The Gay DNA of House Music
August 4, 2015 6:02 PM   Subscribe

 
ASEEEEEEEEED! ASS3EEEEEE33D!
...too soon for D-Mob jokes?
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:33 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Is "House Music" still a contemporary term? I remember listening to it 25 years ago during the heyday of Hacienda, but I wasn't aware it was still a Thing (things have moved on to EDM).
posted by Nevin at 6:41 PM on August 4, 2015


Yeah, House is definitely still a thing. EDM is (usually I think) referring to that kick and synth horns that all sounds the exact same.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:46 PM on August 4, 2015 [4 favorites]


Things have not at all moved on to EDM, the term "EDM" right now has fractured into two things: (a) a catchall for all electronic dance music, and (b) a particular style of hard bass-oriented dance music (related to what is popularly known as "dubstep").

Meanwhile, among the most popular dance music genres are House, Tech House, Progressive House, Deep House, Tropical House...

Definitely still a thing. Here's a current top 100 list from the most popular place DJs get their music. Virtually all of it is some kind of House.
posted by mmoncur at 6:48 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


posted by feckless fecal fear mongering

Epony ... ? ... Never mind ... Just ... Never mind ...
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:59 PM on August 4, 2015


Twenty years ago in the USA, it was rare to hear house music except in black or LGBT clubs and on very few radio stations.

cool article but this is not really accurate in my opinion...at least anecdotally in california late 80's onward
posted by last night a dj saved my life at 7:12 PM on August 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Is this really a surprise to anyone? Club kids have always been overwhelmingly LGBT in most bigger cities and Club kids have continually pushed the cutting edge of dance music be it disco, house, trance or EDM. Yeah now EDM dominates the charts and every douchebro on the planet listens to top DJs and you have megaclubs in places like Vegas that pay major DJs insane sums of money to spin and present a faux sense of exclusivity (and over priced bottle service) but the precursors to most dance genres have almost always been black and/or LGBT.

The unfortunate thing is that HIV/AIDS basically cut a swathe through huge sections of NYC/London/SF so that much of the early (and deeper) histories of these clubs have basically gotten lost in the mass die-offs before HIV treatment became the lifesaver for much of the community.

The result is exactly this, a genre that has basically been taken over and whitewashed.
posted by vuron at 7:14 PM on August 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


Is this really a surprise to anyone?

Yes. Not least to the dudebros.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:24 PM on August 4, 2015 [6 favorites]


The result is exactly this, a genre that has basically been taken over and whitewashed.

Ehhhhhh. As someone whose been really in to this stuff since i was a preteen, it's more of an assembly line or process. Stuff gets whitewashed, it isn't just all there right now.

Stuff starts out in those places(especially underground venues/warehouse parties/off night events at fringe clubs), makes it's way to the bigger more popular clubs, then makes its way to the BIG clubs and then the radio and bros.

The stuff i hear at a small party is usually 6-8 months from being mainstream, or so. The only real exception to this is big fancy clubs that have off night events where they specifically get underground DJs to play the "cool" stuff, and it jumps in to the second link of the chain.

The underground, and LGBT centered events are still where the cool stuff starts out though. That and REALLY knowing where to look online, which is a skill for me that's started to slowly atrophy
posted by emptythought at 8:24 PM on August 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


Oh come on "EDM" really is just the current U.S. (North American?) catchall term for... electronic dance music - excepting club hip-hop and radio synthpop although now that "EDM" is catching on here it is rapidly cross-pollinating with those other lineages of club music. House music is definitely included and is as always probably the most popular, albeit often in a form that uses very different sounds than Chicago house music. Some people reject the term EDM or insist that it's just a subset (comprising what's most popular now) in order to to signal that they are old heads (and/or not American) who don't approve of what's popular now/what popularity has done to the music and the culture. But do you hear people saying they like EDM without knowing what (contemporary mainstream) house is? I don't.

Honestly what the fuck ever it's just an acronym.
posted by atoxyl at 8:57 PM on August 4, 2015


Is "House Music" still a contemporary term?

nthing that, yeah, there's still plenty of house being made and enjoyed, and it's still called "house". It's not necessarily the same style of house that was popular 25 years ago, but it's unmistakably house.

