Though you most likely have never heard it and never will, you can well assume there is nothing quite like the sound of vinyl records exploding. But let’s say for a second that, on a sweltering July day in 1979, you attended a White Sox doubleheader at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Let’s say you brought a record of Donna Summer’s disco hit, “I Feel Love,” not because you have any hopes of playing it at a baseball game but because there’s a promotion going on at the stadium and putting that disc in a box at the gates gets you a discount ticket for 98 cents. It’s quite the deal. But taking your seat you notice the place does not smell of the sweet caramel that coats its crackerjacks; the scent in the stands is more reminiscent of the kind of thing you would expect to fill your nostrils at a Grateful Dead concert. When the MC of the show comes on and blows up every disco record collected that day, all you can hear is the crack of fire expanding the grooves of the records piled in center field, and the thrilling scorn in the chants of 50,000 attendees, “Disco Sucks!”
Genre Genocide
Disco Demolition Night, a promotional event run by rock station radio host and shock jock Steve Dahl, almost single-handedly triggered Disco’s decline from the most popular genre in American music to a dead medium, all in the course of a year. There are many theories to explain the backlash against disco and its disappearance from mainstream American music. Hypotheses range from the idea that it simply oversaturated American radio, causing people to tire of it, to studies that show the decline to be the result of the racism and homophobia of a white, increasingly conservative suburban class. Disco emerged in the early 70s after the beginnings of the homosexual revolution in the 60s, having its roots in Latin American, Black, and gay communities. Gay Americans, so used to having their bars raided and broken up by cops, found freedom in the Discotheques; they became the first place that gay people could publicly congregate and dance together in the full view of America and its politics. This did not go unnoticed. When the genre rapidly gained popularity, media coverage largely focused on its roots in gay culture. Movies like Saturday Night Fever helped increase its popularity, but at the same time, the disco scene appeared to be overly concerned with aesthetics; people were not used to men being presented like the young John Travolta was, concerned with appearance and owning coordination on the dance floor. Certain clubs let in only the beautiful people.
And amidst all of this, rock and roll, the dominating music scene of the past decade that focused much less on appearance than political message, dwindled. Hundreds of rock stations and clubs changed their image and sound to disco. The new music swept the Grammys. The whip for backlash rose. Unrest grew in rock, a genre whose fans and performers consisted almost entirely of white suburban middle class Americans. To rock fans, disco was unauthentic, elitist, and perhaps worst of all, gay. And all of this resentment led to the peak of the anti-disco movement, an all-out genre genocide of Disco Demolition Night, with its fierce leader, Steve Dahl, a fired rock DJ garbed in army fatigues, playing the dictator who had to push the big red button.
This was the miracle that gave rock fans their momentum. Yes, disco was dominant, but America was anything but sure about it. A rising conservative right as well as the media’s attaching the stigma of homosexuality to the movement indicated a level discomfort about disco, its flashiness, its promiscuity, its open gayness. There is something to be said about the way in which it went out. It did not have a peaceful death of old age that most fads experience, but instead fell like Julius Caesar, with all of its trusted friends suddenly turning around and stabbing it to death. Sure enough, disco bled out entirely within a year after Demolition, the genre’s name itself becoming synonymous with parody. Nobody seemed to give it a second thought.
Take all of this into a broader perspective and understand that Disco, from the elements of the music to the culture that surrounded it, has historically had a strange relationship with America. The apparent escapism of it all, the idea that one can forget oneself and dance the night away, sat uneasily with an increasingly conservative America. Its stereotypes were so strong and so rooted in American culture that they burned a mark in the soul of American music, branding anything remotely similar to disco as gay and emasculating.
There is a reason that disco’s name changed to “dance” music on radio stations in the 80s. This taboo was so strong that calling it by its birth name amounted to commercial suicide. We might conclude that this shame continued to seep, however subconsciously, into the modern electronic dance music (EDM) currently exploding in the American music industry, a genre that borrows many elements from its forefather, disco. Yet, instead of sparking an aggressive backlash, however, EDM’s current popularity has had a rather different effect on American culture. Threatened by the stereotype of being silly, effeminate, and nostalgic disco fans, EDM fans act in exaggerated ways to preserve their masculinity, whether through massive, heavily-produced festivals, neon fan gear, or the rise of American brands of EDM—dubstep.
