Why Do Funkers Hate Disco?

[gran...@grove.ufl.edu]

I've been wanting to talk about this for a while. Time and time again,
whenever I talk about disco with funk fans, they give me this look like
I'm a traitor to the Funk Nation. There is this attitude that disco was
some corporate-concoted genre whose sole purpose was to kill funk. George
Clinton said it, Nelson George implies it in _the death of rhythm and
blues_, Rickey Vincent disses disco in his book, and a couple of people
here have made similar statements.

I think people have a misconception of disco, and that is probably
_Saturday Night Fever's_ fault. But the ironic thing about that movie is
that it was a total misrepresentation of the disco vibe. The film was a
cleaned-up, superficial thing designed to make disco acceptable to the
mass (i.e., white and heterosexual) public. Viewing the movie, there is no
mention of gays, blacks, or Latinos -- the people who created disco (more
evidence of the racism and homophobia behind a lot of disco backlash).

People talk about the bland musicianship of disco, and there I have to
vehemently disagree. Some disco, especially the earlier stuff, is funky as
hell. As Vincent said in his book, bands like Brass Construction and Crown
Heights Affair blurred the lines between funk and disco, so to say disco
was devoid of funk is silly in my opinion. Once disco hit Europe, their
tracks were more montonous and cold, and so were the artists here who
tried to copy people like Giorgio Moroder; I'll grant you that. But bands
like MFSB or the Salsoul Orchestra would just get into a groove and rock
it for however long they needed to. I don't see the same kind of
musicianship in today's r&b.

Another frequent criticism of disco is the lyrical content. Again, I think
people misunderstand what disco artists were singing about. Being a genre
created by and for oppressed people (people of color and gays), it's
natural that they would sing about freedom and liberation (on the floor,
in the bedroom, wherever). Any music or art is going to reflect the
background of the people making it: a lot of rock focuses on rebellion
against parents and school and cars and dating because that is how life is
in the suburbs, rappers talk about the ghetto and racism because that is
what they face everyday. And it's not like funk didn't have its share of
less-than-profound lyrics. There are tons of records like "Ain't No Greens
In Harlem" by the Vibrations that don't say anything important, and groups
like Fatback were notorious for their lack of lyrical heaviness.

I could say more, but I'll stop here, hoping that more people contribute
to the discussion. Basically, I think what passes as a dis of disco and
house is based on racism and homophobia (as clearly seen in the
anti-disco chant "disco sucks"). You can't tell me that the massive disco
record burning in Chicago in the late 70s was just about people not liking
disco; that was about people who didn't like the gay people who were
making and dancing to the records. Can you imagine Shea Stadium having a
huge rap record burning? People would be going crazy. People who claim not to
like disco need to give it another shot. Don't base your comments off the
Bee Gees because they were a pop band who tried to do disco. Listen to
stuff from labels like Philly International, Salsoul, Prelude, West End,
or TK. You might be surprised at what you find.

Peace.
Anthony Lamar "B-Graff" Rucker

[Skoobie Nowinski]

In article <Pine.OSF.3.95.960915230433.518A-100000@palm> gran...@grove.ufl.edu writes:
>
>People talk about the bland musicianship of disco, and there I have to
>vehemently disagree. Some disco, especially the earlier stuff, is funky as
>hell. As Vincent said in his book, bands like Brass Construction and Crown
>Heights Affair blurred the lines between funk and disco, so to say disco
>was devoid of funk is silly in my opinion. Once disco hit Europe, their
>tracks were more montonous and cold, and so were the artists here who
>tried to copy people like Giorgio Moroder; I'll grant you that. But bands
>like MFSB or the Salsoul Orchestra would just get into a groove and rock
>it for however long they needed to. I don't see the same kind of
>musicianship in today's r&b.

This is a point well taken. But, up until this point, I haven't
heard any mention of the prevailing production aesthetic of disco, which
was rather antiseptic, especially late in the disco period. Drum tracks
lost quite a bit of their bite, as did bass lines (many of which were
nevertheless funky, which can't really be said of the drum lines), horns
were eschewed in favor of strings, etc. Disco and many of the musicians
involved are certainly not as bland as they are accused of being, but
the disco _sound_ wasn't exactly a monster, whatever the character of
the music and lyrics.

