I’m swimming through bodies at a Korean Disco Bar. Sweat pours through my clothes, bodies surge around me flailing in the lights and rhythm, repetitive popper fumes enter my nostrils and attack my faculties. Normally I’d be drowning; choking on the fumes of others and crushed by the anxiety of being out of place. Everyone here is dolled up to some regard and I’m rocking a stained Wyoming and Keens. But Thelma Houston and the paid dancers on roller skates have me in a trance. A rush where all that matters is sense. The feel of my body as I move it, the rhythm crashing in my ears and blending with my neurotransmitters into a raging flow state. Nothing matters other than moving, sensing, feeling. And it was brought on by fucking DISCO. A gimmick today.
It didn’t use to be. Disco was a counter-cultural movement in the early ’70s, blending the sounds of multiple disenfranchised groups in America, including Black, Queer, and Latino dance music. And that was the sole purpose of disco—music to make you move your body. The name disco came from the discotheque dance clubs imported from Europe that rapidly spread across the urban United States in the seventies. An erotically free culture of music soon followed, boomed, waned, and faded from the scene not a decade later. That isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Cultural trends ride on sine waves, going through the peaks and valleys of popularity. Eventually, they plateau, fizzle out, burn, and die. At least, if you don’t pay attention that’s what it looks like. But disco didn’t die. The overproduction, the rhythm, the synth, and the bass, all enhanced and catalyzed into new genres: Electronic Dance Music, Pop, Hip Hop, House, Drum&Bass, as it goes. The best of Disco evolved, the rest was disregarded.
I desperately want to believe that society and individuals evolve along the same track, that we take in all of the context of our lives and the past and use it to push us forward into something better. But as we age, and as the youth forge their way in the world, we get caught up in our cycles and criticize everything new that is inaccurately perceived as a threat to comfort. Sadly, you see this in music all the time. People who refuse to listen to Rap and Hip Hop, disregard everything in their favorite genre after a certain decade and defend Kanye and Drake because they listened to them when they were younger. The Rock dads, Metal mommas, R&B queens, classic Punks, and Oldheads are unintentionally trapped in the valley of the sine wave. The saddest part is they dissociate and don’t acknowledge the conservative behavior because when they were young, they were on the forward edge of thought with music.
The contradictory behavior makes itself known so much in the treatment of Jazz. Ken Burns Jazz describes how the genre started as a revolution in Music theory, expression, and American culture. It attacks the critics of the early 1900s, emboldens the free-form nature, and expresses a true love of the Music. That is, until the second half. It disattributes the work of those that evolved the genre, shitting on fusion and funk. It hearkens to the theories of purist Wynton Marsalis and others who think that good jazz, REAL jazz, has no electric instruments and has to follow the rules established by music played 65 years ago. Classic Jazz is as fantastic and revolutionary as the documentary makes it out to be, but these viewpoints make it impossible to appreciate anything new. Even when it is worthy of the same praise. And sadly, it’s just par for the course as we age. A lot of people get caught in a trap where they are only listening to the same artists and genres of music they did in college or high school. And it makes sense because it’s so fucking comfortable to just experience what we like and nothing else. It’s understandable to give in to comfort. It is a driving force in human nature to want comfort and security. But holding onto that above all else and not experiencing anything new can make life a hermitted hell. I can very easily see myself becoming a wine mom or a golf dad if I don’t listen to new music, experience new sights, talk to young people, or embrace change when I get the chance to experience it. And change is so important. Change helps others who haven’t found comfort in their lives experience it for the first time. But it doesn’t mean forgetting the past and blindly following everything new and shiny.
The world isn’t a blank slate. Disco music still exists and is still important in forming modern dance culture. The plights of the people before us still live with us today, and the relative goods we experience were built on their backs. We need to radically accept the future and do what we can to mold it. But after you look at the context and set goals for the future, try to enjoy the present! Let the music fill you and ride the rhythm, no matter the genre. We can sit on the shoulders of giants and be the soil progress grows in, but that means we’re here now. So I’m going to move my body while I can.
Hi guys! Thanks to Billie Lyle for coming out of the depths of Korea to share this post with us.
Billie Lyle has also contributed a playlist to the bottlerag radio zoundgiest! Airing Sundays at 08:45am MTN!
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