Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and 1980s: Disco Heterotopias (Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music)

This book is a critical and necessary contribution to disco studies and to popular music studies more broadly. The volume will find an avid readership among researchers and students in popular music studies and among practitioners and aficionados of disco itself. - Arabella Stanger, University of Sussex, UK This book explores some of disco's other lives which thrived between the 1970s and the 1980s, from oil-boom Nigeria to socialist Czechoslovakia, from post-colonial India to war-torn Lebanon. It charts the translation of disco as a cultural form into musical, geo-political, ideological and sociological landscapes that fall outside of its original conditions of production and reception, capturing the variety of scenes, contexts and reasons for which disco took on diverse dimensions in its global journey. With its deep repercussions in visual culture, gender politics, and successive forms of popular music, art, fashion and style, disco as a musical genre and dance culture is exemplary of how a subversive, marginal scene -- that of queer and Black New York undergrounds in the early 1970s -- turned into a mainstream cultural industry. As it exploded, atomised and travelled, disco served a number of different agendas; its aesthetic rootedness in ideas of pleasure, transgression and escapism and its formal malleability, constructed around a four-on-the-floor beat, allowed it to permeate a variety of local scenes for whom the meaning of disco shifted, sometimes in unexpected and radical ways. Flora Pitrolo is a Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and Syracuse University London. Her work investigates alternative European performance and music cultures of the 1980s, with a special focus on Italy. She publishes both as a scholar and as a journalist, and is active as a DJ and producer in various archival and experimental music scenes. Marko Zubak is a Researcher at the Croatian Institute of History in Zagreb, specialising in popular culture in socialist Eastern Europe. His publications include The Yugoslav Youth Press (1968-1980), and he has curated the exhibitions "Yugoslav Youth Press as Underground Press" and "Stayin' Alive: Socialist Disco Culture." Acknowledgements 6 Contents 8 Notes on Contributors 10 Introduction: Disco Heterotopias—Other Places, Other Spaces, Other Lives 14 Other Places: The Global, The Local, The Glocal World 16 Other Spaces: The Heterotopian Paradigm 19 Other Lives: Digging as Methodology 25 Chapter Outline 31 Bibliography 38 Montreal, Funkytown: Two Decades of Disco History 42 A Scene Takes Shape, 1962–1970 45 Narratives of Decline and Rebirth 49 The Montreal Disco Explosion 51 A Scene Survives 54 Disco: Underground and Overground 57 References 59 Discography 62 Dancin’ Days: Disco Flashes in 1970s Brazil 63 The Beginnings: The New York City Discotheque 66 The Frenetic Dancin’ Days Discotheque 68 The ‘Frenetics’ 70 The Second Dancin’ Days 72 From Dance Floor to Small Screen: The Dancin’ Days Soap Opera 74 ‘Come Into This Party’: The Dancin’ Days Soundtrack 75 Disco and Race 77 Conclusion 80 Bibliography 84 Discography 85 Films, TV and Theatre 86 Gimmick! Italo Disco, Copy and Consumption 87 The Locus of Italo: The Adriatic Riviera 89 First Wave Italo Disco: A Culture of the Copy 92 Second Wave Italo Disco: The Age of Seriality 95 Conclusion: The Italo Lyric and Impossible Originality 100 Bibliography 108 Discography 110 Filmography 111 Japanese Disco as Pseudo-International Music 112 Introduction 112 An Early History of Disco in Japan 116 The Making of ‘Sexy Bus Stop’: The Industrial Context of Pseudo-International Japanese Disco 118 The Reception of European Disco: From Candy Pop to Eurobeat 126 Conclusion 132 Bibliography 135 Discography 136 Disco, Dancing, Globalization and Class in 1980s Hindi Cinema 138 Disco—The Label as Fetish 139 Disco in an Isolated Culture and Music Industry 143 Western Content in an Indian Setting 145 Disco, ‘Private Albums’ and India’s Incipient Non-film Music Industry 148 Conclusion: Disco, Class and