>I could say more, but I'll stop here, hoping that more people contribute
>to the discussion. Basically, I think what passes as a dis of disco and
>house is based on racism and homophobia (as clearly seen in the
>anti-disco chant "disco sucks"). You can't tell me that the massive disco
>record burning in Chicago in the late 70s was just about people not liking
>disco; that was about people who didn't like the gay people who were
>making and dancing to the records. Can you imagine Shea Stadium having a
>huge rap record burning? People would be going crazy. People who claim not to
>like disco need to give it another shot. Don't base your comments off the
>Bee Gees because they were a pop band who tried to do disco. Listen to
>stuff from labels like Philly International, Salsoul, Prelude, West End,
>or TK. You might be surprised at what you find.
>

This last charge of racism and homophobia is taken almost
verbatim from the "History of Rock 'n' Roll" series in their episode
regarding disco. I think there is some truth to that argument from a
cultural perspective, but I think the same resistance can be seen to
most artistic genres which come to prominence by a route which doesn't
pass through the ideological center of the country, of which rap is a
prime example. The vehemence of the reaction against disco was not
simply a function of this resistance, but also of the degree to which it
had taken over mainstream music and radio to the exclusion of other
styles. Lots of folks turning their back on disco were the same folks
who had embraced it years earlier-- it was, in part, a shift in taste
expressed commensurately with disco's huge national presence. Very
little in the music business since has enjoyed the success that disco
did across different segments of the music buying public, which may
explain in part the "record burnings" and other instances of anti-disco
hysteria. Disco was so large it turned into a lampoon of itself-- any
genre which could drive something like "Disco Duck" up the charts on the
sheer force of its popularity is likely to experience a fairly potent
backlash sooner or later.

-skoob

[Kurt Nordwell P500]

A better question would be "why don't funkers hate most rap?" I personally find
the attitudes in the lyrics juvenille, myopic, extremely sexist, borderline
racist, and frequently ignorant. I could ignore that deficiency if someone
played an instrument. That is what bothers me the most; how can anyone get into
a groove that is programmed or sampled and does not flow from the hands of an
actual live person. To me it's fake funk. Disco is similar, but the big
difference is that real musicians played it (minus the drums).

Once again I realize that there are rap artists out there that use a real band,
and I know that there were disco hits that were unbelievably sterile, but if
a genre of music should be distained by this newsgroup, I would say it should
be rap.

I also read the Funk book. Disco slowed down the funk and commercialized it,
but looking at African American culture today, rap REPLACED funk. It did not
rescue it (IMHO); it mutated it into something else.

Peace,

Kurt

[Herr Chagall, der 102. Dalmatiner]

1st of all,

the genre is called hiphop.

as most will agree, rap is a vocal (or talk) technique which is employed
not only in hiphop, but in soul (swingbeat), dancetrash (eurodance) or
even rock (mosh rock).

hiphop has not mutated funk or, let alone displaced it - hiphop has helped
many a funk/soul musician regain broad attention and respect for her/his
work of art: take j. brown, i. hayes, c. mayfield and in particular g.
clinton.

thanx to the extensive sampling, these people are back in the game.

don't 4get where hiphop comes from: it is first and foremost music by and
for people of lower social class, whereas swingbeat and new vintage soul
are music genres consumed by middle- or upper-class people (take a look at
early video shoots or album covers of the respective music style).

therefore, hiphop naturally is aggressive and harsh, be it as to the music
or the lyrics.

in the wake of becoming a major commerical factor in the music business,
there are loads of band-waggon-jumpers and dumbfucks who pervert certain
sub-genres and thereby discredit the entire music of hiphop. in spite of
that do the merits of hiphop music and artists outweigh by far their
flaws.

audibaudi, tomislav

yeah, n.w.a _is_ my favorite hiphop combo.

[Jonathan G. George]

I can relate to rap much more than disco for 2 reasons: first, while rap
for the most part does not use ANY live instruments, the samples and
electronic noises are much heavier than disco ever was. It may be "fake"
funk but it funks hard. plus - a lot of samples are from funk songs we
know and love. disco has some catchy stuff, but it's too light and
transparently artificial for the most part (for my tastes). You'd never
find the BeeGees copping Black Sabbath riffs like Ice-T.

Second, while i agree that too much of rap is sexist or gratuitously
violent, I like the lyrics a lot better than disco. I am not aware of
many politically conscious disco lyrics. A lot of rap has at least a thin
veneer of political consciousness to it that makes it palatable to me.
And verbal violence doesn't bother me if it's directed against the
oppressor. Plus the rhymes are just so much better, try Eric B. & Rakim
versus just about any disco - i don't think it's much of a contest.

Peace.

[Jodin Aren Trocheck]

the way i look at it, the genre known as disco and the discofied popular
culture directly caused the decline of many of my favorite recording
artists' carreers. it was not a coincidence that the disco era was also
the end of groundbreaking music from the ohio players, earth wind and
fire, the bar-kays, the meters, sly, curtis, isaac, the original
funkadelics, the isley brothers, etc, etc, etc.

i know that bands break up and artists simply run out of good ideas, but
to have that many die within 4 years of each other (1978-82) is more than
enough to make me dislike if not disco itself, then it's effect on popular
music.

