October 3, 2022 • 58 mins
Beyoncé and Drake released house music albums this year, leaving fans confused by their shift from pop-soul sounds to dance beats. Despite popular belief, house music comes from the the 70s disco era and fostered a safe space for Black and queer folk to feel true liberation. Daily Show producer, Chelsea Williamson, house music great, DJ Derrick Carter, and music scholar and writer, Craig Seymour, join host Roy Wood Jr. to discuss the forgotten origins of house music.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central What Happens Roy Wood Jr. Next,
you're about to hear a special presentation of the Daily
Show podcast that I host called Beyond the Scenes. Now.
All it is, it's very simple. If it's a topic
that's already been on the Daily Show, we talk about
it again and we go even deeper on the topic,
(00:23):
and you know, see where we are now on the issue,
get deeper into the origins of the problem. And we
do that with Daily Show producers, writers, correspondents and expert
guests who know a hell of a lot more about
it than us to help us break it down. Heaven listen,
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast that
goes a little deeper into segments and topics that air
(00:43):
and originally on the show. We're kind of like the
ammenities you get when you stayed an all inclusive resort.
You know, you get the hotel room, of course, but
this podcast, it's the room service, the buffet, the fancy
bath rope in and bath rope so comfortable. I've stole exist,
let me stop snitch and on myself. Today we're discussing
(01:03):
a topic from CP time that I did on the
origins of house music. The piece highlights the notable black
DJs and singers that created the original sound of the genre.
House music is all the rage of these days, from
Drake and Beyonce to Swedish house Mafia to Mickey Mouse's
Cocatte cousin who lives in the bad part of epcom.
But would you believe that this genre has its origins
(01:26):
in the black community? Of course you should c p time.
You never heard me say, surprise it's Caucasians. So yes,
these modern artists stand on the shoulders of house music,
black and gay founders. So let's talk about some of them,
like Francis Nichols, a k a. Frankie Knuckles. Frankie started
as a DJ in New York at a time of
(01:48):
ferocious backlash against disco music, so bad that in nineteen
seventy nine, a crowd gathered at Chicago's Comiskey Park to
burn the records of artists and what was known as
Disco Demolition Night. Even watching the footage today, it's still
a shocking sight. A full baseball stadium. Disco was dead,
(02:10):
but people still wanted to get down in the club,
and so Frankie Nuckle started experimenting with the new style
of dance music at his home club in Chicago, the Warehouse.
That's where house music gets its name, not as some
people think, from Doctor House, although Doctor House does love
popping peels. Today, I'm joined by Daily Show producer Chelsea Williamson. Chelsea,
(02:33):
how are you doing? I'm good? How are you Roy?
I'm good, I'm good. I'm making it. I promise you
that this is the voice you have after listening to
house music and screaming in the club till four o'clock
in the morning, which is not what I was doing.
Maybe you know that. We'll talk about that offline. We're
(02:53):
also joined by American DJ, producer and house music great
Derek Carter and music scholar and writer Craig Seymour. Derek,
how you feeling that day? We'll start with you, all right,
I have my voice and we're doing okay. Here must
be nice and Craig, how you doing? I'm doing wonderful
And I definitely have been there with that voice, you know,
(03:15):
after that night at the club isn't quite what it
is and I'm delighted to be here whenever I get
the chance to talk about house music and give it
up to the people who um provided the foundation for
music that has been so important to my life. It's
a beautiful day. My first introduction to house music was
at Florida and M University. I had a roommate from Milwaukee.
(03:38):
We walked down to this is how old I am.
Excuse the old people, Chelsea. I walked down to Eckert's
pharmacy and it Eckert I bought a two deck cassette
player and that was gonna be our music for our
dorm room. And I popped in master p ghetto d
and then the deal was you get the radio for
(03:59):
an hour, and then the other person gets the radio
for an hour. He popped in the percolator and I
had never heard of this. He starts gyrating around the room.
I think he's having a seizure. It probably took ten
minutes for me to realize, Oh wow, this is amazing.
I want more. What else do you have? And this
(04:20):
brother had a box. He had a box of nothing
but house music and do or Die That was Midwest staples. Yeah,
and so you know, being a Southerner, this was not
something that it permeated its way, at least not as
a sixteen seventeen year old, you know, in ninety six.
(04:43):
So you know, it was shocking for me to like
discover this new thing. And he's like, nah, this has
always been the thing. So Chelsea, you do the research
on these pieces. Let's start there. House music has always
been associated with white people, But can you give us
the basic overview of the black roots of the genre. Yeah,
(05:04):
so I feel like you can't really get into house
without first acknowledging that it came from disco, was very
influenced by disco. And July nine, basically in Chicago, this
Chicago radio DJ named Steve dohl Um held a disco
demolition night. It was in the baseball stadium. They're supposed
to be a game that night, and he blew up
(05:27):
a bunch of disco records because he was like, I
hate this genre. They had like moved his radio beat
from rock to disco. It started a riot. The game
never happened that evening, to say the least, and there
began this backlash against disco. I will also say that
there was part of that that did feel very anti
black and homophobic, because a lot of these disco artists
(05:50):
were black, and you know, many were gay or in
the closet or just were like involved in that scene.
Like I just think of Sylvester and others like him.
After that, you kind of had this flash of people
not really wanted to listen to disco. But at the
same time, these DJs were like, well, people want to dance,
but they don't want to listen to disco, so we've
got to figure out something new. And that's where you
have somebody like Frankie Knuckles, who kind of came up
(06:13):
in New York m d jaying and actually kind of
started out in the Harlem drag ball scene, met his
friend Larry Lavan. They started out together working at Continental
Baths d jaying off and on, and Frankie eventually moved
to Chicago, where he started a jaying at this club
called the Warehouse, which is where House actually gets his name.
While there, he kind of pioneered this, you know, version
(06:35):
of disco that was like more of a four four
beat um and just like put different basses and drums
under it, and he created a very helped to pioneer
a whole new genre that eventually became house. It wasn't
only him. Also, like I said, Larry Lavan was in
New York and he DJed at this very famous club
called Paradise Garage, which I don't think you can forget
(06:56):
in the old overall history because legend it was a
legendary club. He was also pioneering his own thing. Then
you had all the people after them, um, such as
the people that we mentioned in the CP time, like
Ron Hardy. You had Jesse Saunders who had the first
number one record in nine four, called on and on
and helped also make it global. You know, you had
a variety of people that also made this happen. But
(07:18):
it was all, you know, the early eighties, and I
do think it's very important to also acknowledge that, you know,
especially the origins of it were very much black and
very gay, and you can't divorce those two things from it.
So then Derek, first, to the black part of that,
snubby Now we get to the gay part to say,
(07:40):
but to the black part of that. Now, you've been
tintos down in this genre since seven eight years old,
messing up your mama's needles on her forty fives and
scratching up everything in the house as we do as
children when we learn our craft. When you started, you know,
first wallowed me through your introduction into the house music scene,
(08:03):
and as you matriculated in it, did it feel like
you were being snub But like, as a consumer, I
understand that we sometimes have a different perspective from the artist.
So as a creator of this genre, as one of
the pioneers of this genre, did you see this did
it feel like you all were not getting the credit?
Give me the origin and and then talk about it
(08:25):
once you were inside the tornado of it all. Well,
I remember the first time I ever heard the term
house music. Friend of mine had come over and just
was talking about house music, house and I'm like, what
the hell this house music? I mean, that's probably twelve
thirteen at the time. We sit on my front porch
(08:46):
at my parents house, and uh, we'd all been dj.
It's that thing like I started a DJ for the
first time at nine. You know, we all had little crews.
And the amazing thing is that your rates? What were
your rates at nine years old? What was you going
for for a show? Give me a plate where I
(09:08):
grew up. It is just like just outside of the
city and a place called broad View, Maywood, Illinois. Um,
they were probably man easily like ten fifteen other like
kid DJs uh in my neighborhood, Like we battle each
other in the garage and just like make music and
(09:30):
have fun and do that sort of thing. Uh. And
one of my friends who was in this kind of UH,
I don't know our association. This is like started talking
about house music house music, like I don't I don't
understand what you're saying. Then he explained it to me,
and I was like, oh, you're just talking about music,
Like I don't know. Why are you calling the house music?