House music deserves some of the credit for teaching me to disown the homophobia that surrounded me in the small town where I grew up. Queer sexuality was more visible at clubs and raves than anywhere else I'd been, and for the most part, it just wasn't treated as a big deal.

atoxyl, I definitely hear the term "EDM" used in a more restricted sense, referring specifically to electro-house, dubstep/brostep, and stuff like Avicii and David Guetta. Basically, the poppier end of the spectrum. I actually hear the term used more by fans of that music than by folks seeking to disparage it.

Anyway, to some of us old heads, EDM is informed by a different ethos, and takes place in a different cultural context, than the stuff we're interested in. I'm happy to let people listen to whatever music they like, and I don't waste my time getting into pissing matches over Skrillex. But it's not like the term is meaningless.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:10 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


Queer sexuality was more visible at clubs and raves than anywhere else I'd been

Probably the most "mixed" spaces in terms of sexual orientation that I've been in have fallen into that category, actually, which is interesting to think about -- spaces that were enriched for queerness without being specifically or explicitly queer.

(I've also been to some ravey/clubby type places where I felt pretty uncomfortable, though, so it really varies -- some genres seem to attract more homophobic pricks for some reason. Which is sad, because I actually love drum & bass! But that's not what this thread is about.)
posted by en forme de poire at 10:25 PM on August 4, 2015


Surprised that Thaemlitz didn't rate any mention, who has worked for years to teach listeners where house really came from.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:52 PM on August 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


die-hard leather clones inhaled amyl nitrate with nuclear goths and industrial transvestites.
WHERE CAN I FIND THIS WONDERFUL PLACE?

(googles, figures out that it would have shut before I was old enough to go)

Huh. Back to Slimelight for me, I guess.
posted by doop at 12:37 AM on August 5, 2015 [4 favorites]


It's peculiar that the article mentions
Attracting a much smaller clique, but equally wacky, was Leigh Bowery’s Taboo at Maximus in Leicester Square, launched in 1985. Immortalised in Boy George’s musical of the same name and hailed by the style crowd, there’s a chemical aspect of the club that’s often forgotten.
but entirely fails to say anything at all about the Pet Shop Boys' musical Closer To Heaven, about the club Heaven which is mentioned much more in the article than Taboo, which is currently in revival in London to better reviews than Taboo got during it's run.
posted by hippybear at 1:36 AM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've been dealing with the bro factor at my parties, and my basic approach is very simple. If you are going to be visibly uncomfortable with gay folks having fun in exactly the same fashion that you intend to have fun yourself, you shouldn't be there. I've had to throw people out. Gawking but remaining silent isn't good enough. The temptation to exclude guys (and it's almost always guys) based on their stereotyped appearance basically advertising homophobia is pretty strong.
posted by 1adam12 at 1:36 AM on August 5, 2015 [6 favorites]


The best place i regularly go actually had to start doing that. Because while it requires a bit of knowledge to find the entrance to, people were being tailgated in by "lol where's the party at" bros.

Eventually they just posted up someone to stand at the gate and go "who do you know here? what's tonight's event called?" and similar questions, and tell the super-stereotypically-broey guys to move along. And this is before the door person even. A sort of meta-doorperson.

It's had some misses and issues, but it's been a net positive move.
posted by emptythought at 4:18 AM on August 5, 2015 [3 favorites]


Surprised that Thaemlitz didn't rate any mention, who has worked for years to teach listeners where house really came from.

Sorry to echo vuron, but I'm slightly stunned to hear that anyone is unaware of house music's gay roots. That's like being unaware that hip-hop emerged from African-American culture, you know?

Even mainstream American culture has always seemed to be aware that there's a connection. Madonna vogueing; innumerable TV depictions of drag queens or Pride events with a house soundtrack; etc.

emptythought, that sucks that the organizers had to resort to that. What kind of problems were the bros causing, exactly? Just general boorish behavior, or specifically homophobic stuff?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:15 AM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


"At Pyramid, die-hard leather clones inhaled amyl nitrate with nuclear goths and industrial transvestites."

Somebody please turn that into a queer lorem ipsum generator.
posted by mikeburg at 9:56 AM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]


Many people are unaware that house (and therefore techno, trance, dubstep, etc etc) came from fags of colour.

We gave y'all the music y'all dance to. Nobody out of the loop made the connection between Madonna and vogueing (which was appropriative; watch Paris is Burning pls), of course drag queens are dancing to dance music etc.

Even in rave culture, when I was a raver (late 90s to early 00s) nobody got it.

This is absolutely news to a lot of people.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:45 PM on August 5, 2015


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