Background
Disco is a genre of dance music that emerged in the United States during the 1970s. The experimental mixing of records combined with the newly acquired ability to play longer tracks resulted in a genre well-suited for dancing parties. During 1973–74, MFSB's "Love Is the Message" displayed "early rumblings of the disco sound", and shortly afterward emerged the songs "Never Can Say Goodbye" by Gloria Gaynor, "The Hustle" by Van McCoy, and "Love to Love You Baby" by Donna Summer. In 1977, the opening of Studio 54 in Manhattan and the success of the film Saturday Night Fever (which featured John Travolta and music by the Bee Gees) added to the popularity of the disco genre. The following year, Paradise Garage opened in Manhattan's West Village, the New York radio station WKTU became "all-disco", and the number of discothèques in the nation reached nearly 20,000. At the 21st Grammy Awards in 1979, Saturday Night Fever: The Original Movie Sound Track, was named Album of the Year and the Bee Gees received the award for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for their contributions to the soundtrack album. By the end of 1979, the disco industry was estimated to be worth more than $4 billion, "more ... than the industries of movies, television or professional sport".
However, the disco fad soon began to decline. On July 12, 1979, just a few months after Newsweek had reported on the " over" of disco music, a "tongue-in-cheek" promotional event known as Disco Demolition Night was held at Chicago's Comiskey Park. During a doubleheader intermission, disc jockey Steve Dahl set ablaze a bin full of disco records, causing a riot within the stadium and gaining international attention. Approximately 10,000 disco records were destroyed, and around 50,000 rioters participated in the event, staying on the field and forcing the Chicago White Sox to forfeit the second game.
Nationally, a "backlash" took hold, as public support for disco music faded. According to author Craig Werner, as quoted in the British newspaper The Independent, the "anti-disco movement represented an unholy alliance of funkateers and feminists, progressives and puritans, rockers and reactionaries. None the less, the attacks on disco gave respectable voice to the ugliest kinds of unacknowledged racism, sexism and homophobia." By 1980 "mainstream disco" had ended, by 1985 WKTU had returned to playing rock music, and by the end of the decade the famous dance venues Studio 54, Paradise Garage and Clubhouse had all closed.
Read more about this topic: Grammy Award For Best Disco Recording
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)