(09:50):
Like you why what is this? But the thing about
it here locally was that they played um had mixes
on the radio, So we had like disco d AI
back in the uh Steve Doll days, and then it
went on to w BMX and w g c I
and then on through like B ninety six and other stuff.
(10:13):
But basically we had on Friday nights from I guess
like nine till four am, basically the time that the
club would be open. If you couldn't make it to
the club, there were radio DJs that would give you mixes.
It became sort of the soundtrack, you know. And I
was crafty and broke, so like I would manage to like,
(10:35):
I wanted to record all these mixes and find all
this music. So I figured out a way to hook
up my parents VCR to the radio and instead of
a tape deck, so I could get six hours on
the tapes, so I could tape the whole mix show
from start to end and just like have it on
on a vc I tape. The thing was that there
(10:55):
was a lot of record stores, like all over the place.
There's one locally, Reamer's Record that sold a lot of stuff.
There was one we had, you know, Rose Records in
the city, and a bunch of other things. I worked
at a place called Imports, etcetera, which is the store
that gave House Music its actual name, like it came
from the club the warehouse. But Paul weissberg Um, who
(11:18):
was the owner um had set up a little been
of music that Frankie play, because that's kind of the
thing at the time, you know, it's like DJ picks
or like music that you could hear in these various places.
And this is also this I'm talking like nineteen that
would have been like nineteen eighty four, maybe nineteen eighty
(11:39):
three somewhere in there. But I started working there at
eighty seven. I mean I was eighteen, I had just
I was a fresh eighteen and we just used to
run around and like, man, it was the heyday. It
was like there was a party in every little neighborhood
every weekend for you know, like years. You know, there'd
(12:01):
be the dance off battle and like a DJ battle
or like a dancer battle or biggest booty battle. You know,
those have never gone away, the spirit of house music.
Do you feel like it was properly honored by white
people to have been this thing that originated within the
black and gay communities at that time? Uh? Yes, there
(12:23):
were club issues and things like that with segregate Chicago
is notoriously terrible about that sort of stuff, and at
that time particularly, But there are a lot of parties
and a lot of events, and like they would be
you know, all kinds of people. I mean, yeah, most
of the DJs or a lot of the DJs, and
(12:44):
the places where it found its start were primarily h
black and brown queer spaces helmed by black and brown
queer people. But they weren't exclusionary, you know, they weren't
uh in any way running the same kind of game
(13:05):
that the actual club owners in the city were running
where you had to have four pieces of I D
to get in, and who the hell has four pieces
of I D in ur there weren't even four pieces
of I D to be had. You know, you write
your name on a piece of paper if that counts.
That's one. You know, bringing your electric grill. But at
these events they would be white people that'd be like,
(13:27):
you know, white passing Latinos and shoot, white passing black folks.
There would be all kinds of people and just having
a good time. And so I feel like how kind
of fostered and um nurtured this kind of uh community
(13:49):
and and for lack of a better term, that anybody
could come, you know, and like there's a famous song.
You may be black, you may be white, you may
be jew or gentile. You know, it don't make a difference.
Working at the record store, I saw it all the time,
you know, people coming in like black people, brown people,
white people, gay people, straight people, uh people just catching
(14:11):
up to it. More so because it was on the
radio at the time, so it became uh something commercial
that could be I guess exploited something you could sell
commercial times to uh make a little money off of it.
But I think that in the black, the blackness of it,
I mean it was black. It was real black. You know.
(14:34):
You would get like just steppers coming in and full
green outfits, and you know, brothers from the deep south
Side who just didn't leave this outside to go to
do anything but go get records. You know, for the
party it was there were a lot of characters. You know,
you would run into some interesting people. To that point,
(14:54):
Craig speak a little bit to the LGBTQ community and
how they fit into the history of music, specifically queer
Black and Latin X men. Well, first of all, I
just have to give it up to the black ingenuity
of cooking up a cassette player to a VCR. I
had never heard of nothing like that. Yeah, that just
(15:16):
needs a long first of all. Doesn't give it up
to that, all right? And then I also wanted to
um say a little bit about the Steve Dobb the
Disco Demolition um riot. The reason why it can really
I feel very comfortable calling it racist is because, um
(15:37):
some of the people that were taking the records that
people would get were able to get in free for
reduced price to get they were bringing in Stevie Wonder
records they were bringing in, and read the Franklin records
they were bringing in funk records. So the record they
weren't making any distinction between black music in general and disco.
They just wanted to burn these black records. So that's
(16:00):
something that's very important that often gets lost in that.
That was definitely racist. I don't care what am I
drives to say, the point is and what this one.
I believe it was Vince Lawrence. Excuse me if I'm
wrong about that, but I believe he said, you know,
he didn't see any Carpenters records coming through, he didn't
see any doors Day records coming through, he didn't see
(16:21):
any Barry Mandelow records coming through, but he did see
mainstream black R and B records coming through. That we're
not disco. So to me, what's what's what's the what's
the you know, connecting threat between all their artists they're black,
you know, So it really did have a racial um implication. So,
(16:42):
you know, I think it's important to very much think
of a black queer aesthetic and queer community as very
distinct from a white queer community. And I think it's
very important to think of the practices of black queer
communities as very different from the practices of white queer community.
(17:05):
So that's why when Mr Carter said the thing about
it was always a mix of people, a black queer
aesthetic and community, and the principles of the black queer
community have always been about inclusion, and they've always reflected
sort of the thinking of black feminist authors that I'm
(17:29):
not free till everybody's free, you know what I mean.
It's not a get mine type of situation. It's a
someday we'll all be free situation, you know, and we're
trying to free everybody's mind. So that's why the inclusion
of um all sorts of different people was so possible
(17:49):
within these black queer safe spaces where they might not
have been in white gay spaces, which, again, like Mr
Carter said, when you show up to the door, you know,
if you were white, you have to show and you know,
multiple ideas this and that have to go through all
sorts of changes. But I think that inclusive aspect was
(18:09):
always a part of it for me, not growing up
in Chicago, but being around that. I was born in
nineteen eight, so um I saw it all from the
point of view. I grew up in d C. But
I lived in New York for a long period of
time during this period, and New York at this time
in the early eighties was the capital of dance music.
Like everything came out of New York or New Jersey,
(18:32):
filtered through New York to clubs like the Zanzibar and
Tony Humphries, and then they get played by Larry Levan
at the Paradise Garage and that type of thing. So
that was the center. And I distinctly remember when house
came on the scene because what was b back in
those days it's kind of like what we now call freestyle,
(18:52):
but you can call elektro and records like Shannon's Let
the Music Play and things like that, which are very
kind of um of the Jaunty records. And I remember
when the first time like jam Silks Music Is the
Key started playing, people were like, what is this because
it's just it was much more fluid than the sort
of electro rhythms before. And then once we start getting
(19:14):
like Marshall Jefferson's House Music Anthem with the pianos and
all of that kind of stuff, it was like somebody
switched a light switch and like all of these kind
of hard electro records that were once popular, we're just gone.
And now it was all about house music, whether melodic
house music or the sort of um cut up tracks
(19:39):
that people like Um Todd Terry and people were doing.
New York producers really picked up on this sort of
cut up sounds that Chicago producers were doing. Producers like
Arthur Baker, who produced Looking for the Perfect Beat, one
of the first electro hip hop records, he really started
(19:59):
being a champion and of house music and bringing that
into the New York scene. And once it became big
in New York, then the pop artists wanted to get
getting on that money. So that's when you started getting
Frankie Knuckles remixing records for like Janet Jackson and Windy
Houston and people like that, And that's when it really exploded,
when the pop people started getting into it. But again,
(20:22):
it was about how the New York producers were kind
of translating this raw sound that was coming from Chicago.
