
teenager your hormones are raging and you’re
enjoying this very sexy, libidinous disco music,
and then it is replaced by this reggae that had a
very ascetic, overwhelmingly masculine energy.
We used to have Soul Train-like music shows on
TV with really cool, well-dressed young men and
women dancing with abandon in the studio—
and now you’d turn on a music show on TV and
you’d see a bunch of reggae guys dancing with
each other, no girls. One of the most famous reg-
gae artists of the era, Tera Kota, actually
entrenched this as one of his major marketing
points: he emphasised the fact that he didn’t
associate with women. He didn’t sleep with
them, didn’t date them, didn’t talk to them,
didn’t tolerate the sinful presence of any Jezebel
or daughter of Eve around him. A lot of artists
had that kind of energy, and it felt to me like a
deliberate attempt to correct for the libertine
vibe of the disco era, to reject that loose, viva-
cious sexual energy with something more disci-
278 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

plined and spartan. Great disco productions did

continue to go on, right until the end of the
decade and into the hip-hop era (depending on
how broadly you want to use the term ‘disco’)
but they were no longer at the centre of the cul-
ture as they had been prior to 1985 or so.
FP: As you speak about this domain of reggae from
the mid-1980s onwards I wonder if you think we
could theorise it as a kind of loop back to a kind
of other Afrocentrism—in a different, austere
key—that was somehow engineered to culturally
take the place of the Afrocentrism that came
before the rise of disco?
UI: That’s interesting. It was a weird Afrocentrism
though, because it was Afrocentrism via Jamaica:
you had all these Nigerian reggae artists speaking
with Jamaican accents. What was interesting too
was that part of the whole thing with reggae
coming in was that they said that disco was inau-
thentic, with these Nigerians making fools of
themselves pretending to be Americans—but
they themselves were speaking Jamaican patois.
And one of the biggest stars of the time, Ras
Kimono, had built this whole mythology around
himself that he wasn’t actually from Nigeria, he
was from Ethiopia—there are a couple of major
artists who claim to be from Ethiopia. And it’s
interesting because reggae music, at least roots
reggae music, has always had this obsession with
repatriating to Africa, and a lot of Nigerian reg-
gae artists wanted to repatriate to Jamaica. So it
was a weird thing! But in a way it was a return to
Afrocentrism.
FP: That’s interesting, and should maybe be a con-
versation in itself. So disco productions continue
into the early 1990s. Presumably some people are
still making disco today, as they are everywhere.
But then how does disco lay the grounds for or
 DISCO AND DISCONTENT IN NIGERIA: A CONVERSATION 279

transform into successive evolutions of electronic

music, such as house or techno?
UI: Well, it was all disco to us, you know? So it was
just the continuing story of disco. A lot of it, like
I said, didn’t become big hits necessarily. I grew
up middle class, so it was popular among people
like me; but the working-class people would have
been listening to reggae, if anything. So it just
continued developing, but it became harder and
harder for it to compete with the foreign stuff. I
can remember a point at which I stopped listen-
ing to Nigerian music, when I was only listening
to foreign music. But then from there it went
through the house phase, through the techno
phase, up until it got to like, new jack swing. It
just kept on going, and if you follow the thread
all the way it takes us to today’s Afrobeats, really.
FP: But just so I understand you clearly: you were
calling it disco, but you weren’t still calling it
disco when it was actually house, or techno,
right? What were you calling it?
UI: Disco, disco! We were calling it disco.

Discography
Alhaji (Chief) Sikiru Ayinde Barrister and His Fuji Londoners. 1980. Fuji Disco.
Siky Oluyole Records, LP.
Alhaji (Chief) Wasiu Ayinde Barrister & His Talazo Fuji Commanders. 1985. Tale
Disco ’85. Omo Aje, LP.
B.B. & Q. Band. 1981. On The Beat. Capitol/EMI, 12” single.
Baltimora. 1984. Tarzan Boy. EMI, 12” single.
Blo. 1975. Step Three. Afrodisia, LP.
Change. 1980. Lover’s Holiday. Warner Bros. Records, 12” single.
———. 1980. The Glow of Love. Warner Bros. Records, 12” single.
Dibango, Manu. 1973. Soul Makossa. Atlantic. 7” single.
Ekundayo, Ron ‘Ronnie’. 1981. The Way I Feel. Phonodisk, LP.
Kano. 1980. I’m Ready. Baby Records, 12” single.
Klein & MBO. 1982. Body Talk. Zanza, 7” single.
280 U. C. IKONNE ET AL.

Margina & The Hot Dogs. [Year Unknown]. Make My Dreams Come True. Roy
B. Records. 7”single.
Sly & the Family Stone. 1969. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). Epic.
7” single.
Sugarhill Gang, The. 1979. Rapper’s Delight. Sugar Hill Records. 12” single.
Various Artists. 2011. Brand New Wayo: Funk, Fast Times & Nigerian Boogie
Badness 1979–1983 (2010). Comb & Razor Sound, 2xLP.
———. 2016. Wake Up You!: The Rise and Fall of Nigerian Rock 1972–1977.
Now-Again Records, 2xLP.
 Outer Space, Futurism, and the Quest
for Disco Utopia

Ken McLeod

The musical power of the disenfranchised—whether youth, the

underclass, ethnic minorities, women or gay people—more often resides
in their ability to articulate different ways of construing the body, ways
that bring along in their wake the potential for different
experiential worlds.
—McClary (1994, 34)

This chapter explores the influence of outer space and futuristic themes in
disco. In particular, it looks at the nexus of space exploration, science fic-
tion films, and the quest for an often illusory utopian world that informed
and influenced the experience and practice of disco, primarily in North
America and Europe, in the 1970s and early 1980s. I offer a brief history
of the use of space themes and sounds in popular music in general, discuss
the iconography, physical spaces, and sound systems developed in tandem
with space disco, and look at how the phenomenon of space disco

K. McLeod (*)
Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 281

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_12
282 K. MCLEOD

manifests itself in works by Boney M, Giorgio Moroder, and Meco,

amongst others. The chapter also offers some theoretical perspectives,
including Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope (1954, 1955, 1959), Michel
Foucault’s notions of ‘heterotopia’ (1967), and Vermeulen and van den
Akker’s metamodern conception of an ‘atopic’ future (2010), to account
for the popularity of outer space as a disco trope. In many ways, outer
space represented the ultimate manifestation of hope: it was a fantastical
imagined place that metaphorically stood for the potential to reimagine
human relationships.

The Space Age, Disco, and the Politics of Hope

To a large degree, the disco era is viewed today as a somewhat unrealisti-
cally naïve, nostalgic utopia that is firmly located in the past. While such a
view obviously overlooks the important impact of contemporary dance
floor cultures that evolved from disco (such as techno and other forms of
EDM), it also overlooks and dismisses much of disco’s obsession with the
future and outer space. Of course, outer space—‘the final frontier’, so to
speak—is often viewed in popular culture as the ultimate refuge of human-
ity and is emblematic of the hoped-for freedom of marginalized communi-
ties. It is our very lack of knowledge about its apparently limitless vastness
that makes it a blank slate for projecting an equally limitless number of
utopian fantasies and futures onto it.
The desire for a liberated racial and sexual identity, of course, lay at the
heart of disco utopia, as evident in many accounts of the disco experience.
The earliest such accounts are rife with descriptions of utopian egalitarian-
ism and of spreading planetary love. DJ and producer Nicky Siano, for
example, recalled being a gay Brooklyn youth drawn to the ‘social and
affirming’ atmosphere of Greenwich Village (Siano in Haider 2018); he
was 18 when he founded Manhattan’s The Gallery (where stars like Grace
Jones debuted), and he later became a Studio 54 resident. He cites the
1969 Stonewall riots that sparked the fight for LGBT equality as the start-
ing point of disco plurality and, in turn, for promoting an agenda of love
on a planetary scale:

There seemed to be so much turmoil, and the only answer to that is loving
each other(…) In the beginning, all the songs were about spreading love,
getting together, making the world a better place. (Siano in Haider 2018)
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 283

Rolling Stone journalist Vince Aletti was another who was immediately
struck by the social mixing at early disco clubs, describing them as ‘com-
pletely mixed, racially and sexually, where there wasn’t any sense of some-
one being more important than someone else’ (Aletti in Garcia 2014, 2).
Some, such as Luis-Manuel Garcia, saw early disco as being an overt sym-
bolic represention of a performance of a different world:

Since the emergence of ‘disco’ music in early-1970s New York—and well

beforehand in other contexts—the dance floor has been a potent symbol as
well as a performative enactment of a world better than this one.
(Garcia 2014, 1)

Indeed, aside from its concern with constructing a utopian planetary love,
disco can be viewed from its inception as being inherently linked to outer
space. To a large degree, disco was a logical extension of the Space Age, its
accompanying sci-fi sensibility, and the evolution of futuristic-sounding
music-making technology.
The Space Age ostensibly began with the launch of the Sputnik satellite
in 1957, which effectively initiated the USSR-USA Space Race and inten-
sified the popular imagination’s focus on futurism and worlds beyond our
own. Theremin-driven scores for sci-fi movies like The Day the Earth Stood
Still (1951), as well as the first all-electronic score for Forbidden Planet
(1956), had already established the soundscape of outer space in the pub-
lic imagination. Electronically produced hovering tones, propulsive
pitches, abstracted melodies, and repetitive radar blips marked the scores
and soundtracks of these movies. They relied on technology that quickly
evolved over the next two decades, highlighted by the development of the
Moog synthesizer that epitomized Space Age sounds and which would be
heard across multiple genres.
The actual exploration of outer space conjured up the potential for new
worlds and an associated romantic yearning for freedom and equality that,
as many authors have discussed, was a hallmark of disco. During disco’s
heyday in the 1970s, space exploration was at the forefront of people’s
minds: following the first successful moon landing in 1969, throughout
the 1970s the US and USSR continued to be actively involved in a series
of high-profile space missions that captured the public’s imagination.
Though Russia and the US were still engaged in the politics of the Cold
War, many projects began to forward the notion of a more co-operative
approach to space exploration. Of particular note was the first
284 K. MCLEOD

multi-national manned mission, the joint Apollo-Soyuz project (1975),

the establishment of the European Space Agency that pooled the scientific
resources of European countries (1975), and NASA’s Voyager Program
(1977) that sent two robotic probes to study the outer solar system. Both
probes contained ‘Golden Records’ of Earth information and music
(including works by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chuck Berry, and Louis
Armstrong, in addition to a wide variety of non-Western music and greet-
ings in 55 languages) in order to communicate an interstellar message to
any aliens or future civilizations that might recover them. To some extent,
this increasing scientific drive for recognizing the internationalization and
pluralism of space was mirrored in the attempted pluralism of disco.
Echoing (at least to some degree) the quest for collaborative interna-
tionalism that was marking space exploration in the 1970s, disco was cen-
tral to the drive for global musical collaboration. Although it is now a
familiar aspect of contemporary popular music, whether it was in the Euro
disco of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s ‘I Feel Love’ (1977) or
in the work of British Indian producer Biddu, disco artists sought out and
explored new sounds and musical styles from around the globe. Asha
Puthli, for example, was a world music pioneer from Bombay, India. Her
space-themed song ‘Space Talk’(1976) achieved underground immortal-
ity with its saunter-encouraging bass, spaceship synth, dip-and-soar vocals,
and softly clipped lyrics like ‘Space talk, taking a space walk space’.1 As
Alice Echols writes in Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking Of American
Culture: ‘Promiscuous and omnivorous, disco absorbed sounds and styles
from all over, and in the process accelerated the transnational flow of
musical ideas and idioms’ (Echols 2010, xxiv).
Possibly even more influential than the quest for international collabo-
ration, the use of space and futuristic tropes in disco expressed a need to
have hope for not only the improvement but also for the continued exis-
tence of humanity. For many in the 1970s who were faced not only with
the realities and fears of the Cold War and its attendant possibility of
nuclear annihilation, but also experiencing new and growing concerns
about global environmental issues such as overpopulation and pollution,
the future seemed to promise anything but hope. To some extent, the
preoccupation with space and the future, both in actual scientific explora-
tion and in more creatively speculative cultural manifestations, held out
the hope that help could come from elsewhere. As manifest in the Voyager
recording, even aliens could be of help because of their cultural imagined
messianic identity, the latter ‘an expression of transcendence’ (Ruppersburg
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 285

1987, 160) as particularly construed via the pervasive Western ideals of

Christian mythos. Thus the archives and probes sent into the stars seem to
indicate a type of wish, even a prayer—however, a techno-scientific one
that if the world can rely on an ultimate saviour, it might be rooted in the
possibility of an advanced, transcendent alien race.
As will be discussed later in this chapter, disco’s fascination with space
and futurism involves spectacular visions of a utopian or, as I ultimately
argue, even an early manifestation of a metamodern ‘atopic’ future
whereby humanity optimistically attempts to refine itself by chasing a
never reachable horizon.2 At its heart, space-related disco thus manifests a
politics of hope. Central to this discussion are ideas that have circulated
since the 1950s as expressed in Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch’s epic
three-volume work The Principle of Hope (1954, 1955, 1959). Published
at the dawn of actual space exploration and the concomitant boom in sci-
ence fiction literature and movies, the work describes various forms of
cultural and historical utopias, and also offers a prescription for and
‘Outlines of a Better World’ in which humans can reach ‘something which
shines into the childhood of all and in which no one has yet been: home-
land’ (Bloch 1986, 1376)—a place where social justice can be coupled
with an openness to change and to an emancipated future.
For Bloch, hope permeates everyday consciousness and its articulation
in Western art and cultural forms: products of the imagination project
their conditions of production and thus act in ‘an anticipating way’,
extending ‘existing material into the future possibilities of being different
and better’ (Bloch 1986, 144). His work provides a systematic examina-
tion of the ways that ‘daydreams’—fairy tales and myths, popular culture,
comedy and dance, in addition to political and social utopias, philosophy,
and even religion—project visions of a better life that put in question the
organization and structure of life under capitalism (or state socialism).
Bloch believes that music in particular transcends its ideological condi-
tions of production to express dreams of a better life, and is even able to
overcome death: ‘however firmly the night of death may be distinguished
from any other, music rightly or wrongly feels itself to be a Grecian fire
that will still burn in the River Styx’ (Bloch 1986, 1097). To be sure, the
music Bloch speaks of is high-art classical music, and based on his negative
views of jazz dancing—which he classified as ‘imbecility gone wild’ (Bloch
1986, 394)—Bloch would likely have frowned on the very existence of the
apparently low-brow and decadently capitalist disco, space-themed or oth-
erwise.3 However, while seemingly wallowing in precisely the kinds of
286 K. MCLEOD

capitalist decadence Bloch despised, futuristic and space-themed disco

offered a subversive critique of the capitalist-dominated world in its very
desire (even if expressed ironically) to leave that world behind: a desire
fuelled by hope and ‘anticipation’ for an emancipated, transcendent, more
inclusive world. I will return to Bloch’s notions of hope later in this
chapter.
Scientific space exploration to some extent was and is predicated on a
similar principle of hope, despite the fact that many American and Russian
exploits in space exploration were the products and achievements of a
small group of privileged, largely white male scientists. The practice of
space exploration, to this day, hardly conjures up the pluralistic utopian
dream of disco inclusivity; however, as manifest in the possibility of mes-
sianic futuristic or alien saviours, space exploration was, in part, a projec-
tion that the ‘Other’ (particularly a technologically enhanced Other)
could potentially save humanity. In many ways, the pluralism and margin-
alized identities that drove and embodied disco’s utopian dream meta-
phorically mirrored this ideal.