Resurrecting Disco
Bring yourself to now and you can see that rather than disappearing altogether, disco was deconstructed and reassembled repeatedly across the next few decades, as if someone was smuggling the persecuted genre through a musical Underground Railroad. In the 80s, disco changed its name to dance music. Chicago artists then stripped the genre of its acoustic instruments, added more electronic sounds, changed its focus to repetitive rhythms, and birthed a new creation called house music. From there, house would be combined with a variety of genres to become techno in the late 80s; both would make their way to Europe, a continent which would continue to experiment with various electronic instruments and create its own genres for the next few decades i.e. dubstep and drum and bass in the UK, deep house in Germany, and dozens more. Although some electronic influence was present in America’s mainstream music culture, during the 80s and 90s, it was a timid relationship at best. It would not be until about 2007, when rising European house producers like the French David Guetta, would bring electronic dance music (EDM), an umbrella term for all genres electronic music made for dance based entertainment, back to dominate America’s music scene. Since then, American mainstream EDM has undergone what could best be explained as the standard “pop-ification” that happens to most music that breaks through the crust above the underground; the complex rhythms and harmonics that made up the roots of the many genres of EDM have become watered down and easy to digest, with some relying on hip hop and mainstream pop artists for success.
While EDM does not carry the exact same set of burdens that disco did, the perceptions of it remain similar. In some genres like Moombahton, a genre of EDM fused with reggaeton, and Trap, a hip hop influenced style of EDM, sexual connotations remain, most notably in the style of provocative dancing known as “twerking.” Modern American EDM is less openly homosexual than disco, but the threat of being branded as “effeminate” or “unmanly” or “gay” continues to lurk in the background. Anyone who has attended a large-scale EDM festival will notice a marked recent increase in “rage hats,” violently colorful caps, often emblazoned with neon words like “RAGE” and “ ‘MERICA,” which promote an aggressive energy that is close to octane.
There are a number of possibilities that could explain this upped level of intensity in style choice. Perhaps it is just the way of the music; after all, we should not forget that “D” in EDM stands for “dance.” Whether or not the quality of EDM is diminishing is irrelevant in this regard, as even its popified product is high energy and fun. This could naturally lead to affected decisions in dress. What is important to note, however, is the tough guy tone of this energy. There is an emotional difference between saying “let’s party” and “let’s rage.” The latter invokes an image of something much more chaotic, hectic, and destructive. Whether or not this is an overcompensation made by certain male fans to preserve their masculinity is up for debate, but it is hard not to think about the reasons behind the selection of buzzwords blasted across festival attendees’ clothing, and why this attire is worn specifically to EDM based events.
Dubstep as Brostep
What seems to be a more certain example of American male fans attempting to preserve their manhood in the face of the stereotypes is the American transformation of the British originated sub bass and drum driven EDM genre, “dubstep,” and the absolutely immense popularity of its results. When asked what dubstep sounds like, few youth in America would describe the subtle, pulsating low ranges of sound that made up the original dubstep created in the English EDM scene. What they are much more likely to describe is the explosive, screeching, almost feral noises of brostep, a pejorative term used to describe Americanized dubstep. Like other genres of EDM that have become popular, dubstep has been watered down—anyone who compares traditional dubstep to brostep can understand that the moving rhythms of the original have been replaced for something much more chaotic and cheaply thrilling—and at the same time built up to be much more intimidating. The once wobbling envelopes of sub bass have been replaced by mid range distorted sounds that are reminiscent of lead guitars in heavy metal. When asked about the qualities of Americanized dubstep compared to its original British predecessor, Harvard Music Department professor Olaf Post said, “In Skrillex, it’s not even really the base anymore. The word that comes to mind is disruption, intentional disruption of anything could have sounded more subtle, or would have been fine sounding more subtle. Skrillex uses that technique with just a completely different aesthetic goal in mind.”
If you have never heard dubstep before, it is quite difficult to describe the level of pandemonium that occurs in these songs. Listening to it instills the same reaction as a child watching a Michael Bay film, the explosions and sexual energy on screen all contributing to one large, nervous adrenaline rush. And in the midst of all of the noise, the energy builds to a point where it becomes aggressive, macho, and masculine. It is fairly common to see moshpits similar to those at heavy metal concerts appear in the crowds at dubstep concerts. Kids hurl their bodies and each other and bang their heads: it’s rock and roll all over again. There is a reason that the subgenre was dubbed “brostep.” Listening to it, you can imagine any number sampled soundbytes used to make it, a car bomb going off, a cat getting stepped on, a chainsaw, or perhaps 50,000 vinyls blowing up in the center of Comiskey Park.
Whether or not everything I have postulated above is untrue, it is absolutely vital that we consider our relationship to the music we listen to, as well as the actions it induces in us. EDM is American now, whether or not it always has been is irrelevant, and Americans should take the time to understand it and what it all means. If we do not, we end can end up like we did that faithful Demolition night, a musical book-burning, the attempted murder of an art.