EDM’s roots in Black America: Chicago House
Chicago via Nicholas Moulds/Flickr
Previously unbeknownst to me, house/techno music have significant roots in Black-American culture. In a previous article about Vince Staples and Big Fish Theory, I wrote about my appreciation of the album’s unique sounds. In reading more about the creation of the album, I repeatedly saw both U.K. garage and Detroit techno popping up across different sources. Staples was listening to a lot of Detroit techno when thinking about his next project, and Zack Sekoff (the main producer of Big Fish Theory) learned a lot about production from different U.K. garage producers so naturally that lead down a rabbit hole…which lead to another rabbit hole, and then another. You get the idea.
I do want to talk specifically about Detroit techno, but a lot of context is tied to house music’s Chicago origins. Like, a LOT a lot. Almost entirely, actually. And, since U.K. garage is essentially a spin-off of garage house from Newark and New York City, I’ve also decided to mention their respective contributions to house music (which occurred pretty much simultaneously alongside Chicago house’s rise to prominence) in another article.
This tangled web of events actually has a definitive starting point: Disco Demolition Night. An extremely condensed version of THAT story is: in 1979, the Chicago White Sox decided to host a promotion where fans could get cheap tickets to the game by showing up to the stadium with a disco record. By this point, disco was beginning to oversaturate the market, despite only really reaching mainstream popularity a few years prior. So, what happens when you pack 70,000 rock n roll fans tired of disco music in a stadium with a bunch of disco records and a couple of disc jockeys who hate disco? You can figure out the rest.
After Disco Demolition Night, less and less disco records were produced/played as the sound was forced underground. And, as it would happen, the underground in this case were clubs around the Chicago area that were frequented by black and latin people. I wasn’t around in the 70s so I can’t verify this for certain but, from my research, disco clubs were frequented by (and often restricted to) straight, middle class to wealthy, white people. But of course, wealthy white people aren’t the only ones who want to dance and have a good night. Underground clubs began popping up, and their patrons were dominantly LGBTQ people of color.
These clubs also were where black DJs could consistently get gigs, such as The Warehouse. The Warehouse (also referred to as, “the House,” hence, “house music,”) was home to the late DJ, “Godfather of House,” Frankie Knuckles. As you can infer from his nickname, Knuckles played a pivotal role in House music: He was the one to take disco records, and flip/remix them with his own flare. When working on his mixes, Knuckles gravitated towards disco records that had soulful vocals that perhaps more resembled R&B than the kind of mainstream disco that the people had gotten sick of.
Frankie Knuckles @ Sugar Factory club, 2012
Knuckles took these records, which already came with a danceable groove, and flipped, chopped, and stretched them in a way that people flocked too. Of course, Knuckles was not the ONLY DJ to do this; the late Ron Hardy was also editing disco music in a similar way to Knuckles, albeit with more frantic energy (Hardy would typically reverse tracks and pitch them up as much as the technology would allow him to).
Another big name often attributed to House music’s beginning’s in Chicago is Jesse Saunders, a contemporary of Knuckles. Much like Knuckles and Hardy, Saunders would take disco and R&B records, and flip them, looping sections of songs that were primarily just drum and/or bass. However, where Knuckles got his beginning in the gay nightclub scene, Saunders took a different route. Knuckles was well known for his mixes, but Saunders was the first to come up with an original house music piece, “On and On.”
“On and On,” was a result of Saunders trying to recreate a popular record he used in his mixes that got stolen. But, while the original record used live instrumentation, Saunders only had electronic equipment to recreate the song, so the end product ended up having a distinct electronic sound.
“On and On,” would go on to become a radio hit, bringing the sound to the general public. This results in some confusion and disagreement about who truly was the first person to make House a thing in Chicago: Frankie Knuckles or Jesse Saunders. In short: Frankie Knuckles started the house sound, but Saunders made the first original house record.
But by most accounts, Frankie Knuckles was the most popular. In fact, Knuckles became so popular that The Warehouse, which was initially a members-only gay clubs, begin drawing in the same white crowds that populated disco clubs. Knuckles popularity led to him making several guest appearances on WBMX, which focused on urban contemporary music (the station’s call sign stood for, “Black Music EXperience”). WBMX also hosted several other DJs who made the same type of remixes as Knuckles, namely the Hot Mix 5, a group of several other prominent DJs who are all widely attributed as helping create and grow House music.
