THE ROOTS OF MODERN DANCE MUSIC
Dance music has no exact geographical origin, but certain regional creators made definitive and multigenerational contributions to the culture as we know it.
For a primer on how Black Midwestern artists helped originate dance music, look no further than a host of Ohio funkateers who emerged from the Buckeye State in the ’70s. Whereas funk luminaries like George Clinton and Sly Stone hailed from New Jersey and Vallejo, California, respectively, Ohio introduced funk’s cosmic nature to the world, reinventing R&B and soul into a thumping, high-energy form that caught the ears of neighboring states.
Ohio innovators included Cincinnati’s Bootsy Collins, Cleveland’s Dazz and Columbus’ Wee. Dayton alone was the birthplace of The Ohio Players, Zapp, Slave, Lakeside, Faze-O, Sun and, of course, Dayton. (If you’re wondering about the enduring influence of acts like Zapp, they were just one of several entities who sued artist Bruno Mars et al. for copyright infringement related to the monster Mars hit “Uptown Funk”; members of the Gap Band, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were actually added as co-writers.)
Just north of Ohio, late-’70s Minneapolis was abuzz with musicians producing electro-funk and the burgeoning new wave. The Minneapolis sound, for all its soulful melodies and lyrics, turned funk on its head, employing synthy production and faster tempos than traditional R&B. Needless to say, its best-known progenitor was Prince, who used the Linn LM-1 drum machine extensively for his forward-looking grooves and freely experimented with other electronic tools, while acts like The Time and André Cymone (both affiliated with Prince) aided in popularizing their hometown’s signature post-disco modernism.
Though Prince was a Minneapolis-sound visionary, it wasn’t really until Janet Jackson’s breakthrough third album, 1986’s Control, that this radical subgenre took the world by storm. That galvanizing set was overseen by production/songwriting team Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis.
The duo spent their early years as members of The Time, before they were fired by Prince for breaking his rule against doing outside production. The assistance they lent The S.O.S. Band—and missing a Time concert—got them Prince’s cold shoulder, and it would take Jam and Lewis another three years to land with Janet. By then the Minneapolis sound was setting the stage for another Midwestern wave to engulf dance music.
On June 12, 1979, Chicago faced a sudden rampage as a crowd of 50,000 congregated at the former baseball stadium Comiskey Park to partake in the infamous Disco Demolition Night. Buoyed by the slogan “Disco sucks,” rock enthusiasts had had enough of the form’s groovy, funk-fueled earworms. The public was encouraged to bring disco records to the stadium to “blow up” between games. The backlash to the ubiquitous genre may have signaled its mainstream death knell, but its influence has proven eternal (see hip-hop, as evidenced by “Rapper’s Delight” and its ilk). Looming locally in the shadows, for instance, was a new dance culture.
House music was all the rage on the underground by the mid-’80s, led by Chicago club DJs Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy. Bronx-born transplant Knuckles cut his teeth on the Windy City scene after his recruitment by local impresario Robert Williams, who invited him to become the resident DJ at South Jefferson venue the Warehouse. Knuckles would go down in dance-music history because, among other reasons, The Warehouse was the “house” from which house music takes its name.
Knuckles’ dynamic, some would say transcendent, performance style and the uplifting vocals emanating from the Warehouse’s sub-woofers intoxicated his audience, making them repeat customers. The mood set by Hardy was equally lively and fevered in pace. His domain was The Music Box. He and Knuckles waged an unspoken house-music war that left partiers unsure of their go-to DJ―both were turntable kings.
Eric Williams, owner of Chicago retail and creative-arts space the Silver Room, was a witness to the sway Knuckles and Hardy held over Chicago’s dance demimonde. He began attending house-music parties citywide when he was 15, reveling in DJ sets as long as five and even 10 hours long. “There were two different kinds of parties,” Williams says. “Knuckles parties were more fluid, more organic. The music was more disco-y and R&B-ish. Ron Hardy’s music was more thumping and his crowd a little more hood.”
Homophobia was rampant in the ’80s during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, in which Black people accounted for 50% of cases. The crisis inspired a panicked response by some heterosexuals, though house-music lovers continued to congregate in shared party spaces. “Going to house-music parties, everybody went there―you were very clear on where you were going because most of the people DJing were gay and most of the people dancing were gay, though it didn’t really matter because you were just going to hear music,” says Williams. “In some ways the music brought people together who would not have otherwise been in the same room.”
Williams also remembers going to Lakeview nightclub Medusa’s to take in DJ sets by Lil Louis. Singers Jamie Principle (best known for the Knuckles-produced “Your Love”), Chip E. and Vince Lawrence, meanwhile, were in constant rotation.