So then would you all say that these house music
venues became a bit of a cultural and behavioral safe
haven for the gay community, And I would guess to
some degree the black community as well, where you could
(20:44):
come and just be yourself in this one bubble away
from all of the other bullshit that's going on outside
in the city. That was literally it for so many people,
including myself that I knew, uh, particularly because clubs were
always in many ways meant to be an escape, um
from the sort of just things that you do every day.
(21:07):
My job is terrible, but the weekend, you know, my girlfriend,
my boyfriend's mad at me. But the weekend, you know,
all the things that you go through during the make
your money part of the week are absolved and you
are just the weekend. So having those places where you
(21:28):
just could be free, well you wanted to be free,
and then we're able to be free. Uh, that is
a great recipe for a good time, and people were
coming to have great times. You know. The interesting thing
um book Miss card and I've talked about like how
in certain cities like the big cities, the New York's Um,
(21:52):
the Phillies, the Baltimore's, the Chicago House also had a
life on radio, which really sort of spread the message.
But in terms of black queer spaces, there were places
all around the country, even in the South, in Atlanta
and Houston and all of these other places where house
(22:14):
music clubs were really all that the black, gay and
lesbian community had at that time because they weren't hearing
it on the radio, they weren't couldn't even find it
in the record stores. But they would go to these
particular clubs um in order to hear the music. And
in many ways they were much more isolated than people
(22:37):
were in bigger cities like Chicago and d C. And stuff,
where there was a larger Black A community. And then
there were also the clubs. In the South, there was
only the club, and the Black A community was the club,
and the soundtrack to the club was house music. So
there's it provided such an important um connection. And you know,
(23:00):
like I was saying about the inclusivity of house music,
you hear that in the music. You hear that in
um Sterling Voids It's all right, you know. You hear
that in Joe Smooth Promised Land. You hear that in
CC Rogers Someday. You know, you hear that in um
Mr Fingers. Can you feel it? It's all about trying
(23:21):
to seek for a better world for everybody. It's not
just a day pride anthem is that it is an
everybody thing and it's talking about This was the eighties,
so it's talking about apartheid in South Africa. It's talking
about all sorts of things that oppressed people. That's what
house music is to me. So with those artists you've
(23:42):
just named, Chelsea in the segment we featured, you know,
the late great Frankie Knuckles, Martha Wash made in appearance.
We actually got Martha Wash to just straight open up
to zoom camera and do a joke with us on
the fly, and she was with it on zoom. She
she knew the button like, ain't no shot because she's gone.
(24:02):
I mean, she's seen the errors. You know. She was
two tons of fun. She was the backing band for Sylvester,
so she was She's a disco is disco gets pedigreed.
That wraps up our time with house music. If you
like that sort of thing, which personally I do not.
Maybe I'm old school, but that type of music is undignified.
(24:25):
Shaking my hips like a heathen. No thank you, there's
no commandment about dropping it little. That movie Dirty Dancing
was about two people rubbing crotches in public places. So terrible,
wouldn't it? Roy? Is that you God? I knew you
were a black woman. No, it's me, Martha Wash. What's
(24:49):
this I hear about you not liking dance music? Martha?
I cannot abide by dance music, not a single note.
I'm a man of culture shipment once a decade and
that's nonsense. Everyone can dance, Everyone must dance. Hit a
studio from Chelsea, who were some of the other DJs
(25:16):
or singers in the house genre that came up in
the research that they're just we just ran out of time.
I mean there's a lot like that's the thing with houses,
Like there's so many DJs and so many people that
were integral. Um. I know, especially on the we were
trying to find you know a lot of women DJs
that helped out early on, and um, we came up
with Yvon Turner, who did you know the music is
(25:40):
the answer dub mix that is this huge song And
she actually was never properly credited for it. She was
actually credited on the original vinyl as Evan Turner. They
credited her as a man. Weirdly um and that happened
to her a few times in her career and she
ended up actually leaving but then coming back a couple
of years ago and got Grammy nominated um for song.
(26:00):
So you know, she's like managed to do the whole thing.
But you know, people like her recommend to Von Turner
tracks just while we're on Yeah, I think they would
like to know. Google Whitney Houston, I'm Your Baby Tonight,
the Von Turner mix, do yourself a favor. And also
Lisa Stansfield you can't deny it the Von Turner mix
(26:25):
and Layla half the way. Um, heaven knows the Von
Turner Mix. I just want to throw that out there
because that's Von Turner's all good, all good. Um. And
then on the singer side, I think one of the
things that's very um cool and interesting about house music
and it really allows for a lot of women to
(26:45):
sing it full of voice, um, whereas like especially now, UM,
I feel like in a lot of pop music it's
not very normal. So especially you know the eighties and
nineties we talked about Martha Wash, but you know there
was also Crystal Waters who Gypsy Woman She's Homeless, which
was this huge smash hit. You know, you have Ultra
Nate who had this huge hit free and she's one
(27:06):
of the most commercially successful house music singers ever. And
when we were speaking about the sampling of these disco
records early on, you have Lolita Holloway's Love Sensation, which
then got turned into good Vibration, which everybody knows. But
she actually also did not get credited for her vocals
because it was just remixed and sampled so many times.
So you know, there's so many women that have like
(27:28):
made it in this it made dance music their main
career because, especially for a lot of black women with
huge like church gospel vocals, like house music is at home.
It's a safe space, and it's a place where um,
it's consistent work and they know that people will listen
to it, they'll get paid for it, and their voices
will be appreciated. One of the things that it's often
(27:50):
overlooked I feel is, uh, lesbian's. Back in the good
old days when I would go clubbing at things, they
were like lesbians who would just out being themselves and
finding places because it's hard for especially you know, black
and brown women two be queer um in public, and
(28:13):
I feel like they are often relegated to the at
the bottom when in reality at that time particularly there
were a lot of uh female DJs running like coming
to the store and buy things for you know, the
Paris Club and all these other places that were going
on at the time that just catered more specifically towards women.
(28:38):
So there was a place that existed for them in
this sort of pantheona, this uh hierarchy of um black
and queer. Like, it wasn't just men, you know, there
were a lot of women. There are a lot of
trans people, um a new queens that kept raizor blades
(28:58):
in their cheek because as they couldn't get home unless
they have some protection. Keep it raised way in between
your toes. So you gotta do is kick your shoe
off and you can kick somebody in the face if
they try to, you know, mess with you like these
like but you know these are like hard bitches, like
you know, just ain't playing with you and you're and
you're gonna know it. You could learn a lot from
them though. I've learned a lot of self protection, a
(29:21):
lot of self protection things that I know from trans
women back in the day. Keep fifty dollars in your
shoes you get arrested, the ibon like all the all
the good, all the good street stuff, like the street
knowledge came from you know, trans girls, especially the ones
who were see this one. We can get the CRT
(29:43):
in schools. We need this knowledge in the in the textbooks.
I mean. And if you had somebody and if you
had like you know, a trans woman, you know that
had your back like that, oh baby, she would go
to town spe kind of inclusion. After the break, I
want to talk about the way that Europe played a
(30:04):
role into the evolution of house music and what many
would argue is the pushing out any eratier of black
and gay faces within the craft and how that affected
the evolution of house music. We're going to get into
that after the break. This is beyond the scenes. Beyond
the scenes, we are back. We are talking house music. Now.
We have discussed the foundation of it. We've discussed the
(30:26):
base of it, the origins of it. But let's talk
a little bit more about how it evolved beyond America
and how that led to what I suspect would be
some of the eraser of black and LGBTQ folks from
the historical context of the music. Why do you all
think the eraser started and what role did the global
evolution of house music playing that well. I don't have
(30:49):
anything against Europe in the eraser, because Europe is responsible
for house music gaining its international popularity. When house music started,
nobody in the States in terms of music journalism, in
terms of anything, cared one small bit. It was the
(31:10):
European journalists who came over here and wrote about house music.