Spaceship Disco: Otherworldly Disco Spaces

and Sound Systems

Outer space and futurism were often evoked in the interior design experi-
ence of disco clubs, which were calculated to be de-familiarizing spaces
that would take participants on an exotic, otherworldly trip that trans-
ported them outside of the often mundane confines of their everyday exis-
tence. The very latest in spectacular lighting effects, including
multi-coloured shimmering strobe lights and illuminated flashing dance
floors, were the order of the day. Almost all clubs featured the now iconic
disco mirror ball hanging from the ceiling like some spectacular futuristic
planet that beamed, to all appearances, infinite flecks of light across the
otherwise completely dark universe of the dance floor space. In the con-
text of the everyday world and its often repressive social and racial policies,
it is tempting to read these points of light as figurative symbols of the
liberatory, enlightened space of the disco itself. The lights, alongside the
dynamically loud, bass-heavy, and throbbing music, contributed to a sen-
sory overload—often heightened by the ingestion of alcohol or other
drugs—that imparted an experience of otherworldly escapist fantasy.
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 287

The iconography of space and science fiction was perhaps most famously
brought together in 2001 Odyssey, the disco club featured in the film
Saturday Night Fever. In a different form of space-themed fashion, the
infamous Studio 54 was well known for having its DJs presiding from
cockpits filled with an array of sound gear that appeared to hover over the
dancers and were supplemented, in the words of critic Peter Conrad, by ‘a
neon sign representing the man in the moon, with a suspended spoon that
rocked to and fro, delivering twinkly snorts of cocaine to his nose’ (Conrad
2015). The futuristic and technological excesses of Studio 54, alongside
its drug culture, underlined an obsession with both aspirational wealth
and bodily transcendence.
In addition to disco’s distinctive iconography, immersive and high-end
cutting-edge sound was central to the experience of disco from its incep-
tion. David Mancuso, for example, had Alex Rosner build a groundbreak-
ing setup for his Loft parties that featured Klipschorn speakers, a Bozak
CMA-10-2DL, the first commercially available DJ mixer, and four tweet-
ers above the crowd, each facing one of the cardinal points (Trandafir
2016). This was a feature that was often imitated by many disco clubs for
its immersive quality. Later, in renowned clubs like Paradise Garage,
Studio 54, and Zanzibar, Rosner’s protégé Richard Long would create the
prototypical disco sound that featured a huge round bass with low fre-
quencies that were felt more than heard. To achieve this, Long developed
revolutionary equalizer (EQ) techniques (involving EQing the room
rather that the sound system) and handmade his bass cabinets with a scoop
at the bottom, ‘the “J-horn,” that reflect[ed] low tones so that they [were]
felt with the flesh rather than heard with the eardrum’ (Beta 2016). The
use of advanced sound technology and lighting systems, in combination
with hypnotically repetitive beats, creates what I have explored elsewhere
in relation to techno as a kind of ‘embodied technological spirituality—a
literal transference of spirit from the machine to the body’ which ‘defeats
what Adorno and others saw as the alienating effect of mechanization on
the modern consciousness’ (McLeod 2003, 345). Much like the technol-
ogies surrounding the actual space programme, light and sound technolo-
gies acted as material forms of techno-scientific hope.
288 K. MCLEOD

A Brief History of Space Music

Outer space, either as a sonic aesthetic or as a general theme, was not
uncommon in popular music in the era before disco. Rock’n’roll music
developed roughly contemporaneously with the era of space exploration
and, as early as Bill Haley & His Comets’ song ‘Rocket 88’ (1954), and
Alan Freed’s 1950s radio show Moon Dog Rock’n’Roll House Party, space
was a popular theme. The association of such imagery with rock’n’roll
rebellion and alienation permeated many subsequent popular music styles.
David Bowie’s glam rock alter-ego Ziggy Stardust, an iconic figure of the
early 1970s, was, in Bowie’s own words, a ‘Martian messiah who twanged
a guitar’ (McLeod 2003, 341).
Prog rock, so-called Krautrock, space rock, and the Berlin School all
overlapped in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Among the first genres to
incorporate synthesizer and rock instruments, they also broke away from
traditional song structures, extending song length and thereby expanding
the sense of literal and figurative ‘space’ within a song, be it an inner space
(e.g. a dreamscape) or overt references to outer space. Moreover, the
impressive banks of keyboards and the myriad of knobs and dials associ-
ated with the analogue synthesizers of the 1970s, along with the increas-
ingly advanced and electric guitar and studio effects, were roughly
analogous to the cutting-edge technology being developed in real space
programmes (McLeod 2003, 346). Cosmos-influenced pioneers in these
genres include Tangerine Dream (Alpha Centauri, 1971), Hawkwind (In
Search of Space, 1971), King Crimson (Earthbound, 1972), and Pink
Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, 1973).
Jazz and funk channelled their own vibrant displays of outer space
mythologies, which typically occurred within the realm of what cultural
critic Mark Dery has termed ‘Afrofuturism’ (Dery 1993, 736). As I have
noted elsewhere (McLeod 2003), Afrofuturistic art is typically concerned
with the confrontation between modern alienated Black existence and his-
torical prophetic imagination, such as ancient Egyptian myths of the after-
life. Channelling their roots in slavery, as Dery has observed, ‘African
Americans are, in a very real sense, the descendants of alien abductees’
(Dery 1993, 736). As such, African American diasporic consciousness
often uses tropes of science fiction and outer space as loci for a potential
return to a utopian homeland free from racial discrimination. The
Afrofuturistic fusion of space, science fiction, techno-futurism, and a spiri-
tual African heritage perhaps can most overtly be seen in jazz icon Sun Ra,
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 289

who claimed a mystical link to Saturn, as well as in the group Parliament-­

Funkadelic and its leader George Clinton, whose alter ego, Starchild, first
emerged in the 1975 hit ‘Mothership Connection’. It can also be heard in
the techno-tribalism of Miles Davis’s ‘On the Corner’ (1972), Jimi
Hendrix’s ‘Third Stone from the Sun’ (1967) and ‘Astro Man’ (1970,
though not officially released until 1997), Billy Preston’s ‘Outa-Space’
(1971), Ornette Coleman’s ‘Science Fiction’ (1972), Herbie Hancock’s
‘Future Shock’ (1983), and Bernie Worrell’s ‘Blacktronic Science’ (1993).
One of the more disco-inspired instances of Afrofuturism was provided
by the Euro-Caribbean group Boney M’s single ‘Nightflight to Venus’
(1978). The eponymous album contained the hits ‘Rasputin’ and ‘Rivers
of Babylon’ and became the band’s first number-one album in the UK as
well an international bestseller. The unearthly studio creation of well-­
known German producer Frank Farian (the mastermind behind Milli
Vanilli and Meatloaf), Boney M is one of the quirkier groups in history,
and Nightflight to Venus stands as a rich and inventive—as well as outra-
geous and absurd—testament to Farian’s engagement with the cosmic.
The album opens with ‘Nightflight to Venus’, which lasts over seven
minutes and describes a futuristic trip to Venus in the manner of a present-­
day airline passenger flight. The song is driven by a propulsive, almost
African-influenced disco drum beat that stereoscopically pans between
speakers and an ethereal choir of Boney M’s three female singers breathily
intoning the title lyric ‘Nightflight to Venus’. The flight lifts off with a
spoken countdown underscored by a drumbeat increasing in tempo and a
synth swell that continually ascends in pitch until lift-off. A heavily vocoded
spoken-word vocal provides in-flight passenger announcements inter-
spersed with the female chorus. The opening announcement, for example,
robotically intones, ‘Welcome aboard the star-ship Boney M for our first
passenger flight to Venus’. A later announcement informs us that ‘our fly-
ing time will be eight hours’ and that ‘you’ll be travelling at a speed of
2183 miles per second, that is 7 and one-half million miles per hour’. As
the ‘flight’ progresses, the drum beat gradually evolves into a quasi-­
militaristic marching pattern while the synth and guitar groove constantly
modulates higher and higher, adding an increasing intensity to and sense
of tonal distance from the starting point of the work. While there is no
official video for the song, the band did perform it live and on several
television shows such as the German comedy show Plattenküche.4 Their
performance featured the four band members in a variety of colourful
Afro-Caribbean-influenced space attire, capes, space boots, and hats,
290 K. MCLEOD

robotically dancing on a strobe-lit open shell-like stage (mimicking the

birth of Venus in Botticelli’s famous painting) that, periodically belching
smoke, ostensibly functioned as the starship itself. In other television per-
formances, the band is also juxtaposed against various images of real NASA
rockets and outer space. In mixing actual space footage and their own
space fantasy underscored by a militaristic beat and heavy use of vocoder
and synthesizers, Boney M effectively co-opts the (white) military indus-
trial complex linked with space exploration in service of their Afrofuturist
vision. While the work is certainly a kitschy disco fantasy, it nonetheless
contains a message that is at its heart predicated on the notion of hope. It
is no accident that the planet we are futuristically travelling to is Venus: as
represented in the shell-like stage spaceship, where Boney M really wants
to take us is of course not literally to a fiery planet incapable of sustaining
human life, but rather to a metaphoric place associated with the goddess
of love, away from conflicts and divisions (reflected in the military
drum beat).
‘Nightflight to Venus’, like many other space-themed disco songs,
makes significant use of vocal effects, most often in the form of a vocoder.5
This somewhat alienating vocal merging with the machine would seem to
most obviously suggest some form of science fiction cyborg fantasy. In
such instances of machinic re-configuration, the voice has transcended the
space of and connectedness to the body and, as such, loses its emotional
dynamic typically in service of a sense of ironic detachment from human-
ity. The vocoded voice then reinforces the commonly kitschy nature of the
music that often sees outer space as an ironic dreamscape, detached from
the realities of earthly existence. Related to this, the prevalence of the high
falsetto voice in disco is another manifestation of the desire for uplift and
figurative spatial transcendence. In the work of artists as diverse as the Bee
Gees, Earth, Wind & Fire, Sylvester, and others, the falsetto voice can be
heard as a performance of extravagant otherness and of figurative feelings
of alienation, be it of Black or LGBTQ+ identities, and ‘a metaphor for
fictive spaces which uncover the untruth of the real’ (Françoise 1995,
447). In the falsetto-voiced lyrics to Earth, Wind & Fire’s futuristic disco-­
funk ‘Fantasy’ (1977), for example, listeners are invited to ‘Take a ride in
the sky, on our ship fantasii [sic]/All your dreams will come true…’. The
falsetto voice here literally and figuratively opens up a new sonic space and
embodies a yearning for the higher, otherworldly form of liberation that is
promised in the lyrics. Informed by some of the Afrofuturist concepts
discussed above, it is of course an overtly escapist and utopian fantasy that
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 291

is, once again and as the title of the song implies, predicated on the notion
of hope versus reality.

Space Disco
Running parallel to Afrofuturist disco, and often merging and interplaying
with funk and other synthesizer-dominated styles of dance music, the pri-
marily European genre known as space disco emerged in the mid- to late
1970s. Figuring less prominently in mainstream culture and making little
impact on North American markets, space disco loosely spanned the years
1976 to 1986 and, as such, ran roughly parallel to the Star Wars franchise:
Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi
(1983). Other blockbuster space films from this period include Close
Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Star Trek: The Movie (1979), and
Flash Gordon (1980). The same period also saw groundbreaking video
games promoting space sounds in the public imagination, with games
such as Space Invaders released in 1978, Galaxian and Asteroids in 1979,
and Vanguard, Defender, and Galaga in 1981. Even as it began to achieve
massive commercial success and mainstream popularity, disco was rooted
in marginalized and alien identities. As Daryl Easlea has noted in Everybody
Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco, ‘aliens were swamping popular cul-
ture’, be they actual extraterrestrials on the theatre screen or metaphorical
ones in disco music where otherness prevailed: gay men (Village People,
Patrick Cowley, Sylvester), black people ‘subliminally appropriating white
symbols of power’ (Chic in their business suits), and powerful women
(Donna Summer, Grace Jones, Amanda Lear) (Easlea 2004, 114).
Outer space and the future represented quasi-inversions of the hard and
often discriminatory realities of life on Earth for many of disco’s marginal-
ized practitioners. Space travel and the concomitant establishment of new
worlds of freedom and egalitarianism were clearly out of reach for all prac-
tical purposes. Nonetheless, space still served as a powerful though often
ironic or tongue-in-cheek analogy for the socio-political hopes of many: it
represented the dream of an alternative world where all alternative life-
styles and identities would be celebrated instead of marginalized, even
while being fully cognizant of the fact that this was likely only ever going
to be a fantasy. Even though actual space travel and exploration were
increasingly becoming a reality during the heyday of disco, it is clear that
popular science fiction, movies, and literature formed a greater influence
on the incorporation of space themes and futuristic sounds in disco. As
292 K. MCLEOD

such, outer space presented a fictional future within disco culture, and the
songs often reflected this dislocation from reality in their satirical content.
Titles such as Sarah Brightman’s orgasmic ‘Love in a UFO’ (released in
1979 and featuring lyrics such as ‘it was a cosmic dream, his love went
through me like a laser beam’) or Laurie Marshall’s ‘The Disco Spaceship’
(1977: ‘See the disco spaceship in the sky… disco dancing through the
stars, no one questions who you are’) testify to the knowingly kitschy
nature of many releases. Of course, the superficial lyrics and plastic synthe-
sized production of such songs led many to simply write them off as some
of the worst manifestations of disco’s empty excess, though they often
masked a deeper idealistic hope.
Perhaps the main commercial driver of the movement was synth-master
Giorgio Moroder, whose major hit for Donna Summer, ‘I Feel Love’
(1977), highlighted the futuristic sounds of the pulsating Moog so com-
pellingly that it inspired widespread incorporation of the synthesizer into
dance music. As Lawrence aptly notes, ‘Gloria Gaynor might have been
the first queen of disco, but Summer, blending with Moroder’s technol-
ogy, had become its first cyborg princess’ (Lawrence 2003, 254). To some
extent we can see in Summer and Moroder’s ‘I Feel Love’ a version of
Afrofuturism that, perhaps unexpectedly, links it back to African American
musical tradition while simultaneously evincing a colder, more mechanical
form of techno-disco. ‘I Feel Love’ represented a unique paradigm shift in
popular music, ushering the era of pulsating synth-dominated dance
music. It was a shift that was intentionally rooted in futurism itself:
Summer was making a historical pop concept album with Moroder and
Pete Bellotte, 1977’s I Remember Yesterday, that transported listeners
from 1940s jazz through 1960s girl groups and 1970s funk to the imag-
ined future, represented on the record by ‘I Feel Love’. Thus, in some-
thing of a case of life imitating art, the song representing the future became
the future. Of course, much as with Boney M’s ‘Nightflight to Venus’, the
future entailed a utopian world dominated by literally and metaphorically
feeling love: the song evokes a form of transcendent love that is humanly
expressed and felt through the emphasis on synthesizers and studio tech-
nology. In much the same manner as humanity places hope for its future
in science and space exploration, ‘I Feel Love’ manifests a utopian hope
for humanity that is both sonically realized and imagined as being achieved
through technology.
Roughly contemporaneously to his work with Summer on ‘I Feel
Love’, Moroder explored the concepts of space and utopia in his own
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 293

album From Here to Eternity (1977). The album’s title track features musi-
cal elements that became nearly ubiquitous in electronic dance music:
driving four-on-the-floor bass kick drums, vocoders, and squelchy pulsat-
ing synthesizer arpeggiation. The back and forth between Moroder’s
breathy vocals and the ghostly, all-female backing choir has a sensual qual-
ity while also sounding completely innocuous. The relatively banal lyrics
such as ‘From here to eternity/That’s where she takes me’ certainly con-
tribute to the strangely distant, otherworldly atmosphere of the music.
Other featured songs on the album include ‘Faster than the Speed of
Love’ and the pulsating synth instrumental ‘Utopia—Me Giorgio’, which
uses synthesized voices and Moroder’s signature repetitive arpeggiated
basslines to again underscore the notion of a technology-inspired utopia
(as represented by Moroder himself in the title). Indeed, notes on the back
of the album proudly proclaim Moroder’s utopian technological accom-
plishment, stating that ‘only electronic keyboards were used on this
recording’. Moroder’s investment in the ‘utopian’ was carried on into
subsequent musics such as Italo disco, of which Moroder is often seen as
the forerunner or even spiritual godfather, and tracks such as Charlie’s
‘Spacer Woman’ (1983) attest to how space was a theme in Italo as well.6
Another noteworthy example of the cross-pollination between film and
record is American producer Meco’s disco spin on John Williams’s Star
Wars theme, which appeared on his 1977 album Star Wars and Other
Galactic Funk and is one of the biggest selling instrumental singles of all
time. Meco was fascinated by Star Wars and was ‘convinced that John
Williams’s themes were recordable and danceable’ (Gabler 2018). His
‘Star Wars Theme’ incorporates the iconic pew-pew of the blasters, the
light-sabre hum, droid R2-D2’s ‘voice’, and a Williams-inspired swirling
orchestral arrangement, but underpinned by a relaxed disco drum-
beat. The B-side, ‘Cantina Band’, which references the film’s Cantina
scene, provides an interesting case study to analyse the world of Star Wars
as cinematic dimension vis à vis its adoption in disco dancing.
The original scene provided some comic relief in the economy of the
film, and a chance to show the diversity of life in the galaxy: the bar was
populated by a diverse assemblage of weird and wonderful yet somewhat
seedy alien life. Despite the weird array of his customers, the bartender
refuses to serve droids (‘we don’t serve your kind here’) and C-3PO is
forced to wait outside. The music in the scene is a spoof on the swing jazz
George Lucas termed ‘jizz’, but uses a Caribbean steel drum and an ARP
synthesizer for the bass while drastically minimizing bottom-end
294 K. MCLEOD

frequencies in order to give it a pronounced ‘alien’ sound. The Cantina

scene is in many ways a parody of real-life disco, with its ideals of pluralism
paired with exclusionary club entrance policies, and replete with odd char-
acters drinking—and even one clip of aliens snorting a cocaine-like drug.
It is ironic, then—and significant—to think that hundreds of thousands
went on to dance to Meco’s disco version of this scene: beyond its mere
association with the cultural phenomenon of Star Wars mania, we might
read this ‘real life’ dance as a physical acting-out of the hope the film
engenders and, at the same time, as a parody of a parody: the enactment
of an imaginary future that disco dancers knew full well was ultimately
fictional. It is also significant that Meco’s single and John Williams’s ‘Star
Wars (Main Title)’ co-existed and competed in commercial terms: both
reached the Billboard Top 10 concurrently, and Meco earned a Grammy
nomination for Best Pop Instrumental Performance (which he lost to
John Williams).
The Droïds, a French space disco outfit comprising Fabrice Cuitad and
Yves Hayat, were yet another duo directly inspired by seeing Star Wars
and sought to recreate the ‘space opera’ feeling on vinyl without bowing
to John Williams’s score. The two-part title ‘(Do You Have) The Force’
(1977) alludes to the classic Star Wars line ‘may the Force be with you’,
but otherwise the all-instrumental, stripped-down synth-based track is
more reminiscent of Kraftwerk. Equally, before achieving international
fame in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals, soprano Sarah Brightman’s
debut was a top-ten hit in England with the single ‘I Lost My Heart to a
Starship Trooper’ (1978). The song is a head-spinning mélange of pop
cultural space references and synthesized space battle sound effects, all in
service of a colonization theme: ‘hand in hand we’ll conquer space’. As
with much space disco, the song exploits the media and popular fascina-
tion with the original Star Wars and uses music from a number of other
space-themed movies (Flash Gordon, Star Trek, Close Encounters of the
Third Kind). In addition to sampling music from Star Wars, the song also
quotes Richard Strauss’s late nineteenth-century tone poem Thus Spoke
Zarathustra (which received mainstream visibility in Stanley Kubrick’s
iconic film 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the ‘spaceship communication’
melody from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 295

