LITM Extra - Decolonising Disco—Counterculture, Postindustrial Creativity, the 1970s Dance Floor and Disco pt.2 [excerpt]

Love is the Message: Dance, Music and Counterculture

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In this patrons-only episode Tim concludes reading from his essay Decolonising Disco—Counterculture, Postindustrial Creativity, the 1970s Dance Floor and Disco, published recently in the collection Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and 1980s: Disco Heterotopias, edited by Flora Pitrolo and Marko Zubak. Picking up where he left off in part 1, Tim introduces us to Sylvere Lotringer, the French critic who straddled both the worlds of academic Post-Structuralism and the Downtown NYC scene, itself a 'heterotopic' formation (after Foucault). We hear about the hybridity and convergence of the city's overlapping scenes in the early '80s, embodied by musicians like Arthur Russell, before the AIDS and Crack crises, Reaganomics and shifts in the art world caused this exciting collectivism to give way to more individualist modes of creation and production.

In the final part of the essay, Tim shows how music from Africa, Latin America and Europe was a central component of what he calls 'Discotheque music' (ie records you would hear on the DJ-led dancefloors) which produced the original disco sound. With reference to SalSoul, Saturday Night Fever, Nigerian disco, contemporary reissue labels and more, Tim makes the case for these non-American, largely non-white musics to be included in an expanded edition of the disco archive. Lots of great musical examples are used in this show to illustrate the essay.

Tracklist:
The B52s - Rock Lobster
The Peech Boys - Don't Make Me Wait
Public Enemy - Public Enemy Number 1
Fela Kuti - Shakara
The Lafayette Afro Rock Band - Djungi
Black Blood - A. I. E. (A Mwana)
Tony Allen with Africa 70 - Afrodisco Beat
Orlando Julius - Disco Hi-Life
King Sunny Adé - 365 is My Number / The Message
N'draman Blintch - Cosmic Sounds
Khalab ft. Tenesha The Wordsmith - Black Noise