FORUM MUSICAL DE MR Q - HOUSE & RAP CLASSICS

The Beginnings of House Music. It all started in Chicago's Southside in 1977, when a new kind of club opened. This new Chicago club called The Warehouse gave House music its name. Frankie Knuckles, who opened The Warehouse, mixed old disco classics and new Eurobeat pop. House was the first direct descendant of disco. In comparison with disco, House was "deeper", "rawer", and more designed to make people dance. Disco had already produced the first records to be aimed specifically at DJs with extended 12" versions that included long percussion breaks for mixing purposes. The early 80s proved a vital turning point. Sinnamon’s "Thanks To You", D-Train’s "You're The One For Me", and The Peech Boys "Don’t Make Me Wait", a record that has been continually sampled over the last decade, took things in a different direction with their sparse, synthesised sounds that introduced dub effects and drop-outs that had never been heard before.

House music did not have its origins just in American music. The popularity of European music, specifically English electronic pop like Depeche Mode and Soft Cell and the earlier, more disco-based sounds of Giorgio Moroder, Klein & MBO, as well as Italian productions, they all gave rise to House music. Two clubs, the already mentioned Chicago’s Warehouse and New York’s Paradise Garage, which promoted European music, had at the same time broken the barriers of race and sexual preference (for House music was in part targeted at the gay community). Before The Warehouse opened, there had been clubs strictly designed to segregate race. However, The Warehouse did not make any difference between Blacks, Hispanics, or Whites; the main interest was simply music. And the music was as diverse as the clients. People who influenced House Frankie Knuckles One of the leading DJs at that time was New York born Frankie Knuckles, also called the Godfather of House. Indeed, he was more than a DJ; he was an architect of sound, who experimented with sounds and thus added a new dimension to the art of mixing. In fact, he took the raw material of the disco he spun and added pre-programmed drum tracks to create a constant 4/4 tempo. He played eight to ten hours a night, and the dancers came home exhausted. Thanks to him The Warehouse was regarded as the most atmospheric place in Chicago. The uniqueness of this club lay in a simple mixing of old Philly classics by Harold Melvin, Billy Paul and The O’Jays with disco hits like Martin Circus’ "Disco Circus" and imported European pop music by synthesiser groups like Kraftwerk and Telex. Frankie said, "When we first opened in 1977, I was playing a lot of the East Coast records, the Philly stuff, Salsoul. By ‘80/81, when that stuff was all over with, I started working a lot of the soul that was coming out. I had to re-construct the records to work for my dancefloor, to keep the dancefloor happy, as there was no dance music coming out! I’d take the existing songs, change the tempo, layer different bits of percussion over them, to make them more conductive for the dancefloor."

Frankie’s friend Larry Levan was a black teenager from Brooklyn like Frankie. In fact, it was Larry who first suggested opening The Warehouse in Chicago. However, things took a different turn, and in the end Larry Levan spun in New York’s Paradise Garage. Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles were indeed two very important figures in the development of House music and the modern dance scene. Perhaps there would have been no fame for the two without the producer, DJ and devoted lover of dance and music, David Mancuso, and his dance parties for gays called Loft parties. "The Loft" was a house party intended for a very black and a very gay crowd. Larry and Frankie attended the Loft parties regularly. It was not only a place of joy but also a place where they became acquainted for the first time with the techniques of House music. Mancuso taught them about creating a perfect House music: about sound, lighting, production, music and DJ techniques. By the mid 80s House had emerged in Chicago as a fully developed musical genre through the efforts of Knuckles and those inspired by him like DJ Ron Hardy of Music Box fame. Ron Hardy was another DJ from the gay scene. The sounds they produced differed in that the basis of Knuckle’s sound was still disco, whereas Hardy was the DJ that chose the rawest and wildest rhythm tracks he could find. Besides Frankie Knuckles, Larry Levan, and Ron Hardy, there were other important figures in the development of House music such as Steve "Silk" Hurley, DJ Pierre, Larry Heard, Adonis, Marshall Jefferson and Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, who was a Chicago DJ and producer, as well as a creator of the first international House hit, "Love Can’t Turn Around". DJ Pierre, on the other hand, contributed to the development of Acid House. As a result, a track called "Acid Trax" was produced. The creators of House music There have been various views of who is the inventor of House music. For example, Leonard Remix RRoy asserted that he had given birth to House in May 1981. LRRoy was a remarkable and much respected DJ. He also claimed that he had invented the term "House music" in the spring of 1981. A person who regarded himself as a creator of House music in March of 1985 was Chip E. Yet, there remains a third founder, for he produced "Love Can’t Turn Around", one of the biggest selling "House" records. His name is Farley "Jackmaster" Funk. In fact, this big House "cross-over" hit was written, produced and arranged by Jesse Saunders. Jesse, however, did not call himself the creator of House music, but rather used the term "originator", which did not mean that he had invented or created the genre of House music. By "originator" he meant that he "started and/or fused a sound with a lot of different ingredients". Generally speaking, one can say, that there was not just one creator or inventor; on the contrary, House music evolved through the means of collaborative efforts of a few people like Frankie Knuckles, Vince Lawrence, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, as well as the promoters and labels that made easy the distribution of early House. The original disco-mixer Walter Gibbons, a white DJ, had a new and immediate impact on the development of Chicago House music. His independent 12" record called "Set It Off" immediately became an underground club anthem. The "Set It Off" sound was primitive House, haunting, repetitive beats ideal for mixing and extending.

Acid House In reality, Acid House had already started in Chicago in 1985. DJ Pierre and some friends pushed a button on their Roland 303 and found that that Acid sound was already in it. They produced a track called "Acid Trax" which, they allege, was stolen by Ron Hardy and delivered as "Ron Hardy’s Acid Trax". As Pierre once said, "Phuture was me and two other guys, Spanky and Herbert J. We had this Roland 303, which was a bassline machine, and we were trying to figure out how to use it. When we switched it on, that acid sound was already in it and we liked the sound of it so we decided to add some drums and make a track with it. We gave it to Ron Hardy who started playing it straight away. In fact, the first time he played it, he played it four times in one night! The first time people were like, ‘what the fuck is it?’ but by the fourth they loved it. Then I started to hear that Ron was playing some new thing they were calling ‘Ron Hardy’s Acid Trax’, and everybody thought it was something he’d made himself. Eventually we found out that it was our track so we called it ‘Acid Trax’. I think we may have made it as early as 1985, but Ron was playing it for a long time before it came out."

There have been various explanations for the term ‘Acid’. The most popular was that acid used to be put in the water at the Music Box. Pierre though, emphasises that Phuture was always anti-drugs, and cites a track about a cocaine nightmare, "Your only friend" that was on the same EP as "Acid Trax". "Acid Trax" came out in 1986 but did not prove to be successful outside Chicago. The first Acid track to make it to vinyl was called "I’ve Lost Control" which was made by Adonis and Marshall Jefferson.