Theorizing Outer Space and Disco: The Politics

of Spectacle and Utopia

Given the marginalized and often socio-economically disadvantaged posi-

tion of many of its adherents, disco’s infatuation with futurism and outer
space—whether through advanced club lighting and sound systems or
through the otherworldly sounds and lyrics of the music itself—configures
itself as a manifestation of ‘spectacular’ consumption and the sound of
future utopian wealth. We might link the ultimately spectacular and per-
formative dimension of space disco to Bakhtin’s notion of the carni-
valesque as

[s]omething that is created when the themes of carnival twist, mutate and
invert standard themes of societal make-up(…) the extravagant juxtaposi-
tion of the grotesque mixing and confrontations of high and low, upper-­
class and lower-class, spiritual and material, young and old, male and female,
daily identity and festive mask, serious conventions and their parodies,
gloomy medieval times and joyous utopian visions. The key to carnival cul-
ture involves the temporary suspension of all hierarchical distinctions and
barriers among men(…) and prohibitions of usual life. (Bakhtin 1984, 15)

Bakhtin’s concept of hierarchical inversion aligns well with the temporary

pluralistic futurism of disco. Through the lens and imagery of outer space
and the future, disco attempted to transcend racial, gender, and—not-
withstanding Studio 54’s notorious exclusionary entrance policies—class
distinctions in order to create ‘joyous utopian visions’ that were nonethe-
less informed by the ‘gloomy’ realities of the present.
Disco was to a large degree about spectacular aspiration, whether eco-
nomic, sexual, or simply pleasurable consumption (Echols 2010, 153).
Jamie Kastner’s documentary film The Secret Disco Revolution (2012) pos-
its that the genre ‘became the voice of the aspirational’, breaking down
barriers for the liberation of women, African Americans, and gay men
alike. The ultimate aspiration for many, however, was simply to transcend
one’s own emotional, social, and bodily constraints through uninhibited
movement, in order to experience another world of pleasure, solidarity,
and acceptance in the collectivity of the dance floor—a world very much
unlike the one lived and practised in the everyday. Alongside the
Foucaultion notion of heterotopia that permeates this volume (Foucault
1986), we might return here to Bloch’s notion of hope introduced at the
296 K. MCLEOD

start of this chapter—rooted in a dynamic understanding of history and

temporality—to further explore the idea of the ‘aspirational’ space of disco
as the creation of a future-oriented, imagination-fuelled ‘homeland’.
The temporality outlined in The Principle of Hope is three-dimensional:
Bloch presents a dialectical analysis of the past which illuminates the pres-
ent and can direct us to a better future. The past (what has been) contains
the sufferings, tragedies, and failures of humanity (that which must be
avoided) as well as its unrealized hopes and potentials (that which could
have been and can yet be). As such, Bloch sees history as also a repository
of possibilities and options for future action, and the present moment is
marked by both latency and tendency: the unrealized potentialities that are
latent in the present, and the signs and foreshadowing that indicate the
tendency of the direction and movement of the present into the future.
This three-dimensional temporality must be grasped and activated by an
anticipatory consciousness that at once perceives the unrealized emancipa-
tory potential of the past, the latencies and tendencies of the present, and
the realizable hopes of the future. Disco, particularly in its fascination with
the future and space themes, revels in such a Blochian hope for an eman-
cipatory future: dancing to space disco physically activates the latency of
the past into the present and propels that energy into hopes for subse-
quent change. Space-themed disco thus represents an ephemeral, though
embodied, model for what might be.
At the beginning of this chapter I noted that scientific space exploration
was largely the realm of a privileged coterie of white men. Disco, on the
other hand, held out the promise, the hope, of a pluralistic utopian con-
ception of outer space and the future. For many this was an empowering,
or at least an optimistic, message that offered a salve to the realities of their
oft-marginalized positions as alien ‘others’ in society. However, it is impor-
tant to point out that many of these works were perhaps less pluralistic
than they might superficially appear, and that while female and Black art-
ists like Boney M or Donna Summer were in charge of the performance
and embodiment of futuristic space-themed works, the invention of
such groups and artists was still in the hands of white men, in this case
Frank Farian and Giorgio Moroder respectively. Particularly in their tech-
nologized sonic visions and production values, these men impacted and
shaped futuristic dance music and space disco in much the same way that
the scientific community have historically branded and/or colonized
actual outer space as a white, male territory.
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 297

Indeed, space-themed disco inspired by the synth-driven style of

Moroder continues to live on almost solely in white, male contemporary
artists such as Aphex Twins, The Orb, and Daft Punk, among others. In
many ways the sonic, racial, and gender underpinning of space disco has
become passé just as much as the concept of space travel, long-replaced in
the popular imagination by the new frontiers of the internet with its own
fantastic post-digital soundscape and seemingly infinite capacity for plural-
istic representation and democratic participation. Space disco’s fall from
grace as a cultural world might also be attributable to its not so subtle
irony: while the songs taken into analysis across this chapter may have
eminently danceable beats, the lyrics and sounds often appear comical in
their simplistic invocations of futuristic space travel and aliens.
Unlike the serious alternative futures envisioned by Afrofuturist artists
such as Sun Ra or, more recently, Janelle Monáe, space disco perhaps
evinces an early instance of metamodern irony. In their influential article
on the concept of metamodernism, Vermeulen and van den Akker define
metamodernism as a feeling ‘characterized by the oscillation between a
typically modern commitment and a markedly postmodern detachment’
(Vermeulen and van den Akker 2010), which

[d]isplaces the parameters of the present with those of a future presence that
is futureless; and it displaces the boundaries of our place with those of a sur-
real place that is placeless. (Vermeulen and van den Akker 2010)

In many ways, space disco exhibits a form of naiveté that lies somewhere
between (or beyond) the sincerity of modernism and the cynicism and
irony of postmodernism. Thus space disco manifests a kind of informed
naiveté that—rather than believing in a utopian vision of the future—
describes a yearning for utopia despite knowing it is futile, characterized at
the same time by both irony and sincerity. Outer space is perhaps the ulti-
mate mediation between the utopian and dystopic sense of place, but
instead of classifying it as a heterotopia, we could think of it as what
Vermeulen and van den Akker term an atopia due to its extreme other-
worldliness: ‘impossibly, at once a place and not a place, a territory with-
out boundaries, a position without parameters’ (Vermeulen and van den
Akker 2010).
Space disco manifests a ‘knowing’ or ‘informed’ kitsch. It plays off and
with the warm familiarity of space sounds made popular in the science fic-
tion soundtracks of the 1950s and 1960s and stands now as a nostalgic
298 K. MCLEOD

remnant of the imagined future of an earlier age and the places and spaces
that, in all likelihood, will never exist. At the same time, imbued with what
Bloch would term the ‘emancipatory’ and ‘anticipatory’, it seems to tell
the listener that one can still and should always hope for something better.
Space disco’s infatuation with the otherworldly, the messianic, the techno-
logical can thus be seen to ironically negotiate the frontiers of inner space
through the lens of outer space. It enacts an ironic lucidity in which the
answer to the problems, both personal and planetary, is found in experi-
encing the maximal bodily pleasure in the here and now. Ultimately, it
suggests that true hope can only be found in the unknowable vastness of
outer space itself.

Notes
1. Several hip-hop artists have subsequently sampled the song, including The
Notorious B. I. G. on his Life After Death (1997). In 2009, the song was
transmitted into deep space, at the speed of light, as part of a celebration
honouring the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.
2. As suggested by Vermeulen and van den Akker, atopos implies a space exist-
ing between the temporal ordering of modernism and the spatial disorder-
ing of postmodernism—with humanity dreaming and pursuing a ‘horizon
that is forever receding’ (Vermeulen and van den Akker 2010, 12).
3. ‘Nothing coarser, nastier, more stupid has ever been seen than the jazz-­
dances since 1930. Jitterbug, Boogie-Woogie, this is imbecility gone wild,
with a corresponding howling which provides the so to speak music accom-
paniment. American movement of this kind is rocking the Western coun-
tries, not as dance, but as vomiting’ (Bloch 1986, 394).
4. The video of the performance is available at https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=5mfbo_FmBRU. Accessed 10 January 2021.
5. The vocoder didn’t start life as a musical instrument, but as a communica-
tion device. In the 1920s, Homer Dudley at Bell Labs created a device
whose function was to facilitate the transmission of telephone conversations
over long distances by reducing bandwidth; the technology was later
employed by the military, with an enhanced version of it used to scramble
transatlantic conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt during the
Second World War (Prior 2018, 497). In the early 1970s, the technology
found a home as a musical effect when Moog developed a vocoder with
Wendy Carlos for the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange, while the late
1970s and early 1980s represented the vocoder’s heyday, with artists such as
ELO (‘Mr. Blue Sky’, 1977) and Kraftwerk (‘The Robots’, 1978) popular-
izing its sound.
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 299

6. In ‘Spacer Woman’ (1983) by Charlie, the sound is overtly mechanically

synthetic and employs a signature Italo Linn Drum machine, a Roland
Space Echo, a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, and densely vocoded vocals sung in
heavily accented, slightly disjointed English (‘I come from Space/I want to
know/If I can do/My love is true’). Critic Andy Beta describes Italo vocals
as ‘operatic, halting, and cardboard-like, sexy to the point of being creepy,
bizarre, robotic, histrionic, sleazy, and utterly baffling’ (Beta 2015). Though
it was typically sung in English (accented or not), the genre was largely only
popular in non-English-speaking parts of Europe but, according to pro-
ducer Josh Cheon, ‘Chicago House music, Detroit Techno, and Miami
Freestyle were all influenced by Italo’ (Beta 2015). In addition to those
already mentioned in this chapter, other European-based significant contri-
butions to the space disco genre include Cerrone’s ‘Supernature’ (1977),
Koto’s ‘Visitors’ (1985), Dee D. Jackson’s ‘Automatic Lover’ (1978) and
‘Meteor Man’ (1977), and Sheila’s ‘Spacer’ (1979).

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Electric Light Orchestra. 1977. Mr. Blue Sky. Jet Records.
 OUTER SPACE, FUTURISM, AND THE QUEST FOR DISCO UTOPIA 301

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King Crimson. 1972. Earthbound. Island Records.
Koto. 1985. Visitors. Memory Records.
Kraftwerk. 1978. Die Roboter. Kling Klang, EMI Electrola.
Marshall, Laurie. 1977. The Disco Spaceship. Casino Records.
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———. 1977b. I Feel Love. Casablanca.
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 Epilogue: Decolonising Disco—
Counterculture, Postindustrial Creativity,
the 1970s Dance Floor and Disco

Tim Lawrence

As the recent passing of the 40th anniversary of the July 1979 “disco
sucks” rally at Comiskey Park draws attention to one of the earliest mani-
festations of the Middle American revolt against any group perceived to
have made gains at its expense, it has become possible and even necessary
to reach new conclusions about that population’s favourite point of attack.
If the late 1970s backlash established disco as a phenomenon that needed
to be defended, temporal distance from its formation, uptake, overpro-
duction, collapse and recuperation allows for a more nuanced and far-­
reaching understanding of the culture that has three significant implications.
First, the re-historicisation of disco enables and even requires a recon-
ceptualisation of punk and hip hop/rap, the two other music-based move-
ments that came to dominate 1970s and early 1980s New York City
(NYC). All three genres have been figured by historians (Chang 2005,
Cooper 2004, Echols 2010, Fricke and Ahearn 2002, Gendron 2002,
George 1988, Goldman 1978, Haden-Guest 1997, Hager 1984,

T. Lawrence (*)
University of East London, London, UK

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 303

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5_13
304 T. LAWRENCE

Holmstrom 1996, Lawrence 2003, McNeil and McCain 1997, Miezitis

1980, Savage 1991, Toop 1984) as unfolding as discrete and stable enti-
ties that emerged in opposition to one another, with each additional dis-
cursive reference to “disco,” “hip hop”/“rap” and “punk” attributing
these sounds with a singular coherence. Yet a methodological approach
that prioritises city-wide cultural developments above demarcated scenes
leads to the conclusion that the cultures that gathered around these sounds
were much more fluid, open and democratic than has been supposed.
This, in turn, requires not only a new historicisation of the formative years
of “disco,” “punk” and “hip hop”/“rap” in the 1970s and early 1980s,
but also, given the way these sounds have influenced so much music that
has circulated globally since that halcyon period, a broader re-reading of
the history of music genre during the last 50 years.
Second, the reconceptualisation of disco along with hip hop/rap and
punk sheds new light on the progressive potential of the early postindus-
trial economy before it assumed its neoliberal character. The dominant
reading of the history of neoliberalism (Harvey 2005) posits that the
embrace of individualism, freedom and flexibility proposed by the loosely
contemporaneous advances of the countercultural movement, the anti-­
state demonstrations of 1968 and the emergence of the Italian autonomist
movement coincided with and supported the emergence of a corporate
agenda that sought to introduce economic reforms that would undermine
collective power and liberate capital via the slashing of welfare spending,
the rolling back of corporate regulation and the lowering of taxes for the
wealthy—reforms that the proponents of neoliberalism claimed would
enhance individualism, freedom and flexibility. A counter-reading (Negri
1979; Negri 1991; Hardt and Negri 2001) maintains that the countercul-
tural movement, the protests of 1968 and autonomia came about through
the desire of citizens to free themselves from the social and economic
restrictions of the postwar settlement by embracing new forms of auton-
omy, flexibility and creativity that channelled new collective desires. Far
from instigating the shift towards individualism, freedom and flexibility,
capital reacted to the demand for change. However, the popular reso-
nance of this post-Fordism form of collectivist proto-politics has been
underestimated, with disco amounting not to a regressive form of narcis-
sism, hedonism and materialism, as has been regularly argued on the Left
(Dyer 1995), but instead a dramatic expression of the new sensibility.
Third, disco histories should acknowledge not only the culture’s defini-
tively diverse social and sonic roots (Echols 2010; Lawrence 2003; Shapiro
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 305

2005) but also the way the international contribution to the early develop-
ment of the sound came to be marginalised and eventually erased. Having
integrated African and Latin recordings into their sets during the first half
of the 1970s, New York City’s pioneering DJs became almost entirely
detached from these historic sources of dance music, in part because disco
successfully co-opted African and Latin motifs into its matrix, in part
because US disco became such a successful commodity that other produc-
tion centres that lay beyond Western Europe became almost entirely
obscured. What were the global roots of disco and how did these musical
lineages evolve as New York, the United States and, to a certain extent,
France and Germany claimed disco to be their own invention? What might
an anti-colonial history of disco look like if it was written from within
Africa or Latin America or another part of the world?

