"The road that disco traveled-from underground style to regional scene to national and international trend- is a migrational pattern at the heart of popular culture. Initially, music played in discos was dominated by high-quality black dance music."

"Mainstream culture discovered this music around 1975 with the sudden appearance of disco records on the pop charts. Seeing how this music was crossing over from the dance underground ignited a feeding frenzy among the major labels. Black artists were either pushed toward disco by producers and label executives or went on their own pursuit of the disco dollar. This resulted in some major hits, but more typical were records in which great voices and bands were subordinated to big, unwieldy orchestra arrangements and lousy rhythms, which sparked an anti-disco backlash that tainted all black pop."

"All this horrible music inspired the phrase "Disco Sucks" and sadly, it was often used in ignorant attacks against black artists in general. Despite optimistic talk inside the recording industry that disco would help black performers reach broader audiences and more lucrative careers, a glance at the charts from the period reveals just the opposite. When "Good Times" hie the top 10 in the fall of 1979 the top six places on the chart were all occupied by disco records. By the time it reached No. 1 on August 18, there were three disco records in the top 10 and when it fell out of the top 10 on September 22, there were none. The press wasted no time declaring the disco era officially dead. The death of disco had an important effect on the pop scene-especially in radio, where backpedaling programmers were shying away from black records of any kind in an effort to stay as far away from the "disco" tag as possible."

SOURCE:

Vibe History of Hip Hop
edited by Alan Light
$19.25