How Disco Got Its Groove On (Review)
"Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution" captures the rise, fall, and rebirth of disco from all the right angles.
Before the haters tried to dim all the lights on disco, it was the sound of a global phenomenon. It was the sound of ’70s gay liberation, women’s liberation, and Black liberation, and that might be why, according to the astutely observant PBS docuseries Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution, some people couldn’t take it.
However, at least one person interviewed in this three-part series argues that rock fans simply hated disco as a matter of musical taste, irrespective of any socio-political undertones. And anybody alive and conscious at the height of disco fever in 1979 reasonably could have just reached their limit.
As the series, produced and directed by Louise Lockwood and Shianne Brown, chronicles in briskly-paced fashion, the music genre arose out of New York’s underground party scene to quickly take over the country’s radio airwaves, sales charts, movies, TV, and fashion.
By the time disco achieved worldwide cultural saturation, and the novelty records started to roll in — from “Disco Duck,” to the Grammy-nominated Sesame Street disco album, featuring tracks like “Disco Frog” and “Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco” — the backlash had galvanized into a fervent Disco Sucks movement.
On July 12, 1979, Disco Sucks had its day at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, where the feature presentation for the White Sox-Tigers doubleheader was a massive disco demolition derby held between games. The Disco Sucks demolition notoriously devolved from a mean-spirited album-burning into a flaming riot that resulted in the cancelation of the day’s second game.
The footage is still shocking, a sharp contrast to the scenes of peace, love, and inclusion set to a scintillating beat inside David Mancuso’s seminal underground dance spot The Loft, or DJ Larry Levan’s cathedral of house music, Paradise Garage.
Thorough and informative, but not exhaustive, Soundtrack of a Revolution pinpoints milestone figures and moments in the genre’s evolution from soul and R&B offshoot to four-on-the-floor phenomenon, to gasping its supposed last breaths. But disco didn’t die. The sound survived oversaturation, corporatization, and Disco Sucks.
Disco lived on, as the series concludes, in New Wave and house, in gay club DJs Levan and Frankie Knuckles, then rave and EDM. “House music is disco’s revenge,” declares feminist scholar Francesca T. Royster.
The filmmakers assemble a knowledgeable, engaging roster of interviewees — music experts, genre originators, DJs, producers, and all-time disco divas like Gloria Gaynor and Thelma Houston — relaying insight about subjects both expected and obscure.
Loaded with songs and clips, the series, of course, covers the ostentatious glamour of Studio 54, and the cultural phenomenon of Saturday Night Fever, the reign of Disco Queen, Donna Summer. But it finds true gold uncovering under-exposed history, like singer Candi Staton explaining how her upbeat hit “Young Hearts Run Free” was inspired by the night she had to flee a jealous husband who almost threw her off a balcony in Vegas.
Drummer Earl Young — the Philly-based music pioneer credited with inventing the disco style of drumming on the 1973 Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes R&B hit “The Love I Lost” — breaks down how he constructed the beat. And DJ Nicky Siano shows how he first looped the break in MFSB’s “Love Is the Message” to originate a dance floor classic that, to be sure, someone, somewhere is voguing to right now.
Because love was, and is, the message. Disco arose out of marginalized people wanting space to be themselves together, and dance in that freedom.
The series honors their story with a fair and focused reconstruction of the past, and a well-curated representation of the nu-disco generation grooving to Scissor Sisters, Dua Lipa, and Beyoncé’s Renaissance. If you ever cared about disco, or just want to relive hating it the first time, Soundtrack of a Revolution should ring your bell.
Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution (★★★★☆), episode one, airs June 18 on PBS, episode two on June 25, and episode three on July 2.
All three episodes are available to stream on June 1 on PBS.org and the PBS app. Visit www.pbs.org.
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