Ideology in the Hindi Cinema 151 Bibliography 160 Discography 160 Filmography 160 Dancing Desire, Dancing Revolution: Sexuality and the Politics of Disco in China Since the 1980s 162 Chinese Definitions of Disco 163 The Political Assimilation of Disco in China 165 The Cultural Assimilation of Disco in China 166 Disco Lifestyles 168 The Sexualisation of Disco 169 Desexualisation of Disco 172 Sandy Lam, “Liansuo Fanying” (“Chain Reaction”, 1986) 172 Li Yong, “Nüwu” (“Witch”, 1987) 173 Deng Jieyi, “Ludeng xia de Xiaoguniang” (“A Little Girl Under the Streetlight”, 1987) 173 Resexualisation of Disco 174 Conclusion: Waiting for the Next Revolution 176 References 179 Discography 182 Non-stop, I Want to Live Non-stop: The Role of Disco in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia 183 Post-Invasion, ‘Normalised’ Czechoslovak Society in the 1970s 184 The Disco Decade 186 The First Generation 189 The Second Generation 193 Discourses About Socialist Disco 196 The Real World of Discos 197 Conclusion 200 Bibliography 202 Discography 203 Filmography 203 Yugoslav Disco: The Forgotten Sound of Late Socialism 204 Contextualising Yugoslav Disco: A Contradiction in Terms? 206 Neglect and Rediscovery of Yugoslav Disco 209 Importing Disco 213 Adopting Disco 217 Dancing to Disco 220 Conclusion 223 Bibliography 227 Discography 229 Filmography 230 The Lebanese Music Experiment: Disco and Nightlife During the Civil War 231 ‘Liza... Liza’ and ‘Abu Ali’: Lebanon’s Earliest Disco Records 235 Disco Takes Root 243 ‘Belly Dance Disco’: a New Genre, Born Out of Lebanon 246 The Music Industry’s Synth’etic Solution to the Depravity of War 250 Bibliography 255 Discography 256 Filmography, TV Programs & Plays 257 Disco and Discontent in Nigeria: A Conversation 258 The Disco Effect on the Nigerian Music Industry 263 Nigerian Nightlife in the 1970s 267 The Role of DJs and Sound Systems 272 Nigerian Disco Now and Then 279 Discography 286 Outer Space, Futurism, and the Quest for Disco Utopia 288 The Space Age, Disco, and the Politics of Hope 289 Spaceship Disco: Otherworldly Disco Spaces and Sound Systems 293 A Brief History of Space Music 295 Space Disco 298 Theorizing Outer Space and Disco: The Politics of Spectacle and Utopia 302 References 306 Discography 307 Filmography 308 Epilogue: Decolonising Disco—Counterculture, Postindustrial Creativity, the 1970s Dance Floor and Disco 309 Rewriting the History of Disco, Punk and Hip Hop/Rap in 1970s New York City 311 DJ Culture, Disco, Creativity and the Early Postindustrial Economy 319 Decolonising Disco 330 Bibliography 339 Discography 342 Filmography 344 Index 345 "This book explores some of disco's other lives which thrived between the 1970s and the 1980s, from oil-boom Nigeria to socialist Czechoslovakia, from post-colonial India to war-torn Lebanon. It charts the translation of disco as a cultural form into musical, geo-political, ideological and sociological landscapes that fall outside of its original conditions of production and reception, capturing the variety of scenes, contexts and reasons for which disco took on diverse dimensions in its global journey. With its deep repercussions in visual culture, gender politics, and successive forms of popular music, art, fashion and style, disco as a musical genre and dance culture is exemplary of how a subversive, marginal scene - that of queer and Black New York undergrounds in the early 1970s - turned into a mainstream cultural industry. As it exploded, atomised and travelled, disco served a number of different agendas; its aesthetic rootedness in ideas of pleasure, transgression and escapism and its formal malleability, constructed around a four-on-the-floor beat, allowed it to permeate a variety of local scenes for whom the meaning of disco shifted, sometimes in unexpected and radical ways."--Quatrième de couverture Develops research which decolonises disco to shedd light on scenes unexplored in Anglophone scholarship Establishes a crucial link between the field of popular music studies and the scenes of its production Offers a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives suited to academic and non-specialised audiences