NEWS: '...And House Music Was Born' Released
I’m very excited to announce that the latest research output from the Foundations of House project is now live. Published in the journal Popular Music and Society, in a special edition dedicated to Race and Electronic Dance Music, the article begins to synthesise some of the interviews conducted as part of this project and offers an alternative perspective (or correction) of the typical narrative we are fed about house music.
Abstract:
The stories of both disco and house music are often marginalized in the broader narrative of popular music, but house music’s stylistic features are reflective of wider sociocultural developments. Taking its cue from disco, house is often seen as a purely evolutionary musical development, when in fact the seeds of house music were sown with the Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall, and gay liberation. This article asserts that disco’s use of gospel elements created a quasi-religious proto-PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, Respect) ideology on the dance floors of the 1970s, and that this was an expression of those made Other by aspects of either race or sexuality. This expression of Otherness became the founding principle underpinning house music’s form. This article critically reappraises the narratives of both disco and house and interrogates inconsistencies in popular historical accounts using new qualitative interviews with authoritative individuals (DJs, producers, vocalists, authors). Furthermore, the article offers a thematic analysis of house music’s stylistic tropes, drawing direct parallels to Christianity and disco’s gospel influences to create a secularized religious ideology comparable to a PLUR ideology. Finally, the article explores the church’s response to racially motivated economic sanctions as a potential trigger to the generation of house music.
DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2018.1519099
Access/purchase here: …And House Music Was Born: Constructing A Secular Christianity of Otherness from Taylor & Francis Online
Free Pre-print (limited quantity) here: …And House Music Was Born: Constructing A Secular Christianity of Otherness from ResearchGate
Citation: Liam Maloney (2018) …And House Music Was Born: Constructing a Secular Christianity of Otherness, Popular Music and Society, 41:3, 231-249, DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2018.1519099