It was the licensing deals UM from the small independent
Chicago labels that they licensed and took over to UM
Britain and in the UK. These records became like number
(31:31):
one records, Jack your Body, the house music anthem. They
became number one records when over here nobody was trying
for them. I remember one of the best, one of
the most important house groups of all time, Ten City.
They were signed to Atlantic Records here, but their record
was blowing up overseas. Do you think that Atlantic Records
(31:52):
gave them money to tour overseas? No. The lead singer Byron,
he had to ask his grandmother for the money. She
gave him a ray are blade, told him to slit
underneath the curtain where she hit her money. Ten thousand
dollars dropped out on the floor and that was his
touring budget. They went over there and toward it, and
I believe it was That's the way Love Love Is
(32:15):
became a top ten UK pop record, but not because
of any support of the US labels. And also all
of the old house music legends can go overseas now
and still get a check and still perform, and they
get performed like rock stars. What really happened is that
(32:35):
And we haven't talked about this yet, but we can
never underestimate the power, the just the loss that happened
with AIDS that decimated the black gay community at every
single level. So that affected the people that were making
the music, that affected the people that were in the
clubs listening to the music. Those clubs began to close
(32:58):
because there wasn't enough of audience. We're talking about estimates
where some black A clubs feel like between the eighties
and the nineties they lost forty and fifty of their
audience more or more. And so as the music is
getting popular, it starts getting played in the white clubs
(33:19):
and these big white clubs. It started be calling the
big rooms. So the music started to be couldn't be
made for these big rooms that were mostly white. It
wasn't being made for a black gay audience anymore, and
it lost many of the It lost the soulfulness, the
(33:40):
rootedness and R and B, and it lost the sense
of social responsibility that was so much a part of
the early house. So to me, that's where the eraser
comes from. I don't blame a UK kid who grew
up with you know, ten City and Steve Silk Curlely
in the Top ten trying to create their own version
(34:02):
of that. I mean, that's just something people are going
to try to do. I think it was because so
many black creators and audiences died out because of AIDS
that made it very easy for the erasure to happen.
Because once you got these big rooms, these white gay
spaces doing their version of house music, then those DJs
(34:26):
became to prominence and they came to set the aesthetic,
and it actually became the first time, I think, in
the history of music. I'm gonna go this far to
say when dance music in general was not connected to
the priorities of black people. Like every from the blues
to jazz, to R and B, motown to disco to
(34:51):
original house, all of those were um the aesthetics of
those were found died by black people and were rooted
and black culture. But once you started getting the music
playing in these white venues and the circuit parties and
all of that kind of stuff, dance raves, all that,
(35:12):
thank you, id m all that that was no longer
rooted in anything black, and that, to me, is what
led to the erasure. I feel like part of this
also exists on a level that has a lot to
do with socio economics. So I knew growing up thirty
(35:37):
DJs fifteen of whom I would easily say could kick
my ass and the dj W in the battle. They
were great, great, great, but you know you have to
get a job and you know, you what, you just
go DJ all the time. UM people particularly um black
(35:58):
and brown people off then don't have a parent or
a family structure that allows them to be independent muso's
to you know, chase their dreams. And you know, like
I knew people that wanted to keep Djan, but somebody
mama got sick and he had to go get a job.
(36:19):
I knew people who d Jan uh broke, you know,
got to a motorcycle accident and couldn't keep Djan because
you know it didn't have insurance. And you know, all
these sorts of stories that I feel are particularly tethered
to black and brown and often queer spaces because of
(36:41):
associo economic position. Oftentimes, particularly with black and brown queer people,
they were excised from the homes, you know, when someone
found out that they were gay or queer, or transgender,
or you know, just not not right, whatever it is.
And so they were they of it on the street.
They are, you know, doing these things and trying to
(37:02):
cobble together a sense of expression from whatever they can,
however they can, whenever they can. That's hard. And then
that's also why a lot of the the aids when
it came in, um, I remember people just disappearing, you know,
just not there anymore. You know, you would like even
(37:25):
at the record store, you know, what happened so and so,
and then somebody come in with a little spot on
their face and something something looked a little different about them.
And then the next thing you hear is that they're
in the hospital. But you know, it's still a shame
attached to it, so no one really would say the
real cause would be you know, we called it the
package back then. You know, she's got the package um,
(37:49):
and people would make you know, working me to my
last t sale. Honey, you try to find the humor
even in tragedy, but uh, I can, like when greatest something.
But I felt like, man, I remember just so many
people who are just just disappeared that I no longer
(38:11):
see that like aren't around. And it kind of like
made me, you know, like in a better world where
people have been able to be recognized and be seen
and not treated as outcasts and not um sort of
stuck on the side on these margins that could have
been more. But I also feel like if that was
(38:32):
the case, then these marginalized people wouldn't have been so
eager to live for today and live for now and
have this enthusiasm, have this like strive and drive to
create and do these things because tomorrow is not promised
or you know, like you better get it now because
you never know. It's so much deeper to not deeper.
But I mean there's another layer in that you have
(38:55):
to talk about the business owners and the socio economics
of black club ownership. Once black club owners were losing
their audiences, they couldn't always afford to pick up and
start a new venue. Somewhere else just because of the
sociogonomic conditions that affect black businesses, you know. So that's
(39:19):
why you had the white owned big clubs. And what
do white owned big clubs want is their customers. They
want white people, They want white DJs. So that's why
I don't quite I'm not so quite as quick to
blame it on Europeans because if you think about a
lot of dance acts like Daft Punk on their first album,
they don't do anything but like they have a song
(39:40):
called Teachers where they just throw out people's names. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
right right exactly after the break, we're gonna take it
home and we're gonna talk about where house music can go.
They're gonna talk about Beyonce and Drake is beyond the Scenes.
We'll be right back on beyond the scenes, bringing it home.
(40:01):
We are talking house music. Now, we've talked about the
de evolution of it in terms of black and gay
creators being able to still be at the forefront of
the creative evolution of it. So Dereck and Craig, I
want to pose this question you all before we talk
Beyonce and Drake. Do you think y'all's working contributions to
(40:22):
the industry helped keep the history, the black history, and
the gay history of house music alive. Let's just talk
a little bit about the work that you do now
to make sure that this genre still remains as relevant
as it was, you know, back in the day. Because
you know, Derek, I feel to some degree with what
happened in the nineties with the eighth Epidemic, what happened
(40:42):
with poverty and just the you know, and we really
could even blame crack and jail and drugs sentencing as
well as part of that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, all
of that losing some degree of your autonomy and being
able to control this genre like you lost some of
your autonomy. So talk a little bit about the things
(41:03):
that you all are doing now to try and get
some of that back. There's a lot, there's really a lot.
I mean I I travel a lot for work for deejaying,
playing clubs, doing um various events and things like that,
and I always try to make sure that there is
(41:25):
a heavy dose of blackness and something that represents me
and my upbringing and my people and my feelings in
what I do. I don't play hits, I don't play
the latest um whoever the new girl is song? I mean,
you know I Chopper a Sap, whoever dog, you know, Billy,
(41:52):
Somebody's anybody. I don't because that that doesn't represent me
or speak to me. So I played records with jazz,
I played records with funk, I play records with blues keys.
I play records um with women who are telling telling you,
(42:14):
selling you the story like you're gonna hear this right quick.