*-- jodin aren jo...@apk.net http://apk.net/~jodin --*
*-- --*
*-- --*
*-- "if you got funk, you got style" -George Clinton --*

[gran...@grove.ufl.edu]

On Sat, 21 Sep 1996, Jodin Aren Trocheck wrote:

> i know that bands break up and artists simply run out of good ideas, but
> to have that many die within 4 years of each other (1978-82) is more than
> enough to make me dislike if not disco itself, then it's effect on popular
> music.

How do you feel about rap? I ask because it is another genre, like disco,
that has certainly resulted in old school artists getting kicked to the
curb. And what's more, these groups/artists have the shock of actually
hearing *their* music being used as the foundation for a genre that
largely disses them and their generation (without sometimes getting paid
for that sample).

Like someone said here earlier, disco might have taken the funk and
simplified it, but hip-hop not only took (or "stole," if that is how you
want to look at it), funk, but twisted much of it inside out to talk about
pimping, rampant consumerism, "slapping my bitches," and "capping niggas,"
themes that are far from the ideals of freedom, unity, and peace that I
feel are at the core of funk music. How does it make you feel to see
someone like Too Short working with P-Funk? Or knowing that "Funky Worm,"
maybe the funkiest track the Ohio Players cut, virtually gave birth to
gangsta rap? Or reading quotes by the Large Professor (allegedly one of
hip-hop's more talented producers/rappers) dissing James Brown, even as
JB's beats formed the basis of thousands of hip-hop tracks?

Anthony

[Jodin Aren Trocheck]

In article <Pine.OSF.3.95.960922095541.24610D-100000@banyan>,
<gran...@grove.ufl.edu> wrote:

oh boy, here comes a topic i don't know if i'm up for...

as far as rap is concerned, i view it as a viable genre that is going
through a very stale period. sometimes i want to dis rap, but i'd be a
hippcrite. it's just simply the case now a days that the best is not
rising to the top, the industry is too driven by image and cash. rap is
notoriously viscious in it's trends, and if you aren't right on top of
them or one of the few that creates them you are seen as "wack", "lame",
"jake", "busta", "fake" or whateva. take a good listen to "amos n' andy"
by the disposable heroes of hiphopricy on the lp "hipocricy is the
greatest luxury". it addresses this issue head on, talking the hip hop
culture which creates the next big thing and then rallies against them
before the artist even has a chance at another lp.

every musical style has it's trends - some shift slow like jazz, some
quicker like rock, some fast like top 40, and some amazingly fast like
rap. artists are forced to update the sound continually to fit the trend,
because black radio ignores any new sounds and BET well, sucks. It's also
tough to gain record sales in the inner city for rap artists straying from
the gangsta image, as unusual amounts of peer pressure is put on anyone
adventurous enough ot listen. try to find many ME-PHI-ME or arrested
development fans on any city street corner - good luck.

what i'm basically saying is that i suggest those that listen to hip-hop
strictly allow the genre to be stretched. artists like spearhead and
digable planets are making statements without talking about bitches and
ho's. they strive to be "real" and don't have to discuss the ghetto life
surrounding them in every song. life is more than hustling and getting
laid, and i don't know why rap artists or rap fans allow that to permeate
the genre.

[Chris Metzler]

Is it just me, or does it seem like this thread has come up a lot lately?

In article <Pine.OSF.3.95.960915230433.518A-100000@palm>, gran...@grove.ufl.edu writes:
|>
|> I think people have a misconception of disco, and that is probably
|> _Saturday Night Fever's_ fault. But the ironic thing about that movie is
|> that it was a total misrepresentation of the disco vibe. The film was a
|> cleaned-up, superficial thing designed to make disco acceptable to the

|> mass (i.e., white and heterosexual) public . . .

[ stuff deleted ]

|> People talk about the bland musicianship of disco, and there I have to
|> vehemently disagree. Some disco, especially the earlier stuff, is funky as
|> hell. As Vincent said in his book, bands like Brass Construction and Crown
|> Heights Affair blurred the lines between funk and disco, so to say disco
|> was devoid of funk is silly in my opinion. Once disco hit Europe, their
|> tracks were more montonous and cold, and so were the artists here who
|> tried to copy people like Giorgio Moroder; I'll grant you that. But bands
|> like MFSB or the Salsoul Orchestra would just get into a groove and rock
|> it for however long they needed to. I don't see the same kind of
|> musicianship in today's r&b.