Chicago eventually ran deep with gifted house practitioners, but the locals would nonetheless feel an enormous loss when Hardy died from an AIDS-related illness in 1992.
Waiting in the Midwestern wings: Detroit techno.
Techno ultimately penetrated the U.S. mainstream as a result of its popularity in Europe, but it was thanks to the Belleville Three, composed of DJ-musicians Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins, that the genre got off the ground. (Belleville is a semi-rural southwestern suburb of Detroit.) While attending Belleville Junior High, Atkins rubbed shoulders with May and Saunderson, the trio growing a kinship born of their appreciation for dance-music predecessors Bootsy Collins and Prince.
Though Detroit techno largely refrained from vocal contributions (departing from Chicago house’s singalong quality), it was influenced by the German electronic group Kraftwerk, relying on dense polyrhythms and hypnotic repetition.
The initiator to May’s innovator and Saunderson’s elevator, Atkins bought a Korg MS-10 analog synthesizer to craft thrumming, percussive, bass-heavy production. The beginner turntablist then introduced the wheels to May and Saunderson. The trio made road trips to Chicago, where they plugged into house.
Atkins was also a sci-fi freak. He got the name “techno” from author Alvin Toffler’s phrase “techno rebels,” which appeared in his 1980 book The Third Wave. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the Belleville Three’s imagination likewise drifted to Afrofuturism.
The teenagers weren’t old enough for clubs, so they sought out a Detroit radio DJ who oversaw nighttime mixes, WGPR’s Charles “The Electrifying Mojo” Johnson. Johnson showed interest in the Belleville Three’s exhilarating mixes and allowed them to play sets on his five-hour late-night program, The Midnight Funk Association.
Around that time Atkins and May even started a Belleville Three DJ offshoot dubbed Deep Space Soundworks. Atkins also partnered with local musician Richard Davis to co-produce Enter, a landmark 1983 techno album, before going on a decade-long hiatus.
Across the pond, dance fans went mad for techno, the music soundtracking their occasionally drug-fueled bacchanals. (Though the use of so-called club drugs would become de rigueur in the dance milieu, the members of the Belleville Three themselves took a more straight-edge approach to partying.)
A second wave of Detroit techno sprang up in the late ’80s and 1990s after downtown Detroit venue the Music Institute was developed as a summit for underground DJs. From club parties and basement functions, the genre branched off into subgenres like ghettotech, which Detroit-born sound designer Kacie Willis discovered in middle school, recalling, “Some people referred to this driving techno-inspired dance music as ‘jit.’ It had a lot of Miami bass influences. The lyrics were pretty vulgar” (see DJ Assault; “jit,” by the way, started as a dance song in the 1970s by three brothers who became known as “the Jitterbugs”). Ghettotech was spun on Detroit outlets like hip-hop and R&B station 97.9 WJLB.
“I think having that grounding of ‘Whoa, there’s another genre of music that came from here’ is so important,” Willis says, nonetheless conceding that, however seminal, techno and Motown are rarely mentioned in the same breath.
Still, techno on the whole―which transitioned beyond ghettotech into subgenres like acid techno, tech-house, trance, hardstyle and breakcore―has for some time been heard in film and television scores; composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, for instance, appear to have a fondness for its textures. “The ambient nature of Detroit techno is kind of moody; it’s kind of atmospheric,” Willis continues. “It’s a perfect setting for that 2am-at-the-club vibe, but it’s also a perfect support for narrative.”
In fact, the dance genres introduced in the Midwest have become a universal, and truly global, phenomenon. Afro-electronic rhythms like kwaito, Bacardi and its successor, the burgeoning Amapiano, are at the forefront of new-school EDM. Europe is the standard-bearer for drum and bass, jungle and U.K. garage. Building on traditional Latin percussion, South American musicians have their own fiery iterations: Cuba’s guaracha, Venezuela’s raptor house and Rio de Janeiro’s baile funk.
Although dance music has undeniably been whitewashed over the decades, some understand the importance of its Black history. In 2021 Haitian Canadian producer KAYTRANADA was the first Black musician to win a Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album, and artists like Sango, LSDXOXO and Moodyman are paving the way for the next generation.
“The Midwestern cities―there’s absolutely no question of where they exist in the canon of the culture,” says New Jersey-born club king Rich Medina (who’s DJed shows with the likes of Lauryn Hill, De La Soul, Erykah Badu, The Roots, Jill Scott, Zap Mama and Femi Kuti). “A lot of up-and-coming DJs don’t know the roots of this music, but if they’re playing house music or techno or something that sounds like Prince, they’re paying respect to the Midwest whether they know it or not.”