Rewriting the History of Disco, Punk and Hip Hop/

Rap in 1970s New York City
Running up to the late 1990s, books dedicated to the history of disco
characterised the culture as existing on an axis that, at one end, featured
the elitist, hedonistic, narcissistic, individualistic, fashion-conscious, sexu-
ally polymorphous practices characteristic of midtown discotheques such
as Studio 54, and at the other revolved around a working-class, stylistically
less sophisticated culture that revived straight hustle dancing and enjoyed
widespread uptake in the suburbs, as depicted in the movie Saturday Night
Fever (Badham 1977; Goldman 1978; Haden-Guest 1997; Miezitis
1980). Inasmuch as it was acknowledged, punk was figured as disco’s
aggressive, commercially less successful antagonist. Hip hop/rap didn’t
feature, either because it had yet to enter public consciousness or because
it was deemed to be irrelevant to the history of disco. For example, Haden-­
Guest’s The Last Party, the most extensive history of disco at the time of
its publication, dedicates a single phrase (Haden-Guest 1997, 216) to the
history of hip hop/rap during the 1970s.
More recent histories of disco (Echols 2010; Lawrence 2003; Shapiro
2005) draw attention to the culture’s socially diverse and sonically pro-
gressive origins, which shaped a less visible yet ultimately more influential
form of disco that took root in private parties, downtown discotheques
and independent record companies, shaping contemporary DJ culture,
remix culture, sound system culture and the practice of inclusive partying
306 T. LAWRENCE

along the way. This revisionist analysis was necessary given that, ever since
the “disco sucks” backlash peaked in the summer of 1979, disco’s reputa-
tion for crassness, commercialism, exclusivity and superficiality dominated
public discourse. This extended to the wave of histories that established
the basic parameters of punk and rap/hip hop (Chang 2005, Cooper
2004, Fricke and Ahearn 2002, Gendron 2002, George 1988, Hager
1984, 1986, McNeil and McCain 1997, Moore and Coley 2008, Savage
1991, Schloss 2009, Toop 1984). All figured punk and/or hip hop/rap as
existing in direct opposition to a reductionist version of disco that revolved
around midtown exclusivity, suburban bad taste and mindless music.
To varying degrees, these histories figure disco, hip hop/rap and punk
as cohesive and mutually exclusive music cultures that existed in opposi-
tion to one another, with the hip hop/rap and punk scenes alone in estab-
lishing dialogue in the early 1980s (Hager 1986). Yet more recent studies
(Lawrence 2016; Reynolds 2005) highlight the degree of interaction that
occurred between the disco, hip hop/rap and punk scenes during the late
1970s and early 1980s. Having punctured the sweeping assumption of
mutual antagonism, these histories raise two questions. First, if these cul-
tures were much more obviously collaborative than antagonistic during
the late 1970s and in particular early 1980s, then when did the idea that
they were grounded in opposition take root? Second, if the disco, hip
hop/rap and punk scenes became less discrete and more interactive during
the late 1970s and early 1980s, might their assumed opposition during
the major part of the 1970s also be open to question?
The answer to the first question lies in the divisive character of the
1980s, and in particular the second half of the decade, when the combina-
tion of AIDS (which reached epidemic proportions in 1983), crack con-
sumption (which became a national crisis during the middle of the 1980s)
and the embedment of Reagan’s neoliberal reforms led groups that had
been collaboratively minded to become defensive and distrustful. This
milieu formed the backdrop for the emergence of a discourse that depicted
disco and hip hop/rap as being especially antagonistic, including the pub-
lication of George’s (1988) Death of Rhythm and Blues, which held disco
responsible for the whitening of R&B and hailed the rise of rap as the anti-­
disco saviour of black music—this from a writer who in 1981 co-authored
an article with disco columnist Brian Chin (George and Chin 1981) that
welcomed the way that the “barriers” between post-disco dance music and
black music had “crumbled.”
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 307

To address the second question, perhaps because history is written

backwards and with a knowledge of where the narrative will end, there has
been a marked tendency within music histories to argue that, even if they
aren’t born whole, genres and their pioneering participants display two
elements from the moment they are conceived: they aggregate original
aesthetic values, and they understand these values to exist in opposition to
parallel practices. However, if the widespread practice of assuming and
imposing a retrospective generic coherence on the histories of disco, punk
and hip hop/rap is suspended, all three scenes can be seen to have engaged
not in a three-way battle for subcultural supremacy, but instead in a subtler
series of encounters that witnessed them emerge as nameless movements
that sought out space in which to explore innovative, expressive cultural
practices that ultimately shared more connections than has been assumed.
Moreover, the imagined early divisions could have barely existed given
that disco and punk didn’t acquire their names until 1974, rap didn’t
receive its first release until 1979 and hip hop—as the term that figured
DJing, MCing, breaking and graffiti as a cohesive movement—didn’t
come into formation or parlance until 1981 (Lawrence 2016). While
moments of competition and hostility inevitably followed, even these
were, on closer examination, rooted in caricatured depictions of disco and
punk rather than any deep-rooted antagonism.
To begin with disco, the DJ-led dance culture that started to unfold at
David Mancuso’s Loft as well as Seymour and Shelley’s Sanctuary from
early 1970 onwards wasn’t straightforwardly received as disco because the
sound of disco didn’t fully coalesce or come into public consciousness
until the middle of 1974. As late as the autumn of 1973, for example,
Vince Aletti published an article in Rolling Stone that noted the way in
which rising popularity of discotheques, juice bars, after-hours clubs and
private lofts was exerting a “strong influence on the music people listen to
and buy” (Aletti 1973), but that that music lacked a name. Disco started
to circulate in public consciousness when the Hues Corporation and
George McCrae enjoyed successive number one hits during the summer
of 1974, yet those releases and the coalescing disco genre already amounted
to a reduction of what was happening musically, never mind socially, in
New York City’s party spaces. Quite simply, although the 1970s are fre-
quently labelled the “disco decade” and although disco is routinely
believed to have broken through at the beginning of the decade, the genre
didn’t exist until the decade was almost halfway over. Whatever came
308 T. LAWRENCE

before didn’t sound like straight-up disco and didn’t acquire or need a
single name.
Rather than label the diverse range of sounds selected by New York
City DJs during the opening years of the 1970s as “disco,” the music
selected by DJs during the early 1970s can be more productively under-
stood as a form of countercultural music that was more radical in aesthetic
and social terms than the music that is more commonly associated with the
countercultural movement, namely, rock, acid rock and progressive rock
(Greene 2016; Macan 1997; Whitely 1992). In contrast to many, although
by no means all, aspects of rock culture, early 1970s DJ sets were impro-
vised, unrepeatable and impossible to commodify. Whereas rock concerts
separated musicians from the crowd, DJ sets were explicitly democratic
thanks to the manner in which DJs and dancers entered into an antipho-
nal, call-and-response conversation. Unlike just about any other musical
performance of the era, save for the all-night loft jazz sessions that also
unfolded in New York’s downtown ex-industrial spaces, DJ sets would
routinely last for several hours, and for 12 hours or more if the party was
being staged in a private space rather than a public discotheque. In other
departures, party DJs integrated music that cut across space as well as
time, and also foregrounded female, African American and international
musicians. Forming a much more notable presence in early 1970s dance
culture than they did in late 1960s rock culture, queers went on to exert a
formative influence on the musical aesthetics that followed, from the
introduction of DJ mixing (Lawrence 2003) to the prominent role
attained by African American female recording artists on the New York
City dance floor (Echols 2010; Hughes 1994; Lawrence 2003). Sonically
open, demographically diverse, collectively minded, egalitarian and com-
mitted to social transformation, early 1970s party culture amounted to the
most complete and compelling articulation of New York City’s often cited
but never straightforwardly realised melting pot.
To continue the comparison, if acid consumption was prominent in
rock as well as in early 1970s dance culture, at the Loft, David Mancuso
selected music according to the shifting intensities of an acid trip, as iden-
tified by Timothy Leary (Leary 2000), with the 12-hour journey enhanced
through the introduction of specialist sound equipment, party decora-
tions/lighting effects and expansive music selections, with the latter pro-
viding a sonic structure that supported social diversity and coalition
building. The music selected by Mancuso and other DJs often included
breaks and crescendos that encouraged crowds to express a form of
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 309

liberationist energy as well as explore new forms of bodily movement,

expression, sexuality and desire, and this combination set the early 1970s
dance floor apart from the somewhat asexual, isolated swaying that char-
acterised countercultural gatherings. DJs also made a point of picking out
long cuts from albums because these foregrounded more explorative
structures that encouraged dancers to lose themselves in the music and
enter into an alternative dimension. The introduction of the 12-inch sin-
gle supported the spread of this form of immersive, transformative “jour-
ney music.” Meanwhile, party DJs challenged the corrosive marketing
hegemony of their radio counterparts, the rise of the relatively unprofit-
able 12-inch single challenged the music industry’s album-driven profit
model, supposedly unskilled DJs became the primary innovators within
remix culture thanks to their knowledge of dance floor preferences, and
DJs even organised collectively in order to demand free promotional cop-
ies of new releases, establishing the Record Pool, soon known as the
New York City Record Pool, as their vehicle (Lawrence 2003). Disco’s
malleable four-on-­the-floor bass beat enabled it to self-consciously inte-
grate gospel, funk, R&B, orchestral, African, Latin and even rock elements
into its mix, which added to the impression of it being a music that existed
to forge a rainbow alliance between diverse communities.
But if the rock end of the countercultural movement of the 1960s was
at least partially blind to the concerns of women and people of colour,
which groups found themselves, if not excluded by disco then, unable to
embrace its ethos? The obvious answer lies in the coalitions that formed
around punk and hip hop/rap. In contrast to disco’s embrace of racial
diversity, early punk embraced a form of ethnic whiteness that mocked
rock hipsters who embraced elements of black style; indeed, there were
times when the embrace of white ethnicity tipped into racism (Bangs
1988). Punk prioritised aggressive, short bursts of noise over disco’s
immersive, seductive groove. New York City’s two main punk hangouts,
CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, didn’t even have dance floors. Holmstrom’s
punk magazine declared that disco amounted to the “epitome of all that’s
wrong with Western civilization” (Holmstrom 1996). Meanwhile hip
hop/rap historians note how disco whitened, depoliticised and commer-
cialised the terrain of black music, excluded Bronx partygoers from its
exclusive dance floors and even embraced a form of polysexuality that was
foreign to black male identity, all of which established the conditions for
rap music and hip hop culture to emerge as the authentic new voice of
young, working-class dancers and musicians of colour. Yet although
310 T. LAWRENCE

differences existed between disco and punk and disco and hip hop/rap,
these have been exaggerated by, on the one hand, subsequent historical
developments that dramatically intensified the differences that existed
between the ultimately complex demographic coalitions that were attached
to these scenes, and, on the other, deep-rooted subcultural and musico-
logical assumptions that understand scenes and sounds as being rooted in
difference, distinction and opposition to one another, as well as, as Sarah
Thornton (Thornton 1996) argues, a partly imagined mainstream.
To begin with the partly imagined hostility that existed between disco
and punk, the two scenes were barely conscious of one another’s existence
or their own internal coherence as they began to take root. When punk
musicians began to congregate at CBGB during 1974 and 1975, disco still
only existed at the outer margins of the popular imagination, so in reality
there was little to oppose. Holstrom started to pen anti-disco editorials
during 1976, yet the vitriol was partly an affect, while his target turned out
to be a specific strand of disco that was taking root in midtown and the
suburbs, which was judged, not entirely without foundation, to be com-
mercially driven and socially regressive. Very few, if any, CBGB regulars
were aware of the more radical form of dance culture that was taking root
in the city’s subterranean downtown scene (Lawrence 2016); had they
been, they might well have identified with its DIY, organic underpinnings.
When asked they declare the lack of a dance floor at the Bowery venue to
have been a source not of anti-disco celebration but profound frustration
(Lawrence 2016). Lurking beneath the culture clash headlines, the
New York punk scene understood itself to be in opposition to much more
than the most obvious signs of commercial disco, with pivotal figures such
as curator/scenester Diego Cortez drawn to the Bowery venue as an alter-
native to the more obviously privileged scene that had settled in SoHo,
where, he notes (Davis 2010), white people drank white wine in gallery
rooms that displayed art mounted on white walls. Although the black
presence at CBGB was minimal, the scene understood itself to be interna-
tional, polysexual, driven by art and creativity more than anger, and defi-
nitionally renegade. The nascent disco and punk scenes also shared an
interest in minimalist and post-minimalist music, and, in particular, sought
to explore how the physical and emotional impact of music could increase
as its content was stripped away, with punk’s limited chord structures
matching disco’s obsession with the break. If a degree of headline hostility
between punk and disco gathered momentum during 1977 and 1978, just
as the slick/midtown/Studio 54 and the conformist/suburban/Saturday
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 311

Night Fever articulations of disco reached saturation point, those years also
saw entrepreneurs plan for and open the first of several influential punk
discotheques, with Hurrah and the Mudd Club leading the way. Musicians
delivered mutant music that combined disco, punk and other sounds to
feed the converging scenes (Lawrence 2016).
An overlapping series of observations can be applied to the supposed
enmity that existed between disco and hip hop/rap. Widely, if not univer-
sally, credited as hip hop’s pioneering DJ and party host, Herc can’t have
consciously opposed disco when he started to put on parties in the autumn
of 1973 because disco didn’t yet exist and, besides, Herc had no experi-
ence of partying outside of the Bronx. Herc is also said to have embraced
funk only after his crowd didn’t respond to his early dub-reggae selec-
tions, as if that indicated that something novel unfolded in that space,
rather than the opposite, which is that funk-oriented dance music was
spreading through the city like wildfire, with many records being played in
Bronx and downtown party spots alike (Lawrence 2016). Hip hop/rap
historians cite Herc’s Jamaican upbringing as influencing his innovations
in sound system construction, yet more advanced experiments in bass
reinforcement were being explored by Richard Long, whose innovations
were introduced in the Loft, the SoHo Place and eventually the Paradise
Garage, where members of the Zulu Nation would eventually head to take
notes (Lawrence 2016). Herc is also credited with pioneering the tech-
nique of mixing between the breaks during the summer of 1974, yet dis-
cotheque DJs were deploying the same technique in Boston, as was the
NYC-based DJ Walter Gibbons, whose skill and precision outstripped that
of Herc (Lawrence 2008).
The overstated disagreement between hip hop/rap and disco extends
to the claim that funk-driven Bronx DJs didn’t play disco, as if disco
couldn’t be funky. In fact, Bronx DJs only became disillusioned with disco
when the sound reached its commercial peak during 1978, by which point
downtown DJs had also started to question the direction the sound was
taking (Lawrence 2003; Lawrence 2016). Much has also been made of the
way discotheques excluded Bronx partygoers, but while it’s true that
Studio 54 admitted very few dancers of colour, that highlighted the limits
of Studio’s door policy rather than a rupture between borough dancers of
colour and disco. Scores of discotheques were located in the Bronx; queers
of colour who didn’t feel comfortable in those environments had since
started to head to queer-friendly venues in Manhattan before midtown
became a home for flashbulb discotheques; and several Manhattan venues
312 T. LAWRENCE

catered to African American dancers. In any case, many of the Bronx danc-
ers who partied with Herc and other pioneering Bronx DJs such as Afrika
Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash were underage, and wouldn’t have
been admitted to any public discotheque, never mind Studio 54. Above
all, just as disco didn’t exist in anyone’s mind until 1974, so rap didn’t
consolidate as a genre until 1979, with hip hop only breaking through
conceptually during the latter part of 1980 and 1981. Indeed, it was only
during the 1980s that Bronx DJs and MCs started to come into contact
with the pioneers of downtown party culture and disco (Lawrence 2016).
If territorialism came to the fore it was experienced not between the two
scenes but within the two scenes.
The noise created by clashes between disco, hip hop/rap and punk,
some of which occurred during the 1970s, much of which has been ampli-
fied subsequently, shouldn’t obscure the extent to which New York City’s
grassroots music scenes embarked on a path to interaction and even con-
vergence during the 1970s. If aesthetic preferences overlapped and crowds
became more fluid, then disco should be refigured not as a singular move-
ment that briefly overhauled rock as the bestselling genre in the United
States during 1978 before it collapsed during 1979, but instead as an
open-ended plurality that intersected with other semi-permeable scenes. If
the radical underpinnings of punk and hip hop/rap are taken for granted,
it has taken much longer for disco’s radicalism to be recognised, so power-
ful has been its association with commercialism, mindlessness and
hedonism.
Even the ambitious overview provided in The Downtown Book (Taylor
2006) remains almost entirely blind to the contribution of DJ-led disco-
theque/disco/dance floor culture. Yet participants in New York’s DJ-led
party/disco scene agreed with protagonists in the city’s parallel grassroots
music and art scenes about the need to place music at the centre of their
activity; to explore new forms of bodily experience and communal trans-
formation; to refocus political expectations following the denouement of
the 1960s countercultural movement; to move towards practices and life-
styles that prioritised flexibility, creativity, openness, participation and a
basic DIY orientation that broke with the social norms and hierarchies of
the postwar era; to prioritise democratic and antiphonal forms of music-­
making, from DJ culture to forms of playing and performance that de-­
emphasised virtuosity; and to explore the sonic and social potential of
minimalist and post-minimalist forms of artistic expression.
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 313