I feel that one of the best parts about being
able to still be here and still have a platform
is that you should use it. You know, you should
take that platform and make it so that it has
(42:38):
some sort of relevance to what it is you're trying
to say, Like I I have people that you know,
DJ friends who I don't want to say sell out,
but you know that, Oh it's about the music. It's
about there. I mean, yeah, it's about the music, but
it's about the voice. You know. Um, I always say
(42:58):
the voice was the first instrum it h and people
who don't understand that can't quite relate to a lot
of things. I do. You play a lot of vocals,
you do this, you do that. I'm like the voices,
the first instrument people you know they made I didn't
see any dinosaurs, didn't hit on rocks and you know
(43:20):
have rhythm, but they did holler, you know, all animals,
even going back. That's that's how you gotta mate. You
sing your little song in the tree or whatever, you
make your call in the fourth google. That's that's how
you That's how you got some. So I mean, and
(43:42):
that's what we do with music and with instruments. We
do these things because there's also like level of I
have something to say, or I'm trying to get some
or you know, there's a story I want to tell,
you know, communication, all these sorts of things. And so
I still feature heavily um black and brown people singing
(44:03):
and playing and um music that suits and sits within
that wheelhouse. I mean, my parents are from MSS Sippy
like MS Like. I called my dad yesterday to make
sure they had water because Jackson, Misissippi ain't got no warter.
(44:23):
So I was like, y'all got water dot there? And
he's like yeah, but you know, and I was like, well,
I mean, you know, my parents not Stephen Fetcher. I
don't want to sound like that like my parents had
just in a tin roof shot. My mom's side is
from Clarksdale, so I'm not offended in the least. I know,
you know, you know at the end of the road
where the road stopped, you know, that's where my grandmother's house.
(44:46):
So I am of this kind of like people who really,
really really had it. I won't say I don't want
to like, I don't want to make it sound like,
you know, these are victims, because they've never we consider
themselves victims. They don't play like their victims. My parents
are not victims of anything, but they their conditions and
(45:07):
and and their situations weren't always the best. They weren't
geared for success. And the fact that you know, they
made it out. My mom's a teacher, my dad engineer,
Like you know, they raised their kids in the suburbs
and said we had enough of this cold, we're moving back,
and allowed me to go to private school and this
sort of thing. Um, I find that and all that
(45:31):
and and all the like whiteness that I was often
the blackness, and I was the blackness in the whiteness
as a child a lot. You know, I always had
my roots to keep me strong. If if that's another analogy,
(45:54):
you know, like a good foundation of things. You know,
my my roots kept me upright, My roots kept me
from doing some things because there's always like you know,
I asked us to hear or like you know, my
my mother still sits on my shoulder and corrects my English,
you know, and and this sort of thing. So, Um,
I feel like being able to still be the blackness
(46:19):
in the whiteness is part of my very platform in
general and the way I approach a lot of this
and go through it. Beautiful Craig, talk a little bit
about your writing. Yeah, As for me, Um, one of
the most perplexing questions that I'm dealing with in my
writing is, like I think a lot about the brothers
(46:39):
who aren't here, Like the brothers who like might have
become superstars but past of aid, the brothers who might
have been a great producer but just didn't get that chance.
That haunts me all the time, and I don't know
quite how to get it that but I know I do, right,
you know, So much of my work is about preserving
(47:00):
the stories and the names of um, black gay men
that have contributed to pop music throughout you know, from
seeing the Sissy Man's blues too, Saucy Santana, Booty, you know, Stewart,
So you know, it's all the way, and you know,
I just wanted to call some names. I mean, I
(47:20):
think we do have to talk about the people that
were out during the period, like the Robert Evans, you know,
one of the greatest vocalists, um you know house music vocalists,
um ever like and David Cole using his church piano playing,
you know, became part of CE and C Music Factory
and then remixed the Whitneys and stuff. But just these men,
I think it's important to tell those stories. I just
(47:43):
kind of tried to record the stories of people who
I feel haven't been given they're due, and also to
sort of share my stories of how it felt literally
to be a black gay man in their twenties in
the eighties dealing with this kind of stuff in real time.
To that point, with the Saucy Santana's of the world
(48:05):
and the more present day artist Chelsea, give us some
of those genres that have been influenced by house since
its rise through the seventies and eighties. Yeah, I feel
like houses um ever present an omnipresent actually, which is
so crazy because a lot of people don't necessarily equate
it with a lot, but it's had so many influences.
(48:26):
So I think you have Acid House, which is kind
of like known for like more like squelching noises. It
sounds a little bits, it sounds different, and Ron Hardy
was actually one of the ones who helped to kind
of bring it to the forefront pre techno, It's right.
So then you had, you know, you kind of started
Acid House. You know two Live Crew, two of the
members and they're actually started Miami Bass, which is huge
(48:50):
and it's also part of the House family. They also
helped to start you know, Baltimore club music, which we
still here to this day. Um, you know, I will
say for people if maybe you're not as familiar, I'd
say one of the latest ish ones that you've heard
more mainstream is probably like and Rake's album Sticky is
like a Baltimore club influence, but also wop Sam samples,
(49:11):
you know, early Baltimore club song. You know, horns in
this House. So, um, you know, we hear that one
a lot. You have I'm a Piano, which is like
a South African house, you know, a genre like deep house,
gospel house, hip hop, house, ghetto house like houses like everywhere,
gospel house were go into Jesus. Yeah, yeah, gospel houses
(49:37):
every might not every Sunday morning. I listened DJ spin
who's a Baltimore person, and he has his Sunday service gospel.
You know, because of the thing is the pianos like
that Marshall Jefferson brought in through the house music anthem.
(49:57):
That's not the church piano. And they you've got people
like David Cole who were used to the church. So
all that piano you hear in house music house remixes,
that's all from the church. And that the singers were
all from the church. So it's like that's the most
that's the most natural thing in the world. If you
had to sit in church eight hours on a Sunday
(50:20):
and couldn't leave except to you know, you get some
food and then come back to church again and then
you do all the things that if that was your life,
you know, especially for a lot of black men and women,
that was your life for the first sixteen seventeen years
of you being on this earth. Like you, it's in
(50:41):
your bone and how you hear music, it's in how
you approach uh people, getting getting happy, and it's the
release you want from it that you expect from she
don't got happy and you got a fantom and like
put it. You know all that, you know the church
fan and and you because that's that's like a club.
(51:05):
You know, that's what the club as you get there
and people get the holy ghost churches churches the club
with better chairs if you're lucky. Breaky Knuckles used to
call the club the haven for the children falling from grace,
so he was. He was very much aware that a
lot of the gay people that came to his club
were people that were grown up in the church experience
(51:28):
but were then outcast because they were gay. So yeah,
you need to get on the gospel house wave. Now
come on, now, this has been a wonderful discussion. I
will end on a simple question we can answer as
quickly as we can. Chelsea, you'll go first. We'll end
with Derek Drake and Beyonce's House influence albums that came
out in good or bad, Chelsea go. I will say
(51:53):
that I think that anytime somebody black mainstream artists taking
back a black genre overall, I will say is a
good thing. I think Also, they're two completely different types
of house, which I think is another part of it.
But um, you know Beyonce's ballroom House, Drake is more
i'd say, like tropical, a little bit more UK on
(52:15):
a piano ish but yeah, afrobeats it like it's it's
a little bit different. But um, I enjoyed both both
go up in the club and that's what matters to me.
So um, that's what I'll say. Yeah, I agree that totally.
There's just two different albums. I mean, Drake is very
much as House has a cross the Black Atlantic, as
I said, you know, as house has moved its way
(52:37):
through the UK, through South Africa back up through Toronto
first exactly. Really I think that's what it is and
and it's you know, so it has that kind of
modern feel where Beyonce I think, even when she's not
making house tracks on the record, she incorporates a lot
of the sort of bravado and self love and perseverance,
(52:59):
those themes that are so um particular the house music.
She really embodies those in the album. Even though you
could say like break my Soul and that let the
last song, the samples Kevin ab and Rene like those
are the most housey songs I feel even on tracks
like he did and stuff like that, you get the
feeling of house and so yeah, I love that. I
(53:22):
think it's I think it's fantastic. All right, Derek, what
say you? Final word? Well, uh, I I don't like it.
