Disco was a producers art form, bringing bass and drums up in the mix so even white people couldn’t miss the beat, dance is a DJ’s art form, looping bass and drums till it takes over the track and Frankie Knuckles was a major player. At the Chicago club “The Warehouse” in the late 70s he invented what we now call House.
By the time it reached my neck of the woods, Long Island in the 80s, it had evolved into industrial house and slowly but surely took over.
But when Frankie was inventing the extended extended mix at the Warehouse, he was using a DJs technology to screw around with the rhythm till it soared and plastered the listeners into paroxysms of sweat and dance. All there was was the beat, what Moroder had implied Knuckles made happen.
When all you can feel is beat on heart on dance floor, the sort of stuff that then happened at paradise garage and moved everywhere afterwards, the question as to what constitutes song is entirely moot. What matters is what constitutes movement: it is the place where the heart keeps you alive. Keep life alive.
Those all night “raves” were the final, exuberant meaning of life. A place where your heart beat so fast and the beat beat so hard it meant nothing but the beat and it made you at the top of your aliveness. This is what Frankie Knuckles, who died earlier this week at the age of 59, invented.