DJ Culture, Disco, Creativity and the Early

Postindustrial Economy
The 1970s are widely judged to have marked the turning point in the
transition from industrial to postindustrial capitalism. For many on the
Right, the decade evidenced the breakdown of the postwar settlement, the
need to roll back the bloated and inefficient state in order to liberate the
individual and market competition, and the corrosive moral impact of the
countercultural movement. For many on the Left, the decade was marked
by state’s failure to manage the faults that were emerging within industrial
capitalism as well as the onset of a new form of individualistic narcissism
that either passively or actively enabled corporate capital to engineer the
introduction of a series of budgetary and legal reforms that paved the way
for the shift to a neoliberal economy. New York City provided both sides
with evidence to support their critique, its declining public services and
rising crime rates offering proof that market forces either needed to be
unleashed or reigned in. The Right and Left seemed to agree on one
thing: disco encapsulated the economy’s collapse into a form of ineffi-
cient, hedonistic, morally degenerate wastefulness. Whether in the plot
lines of Saturday Night Fever or the representations of Studio 54’s dance
floor and basement shenanigans, the culture encouraged abstinence from
work, declining productivity and new levels of amoralism.
David Harvey’s influential analysis (2005) of the decade is of particular
interest here. Harvey points to President Ford’s refusal to provide bailout
money to a bankrupt New York as being key to capital’s strategy to “move
decisively” (Harvey 2005, 15) to test-run a new form of neoliberal gover-
nance as a response to the declining profitability of industrial capitalism.
Meeting with city officials, the corporate banking sector demanded the
introduction of a wage freeze, cuts to government services, new institu-
tions to manage the city’s budget, new user fees (including tuition fees), a
requirement that municipal unions invest pension funds in city bonds, and
punitive interest rates in return for bailout money. Their strategy, which
aimed “to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to
restore the power of economic elites” (Harvey 2005, 19), crystallised
around the project of persuading sympathetic national and international
governing bodies to liberate finance by valuing the individual above the
collective, markets above regulation and tax cuts for the wealthy above
spending on welfare. Ronald Reagan won the presidential election of
November 1980 by promising to introduce such a project while restoring
314 T. LAWRENCE

Christian values and defending the interests of white working-class

families.
Harvey maintains that these developments might have been forestalled
had creative workers not descended into individualistic modes of expres-
sion and work that led them to become complicit with the shift to a new
neoliberal conjuncture:

The narcissistic exploration of self, sexuality, and identity became the leit-
motif of bourgeois urban culture […] Artistic freedom and artistic licence,
promoted by the city’s powerful cultural institutions, led, in effect, to the
neoliberalization of culture [… and …] erased the collective memory of
democratic New York. (Harvey 2005, 47)

He adds that “the city’s elites acceded, though not without a struggle, to
the demand for lifestyle diversification (including those attached to sexual
preference and gender) and increasing consumer niche choices (in areas
such as cultural production),” and concludes that as a result “New York
became the epicentre of postmodern cultural and intellectual experimen-
tation” (Harvey 2005, 47). The argument that cultural workers started
out as passive onlookers before embracing the opportunities that came
their way through shifting economic circumstances received an earlier
articulation when one of Harvey’s protégés, Sharon Zukin (1988),
detailed the way SoHo artists became complicit with the real estate invest-
ment sector when they mined the rising value of the area’s ex-industrial
infrastructure. It has subsequently been popularised by figures such as the
renowned documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, who alleges (Curtis
2016) that a new form of self-absorption prevented artists and punks—
whom he correlates with the Left—from focusing on the advances of capi-
tal. In an improbable capillary motion, just as elements of the traditional
working class blamed queers, women and people of colour for their declin-
ing living standards, switching their votes from Democrat to Republican
in the November 1980 election, so a significant part of the Left has blamed
the countercultural movements of the 1970s for facilitating the revival of
capital in return for self-discovery and limited sectional gains.
There are, however, grounds to refigure the DJ-led party culture of the
1970s, its disco and hip hop/rap manifestations, the punk scene, the wider
art scene and the convergent, mutant forms they assumed in combination
with one another as an original, epoch-defining form of postindustrial
expression that sought to hold on to the collective and egalitarian values
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 315

of the postwar settlement while seeking to explore new forms of expres-

sion, creativity and participation that broke with the constraints of indus-
trial capitalism. New York became the pioneering epicentre of the
movement in the first place because it was the most diverse city in the
world, its population defined by millions of stories of flexibility, mobility
and openness. Downtown industrial buildings, many of them empty or
emptying, were converted into postindustrial spaces for social congrega-
tion and creative work, with dance venues rivalling art galleries in terms of
sheer numbers. The form of dancing that took root replaced the conven-
tion of couples dancing with something that was both more individualistic
and more collective, as dancers embraced a style of freeform dancing that
enabled them to move individually while also becoming part of a physical
and psychic “crowd.” DJs might have lacked the conventional instrumen-
tal skills of other musicians yet demonstrated themselves to be experts in a
new form of information gathering, processing and communicating.
Rooted in the goals of the liberation movements and counterculture, par-
ticipants exchanged the structures, hierarchies and rituals of the nine-to-­
five working day and conventional domestic routines with new forms of
work and sociality, switching the daily grind for nocturnal release. Far
from failing, New York’s population navigated the decline of industrial
capitalism by giving birth to a new form of creative, collective, postindus-
trial activity.
The goal, in short, was to explore a new form of being that navigated a
pathway between the limits of industrial capitalism and the not yet visible
competitive individualism that would define neoliberal capitalism. If eco-
nomic exploitation remained an ongoing concern, the social movements
of the 1960s and the protests of 1968 asserted that the fight against class
exploitation should no longer automatically override the equally impor-
tant need to end inequalities around gender, race and sexuality, with the
state understood to be as likely to constrain as to support. A new form of
politics was required, one that could connect the disparate yet connected
interests of the rainbow coalition and the working class in a way that
appeared to be alien to the established practices of the Democratic party
and the trade union movement. A new form of praxis was also required,
one that could demonstrate how these new social relations could offer an
escape route out of the existing repressive practices.
Sylvère Lotringer, a younger contemporary of French poststructural
theorists Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Félix Guattari
and Paul Virilio, went further than any contemporary in his analysis of the
316 T. LAWRENCE

way these emerging forces were finding a new form of articulation in

1970s New York City. Based in Paris before he started to teach in the
French department at Columbia in September 1972, Lotringer believed
that the failure of the Communist Party to support the student uprising of
1968 “had been a clear signal in France that the old revolutionary machines
had outlived their purpose” (Lotringer 2013a, 11) and made it his mission
to introduce European/Italian political theory into the United States, co-­
founding the journal Semiotext(e) in 1974 and organising a schizo-culture
conference at Columbia University in 1975. Opening the conference,
Lotringer envisioned the forging of a “libidinal fluidity” that would extend
beyond the person, replacing the existing “neurotic model” that empha-
sised “difference between the sexes” with a “transpersonal and transsexual
process where desire could be directly coupled to the socius” (Lotringer
2013a, 43–45). The aim, he added, was to produce a “nomadic entity, an
irreducible multiplicity” (Lotringer 2013a, 45). The conference agreed
that the traditional Left was too authoritarian, too centralised and too
beholden to the idea that progressive change could only be achieved
through working-class organisation. However, the conference was also
marked by fierce arguments, shifting formats panel and breakdowns, with
Guattari booed off the podium during the final panel when he criticised
the audience for wanting to participate in a conventionally structured con-
ference. The event ended in an atmosphere of discord.
Lotringer found solace in the downtown scene. He had already
absorbed Foucault’s “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopia”
(Foucault 1984) and the argument that heterotopic spaces either “create
a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which
human life is partitioned, as still more illusory,” or “create a space that is
other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours
is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled” (Foucault He had also come to
view New York as an expression of unconscious desire that escaped wider
repression in the United States and that exposed the contradictions of the
wider system, so concluded that what he was “looking for in art would
involve in some way the experience of living in New York” (Lotringer
2013b, xi). William Burroughs, who spoke at the schizo-culture confer-
ence, introduced Lotringer to SoHo’s thriving art scene, where figures
such as John Cage and Merce Cunningham were introducing “chance
operation’s into their work and resisted “the seduction of narrative, which
always imposes an order of progression and climax” (Lotringer 2013b, xi).
In particular, Cunningham’s presentation of heterogeneous elements side
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 317

by side offered “a different idea about how people can coexist together”
(Lotringer 2013b, xi). The critic concluded that the downtown scene’s
aesthetic paralleled French theory without knowing it.
By the time Lotringer organised the Nova Convention in late
November/early December 1978, he had also become acquainted with
the art-punk end of the downtown scene that gathered at CBGB and the
recently opened Mudd Club, and for the most part lived in the crumbling
tenements of the East Village rather than the grand lofts of SoHo. Staged
at the Entermedia Theater, Irving Plaza and NYU, the event featured no
wave film screenings, performances, concerts and talks by Laurie Anderson,
Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Patti Smith, Robert Wilson and Frank
Zappa as well as by William Burroughs. After the convention Lotringer
moved into a raw loft with Cortez in the Fashion District, having met the
downtown scenester, one of the co-founders of the Mudd Club, after the
Columbia conference. “It was so loud that no one could ever talk with
each other,” Lotringer recalls of the venue: “just dancing among this
crowd was meaningful enough. We all knew each other and there was a
sense of togetherness” (Premmereur 2014). A late twentieth-century het-
erotopia, the Mudd Club staged regular immersive parties that were
inspired by the Fluxus happenings of the 1960s. Owner Steve Mass recalls
how “the parties took American institutions and parodied and destroyed
them in one way or another,” adding that “all kinds of unexpected things
would happen” (Lawrence 2016, 19). The network of venues that rou-
tinely included combinations of DJing, live music, performance art, art
shows, film and video screenings in their offering expanded exponentially
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The sheer level of activity was remark-
able. “Downtown was like this kaleidoscopic, smorgasbord of activity”
recalls Club 57 organiser and performance artist Ann Magnuson: “all of
these ideas were out there. It was like Halloween every night” (Lawrence
2016, 19).
If anything, the scale and the scope of activity was underestimated by
Lotringer, Magnuson and friends, who inevitably experienced the expan-
sion in real time, and who, through the definitional limits of their own
immersion, were only able to grasp shards of an explosion that not only
deserves to be credited as one of the most influential cultural renaissances
of the twentieth century but also for its then unique rootedness in multi-
media spaces and cross-scene interactions. Participants in the art-punk and
Bronx party scenes discovered a mutual appreciation of cut-up, the manip-
ulation of found objectives, DIY, collaboration and ephemeral
318 T. LAWRENCE

performance, with these exchanges core to the opening of downtown ven-

ues that showcased Bronx talent as well as the conceptualisation and
deployment of hip hop as a cultural phenomenon that encompassed the
differential discrete practices of DJing, MCing, breaking and graffiti. A
little more gradually, art-punk and Bronx party protagonists came to
appreciate the organic, funky, communitarian ethos of the city’s DJ-led
downtown and downtown-inspired dance spaces. Easing into the moment,
the DJ-led downtown dance scene was able to more or less seamlessly
embrace the mutant/hybrid/interactive era because in many respects it
echoed and intensified the eclectic mix of early 1970s DJ-led party cul-
ture. The Loft and the Paradise Garage arguably reached their creative
peak during the early 1980s. Musicians adapted to provide all three inter-
acting scenes with sounds that ambitiously brought the sonic preferences
of the scenes together, which in turn encouraged participants to move
beyond their usual hangouts and bring into being an increasingly inte-
grated social milieu. The composer, instrumentalist and songwriter Arthur
Russell came to embody the period as he moved between scenes and
sought to bring previously separate elements together (Lawrence 2009).
Hybridity, mutation and convergence came to define everyday cultural
practice, with participants generating new forms of collective, flexible,
project-driven work.
These groups were political although steered clear of mainstream poli-
tics, the democratic party and the trade union movement. Theirs was a
new form of engagement that didn’t consist of mere navel-gazing but
explored new modes of expression, both individual and collective. They
also carried out their activity during the tenure of Carter’s relatively benign
if disappointing administration, and when Reagan came to power they
maintained their core beliefs while hoping that New York’s long-standing
island status would enable them to maintain their direction of travel while
the nation went into reverse. While a minority of artists benefited from the
rising value of loft spaces and opportunities that came as Wall Street bro-
kers sought to spend some of their income on art, most struggled to main-
tain their foothold in the city and struggled to come to terms with the
mixture of increased surveillance and commercialism. To suggest other-
wise is one-dimensional. Yet a further question raised by Harvey remains:
did capital lure New York’s apolitical creative class into its neoliberal turn
so seamlessly because its advocacy of individualism, flexibility, creativity
and materialism appealed to the city’s artist community, or did that com-
munity and other like-minded groupings independently initiate the
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 319

emergence of new forms of flexibility and creativity, with capital co-opting

its philosophy only later?
Although Harvey’s analysis of capital’s exploitation of New York City’s
fiscal crisis of 1975 is compelling, an alternative reading of the underlying
shift to postindustrial capitalism has been proposed by Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri (2001, 2006), who note that the countercultural move-
ment of the late 1960s, the anti-authoritarian protests of 1968, and the
Italian autonomists of the 1960s and 1970s fed into an international
grassroots movement that rebelled against the hierarchical structures,
social exclusions and systematic inequalities of industrial capitalism as well
as the wider postwar settlement, with its critique including the state, the
family, the church, the trade union movement, the corporate sector and
other elements of the ideological establishment. Whereas 1968 ultimately
produced often ineffective declarations of intent, argues Negri (1979), by
1977 the movement had affirmed itself as a social force, turning the words
of 1968 into a reality, at least in Italy. Negri and Hardt add that during the
1970s autonomia “succeeded temporarily in redesigning the landscape of
the major cities, liberating entire zones where new cultures and new forms
of life were created” (Hardt and Negri 2006, 82). The movement called
for the social sphere and the workplace to become more flexible, more
participatory and more creative while depending the values of democracy,
equality and inclusiveness. As Jeremy Guilbert has argued,

[T]he dream of 1968 had always been that the hedonism that the new con-
sumer society made possible, and the right to self-expression, which was one
of the demands of the new social movements, need not lead only to such a
selfish individualism. […] However, the mainstream communist and social-
ist Left […] tended to adopt a rather censorious stance towards the new
pleasures which consumer culture made available. (Gilbert 2008, 42)

It follows that capital hijacked rather than initiated the discourse of flexi-
bility, expression and creativity, and did so as part of its drive to rollout
neoliberal ideology, policy and associated management practices (Boltanski
and Chiapello 2005; Gilbert 2017).
The case study of New York City doesn’t merely affirm an argument
advanced by Negri and others. Brimming with examples of citizens seek-
ing out new forms of participation, creativity and freedom far in advance
of capital’s call for the breakup of the state regulation, the city’s creative
scenes of the 1970s and early 1980s also suggests that the kind of
320 T. LAWRENCE

breakthrough Negri attributes to the Italian autonomist movement

enjoyed a far greater uptake in the United States than is assumed.
Participants in their thousands, many of them self-identifying suburban
refugees, resolved to abandon the regulated work and social patterns fol-
lowed by their parents in order to pursue a new form of freedom that
placed very little value on wealth creation and the reproduction of the
nuclear family (Lawrence 2016). They also understood themselves to be
engaged in birthing a new form of cooperative society that sought to
breakdown the separation between work and pleasure. Glenn O’Brien,
Interview Magazine editor and co-founder of the cable TV show TV
Party, argued:

The party is the highest expression of social activity—the co-operative pro-

duction of fun. The party is the first step in organizing society for mutual
interests. TV Party believes that social affinity groups will provide the foun-
dation for any effective political action. (Fantina 1980)

Although Lotringer would have been familiar with TV Party—a punk-­

style cable TV show that was heavily intertwined with the Mudd Club
scene—the critic’s conference interventions, his Semiotext(e) journal and
his more recent reflections on the downtown scene understate the power
of the movement in part because the breadth and depth of the gathering
inter-scene coherence was only fleetingly grasped at the time and has
remained under-analysed until recently, as already argued. The belated
insertion of the DJ-led party/disco scene into the wider analysis of
New York’s organic creative movements of the 1970s adds exponential
weight to the importance of that movement, because the city’s DJ-led
party/disco scene predated and ended up enjoying far greater popular
support than the movements that would manifest themselves as hip hop
and punk, at least during the 1970s, before the three scenes became
increasingly intertwined. On a qualitative level, disco also contributed to
class, gender, queer and sexual diversity of the grassroots creative move-
ment, compensating for omissions and blindspots that could be found in
the more contained demographic scenes that coalesced around punk and
hip hop. The point isn’t to create a hierarchy of inclusiveness but to point
to the way new conceptions of coalition-building can be understood if
dance/disco is understood to have contributed to the broader urban-wide
movement towards creativity, collaboration and community.
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 321