Here's the thing. Two of my absolute best friends in
the entire world, one of whom I started label with
(53:42):
and one of whom I've been best friends with since
I was seventeen, wrote and produced some of the things
on the Beyonce album Honey, and my ex Classic Classic
Music Company partner Luke Solomon. Uh did Alien Superstar and
then they did that other one of the other songs
as I forgot the name of it. So I give
them credit for um entree into this kind of uh
(54:08):
this this different world being present and being um seen,
being in these places, presenting this music and having something
to do with a large amount of shine. Honey is
my is my best friends since we were you know, forever.
It's great for them, I think, and it's good for
(54:32):
a community to see black people be black people unabashedly
and deal with um black producers and have a sense
of this pipeline of this music. It's it's started here
and it's come through I think there's a place for it. Um.
(54:56):
I find that often it's not to my taste because
it's it's created and made for someone who isn't me. Apparently,
you know, it's made for someone who listens to the
radio or has a uh much uh. They're incursion into
(55:17):
music is a lighter and often, um, it doesn't come
fraught with the kinds of issues and problems that I
have had to go through and currently deal with regarding music.
My music experience is it's heavy a lot um And
(55:37):
so what you say, it's essentially like taking if we're
gonna go back to food again as an analogy, if
you cook this the home way, and you've used everything
in your kitchen and it's a home cooked meal and
you see a more mass produced version of it that
is still flavorful and decent and does the job. I mean, yeah,
it is. But if you grew vegetable, then raise the animals,
(56:03):
and then you know all these sorts of things like
I grew the vegetables, I've helped to raise these animals.
You know, I I feel like I have Maybe I'm
a bit precious about it, but I can be a
bit precious about it if I want to, you know,
and that's my place in that. And I respect them,
and I I am happy that you know, they're putting
(56:23):
a little shine on things and that they're able to
cast uh some of the music in a different light,
particularly as you know, Retro and oh be honest, spring
by House Music and Drake spring House Music. I mean
the Drake album has had a large part of the
production by Black Coffee, who, like you know, I've worked
with DJ with we did a party here at Chicago
(56:44):
a couple months ago. Uh. These are these are people
who are in the community, So I like that they
are also getting shine. It gives you a a you know,
if you could see it, you can be it kind
of thing that positives these people in a place that
offers you know, this is something available to you too, honey.
(57:08):
Being trans is you know, one of the absolute first
trans people to ever be on like the Billboard Top ten.
Uh as like you know, a producer or something like
these sorts of things. So there's a place for my
appreciation for it is not in a critical place. I
(57:36):
feel like the corona of it, the corona of it
is is amazing. Yeah, it's net positive for the genre.
It's net positive for the people who have been tintoes
down in that culture, even if it's not something that
you would run with. This is a terrible analogy, but
it's the way a lot of stand up comedians feel
about tiktoker's and internet comedians and they going land that
(57:58):
ain't comedic. Hey, if it's bringing asses to the seats
and these people are going to comedy clubs and helping
keep comedy clubs open, I see them as net positive
for the genre. We could talk for years about this,
but I thank you all for giving me almost an
hour on this topic. Thank you all so much for
going beyond the scenes with us today about house music.
(58:20):
Thank you, thank you for having us nice watch The
Daily Show weeknights and eleven ten Central on Comedy Central
and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has
been a Comedy Central podcast
You're listening to Comedy Central What Happens Roy Wood Jr. Next,
you're about to hear a special presentation of the Daily
Show podcast that I host called Beyond the Scenes. Now.
All it is, it's very simple. If it's a topic
that's already been on the Daily Show, we talk about
it again and we go even deeper on the topic,
(00:23):
and you know, see where we are now on the issue,
get deeper into the origins of the problem. And we
do that with Daily Show producers, writers, correspondents and expert
guests who know a hell of a lot more about
it than us to help us break it down. Heaven listen,
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast that
goes a little deeper into segments and topics that air
(00:43):
and originally on the show. We're kind of like the
ammenities you get when you stayed an all inclusive resort.
You know, you get the hotel room, of course, but
this podcast, it's the room service, the buffet, the fancy
bath rope in and bath rope so comfortable. I've stole exist,
let me stop snitch and on myself. Today we're discussing
(01:03):
a topic from CP time that I did on the
origins of house music. The piece highlights the notable black
DJs and singers that created the original sound of the genre.
House music is all the rage of these days, from
Drake and Beyonce to Swedish house Mafia to Mickey Mouse's
Cocatte cousin who lives in the bad part of epcom.
But would you believe that this genre has its origins
(01:26):
in the black community? Of course you should c p time.
You never heard me say, surprise it's Caucasians. So yes,
these modern artists stand on the shoulders of house music,
black and gay founders. So let's talk about some of them,
like Francis Nichols, a k a. Frankie Knuckles. Frankie started
as a DJ in New York at a time of
(01:48):
ferocious backlash against disco music, so bad that in nineteen
seventy nine, a crowd gathered at Chicago's Comiskey Park to
burn the records of artists and what was known as
Disco Demolition Night. Even watching the footage today, it's still
a shocking sight. A full baseball stadium. Disco was dead,
(02:10):
but people still wanted to get down in the club,
and so Frankie Nuckle started experimenting with the new style
of dance music at his home club in Chicago, the Warehouse.
That's where house music gets its name, not as some
people think, from Doctor House, although Doctor House does love
popping peels. Today, I'm joined by Daily Show producer Chelsea Williamson. Chelsea,
(02:33):
how are you doing? I'm good? How are you Roy?
I'm good, I'm good. I'm making it. I promise you
that this is the voice you have after listening to
house music and screaming in the club till four o'clock
in the morning, which is not what I was doing.
Maybe you know that. We'll talk about that offline. We're
(02:53):
also joined by American DJ, producer and house music great
Derek Carter and music scholar and writer Craig Seymour. Derek,
how you feeling that day? We'll start with you, all right,
I have my voice and we're doing okay. Here must
be nice and Craig, how you doing? I'm doing wonderful
And I definitely have been there with that voice, you know,
(03:15):
after that night at the club isn't quite what it
is and I'm delighted to be here whenever I get
the chance to talk about house music and give it
up to the people who um provided the foundation for
music that has been so important to my life. It's
a beautiful day. My first introduction to house music was
at Florida and M University. I had a roommate from Milwaukee.
(03:38):
We walked down to this is how old I am.
Excuse the old people, Chelsea. I walked down to Eckert's
pharmacy and it Eckert I bought a two deck cassette
player and that was gonna be our music for our
dorm room. And I popped in master p ghetto d
and then the deal was you get the radio for
(03:59):
an hour, and then the other person gets the radio
for an hour. He popped in the percolator and I
had never heard of this. He starts gyrating around the room.
I think he's having a seizure. It probably took ten
minutes for me to realize, Oh wow, this is amazing.
I want more. What else do you have? And this
(04:20):
brother had a box. He had a box of nothing
but house music and do or Die That was Midwest staples. Yeah,
and so you know, being a Southerner, this was not
something that it permeated its way, at least not as
a sixteen seventeen year old, you know, in ninety six.
(04:43):
So you know, it was shocking for me to like
discover this new thing. And he's like, nah, this has
always been the thing. So Chelsea, you do the research
on these pieces. Let's start there. House music has always
been associated with white people, But can you give us
the basic overview of the black roots of the genre. Yeah,
(05:04):
so I feel like you can't really get into house
without first acknowledging that it came from disco, was very
influenced by disco. And July nine, basically in Chicago, this
Chicago radio DJ named Steve dohl Um held a disco
demolition night. It was in the baseball stadium. They're supposed
to be a game that night, and he blew up
(05:27):
a bunch of disco records because he was like, I
hate this genre. They had like moved his radio beat
from rock to disco. It started a riot. The game
never happened that evening, to say the least, and there
began this backlash against disco. I will also say that
there was part of that that did feel very anti
black and homophobic, because a lot of these disco artists
(05:50):
were black, and you know, many were gay or in
the closet or just were like involved in that scene.
Like I just think of Sylvester and others like him.