Perhaps I'm taking too much license, but I'd summarize what you're saying above
as "People think disco sucks, but what they think of as disco isn't really
disco." To me, this is a semantic point. I agree with your statements about
Philly International -- I like Gamble & Huff stuff too. But I don't think of
that as disco. I think of the Bee Gees/Village People/Trammps stuff as disco.
You tell me that that's a result of the way disco was repackaged by entertainment
combines to wash out anything non-acceptable to white heteros. OK. It's still
a fact that by the end of the 70's, the cool R&B bands (even the ones making
what you'd call disco) were no longer going strong, and the "bad disco" ruled.
Maybe this wasn't because of some fundamental flaw in disco, but rather because
of what the corporations did to it. Fine. I have no problem disliking music
companies (I do it all the time). But the "bad disco" dominated the scene,
messed up R&B/funk, and that's the music I think of when I hear the word
"disco." So I say it sucks. I don't think we're in disagreement about what
music was good and what music was bad -- only what we refer to by the term
"disco." That's what I mean by saying it's a semantic difference.

You may be historically correct by extended the definition of disco to refer
to MFSB/Three Degrees kind of stuff, but I bet most people don't think of it
that way -- their view of "disco" is _Saturday Night Fever_'s view, and that's
what's entrenched in their minds. That kind of music dominated by the end of
the 70's. In other words, I think you're fighting a battle that was lost
16 years ago.

-c

--
Chris Metzler Work Address: Astrophysics, MS-209
630-840-3662 (office) Fermilab, P.O. Box 500
met...@denali.fnal.gov Batavia, IL 60510 USA

"But I don't *want* to live in a theocracy!" -- me
--
Chris Metzler Work Address: Astrophysics, MS-209
630-840-3662 (office) Fermilab, P.O. Box 500
met...@denali.fnal.gov Batavia, IL 60510 USA

"But I don't *want* to live in a theocracy!" -- me

[Jonathan G. George]

Chris Metzler (met...@boris.physics.lsa.umich.edu) wrote:

I don't think we're in disagreement about
what
: music was good and what music was bad -- only what we refer to by the term
: "disco." That's what I mean by saying it's a semantic difference.

: You may be historically correct by extended the definition of disco to refer
: to MFSB/Three Degrees kind of stuff, but I bet most people don't think of it
: that way -- their view of "disco" is _Saturday Night Fever_'s view, and that's
: what's entrenched in their minds.

On the other hand, the phrase "disco sucks" becomes pretty meaningless if
historical criteria are disregarded and everything that people LIKE is
referred to as funk while everything they DISLIKE is referred to as disco.
Disco has come to have such a bad reputation that categorizing MFSB as
disco isn't seen as an expansion of disco (and maybe a reason for
re-evaluation of the genre) but as dissing MFSB. I think this is a
problem, but I catch myself doing it all the time.

[Chris Metzler]

In article <5290cn$i...@news.mr.net>, jggeorge@@mutt.hamline.edu (Jonathan G. George) writes:
|>
|> On the other hand, the phrase "disco sucks" becomes pretty meaningless if
|> historical criteria are disregarded and everything that people LIKE is
|> referred to as funk while everything they DISLIKE is referred to as disco.

I agree. I think people define disco historically -- just maybe not what the
original poster would say is historically *correct*, but rather what seemed
dominant during the peak popularity of disco. That too is a historical
definition, just one that the original poster would say is short-sighted.

I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about here, or if we even are . . .

[rocksteady]

For me, it's because when dico Jonathan G. George wrote:
>
> Chris Metzler (met...@boris.physics.lsa.umich.edu) wrote:
>
> I don't think we're in disagreement about
> what
> : music was good and what music was bad -- only what we refer to by the term
> : "disco." That's what I mean by saying it's a semantic difference.
>
> : You may be historically correct by extended the definition of disco to refer
> : to MFSB/Three Degrees kind of stuff, but I bet most people don't think of it
> : that way -- their view of "disco" is _Saturday Night Fever_'s view, and that's
> : what's entrenched in their minds.
>

> On the other hand, the phrase "disco sucks" becomes pretty meaningless if
> historical criteria are disregarded and everything that people LIKE is
> referred to as funk while everything they DISLIKE is referred to as disco.

> Disco has come to have such a bad reputation that categorizing MFSB as
> disco isn't seen as an expansion of disco (and maybe a reason for
> re-evaluation of the genre) but as dissing MFSB. I think this is a
> problem, but I catch myself doing it all the time.

I had a problem when disco became popular, because the damn drum beat
was always the same, open high-hat on the off-beats, 4/4 kick drum...
even with some great bass parts it got really boring. Whether it was
the Bee Gees or somebody funkier, the beat was similar. (The Bee Gees
had some great New Orleans players on their records, BTW) Within a year
it seemed like all the syncopation that had been a feature of funk had
dissapeared completely from popular music. In the 80s I was real glad
to see rap and hip-hop force a return to the more interesting beats.

Al
--

Allen Kaatz

\\\\\\\\\\\\ rocks...@wport.com ////////////