The extended period of convergence began to fracture during 1983

before collapsing during 1984 and 1985. The AIDS and crack crises con-
tributed significantly. Although AIDS was first reported in 1981 and
reached epidemic proportions in 1983, Reagan didn’t mention the virus
in a public address until the autumn of 1985, preferring instead to uphold
the kind of normative “family values” that resonated with the Christian
fundamentalist Moral Majority faction within his electoral coalition (Kaiser
1997). In the meantime Ronald Reagan, having launched his “War on
Drugs” in 1982, harnessed the crack epidemic to increase the policing and
imprisonment of users of colour as well as justify cuts to programmes that
could have helped alleviate the crisis (Reinarman and Levine 1997). Facing
an existential threat, black and queer communities that had become
increasingly open to forming collaborative and social alliances assumed a
new body language that revolved around defensiveness and survival. Hank
Shocklee explains how he and rapper Chuck D took it upon themselves to
put the celebratory party aesthetic of the 1970s and early-to-mid-1980s to
one side when they began to record as Public Enemy and instead record
incendiary music that addressed the crisis in the black community
(Shocklee 2008/2009). It was a short step for Nelson George to publish
a book on the death of rhythm and blues that blamed disco for whitening
the sound, with the late 1970s breakthrough of rap positioned as the solu-
tion to disco’s supposed abandonment of black music—a move that con-
clusively eclipsed his co-authoring of the 1981 article that welcomed the
crossover that was occurring between the black and dance charts.
Meanwhile the AIDS crisis engendered a “new spasm of fear” (Clendinen
and Nagourney 1999, 517) in the queer community as participants
dropped like flies, the media fed a moral panic around the disease, and the
city government dramatically intensified its surveillance of queer-identified
venues and bathhouses. Masculinist voices in the black community were
perceived to be implicitly if not explicitly homophobic. The queer dance
floor became a place of refuge.
Changes in the New York economy, many of them traceable to Reagan’s
first budget of 1981, also contributed to the era of division, with real
estate and Wall Street values jumping significantly during 1983 before ris-
ing by approximately 20% per year for the next four years. New York
became more competitive, more unequal and more estranged, with the art
and music scenes caught up in the neoliberal conjuncture. It was during
1984 that Basquiat started to receive $20,000 for his canvases, which
enabled him to paint in spattered Armani suits. Meanwhile artists and
322 T. LAWRENCE

musicians who had contented themselves with living cheaply and doing
minimal paid work in order to cover the rent now needed to chase the
dollar in order to remain in the city. Their modus operandi shifted from
one devoted to forming collaborative relationships that produced partici-
patory, ephemeral, gestural art to one that was necessarily competitive and
individualistic. Paying less tax, corporations started to commission art and
sponsor exhibitions in order to improve their brand image. The minority
of artists who won these commissions didn’t demonstrate a consistent
willingness to critique the system that was feeding them. Basquiat wasn’t
the only winner—short-term winner because by 1988 he was dead—as an
increasingly visible strata of elite artists-cum-celebrities headed by Jeff
Koons started to charge spiralling fees for their works. If these artists
weren’t already among the relatively small number who had profited from
purchasing a SoHo loft space, they soon had the money to join that group.
As with the wider economy of the 1980s running through to the pres-
ent, the gains were enjoyed by the few, not the many, leaving the vast
majority of artists to struggle to pay the rent. As Magnuson comments:

When I got to New York [in 1978] my feeling was the most uncool thing
you could be was rich. Then what started happening was the most uncool
thing you could be was poor because being a struggling artist became
unsustainable, and it sort of switched like that very dramatically. It shifted
for me when Reagan got into office for the second four years [in November
1984]. (Magnuson in Lawrence 2016, 470)

An increasingly disaggregated creative scene both mirrored and contrib-

uted to the wider shift towards competitiveness and inequality, with a
small number of participants enjoying exponential financial success while
the vast majority made do or struggled. “The context quickly changed and
New York soon became a financial capital and a showcase for the entire
world,” recalls Lotringer (Premmereur 2014), who stopped publishing
Semiotext(e) in 1985 after concluding that the collectivist impulse of the
downtown scene had given way to a more individualist formation:

Artists who had been occupying huge downtown lofts with cheap rents had
to relinquish them. Our 5,000 square feet loft in the Fashion District, for
which we paid $300 a month suddenly went up to $2,500 and we had to
give it up. Uptown and downtown, until then separate, started mixing at
night in the clubs. The Soho group of artists lost its centrality with expres-
sionist art proliferating in the East Village and fashionable shops replacing
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 323

rough lofts. The No Wave, neo-punk scene with a lively production of no-­
budget films didn’t last for much longer. Art galleries multiplied and being
an artist became an enviable, parent-subsidized profession. (Lotringer in
Premmereur 2014)

By 1984 the collective, collaborationist impulse of the New York music

and art scene had given way to something more individualistic and more
competitive, because by then the economy had started to assume its neo-
liberal shape while the nation’s president’s response to the AIDS and drug
consumption crises amplified rather than resolved divisions. Yet the
embedment of competitive individualism and the material successes
enjoyed by a minority of artists and musicians during the new epoch
shouldn’t obscure the distinctive nature of the period that preceded it, as
it has been allowed to do in arguably the most popular account of the rise
of neoliberalism. Nor should the mythology that during the 1970s
New York amounted to a failed city in need of repair pass without critique,
for while cuts to public services and associated social problems shouldn’t
be romanticised, the challenge of shifting from industrial to a postindus-
trial economy indicates that New York was in need not of repair but sup-
port. Even though the response of the White House and Wall Street was
harsh, the city nevertheless hosted an explosion of culture that was rooted
in community and pioneered new forms of expression and living. Far from
seeking to escape a city that is routinely depicted as amounting to an unliv-
eable hellhole, participants in its art and music scenes were reluctant to
leave for even for a weekend in case that would lead them to miss out on
some essential gathering.
The challenge, then, is to understand the 1970s and the early 1980s
not as a time characterised by urban decline that paved the way for the
inevitable introduction of neoliberal reforms, but as one that broke with
the postwar settlement in order to generate new forms of flexibility, cre-
ativity and collaboration. As Maurizio Lazzarato argues in his discussion
of the French “intermittents,” intermittent workers in the entertainment
industry who went on strike in 2003 to contest cuts to benefits introduced
by the French government,

[T]he assertion that subjectivity is first of all a collective assemblage, even

when it is expressed through an individual, is essential to the dismantling of
the neoliberal ideology of the “creative class” or the theory of the “cognitive
worker”, which maintains belief in the creativity of individuals or social
324 T. LAWRENCE

groups defined by certain socioanthropological characteristics. (Lazzarato

2017, 195)

Libertarian, antiessentialist and rigorously anti-individualist, the intermit-

tents recognised the creative nature of collectivity and the collaborative
dynamic inherent in all real creativity, as Gilbert has also observed, adding
that “it is these facts that neoliberalism is predicated on attempting to
refute at all costs. It is their irrefutability that remains neoliberalism’s—
and perhaps capitalism’s—greatest point of vulnerability” (Gilbert 2017,
xliv). If arguments made for the intermittents can be applied to the earlier
activity of New York City’s intersecting creative movements of the 1970s—
movements that almost certainly inspired a visiting Brian Eno to formulate
the idea of the “scenius” as “the communal form of the concept of the
genius ethos of the genius” (Lawrence 2016, 462)—then claims already
made for the Italian autonomist movement can be forcefully extended.

Decolonising Disco
While large swatches of the United States believed New York to be unsal-
vageable precisely because of its multiracial, polysexual, cross-class popula-
tion, the channelling of that coalition onto its dance floors enabled the city
to achieve its pioneering role in the development of DJ-led dance culture.
Drilling down on this development, Francis Grasso and David Mancuso
moved ahead of Kool Herc because the crowds that gathered at the Loft
and the Sanctuary were more diverse and included a far higher proportion
of queers than was the case at Herc’s Sedgwick Avenue parties. Diverse
crowds also encouraged diverse DJs to draw on records from a diverse
range of sources, as identified by Vince Aletti in his pioneering article on
the rise of private party and public discotheque culture. Aletti described
the music that could be heard in these venues as often “Afro-Latin in
sound or instrumentation, heavy on the drums, with minimal lyrics, some-
times in a foreign language, and a repetitious chorus” with the most popu-
lar cuts “usually the longest and the most instrumental, performed by
black groups who are, frequently, not American” (Aletti 1973). A Loft
regular who was heavily influenced by Mancuso’s selections, Aletti added
that Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” amounted to “a perfect example of
the genre.”
The coalescing sound included African and Latin elements at its core,
yet during the second half of the 1970s the supply lines for imported
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 325

records narrowed markedly, so while West European disco flowed into the
United States freely, shaping much of the output of the era’s bestselling
label, Casablanca Records, little African and Latin music made the same
journey. The development received little attention, perhaps because the
spiralling success of Eurodisco soon threatened to overwhelm not merely
African and Latin imports but African American disco itself, leaving the
proponents of African American disco to argue for the ongoing impor-
tance of what could be loosely described as the original disco sound. In the
process, disco became a US invention that inspired a European subgenre,
with the non-US and non-European elements that contributed to the
shaping of the original disco sound subsumed within a colonial narrative
that buried its colonial status. In this respect, too, the history of disco
requires further thought.
To elaborate, the early years of DJ-led dance culture integrated
European, Latin and in particular African imports into the open-ended yet
interlinked soundscape that could be heard in private parties and public
discotheques across New York and in particular in the city’s downtown
neighbourhoods. A sign of the changing times, Grasso only started to play
Olatunji’s “Drums of Passion” when new owners took over the Sanctuary
in early 1970 and opened its to queer dancers, a first within public disco-
theque culture. Mancuso went further as he integrated records by the
Congolese Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, the Bahamian-led Exuma, the
Bahamian Funky Nassau, the multicultural UK band Cymande, and the
UK-based Ghanian-Caribbean line-up Osibisa. Records that displayed a
strong Latin element, even when recorded outside of Latin America, also
received heavy play, including cuts by the Spanish group Barrabás and the
US/multicultural rock band WAR. Meanwhile African records such as
Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” and Fela Kuti and the Africa ‘70s
“Shakara” became iconic Loft selections. Many of these records went on
to gain local and national notoriety because, first, Mancuso’s audiophile
sound system and electric party atmosphere enabled his selections to emit
in the best-possible situation and, second, because his private party status
enabled him to stay open long after New York’s public discotheques were
required to close, which in turn encouraged the city’s discotheque DJs to
head to the Loft once they were finished working for the night. Indeed
“Soul Makossa” became the first record to enter the Hot 100 without
radio play precisely because of the rising power of New York’s dance floor
network (Lawrence 2003).
326 T. LAWRENCE

As a close reading of the DJ lists that accompanied Vince Aletti’s weekly

“Disco Files” column published in Record World confirm, African and
Latin elements became central to disco as the sound consolidated between
1974 and 1977 before peaking in 1978 (Aletti 1998). Recruiting many of
Philadelphia International’s key musicians, Salsoul became the first label
to explicitly integrate Latin elements into its recordings. Lamont Dozier’s
“Going Back to My Roots” culminated with an extended break that fea-
tured African-Latin percussion and ecstatic chanting. Linda Clifford’s
“Runaway Love,” Patti Jo’s “Make Me Believe In You,” Melba Moore’s
“Standing Right Here,” Ozo’s “Anambra,” Vicki Sue Robinson’s “Turn
the Beat Around,” Salsoul Orchestra’s “Salsoul 3001,” T-Connection’s
“Do What You Wanna Do,” Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell” and Karen
Young’s “Hot Shot” variously foregrounded congas, talking drums, tim-
bales and woodblocks to heighten the African-Latin component of disco,
with DJ-remixers Walter Gibbons and Richie Rivera arguably the most
progressive contributors to the development. At times the engagement
assumed a more obviously colonial rhetoric, as was the case with the
Ritchie Family’s internationally themed albums, Brazil, Arabian Nights
and African Queens (the latter featured the African drummers J.M. Diatta
and Babatunde Olatunji). In short, disco continued to draw on many of
the African and Latin sounds that had contributed to its formation, yet
now did so as an organising force, with sounds that had previously enjoyed
a form of chaotic equality now subsumed within its integrative coordinates.
Yet it is hard to pinpoint any African or Latin tracks that became dance
floor staples at party spaces such as the Loft along with other cutting-edge
private parties including Flamingo, the Paradise Garage, Reade Street, the
Soho Place and 12 West, never mind midtown’s more explicitly commer-
cial discotheques. Although Mancuso’s ear remained tuned to interna-
tional sounds, he appears to have played maybe not even a handful of
tracks that were recorded outside of the United States and Europe during
the latter years of the 1970s, with Third World’s “Now That We Found
Love,” laid down in Nassau, Bahamas, the location of Chris Blackwell’s
Compass Point Studios, the standout exception. Although Compass Point
would remain influential for several years, the supply chain had shifted, in
part because US record companies had belatedly woken up to the poten-
tial to sell music through party as well as radio DJs, turning the produc-
tion of disco into an industry. The spiralling success of Saturday Night
Fever took the disco market into overdrive, encouraging independent as
well as major labels to release a disproportionate amount of substandard,
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 327

generic disco music. Whereas during the opening years of the 1970s
New York DJs found themselves scouring record bins in search of music
to feed to ravenous crowds, oblivious to the culture that was taking root,
by 1978 they had become embroiled in a supply chain of increasingly vari-
able quality, the sheer size of which diminished the range of sounds that
were within easy reach.
There was no lack of danceable music being recorded in Africa, Latin
American and beyond during the second half of the 1970s, and much of it
was transparently influenced by disco as well as funk and jazz. To focus the
discussion on Africa and to begin with one extended example, drawing on
primary discographical information available at database and trading web-
site Discogs (2019), a New York-based company based at 1755 Broadway,
Editions Makossa, which later traded as Makossa and Makossa
International, captured the unfolding exchange. Early into its run the
label released music by the Lafayette Afro-Rock Band, a Long Island funk
line-up that had relocated to the less competitive environment of Paris,
where they worked as the in-house band at Pierre Jaubert’s Parisound
studio and performed regularly in Barbès, a centre for African immigrants
living in Paris, which tuned them into African music. The group released
the heavily percussive “Voodounon” on Editions Makossa in 1973; the
record was distributed by the African Record Centre, located at 1194
Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. Released in the United States in 1974,
their debut album featured a cover of Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa” as
well as “Hihache,” the latter registering more in the Bronx than Manhattan.
The band’s 1974 follow-up, Malik, included “Djungi,” which featured
four-on-the-floor bass beat and uptempo, grooving instrumentation—a
combination that would soon define the early sound of disco. Indeed, the
O’Jays classic disco record “I Love Music,” a 1975 release, reproduced
the bass line and keyboard melody in “Djungi.”
Editions Makossa went on to license and release music from Fela Kuti
as well as Georges Anderson, Ernesto DjéDjé, Gregoire Lawani and Buari.
The latter, led by Ghanian singer, dancer, percussionist, composer and co-­
arranger Sidiku Buari (1975), debuted with an eponymous album on RCA
in the United States in 1975 that displayed many of the key components
of the breakthrough disco-funk sound; the opening track, “Karam Bani,”
features sizzling four-four hi-hats, funky drumming, a four-on-the-floor
bass beat, foreign-language chorus- and chant-led vocals, and jamming
instrumentation. Buari went on to release Disco Soccer, an upfront disco-­
funk album released by Polydor in Ghana in 1977 and by Makossa in the
328 T. LAWRENCE

United States in 1979. In the text that accompanied Disco Soccer Buari
explained:

I feel through my music—as waxed in this collection is a development [sic]

which comes from the ingredients of the traditional music and culture of
Ghana. There is a strong American disco beat to these heavy African
rhythms. For it is my intention that my music gives pleasure to dancers as
well as educate. (Buari 1977/79)

