Wednesday, June 4, 2008

disco music

of dance-oriented music whose origins, like other genres of music, are hard to place at a single defining point. In what is considered a forerunner to disco style clubs in February 1970 New York City DJ David Mancuso opened The Loft, a members-only private dance club set in his own home. Most agree that the first disco songs were released in 1973, but some claim Manu Dibango's 1972 Soul Makossa to be the first disco record.
The first article about disco was written in September 1973 by Vince Aletti for Rolling Stone Magazine.
In 1974 New York City's WPIX-FM premiered the first disco radio show.

Musical influences include funk, soul music, and salsa and the Latin or Hispanic musics which influenced salsa.The disco sound has a soaring, often reverberated vocals over a steady four-on-the-floor beat, an eighth note (quaver) or sixteenth note (semi-quaver) hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and prominent, syncopated electric bass line. Strings, horns, electric pianos, and electric guitars create a lush background sound. Orchestral instruments such as the flute are often used for solo melodies, and unlike in rock, lead guitar is rarely used.

Well-known late 1970s disco performers included Evelyn "Champagne" King, Tavares, Chic, Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Grace Jones, Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross, the Village People, Sylvester, and The Jacksons. While performers and singers garnered the lion's share of public attention, the behind-the-scenes producers played an equal, if not more important role in disco, since they often wrote the songs and created the innovative sounds and production techniques that were part of the "disco sound".Many non-disco artists recorded disco songs at the height of disco's popularity, and films such as Saturday Night Fever and Thank God It's Friday contributed to disco's rise in mainstream popularity and ironically the beginning of its commercial decline.

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