Oldies Music Glossary: "Disco"

Definition: Growing out of the late-Sixties funk scene, but also heavily influenced by the soaring, orchestral pop of "Philly Soul," disco often split the difference between the two, packing New York dance clubs, then known as "discotheques," with a relentless, pounding beat. Disco reduced funk to a hard 2/4 stomp, with the bass drum prominent above all else and a syncopated hi-hat pulling the beat back to it on every other beat. In between, rhythmic funk guitars and a walking, almost bouncing bass line kept the groove moving, while the romantic pop of early-Seventies soul riding over the top.

While disco had already come and gone as a movement by 1977, the pulse remained to inspire pop, and the sleeper 1978 film Saturday Night Fever ignited a resurgence that took the glitzy glam of disco to the heartland of America. What had been a phenomenon limited to the gay, black, and Hispanic urban centers of the country became ubiquitous among bored whites desperately looking for a cultural movement in late-Seventies America. Disco's popularity exploded to insane lengths from January 1978 through October 1979, dominating pop culture to such a degree that it threatened to kill off rock and r&b completely -- or, at the very least, remove it from Top 40 radio.

The resulting disco backlash was also partially motivated by the fact that disco was a music heavily favored and influenced by the margins of society -- blacks, gays, Hispanics, and women. The explosion of New Wave in the summer of 1979 helped kill the phenomenon off, but disco's immense popularity was truly the source of its own demise. The style, however, essentially laid the foundations of what we today consider "dance music" and "electronica," and the earliest hip-hop clubs and artists began forming in the late Seventies as a direct reaction and homage to the simple, powerful disco beat.

Also Known As: Dance music, R&B