Featuring a tight disco-funk rhythm, swooping strings, lyrics that were

limited to a soulful chorus and a trippy synthesiser, “I’m Ready,” the sec-
ond track on Disco Soccer, came out as a 12-inch single on Makossa
International Records in 1978.
African interaction with disco during the second half of the 1970s
didn’t begin and end with Makossa. Foregrounding five African musi-
cians, produced by white Belgian producers Ralph Benatar and Jean
Kluger, recorded in Brussels and released on local label Biram, “A. I. E. (A
Mwana)” by Black Blood (1975) received international distribution before
Chrysalis (UK) issued a 12-inch version (1977) in a bright-blue-and-­
yellow cover featuring “DISCO DISCO DISCO DISCO DISCO” printed
in circle formation. Pioneering Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen and the
Africa 70 musicians provided evidence that disco had reached Nigeria no
later than 1976 when they recorded “Afro-Disco Beat” at Decca’s 16
track Abule-Oja Vaba Studio in Lagos. Released by Phonogram in 1977,
the track is straight-up Afrobeat, raising the possibility that Allen was
minded to claim disco as being his and Kuti’s invention. Wherever inven-
tion lay, Teaspoon & the Waves were sufficiently familiar with Lamont
Dozier’s “Going Back to My Roots” (1977) to release “Oh Yeh Soweto”
(1977), a toughened, roughened cover of the song, in South Africa.
Regarded as Cape Town’s answer to Earth, Wind & Fire, Pacific Express
recorded “The Way It Used to Be” in Johannesburg before the record was
released in France in 1978. Composed and produced by South African
musician Hamilton Nzimande, the Nzimande All Stars released the
16-minute dance jam “Sporo Disco” on the South African label Masterpiece
in 1978. Having settled in Paris, the 20-year-old Gabonese vocalist
Ondeno recorded the pulsating Afro-disco track “Mayolye” (1978) after
finding joy in the city’s Afro-disco scene, releasing the seven-inch in a
colour cover that featured him sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower plus a
“Super Disco” logo stamped in bright red on light blue. Meanwhile
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 329

Ghanian musician Dan Boadi moved to Chicago and as Dan Boadi and
the African Internationals released 500 copies of the Curtis Mayfield-­
sounding “Money Is the Root of Evil” (1978) on NAAP. Eko recorded
Funky Disco Music (1979)—including the title track plus “Ndolo Embe
Mulema”—at Studios Barclay in Paris and released the result on
Dragon Phénix.
The production of African disco continued through the tipping point
year of 1979, when the overproduction of generic disco along with the
slowdown in the US economy provoked a national backlash against the
sound and a general reduction in its production. If progressive New York
City DJs were becoming concerned about the lack of fresh-sounding
disco, one wonders if they got to hear Ghanaian multi-instrumentalist and
one-time Osibisa player Kiki Gyan’s shimmering “Disco Dancer,” the
opening track on Feeling So Good, which was recorded and mixed in
London before receiving a release on Nigeria’s Boom Records. Clément
Djimogne’s “Money Make Man Mad” (released on Nigerian label
Nigerphone) and Benis Cletin’s “Jungle Magic” (released on Nigerian
label Afrodisia) foregrounded a more organic aesthetic and more obvi-
ously African accented vocals than any disco recorded in a US studio and
were no less compelling for that. An example of the rich cultural exchange
that flowed between Nigeria and the UK following Nigeria’s declaration
of independence in 1960, and surviving the corrosive effects of successive
dictatorships, Nigerian line-up Blo recorded the disco-funk number “Get
That Groove In” in London before releasing the track on Afrodisia.
Nigerian musician Orlando Julius, the leader of numerous bands and a
collaborator with Lamont Dozier, merged disco and Ghanian highlife for
the recording of “Disco Hi Life,” released on the Nigerian label Jofabro
(1979). Explaining the depth and energy of Nigeria’s contribution, John
Doran notes that the indigenous club scene’s preference for live music
over DJs meant local disco line-ups were in demand, with every city able
to support “at least one world-class band” (Doran 2016).
These and other African disco records released during the second half
of the 1970s didn’t appear in the DJs lists published in Vince Aletti’s
“Disco Files” column save for Fela Kuti and the Africa ‘70s “Shakara
Oloje,” first released in Nigeria (1972) before Editions Makossa licensed
it in the United States in 1974. During the first months of the year Aletti
made some references to African and Latin music, describing Buari’s debut
album as “one of the most exciting African imports since ‘Soul Makossa’”
(Aletti 1998, 58), and noting that
330 T. LAWRENCE

while [Latin music] may not be everyone’s idea of discotheque music, […]
an increasing number of clubs in New York and other cities with large Latin,
primarily Puerto Rican, communities are scattering records by Eddie
Palmieri, Larry Harlow, Tito Puente and others in between B.T. Express,
Carl Douglas and LaBelle. (Aletti 1998, 62)

Even if they were contained, these comments chimed with Aletti’s ground-
breaking account of the open-ended character of discotheque music, pub-
lished in 1973, yet the rest of the year saw virtually no further references
to African and Latin music save for a thumbs-up review of a Fania All Stars
concert at Madison Square Garden. By the summer of 1975 the quick-­
succession release of the Ritchie Family’s “Brazil,” Banzaii’s “Chinese
Kung Fu” and Van McCoy’s “The Hustle” suggested that US and
European disco outfits were becoming adept at integrating the signifiers
of international music into their recordings. In August 1975 Aletti claimed
that “the popularity of disco music hasn’t prevented performers and pro-
ducers in other styles from breaking through” (Aletti 1998, 110). Yet
although he concluded in his end-of-year column in December 1975 that
disco “remains unpredictable,” his end-of-year lists of the year’s best disco
singles, albums and special pressings didn’t include a single African or
Latin track in its 160 entries (Aletti 1998, 152). A certain narrowing had
taken place on the NYC dance floor, two years before disco would go into
marketing overdrive.
The mutant, convergent period that followed the backlash against disco
and the withdrawal of the major labels from the genre witnessed the reen-
try of African and Latin imports into the New York party scene, with
Jamaican dub also establishing a new foothold. Having shifted towards an
increasingly disco-driven sound, as exemplified by his straight-up disco
selections for a chart submitted to Record World (Aletti 1998, 411) in July
1978, David Mancuso started to select recordings by artists such as King
Sunny Adé and His African Beats (“365 Is My Number/The Message”)
and Hugh Masekela (“Don’t Go Lose It Baby”) as well as Black Uhuru,
Jimmy Cliff and Eddy Grant. Mudd Club DJ Anita Sarko started to inte-
grate music from Mexican composer Esquivel and His Orchestra, Peruvian
vocalist Yma Sumac and Fela Kuti into her sets. French label Celluloid
contributed to the reopening when it established an office in the city, mak-
ing it easier for DJs to draw music from Errol Dunkley, Kassav,” Nyboma
Mwan’dido, Salif Keita, Touré Kunda, Kante Manfila and Osibisa into
their sets, with Danceteria’s Mark Kamins one of the first to cultivate a
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 331

“world music” sound. Produced, arranged and mixed by the trend-setting

team of Arthur Baker and John Robie, “Funky Soul Makossa” by Nairobi
and the Awesome Foursome, a 1982 release, linked the early 1980s back
to the notably open period of the early 1970s. Michael Jackson went on to
replay the chant from Dibango’s breakthrough release in “Wanna Be
Startin’ Somethin,’” the opening track on Thriller, without permission; in
1986 the US performer settled out of court with the Cameroonian musi-
cian (Gbadamassi 2009).
However, a significant number of African disco records continued to
struggle to gain any traction, among them Ghanian Okyerema Asante’s
“Sabi (Get Down),” Nigerian N’Draman Blintch’s album Cosmic Sounds,
the London-based Ghanaian outfit Kabbala’s “Voltan Dance,”
Cameroonian Pasteur Lappe’s 12-inch release of “Na Real Sekele Fo Ya,”
Martinique vocalist Mac Gregor’s “Nan Ye Li Kan” (recorded in the Ivory
Coast), Boncana Maïga’s “Koyma Hondo” (recorded in New York),
Ghanian Rim and Kasa’s “Love Me for Real” (recorded in San Francisco),
Ghanian Pat Thomas’s “Yesu San Bra: Disco Hi-Life” and Ivory Coast
artist NST Cophie’s album Mon’Da Center. Given that these recordings
have gone on to circulate in Europe, the United States and beyond via a
wave of reissues led by labels including Analog Africa, Awesome Tapes
from Africa, Mr Bongo, Sofrito, Soul Jazz, Soundway and Strut, picking
up significant DJ play along the way, it could be concluded that their ini-
tial failure to break through had little if anything to do with concerns
about “quality.” Interestingly, these and scores of other African and Latin
disco tracks have for the most part come to the fore following disco’s ini-
tial 1990s revival. As DJs and dancers exhausted the US and European
disco archive, they turned to more obviously international archives, many
of which hadn’t enjoyed widespread distribution prior to the backlash
against disco or even after.
It is time for these and other disco-oriented recordings to be included
an expanded definition of the disco archive. Their musical value suggests
that if trading routes and cultural assumptions had been more equal then
disco might have maintained the more obviously open and international
aesthetic of early “discotheque music,” and might have found it easier to
avoid becoming the two-dimensional product that made it vulnerable to
the backlash. The expanded history of disco also enables the history of US
disco to be better understood, for in addition to the sound emerging as an
expression of marginalised, countercultural forces, it also came to assume
a colonial logic that included US and European disco at the expense of
332 T. LAWRENCE

minority expressions of the sound. The very fact that disco assumed an
international dimension also confirms disco to have been one of the first
sounds to demonstrate that humans with connecting desires were ready to
move to a common beat, irrespective of where in the world they were
dancing.
Drawing attention to this can’t be reduced to a desire to live in a recy-
cled, nostalgia-tinted past (Reynolds 2011) or a wish that history had
taken a different turn. Global sounds have come to the fore powerfully
during the last 10 years, after all, with African, Asian and Latin sounds
offering fresh directions for electronic genres including nu disco, house
and techno that might otherwise have run out of ideas. Awarded label of
the year at Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM awards in 2018, the London-­
based label On the Corner exists as a cutting-edge newcomer to an evolv-
ing movement that combines a wild yet strangely cohesive array of
international styles. Melding jazz, electronic music and field recordings
from the archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Brussels—
which was built to showcase King Leopold II’s Congo Free State in the
1897 World Exhibition—DJ and electronic producer Khalab’s Black Noise
2084 provides a postcolonial platform upon which subjugated voices con-
nect with black electronic dance music and jazz. Whereas disco c. 1974
smoothed out some of the rough edges and radically improbable connec-
tions that came to the fore in the discotheque mix of 1970–1973, record-
ings such as Black Noise maintain the rough edges and improbable
connections of colonial and postcolonial transatlantic music to the fore.
Flow and interruption are held together in a form of anti-imperial
expression.
For a culture that has often been derided as being simplistic, disco nes-
tles at the apex of contemporary complexity. Born out of counterculture
and postindustrialism, the culture in its pre-named form became an influ-
ential example of community-driven creativity and connectedness.
Paralleling other scenes, it provided participants not only with hope dur-
ing challenging times but also with a new way of living that suggested a
postindustrial economy could take root in ways that would enable citizens
to lead lives that were more participatory as well as more flexible. And
although US and West European disco eventually marginalised the cul-
ture’s organic party origins and its international roots, those histories
remain recuperable to the point where an oft-ridiculed cultural formation
seems to offer strange hope for us to better understand a past in order to
reconceptualise and reexperience the present and the future.
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 333

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 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 335

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336 T. LAWRENCE

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Discography
Banzaii. 1975. Chinese Kung Fu. Twelve-inch single. Scepter Records.
Black Blood. 1975. A. I. E. (A Mwana). Seven-inch single. Biram.
———. 1977. A. I. E. (A Mwana). Twelve-inch single. Chrysalis.
Blintch, N’Draman. 1980 Cosmic Sounds. Cosmic Sounds.
Blo. 1979. Get That Groove In. From the album Bulky Backside—Blo Is Back.
Afrodisia.
Buari. 1975. Buari. RCA Victor.
———. 1978. Disco Soccer. Twelve-inch single. Makossa International Records.
———. 1979a. Disco Soccer. Polydor 1977, Makossa.
———. 1979b. Karam Bani. From the album Buari. RCA Victor.
Cletin, Benis. 1979. Jungle Magic. From the album Jungle Magic. Afrodisia.
Clifford, Linda. 1978. Runaway Love. Twelve-inch single. Custom Records.
Dan Boadi and the African Internationals. 1978. Money Is the Root of Evil. From
Money Is the Root of All Evil. NAAP Records.
Dibango, Manu. 1972. Soul Makossa. Fiesta.
Djimogne, Clément. 1979. Money Make Man Mad. From the album Money Makes
Man Mad. Nigerphone.
Dozier, Lamont. 1977. Going Back to My Roots. Twelve-inch single. Warner Bros.
Eko. 1979a. Funky Disco Music. On Funky Disco Music. Dragon Phénix. Reissued
by Africa Seven, 2018.
———. 1979b. Ndolo Embe Mulema. On Funky Disco Music. Dragon Phénix.
———. 2016. Funky Disco Music. Twelve-inch single. Fly By Night Music.
Fela Kuti and the Africa ‘70s. 1974. Shakara Oloje. Editions Makossa.
Gyan, Kiki. 1979. Disco Dancer. From the album Feeling So Good. Boom Records.
Jackson, Michael. 1982a. Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’. From the album
Thriller. Epic.
———. 1982b. Thriller. Epic.
Jo, Patti. 1973. Make Me Believe In You. Seven-inch single. Wand. Remixed by
Tom Moulton for Disco Gold (Scepter, 1975).
Julius, Orlando. 1979. Disco Hi Life. Jofabro.
Kabbala. 1982. Voltan Dance. Twelve-inch single. Red Flame.
Kendricks, Eddie. 1972. Girl You Need a Change of Mind. From the album
People… Hold On. Tamla.
Khalab. 2018. Black Noise 2084. On the Corner Records.
King Sunny Adé and His African Beats. 1982. 365 Is My Number/The Message.
Island Records.
Lafayette Afro-Rock Band. 1973. Voodounon. Editions Makossa.
 EPILOGUE: DECOLONISING DISCO—COUNTERCULTURE… 337

———. 1974a. Djungi. From the album Malik.

———. 1974b Hihache. From the album Soul Makossa.
———. 1974c. Soul Makossa. From the album Soul Makossa.
———. 1974d. Malik. America Records / Makossa International.
Lappe, Pasteur. 1980. Na Real Sekele Fo Ya. Twelve-inch single. Disques
Espérance.
MacGregor. Unknown. Nan Ye Li Kan. Production Ecurie.
Maïga, Boncana. 1982. Koyma Hondo. From the album Koyma Hondo. West
African Music.
Masekela, Hugh. 1984 Don’t Go Lose It Baby. Twelve-inch single. Vuka Africa.
McCoy, Van. 1975. The Hustle. Seven-inch single. Avco.
Moore, Melba. 1977. Standing Right Here. Twelve-inch single. Buddah Records.
Nairobi and the Awesome Foursome. 1982. Funky Soul Makossa. Streetwise.
NST Cophie. 1982. Mon’Da Center. Cophie’s.
Nzimande, Hamilton. The Nzimande All Stars. 1978. Sporo Disco. Twelve-inch
single. Masterpiece.
O’Jays. 1975. I Love Music. Philadelphia International.
Okyerema Asante. 1979. Sabi (Get Down). From the album Sabi. Atumpan
Records.
Olatunji. 1959. Drums of Passion. From the album Drums of Passion. Columbia.
Ondeno. 1978. Mayolye. Seven-inch single. African Music Time.
Ozo. 1976. Anambra. Twelve-inch single. DJM Records.
Pacific Express. 1978. The Way It Used to Be. From the album On Time. Gull.
Rim and Kasa. 1982. Love Me for Real. From the album Too Tough. Sum Sum
Records.
Ritchie Family. 1975. Brazil. From the album Brazil. 20th Century Records.
Robinson, Vicki Sue. 1976. Turn the Beat Around. RCA Victor: Seven-inch single.
Salsoul Orchestra. 1976. Salsoul 3001. Seven-inch single. Salsoul Records.
T-Connection. 1977. Do What You Wanna Do. Twelve-inch single. TK Disco.
Teaspoon & the Waves. 1977. Oh Yeh Soweto. From the album Teaspoon & the
Waves. Soul Jazz Pop.
Third World. 1984. Now That We’ve Found Love. Twelve-inch single. Island
Records.
Thomas, Pat. 1980. Yesu San Bra: Disco Hi-Life. From the album 1980. OIR/Pan
African Records.
Tony Allen and the Africa 70. 1977. Afro-Disco Beat. Phonogram.
War. 1972. City, Country, City. From the album The World Is a Ghetto. United
Artists.
Ward, Anita. 1979. Ring My Bell. Twelve-inch single. TK Disco.
Young, Karen. 1978. Hot Shot. West End Records.
338 T. LAWRENCE

Filmography
Badham, John (Dir.). Saturday Night Fever. Paramount Pictures, 1977.
Davis, Tamra (Dir.). Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Arthouse
Films, 2010.
 Index1

