Did Disco Suck? The Life of a Musical Genre

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Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1, 7, LMU Munich, course: Proseminar "Popular Music & American Society, 1955-Present: An Introduction", language: English, abstract: The term "genre" is often confusing. When asked to categorize certain songs or groups into musical genres, many people will probably have trouble to do so. There are many genres, and not all of them are accepted or even known by everyone. Some genres are hard to tell apart for many people. One of the more widely accepted genres is disco. Most people would, however, not regard it as one of the most important genres in music history. Common associations with disco include the Bee Gees, the Village People, and the movie "Saturday Night Fever". Disco, for most people, is easy-listening and has a slightly tacky image. But why was disco so successful during the 1970s? And how come that with the disco revival of the 1990s, the shadowy existence of disco during the 1980s was exchanged for retro reminiscence? The fact that disco is not considered an important part of music history is shown by its rather stepmotherly treatment in literature. Of the literature used for this work, the books Just My Soul Responding by Brian Ward (though containing a fairly short section on disco) and A Change Is Gonna Come by Craig Werner, both proved to be very useful regarding the evaluation of disco as a product of its time. The books Hot Stuff by John-Manuel Andriote and Saturday Night Forever by Alan Jones and Jussi Kantonen are less scientific, but in exchange they both offer very enthusiastic inside views by people who seem to have lived for disco in the 1970s. Both are thoroughly researched and full of interesting additional information. The purpose of both books is to raise awareness of the importance disco had on the music industry, and on the people themselves, back in the 1970s. The lack of literature on disco is in a way compensated for by many web sites that are devoted to disco music. Some provide very useful information based on the authors' own research (e.g. disco-disco.com), or on articles written by music journalists (e.g. discostyle.com), or on both (e.g. jahsonic.com). To explore the life of disco as a musical genre, the term "musical genre" itself has to be clarified first. Therefore, this work focuses on the definition and purpose of musical genres. Then the social background of the 1970s will be explored, followed by a look at the development disco went through during that decade, including its problematic reputation at the end of that development. Last, a description of the legacy of disco shall prove that musical styles never totally die out.