After that, you kind of had this flash of people
not really wanted to listen to disco. But at the
same time, these DJs were like, well, people want to dance,
but they don't want to listen to disco, so we've
got to figure out something new. And that's where you
have somebody like Frankie Knuckles, who kind of came up
(06:13):
in New York m d jaying and actually kind of
started out in the Harlem drag ball scene, met his
friend Larry Lavan. They started out together working at Continental
Baths d jaying off and on, and Frankie eventually moved
to Chicago, where he started a jaying at this club
called the Warehouse, which is where House actually gets his name.
While there, he kind of pioneered this, you know, version
(06:35):
of disco that was like more of a four four
beat um and just like put different basses and drums
under it, and he created a very helped to pioneer
a whole new genre that eventually became house. It wasn't
only him. Also, like I said, Larry Lavan was in
New York and he DJed at this very famous club
called Paradise Garage, which I don't think you can forget
(06:56):
in the old overall history because legend it was a
legendary club. He was also pioneering his own thing. Then
you had all the people after them, um, such as
the people that we mentioned in the CP time, like
Ron Hardy. You had Jesse Saunders who had the first
number one record in nine four, called on and on
and helped also make it global. You know, you had
a variety of people that also made this happen. But
(07:18):
it was all, you know, the early eighties, and I
do think it's very important to also acknowledge that, you know,
especially the origins of it were very much black and
very gay, and you can't divorce those two things from it.
So then Derek, first, to the black part of that,
snubby Now we get to the gay part to say,
(07:40):
but to the black part of that. Now, you've been
tintos down in this genre since seven eight years old,
messing up your mama's needles on her forty fives and
scratching up everything in the house as we do as
children when we learn our craft. When you started, you know,
first wallowed me through your introduction into the house music scene,
(08:03):
and as you matriculated in it, did it feel like
you were being snub But like, as a consumer, I
understand that we sometimes have a different perspective from the artist.
So as a creator of this genre, as one of
the pioneers of this genre, did you see this did
it feel like you all were not getting the credit?
Give me the origin and and then talk about it
(08:25):
once you were inside the tornado of it all. Well,
I remember the first time I ever heard the term
house music. Friend of mine had come over and just
was talking about house music, house and I'm like, what
the hell this house music? I mean, that's probably twelve
thirteen at the time. We sit on my front porch
(08:46):
at my parents house, and uh, we'd all been dj.
It's that thing like I started a DJ for the
first time at nine. You know, we all had little crews.
And the amazing thing is that your rates? What were
your rates at nine years old? What was you going
for for a show? Give me a plate where I
(09:08):
grew up. It is just like just outside of the
city and a place called broad View, Maywood, Illinois. Um,
they were probably man easily like ten fifteen other like
kid DJs uh in my neighborhood, Like we battle each
other in the garage and just like make music and
(09:30):
have fun and do that sort of thing. Uh. And
one of my friends who was in this kind of UH,
I don't know our association. This is like started talking
about house music house music, like I don't I don't
understand what you're saying. Then he explained it to me,
and I was like, oh, you're just talking about music,
Like I don't know. Why are you calling the house music?
(09:50):
Like you why what is this? But the thing about
it here locally was that they played um had mixes
on the radio, So we had like disco d AI
back in the uh Steve Doll days, and then it
went on to w BMX and w g c I
and then on through like B ninety six and other stuff.
(10:13):
But basically we had on Friday nights from I guess
like nine till four am, basically the time that the
club would be open. If you couldn't make it to
the club, there were radio DJs that would give you mixes.
It became sort of the soundtrack, you know. And I
was crafty and broke, so like I would manage to like,
(10:35):
I wanted to record all these mixes and find all
this music. So I figured out a way to hook
up my parents VCR to the radio and instead of
a tape deck, so I could get six hours on
the tapes, so I could tape the whole mix show
from start to end and just like have it on
on a vc I tape. The thing was that there
(10:55):
was a lot of record stores, like all over the place.
There's one locally, Reamer's Record that sold a lot of stuff.
There was one we had, you know, Rose Records in
the city, and a bunch of other things. I worked
at a place called Imports, etcetera, which is the store
that gave House Music its actual name, like it came
from the club the warehouse. But Paul weissberg Um, who
(11:18):
was the owner um had set up a little been
of music that Frankie play, because that's kind of the
thing at the time, you know, it's like DJ picks
or like music that you could hear in these various places.
And this is also this I'm talking like nineteen that
would have been like nineteen eighty four, maybe nineteen eighty
(11:39):
three somewhere in there. But I started working there at
eighty seven. I mean I was eighteen, I had just
I was a fresh eighteen and we just used to
run around and like, man, it was the heyday. It
was like there was a party in every little neighborhood
every weekend for you know, like years. You know, there'd
(12:01):
be the dance off battle and like a DJ battle
or like a dancer battle or biggest booty battle. You know,
those have never gone away, the spirit of house music.
Do you feel like it was properly honored by white
people to have been this thing that originated within the
black and gay communities at that time? Uh? Yes, there
(12:23):
were club issues and things like that with segregate Chicago
is notoriously terrible about that sort of stuff, and at
that time particularly, But there are a lot of parties
and a lot of events, and like they would be
you know, all kinds of people. I mean, yeah, most
of the DJs or a lot of the DJs, and
(12:44):
the places where it found its start were primarily h
black and brown queer spaces helmed by black and brown
queer people. But they weren't exclusionary, you know, they weren't
uh in any way running the same kind of game
(13:05):
that the actual club owners in the city were running
where you had to have four pieces of I D
to get in, and who the hell has four pieces
of I D in ur there weren't even four pieces
of I D to be had. You know, you write
your name on a piece of paper if that counts.
That's one. You know, bringing your electric grill. But at
these events they would be white people that'd be like,
(13:27):
you know, white passing Latinos and shoot, white passing black folks.
There would be all kinds of people and just having
a good time. And so I feel like how kind
of fostered and um nurtured this kind of uh community
(13:49):
and and for lack of a better term, that anybody
could come, you know, and like there's a famous song.
You may be black, you may be white, you may
be jew or gentile. You know, it don't make a difference.
Working at the record store, I saw it all the time,
you know, people coming in like black people, brown people,
white people, gay people, straight people, uh people just catching
(14:11):
up to it. More so because it was on the
radio at the time, so it became uh something commercial
that could be I guess exploited something you could sell
commercial times to uh make a little money off of it.
But I think that in the black, the blackness of it,
I mean it was black. It was real black. You know.
(14:34):
You would get like just steppers coming in and full
green outfits, and you know, brothers from the deep south
Side who just didn't leave this outside to go to
do anything but go get records. You know, for the
party it was there were a lot of characters. You know,
you would run into some interesting people. To that point,
(14:54):
Craig speak a little bit to the LGBTQ community and
how they fit into the history of music, specifically queer
Black and Latin X men. Well, first of all, I
just have to give it up to the black ingenuity
of cooking up a cassette player to a VCR. I
had never heard of nothing like that. Yeah, that just
(15:16):
needs a long first of all. Doesn't give it up
to that, all right? And then I also wanted to
um say a little bit about the Steve Dobb the
Disco Demolition um riot. The reason why it can really
I feel very comfortable calling it racist is because, um
(15:37):
some of the people that were taking the records that
people would get were able to get in free for
reduced price to get they were bringing in Stevie Wonder
records they were bringing in, and read the Franklin records
they were bringing in funk records. So the record they
weren't making any distinction between black music in general and disco.
They just wanted to burn these black records. So that's
(16:00):
something that's very important that often gets lost in that.
That was definitely racist. I don't care what am I
drives to say, the point is and what this one.
I believe it was Vince Lawrence. Excuse me if I'm
wrong about that, but I believe he said, you know,
he didn't see any Carpenters records coming through, he didn't
see any doors Day records coming through, he didn't see
(16:21):
any Barry Mandelow records coming through, but he did see
mainstream black R and B records coming through. That we're
not disco. So to me, what's what's what's the what's
the you know, connecting threat between all their artists they're black,
you know, So it really did have a racial um implication. So,
(16:42):
you know, I think it's important to very much think
of a black queer aesthetic and queer community as very
distinct from a white queer community. And I think it's
very important to think of the practices of black queer
communities as very different from the practices of white queer community.