WBMX became Chicago’s most popular station, and mixes done by Knuckles, as well as the Hot Mix 5, were listened to by millions, instead of just the few who frequented the obscure clubs that served as a sort of haven for Black people from different walks of life.
Another key moment is the advent (and subsequent commercial failure) of the TR-909. Meant to be a follow up to the highly successful TR-808 (which still permeates modern hip-hop to this day), the TR-909 was (by comparison) a flop, commercially. A lot of unsold/returned TR-909s ended up in pawn shops for cheap, which poor Black musicians were able to afford. The TR-909 had a unique, computerized sound which, when combined with disco/R&B records (either ones they already had laying around, or purchased for cheap from record stores), made something entirely new to dance to, like Larry Heard’s “Can You Feel It.”
Because the source material would contain soulful vocals and rhythms from Black singers, these new tracks would have a human element to them that purely electronic music lacks. Over time, cassette recordings of these WBMX mixes made their way overseas and were a hit, like Farley Funk and Jesse Saunders’ “Love Can’t Turn Around” (the first record to go from club hit to the U.K. Singles chart) or Steve "Silk" Hurley’s (a.k.a. J.M. Silk) “Jack Your Body” (the phrase, “jack,” refers to a dance that was popular in Chicago clubs at the time).
TV One has an episode of Unsung that covers Frankie Knuckles role in creating the genre, as well as the contributions from other DJs, producers, and singers. There really are way too many important individuals to fit into one, 1400+ word article, so definitely go give that episode a watch. I recently sat through it and the big thing I took away from it was that everyone involved with the actual music side of house music, was almost entirely black (the Hot Mix 5 were not all black, but that’s about the only exception I saw). More attention needs to paid to people like Jamie Principle, Larry Heard, Curtis McClain, and many, many more.
Side note: apparently, even Barack Obama was as fan of house music when he was younger and did his part as Illinois senator to make sure Frankie Knuckles and the rest of the DJs from that time got their credit in the form of several streets named after them. Didn’t know that until I watched the Unsung episode. Seriously, give it a watch.
Since House music’s rise in the early/mid-eighties, there have been plenty of offshoots, namely deep house, acid house, and U.K. garage, all of which are still alive and well (my man denzelworldpeace makes some stuff that could fit these categories).
These genres all stem from Chicago House and still contain several elements leftover from House music’s early days, when Black DJs were flipping disco and R&B records by Black musicians, in clubs populated by Black people. From top to bottom, house music was, and still is, a Black genre.
Proof:
Cummins, James. “FINDING JESSE - THE DISCOVERY OF JESSE SAUNDERS AS THE FOUNDER OF HOUSE: FLY: US/CANADA: FEATURES.” FINDING JESSE - THE DISCOVERY OF JESSE SAUNDERS AS THE FOUNDER OF HOUSE | FLY | US/CANADA: FEATURES, 25 Oct. 2004, web.archive.org/web/20120322041641/www.flyglobalmusic.com/fly/archives/uscanada_features/finding_jesse_-.html.
Estelle, Caswell. “The Ingredients of a Classic House Track.” YouTube, Vox, 15 July 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrqIA0PpAv8.
Lynskey, Dorian. “The House That Frankie Knuckles Built.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Oct. 2011, www.theguardian.com/music/2011/oct/13/frankie-knuckles-your-love.
Magana, Daisy. “The History of House Music Starts in Chicago.” 6AM, 8 June 2020, www.6amgroup.com/the-history-of-house-music-chicago/.
Matos, Michaelangelo. “House DJ Frankie Knuckles Dead at 59.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 1 Apr. 2014, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/frankie-knuckles-godfather-of-house-music-dead-at-59-243506/.
Walters, Barry. “Burning Down the House: Read SPIN's 1986 Feature on Chicago's Club Scene.” Spin, 1 Apr. 2014, www.spin.com/2014/04/burning-down-the-house-chicago-club-80s/.