A Archives, 5, 15–17, 22, 24, 42,

ABBA, 116 178, 179, 195, 200, 214, 229,
Adorno, Theodor, 77, 87, 287 230, 232–234, 246n4, 285,
Adriatic sea 331, 332
coast, 199 archival practices, 17, 24
riviera, 20, 76–80 Atopia, 24, 297
Afrobeat, 254, 269, 279, 328 atopic future, 282, 285
Afrocentrism, 23, 254, 255 Autonomia, 90, 304, 319
Afrofunk, 254 Avex, 115, 118, 120, 121
Afrofuturism, 288, 289, 292
Agha, Salma, 135, 136
Al Mounzer, Ihsan, 237, 239–241, B
243, 246n1, 246n6 Baalbeck Festival, 225
Albert One, 84 Baalbeck Studio, 235, 243, 246n5
Aletti, Vince, 283, 307, 324, 326, Baby Records, 83, 84
329, 330 Baia degli Angeli, 83
Alfa (label), 118, 119 Bailes Black, 67
Appaiah, Biddu, 132–134, Bakhtin, Mikhail, 295
137–139, 284 Baldelli, Daniele, 83
Archambault, Gilles, 38 Bambaataa, Afrika, 312

1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 339

F. Pitrolo, M. Zubak (eds.), Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and
1980s, Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular
Music, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91995-5
340 INDEX

Bamboo Shoot Tribe (Takenokozoku), Coca-Cola, 184, 189, 199

116, 117, 119 colonial gestures, 274
Barry, Claudja, 43 Communism, 198, 217
Barthes, Roland, 80 Conde, Alex, 267
Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 321, 322 Cortez, Diego, 310, 317
Batakoto, 266 Cosmopolitanism
Beachcomber, 224, 262, 265 aesthetic cosmopolitanism, 4, 15
Bee Gees, 207, 254, 268, 290 cosmopolitan, 52, 54, 57, 61, 68,
Being (label), 115, 121, 200 153, 164, 173, 253
Benedict, Vijay, 130 Counterculture, 24, 69, 105,
Benjamin, Walter, 89 216, 303–332
Benson, Tony, 265, 266 Cover, 23, 34, 67, 84, 101, 108–112,
Berlusconi, Silvio, 78, 95n3 115, 118, 120, 138, 161, 163,
Big in Japan, 20, 103 179–181, 205, 206, 229, 235,
Blo, 257, 258, 329 236, 244, 322, 327, 328
Bloch, Ernst, 282, 285, 286, 295, cover versions, 21, 84, 111, 179,
296, 298, 298n3 181, 183, 191n7
Bon dance, 101, 111 Crate digging, 5, 12, 14, 16
Boney M, 24, 101, 116, 138, 139, crate diggers, 12, 13, 15, 22, 182,
181, 204, 205, 207, 209, 241, 203, 214
268, 282, 289, 290, 292, 296 Cucuzella, George, 39
Brazil, 19, 20, 51–70, 330 Czechoslovakia, 2, 22, 173–191, 191n3
Brightman, Sarah, 162, 292, 294
Brown, Miguel, 43
Bubble gum’ music, 176 D
Burman, R. D., 135 Đogani, Hamit, 213, 217
Dancin’ Days
discotheques, 19, 51, 56–59,
C 61, 71
Č olić, Zdravko, 208, 210 soap opera, 19, 52, 62–63
Caban Bamboo, 265 soundtrack, 63–65
Canada, 31, 32, 35, 40–42 David, Michal, 184, 185
Candy pop, 115–121 Decolonisation, 3
Casablanca, 205 Deleuze, Gilles, 315
CBGB, 309, 310, 317 Derrida, Jacques, 17
Chaimovicz, Marc Camille, 10 Deserio, Pat, 40
Chakachas, 255 Dibango, Manu, 15, 39, 254, 324,
Chakraborty, Mithun, 21, 127–130, 325, 327, 331
135–137, 140–147 Dick, Nicolas El, 239, 246n5
China, 21, 151–166, 166n2 Disco 1234, 42
Cice-Mace, 200, 201, 210 Disco ball, see Mirrorball
City pop, 114, 115, 122 Discobolos, 178, 179, 181, 182
 INDEX 341

Discogs, 16, 17, 85, 95n4, 204, 327 Funk Warehouse, 267
Discomagic, 85, 86 Funkytown, 19, 29–45
Disco polo, 89, 96n5
Diting, 152
Douglas, Carl, 111, 133, 330 G
Dr. Dragon & The Oriental Gazebo, 85, 86, 88, 92, 93
Express, 107 George, Nelson, 304, 306, 321
Dzi Croquettes, 59 Gilbert, Jeremy, 319
Džuboks, 208, 209 Globalisation, 9, 21, 127–148, 153
Globo Television, 60
Godard, Jean-Luc, 199
E Goody Music, 81
Eastern Gang, 114 Gospel, 309
EBM, 84 Gott, Karel, 180, 182
Eco, Umberto, 80, 94 Gowon, Yakuba, 252
Economidas, Peter, 261
EDM, 282
Emori, Ai, 105, 106, 108–112, 114 H
Empire Records, 40 Hanna, Toni, 235
Estrada, 199, 202, 208–210, 216 Harajuku, 116, 117
Eurodisco/Euro disco/Eurodance/ Hardt, Michael, 304, 319
Europop/Eurobeat, 20, 84, 89, Harvey, David, 6, 7, 304, 313, 314,
103, 106, 115–122, 137, 208, 318, 319
228, 236, 244, 268, 284, 325 Hassan, Nazia, 133, 134, 137–139,
Exercise Disco/Fitness Disco, 157 147, 148
Hayashi, Tetsuji, 114
Hebdige, Dick, 95, 202
F Hedong (Hollywood East Star
Face Record, 161 Trax), 161
Fairouz, 225–227, 230, 232, 240, 246 Herc, DJ Kool, 311, 312, 324
FESTAC, 253–255 Heterotopia, 1–25, 76, 79, 282, 295,
Florence, 83 297, 317
Folk, 21, 82, 89, 103, 107, 112, 131, Hi-NRG, 42, 43, 101, 117,
163, 264 118, 120
Foucault, Michel, 5–11, 76, 79, 282, Hip hop, 12–14, 16, 24, 66, 101–103,
295, 315, 316 118, 148, 278, 298n1, 303–312,
Frenéticas, 19, 54, 58–60, 62, 64, 65, 314, 318, 320
71n7, 71n8 HIV/AIDS, 306, 321, 323
Funk, 18, 23, 55, 57, 63, 65–67, 69, Hladnik, Boštjan, 206
70n3, 70n5, 71n10, 72n12, 106, HMV (The Gramophone Company of
114, 115, 130, 131, 204, 207, India), 103, 138, 139
209, 210, 216, 239, 240, 288, Hobeika, Rafic, 23, 235, 236, 246n1
291, 292, 309, 311, 327 Hodge, Jim, 9, 10
342 INDEX

Hollis, Phil, 270 Kota, Tera, 277

Honda, Satoshi ‘Hustle, 107–116, 119 Kuti, Fela, 255, 325, 327–330
Hope, 11, 12, 18, 24, 25, 54, 70, 79,
114, 178, 206, 232, 282–287,
290–292, 294–296, 298, 332 L
Horkheimer, Max, 77, 87 La Bionda, 81, 82, 93, 96n6, 241
House, 19, 84, 118, 205, 234, 244, Lagos, 9, 253, 261, 262, 266,
279, 332 267, 328
Hurrah, 311 Lahiri, Bappi, 21, 127, 129–131,
Hyperlocal/hyperlocalism, 12, 95n3 135–137, 139, 141, 146, 148n2
Latin disco, 331
Latin music, 71n8, 325, 329, 330
I Lawrence, Tim, 2, 15, 17, 23–25,
India, 2, 21, 127, 128, 130, 132–135, 36, 42, 45, 89, 90, 104,
137–142, 144, 146–148, 284 158, 190, 197, 198, 292,
Industrial (mode of production), 86 304–312, 317, 318, 320,
Italo, Italo disco, 20, 24, 41, 43, 322, 324, 325
75–95, 117, 119, 120, 161, 213, Lazzarato, Maurizio, 323, 324
268, 270, 293, 299n6 Lear, Amanda, 216, 291
Italy, 20, 63, 75, 76, 78–82, 85, 90, Lebanon, 2, 23, 223–235,
96n5, 116, 184, 239, 268, 319 237–245, 246n3
Levine, Ian, 43
LGBTQ+, 264, 290
J Licorne, La, 31–34, 37, 38
Jackson, Michael, 129, 131, 136, 140, Lime, 43
258, 331 Limelight, 29, 30, 33, 38, 39, 42, 45
Jacqueline, 23, 235, 236, 246n1 Lipovača, Sead, 209
Jamal, Mohammad, 237, 246n6 Loft, the, 307, 308, 311,
Jameson, Frederic, 4 318, 324–326
Japan, 20, 101–110, 112–117, Lokice, 210
119–122, 123n3, 123n4, 123n5 Lombardoni, Severo, 85, 86
Japan Victor record company (JVC), Lotringer, Sylvère, 24, 315–317, 320,
107–110, 115 322, 323
Jones, Grace, 70n5, 207, 216, Luković, Petar, 208–210
282, 291
Jovem Guarda, 65–67
Jugoton, 205 M
Maalouf, Robert, 239, 246n5
Magnuson, Ann, 317, 322
K Maia, Tim, 52, 63, 65, 67, 72n12
Kerliu, Arian, 209 Makzoumeh, George, 229–231,
Kesovija, Tereza, 208 233, 234
‘Killer Joe’ Piro, 35 Malavasi, Mauro, 81
 INDEX 343

Mancuso, David, 17, 287, 307, 308, New wave, 22, 42, 84, 165, 176, 190,
324–326, 330 196, 201–203, 212, 214, 236,
Mandić, Oliver, 211 245, 257, 265
Manuwa, Ricky, 267 New York City (NYC), 9, 23, 24, 31,
Margino, 270 36, 37, 39, 42, 44, 45, 54, 77,
Marković, Goran, 210 252, 254, 256, 303, 305–313,
Marx, Karl, 87, 199 316, 319, 324, 329, 330
Max’s Kansas City, 309 The New York City Discotheque
Mazierska, Ewa, 3, 5, 203 (NYCD), 54–55, 68, 70n5, 71n8,
Mecano (club), 224 72n15, 212
Meco, 282, 293, 294 Nigeria, 2, 23, 251–279, 328, 329
Melody Maker, 202 ‘Non-film’ music, 137–140, 146
Mengshi (Master Mix), 161
Mikulski, Bernhard, 80
̵
Milošević, Sladana, 210 O
Mirrorball, 9, 10, 224 Oni, Femi, 265–267
Mirzino jato, 205, 209, 216 Onyeabor, William, 257
Mitrev, Kire, 200, 201 Organisation, Recording, Music
Montreal, 19, 29–45, 246n5 (ORM), 181, 182
Moroder, Giorgo, 204, 282, 284, 292, Osibisa, 215, 258, 325, 329, 330
293, 296, 297 Ouimet, Robert, 29
Motta, Nelson, 19, 51, 54, 56–58, Oz, 42
60–63, 66–69, 70n1, 70n3,
71n8, 72n13, 72n14
Mousseau, Jean-Paul, 36 P
Mudd Club, 311, 317, 320, 330 Paradise Garage, the, 81, 287, 311,
Murray-Bruce, Ben, 271 318, 326
Música popular brasileira (MPB), 55, Parapara, 119, 121
57, 62, 65, 70n4, 72n13 Parapluie, 40
Mutant disco, 311, 314, 318, 330 Peking Opera Disco, 156
Pepel in Kri, 208
Perpall, Pierre, 43, 45
N Peters, Chez, 261, 262
Naggiar, Freddy, 82–84, 86 Petrović, Boban, 195, 209, 212
Nakba, the, 225 Petrus, Jacques Fred, 81, 83
NASA, 290 Phonodisk, 257
Negri, Antonio, 90, 304, 319, 320 Pidgin, 20, 75, 94, 96n5
Neoliberalism, 5, 9, 304, 323, 324 Polet, 197, 212
New Age, 53 Polysound Studio, 240
New beat, 84 Postcolonial/postcolonial
New Musical Express, 202 condition, 332
New soul, 107–109, 115 Postfordism, postfordist, 86, 304
344 INDEX

Post-punk, 42, 84, 119 Rio de Janeiro, 51, 54, 56, 57,
Psychedelia, psychedelic, 13, 57, 106, 67, 72n13
228, 239, 240 Rock, 30, 42, 43, 56–58, 67, 69, 84,
Punk, 22, 24, 42, 84, 176, 190, 196, 101–105, 107, 112, 117, 131,
197, 201, 202, 212–214, 216, 138, 141, 142, 151, 177, 178,
303–312, 314, 320 180, 196, 199, 201–203, 210,
215, 228, 239, 241–243, 245,
262, 265, 267, 288, 308, 309,
Q 312, 325
Qigong Disco, 155, 156 Rock ‘n’ roll, 71n10, 117, 128, 141,
Queer, 10, 166, 308, 311, 314, 320, 142, 197, 204, 213, 216, 288
321, 324, 325 Roppongi, 105, 106, 118
Roy B. Records, 270
Russell, Arthur, 318
R
R&B, 105, 106, 306, 309
Race, 53, 59, 60, 65–69, 89, 283, S
285, 315 Sabah, 225, 227, 228, 235, 243
Radio, 4, 5, 17, 22, 30, 39, 42, 54, Salsoul records, 268
67, 85, 95n3, 109, 117, 132, Sao Paulo, 5, 55, 56, 66, 72n13
144, 176, 181, 182, 188, 199, Saturday Night Fever, 9, 115, 142,
205, 225, 227, 229, 231, 204–207, 211, 223, 254, 287,
233–235, 268, 271, 288, 309, 305, 310–311, 313, 326
325, 326 Schlager, 23, 177
Radio Lebanon, 225, 227 Science fiction, 281, 285,
Raggi, Issam, 236 287–291, 297
Rahbani, Assi and Mansour, 225 Self-management, 198, 214
Rahbani, Elias, 226–228, 236, Shinjuku, 105, 106, 108, 109, 112,
240, 243–245 113, 116, 118–120
Rahbani, Gassan, 243, 244, 246n1 Shonibare, Segun, 262, 265
Rahbani, Marwan, 23, 237, 238 Silver Convention, 113–115
Rahbani, Ziad, 230, 243 Simjanović, Zoran, 209, 210
Rap, 267, 303–312, 314, 321 Simonetti, Claudio, 81
Reagan, Ronald, 306, 313, 318, Sly & the Family Stone, 267
321, 322 Sobota, Mirko, 211
Reggae, 102, 118, 237, 244, 277–279 Socialism
Regine’s, 40 late socialism, 22, 184, 186,
Reissues 189, 195–217
culture, 15, 24, 274 state socialism, 285
labels, 17, 235, 274 Solar records, 268
 INDEX 345

Sollo, Jake, 258 U

Soul, 12, 13, 55, 63, 65–67, Ukraden, Neda, 208
69, 70n5, 71n10, 72n12, Utopia, 6–8, 10, 24, 76, 225,
77, 81, 84, 87, 89, 281–298, 316
106–110, 112–116, 158, 207,
262, 265
Space age, 282–286 V
space exploration, 283 Van McCoy, 109, 111, 204, 216,
Space disco, 24, 204, 281, 269, 330
291–298, 299n6 Village People, 101, 180, 191n7, 291
Space music, 288–291 Vilović, Nenad, 209
Spacthèque, Mousse, 38 Vocoder, 245, 290, 293, 298n5
Spaghetti dance, 81 Voix De L’Orient, 225, 226, 228,
Spaghetti western, 81 229, 235, 237, 238, 240, 245
Square dancing, 157, 163, 165 Vukojević, Branko, 208–210
Star Wars, 291, 293, 294
Step dance, 105, 111, 117
Studio 54, 64, 207, 211, 212, 282, W
287, 295, 305, 310–313 Whisky à Go-Go, 262
Summer, Donna, 24, 30, 113, 115, World Disco Dancing
135, 205, 207, 209, 268, 284, Championship, 213
291, 292, 296 World music, 4, 15, 284, 331

T Y
Tabù Club, 83 Yugoslavia, 196, 198–200, 202–205,
Techno, 43, 103, 279, 282, 287, 208, 209, 211, 213, 214, 216
299n6, 332 Yurchak, Alexei, 22, 186, 187,
Terrorism, 20, 76, 78, 95n2 214–216, 217n2
Three Degrees, The, 123n5
Tondelli, Pier Vittorio, 78
Toop, David, 4, 304, 306 Z
Tower of Power Unlimited, 266 Zahr, Raja, 238, 246n1
Travolta, John, 205, 206, 211, 260 Zgarka, Dominique, 39
Truxx, 41 Zhang, Qiang, 152, 157, 158, 163,
Tsutsumi, Kyohei, 110, 112, 113, 166, 166n3
123n4, 123n5 Žižek, Slavoj, 214
Turatti, Roberto, 84 Zukin, Sharon, 314