(17:05):
So that's why when Mr Carter said the thing about
it was always a mix of people, a black queer
aesthetic and community, and the principles of the black queer
community have always been about inclusion, and they've always reflected
sort of the thinking of black feminist authors that I'm
(17:29):
not free till everybody's free, you know what I mean.
It's not a get mine type of situation. It's a
someday we'll all be free situation, you know, and we're
trying to free everybody's mind. So that's why the inclusion
of um all sorts of different people was so possible
(17:49):
within these black queer safe spaces where they might not
have been in white gay spaces, which, again, like Mr
Carter said, when you show up to the door, you know,
if you were white, you have to show and you know,
multiple ideas this and that have to go through all
sorts of changes. But I think that inclusive aspect was
(18:09):
always a part of it for me, not growing up
in Chicago, but being around that. I was born in
nineteen eight, so um I saw it all from the
point of view. I grew up in d C. But
I lived in New York for a long period of
time during this period, and New York at this time
in the early eighties was the capital of dance music.
Like everything came out of New York or New Jersey,
(18:32):
filtered through New York to clubs like the Zanzibar and
Tony Humphries, and then they get played by Larry Levan
at the Paradise Garage and that type of thing. So
that was the center. And I distinctly remember when house
came on the scene because what was b back in
those days it's kind of like what we now call freestyle,
(18:52):
but you can call elektro and records like Shannon's Let
the Music Play and things like that, which are very
kind of um of the Jaunty records. And I remember
when the first time like jam Silks Music Is the
Key started playing, people were like, what is this because
it's just it was much more fluid than the sort
of electro rhythms before. And then once we start getting
(19:14):
like Marshall Jefferson's House Music Anthem with the pianos and
all of that kind of stuff, it was like somebody
switched a light switch and like all of these kind
of hard electro records that were once popular, we're just gone.
And now it was all about house music, whether melodic
house music or the sort of um cut up tracks
(19:39):
that people like Um Todd Terry and people were doing.
New York producers really picked up on this sort of
cut up sounds that Chicago producers were doing. Producers like
Arthur Baker, who produced Looking for the Perfect Beat, one
of the first electro hip hop records, he really started
(19:59):
being a champion and of house music and bringing that
into the New York scene. And once it became big
in New York, then the pop artists wanted to get
getting on that money. So that's when you started getting
Frankie Knuckles remixing records for like Janet Jackson and Windy
Houston and people like that, And that's when it really exploded,
when the pop people started getting into it. But again,
(20:22):
it was about how the New York producers were kind
of translating this raw sound that was coming from Chicago.
So then would you all say that these house music
venues became a bit of a cultural and behavioral safe
haven for the gay community, And I would guess to
some degree the black community as well, where you could
(20:44):
come and just be yourself in this one bubble away
from all of the other bullshit that's going on outside
in the city. That was literally it for so many people,
including myself that I knew, uh, particularly because clubs were
always in many ways meant to be an escape, um
from the sort of just things that you do every day.
(21:07):
My job is terrible, but the weekend, you know, my girlfriend,
my boyfriend's mad at me. But the weekend, you know,
all the things that you go through during the make
your money part of the week are absolved and you
are just the weekend. So having those places where you
(21:28):
just could be free, well you wanted to be free,
and then we're able to be free. Uh, that is
a great recipe for a good time, and people were
coming to have great times. You know. The interesting thing
um book Miss card and I've talked about like how
in certain cities like the big cities, the New York's Um,
(21:52):
the Phillies, the Baltimore's, the Chicago House also had a
life on radio, which really sort of spread the message.
But in terms of black queer spaces, there were places
all around the country, even in the South, in Atlanta
and Houston and all of these other places where house
(22:14):
music clubs were really all that the black, gay and
lesbian community had at that time because they weren't hearing
it on the radio, they weren't couldn't even find it
in the record stores. But they would go to these
particular clubs um in order to hear the music. And
in many ways they were much more isolated than people
(22:37):
were in bigger cities like Chicago and d C. And stuff,
where there was a larger Black A community. And then
there were also the clubs. In the South, there was
only the club, and the Black A community was the club,
and the soundtrack to the club was house music. So
there's it provided such an important um connection. And you know,
(23:00):
like I was saying about the inclusivity of house music,
you hear that in the music. You hear that in
um Sterling Voids It's all right, you know. You hear
that in Joe Smooth Promised Land. You hear that in
CC Rogers Someday. You know, you hear that in um
Mr Fingers. Can you feel it? It's all about trying
(23:21):
to seek for a better world for everybody. It's not
just a day pride anthem is that it is an
everybody thing and it's talking about This was the eighties,
so it's talking about apartheid in South Africa. It's talking
about all sorts of things that oppressed people. That's what
house music is to me. So with those artists you've
(23:42):
just named, Chelsea in the segment we featured, you know,
the late great Frankie Knuckles, Martha Wash made in appearance.
We actually got Martha Wash to just straight open up
to zoom camera and do a joke with us on
the fly, and she was with it on zoom. She
she knew the button like, ain't no shot because she's gone.
(24:02):
I mean, she's seen the errors. You know. She was
two tons of fun. She was the backing band for Sylvester,
so she was She's a disco is disco gets pedigreed.
That wraps up our time with house music. If you
like that sort of thing, which personally I do not.
Maybe I'm old school, but that type of music is undignified.
(24:25):
Shaking my hips like a heathen. No thank you, there's
no commandment about dropping it little. That movie Dirty Dancing
was about two people rubbing crotches in public places. So terrible,
wouldn't it? Roy? Is that you God? I knew you
were a black woman. No, it's me, Martha Wash. What's
(24:49):
this I hear about you not liking dance music? Martha?
I cannot abide by dance music, not a single note.
I'm a man of culture shipment once a decade and
that's nonsense. Everyone can dance, Everyone must dance. Hit a
studio from Chelsea, who were some of the other DJs
(25:16):
or singers in the house genre that came up in
the research that they're just we just ran out of time.
I mean there's a lot like that's the thing with houses,
Like there's so many DJs and so many people that
were integral. Um. I know, especially on the we were
trying to find you know a lot of women DJs
that helped out early on, and um, we came up
with Yvon Turner, who did you know the music is
(25:40):
the answer dub mix that is this huge song And
she actually was never properly credited for it. She was
actually credited on the original vinyl as Evan Turner. They
credited her as a man. Weirdly um and that happened
to her a few times in her career and she
ended up actually leaving but then coming back a couple
of years ago and got Grammy nominated um for song.
(26:00):
So you know, she's like managed to do the whole thing.
But you know, people like her recommend to Von Turner
tracks just while we're on Yeah, I think they would
like to know. Google Whitney Houston, I'm Your Baby Tonight,
the Von Turner mix, do yourself a favor. And also
Lisa Stansfield you can't deny it the Von Turner mix
(26:25):
and Layla half the way. Um, heaven knows the Von
Turner Mix. I just want to throw that out there
because that's Von Turner's all good, all good. Um. And
then on the singer side, I think one of the
things that's very um cool and interesting about house music
and it really allows for a lot of women to
(26:45):
sing it full of voice, um, whereas like especially now, UM,
I feel like in a lot of pop music it's
not very normal. So especially you know the eighties and
nineties we talked about Martha Wash, but you know there
was also Crystal Waters who Gypsy Woman She's Homeless, which
was this huge smash hit. You know, you have Ultra
Nate who had this huge hit free and she's one
(27:06):
of the most commercially successful house music singers ever. And
when we were speaking about the sampling of these disco
records early on, you have Lolita Holloway's Love Sensation, which
then got turned into good Vibration, which everybody knows. But
she actually also did not get credited for her vocals
because it was just remixed and sampled so many times.
So you know, there's so many women that have like
(27:28):
made it in this it made dance music their main
career because, especially for a lot of black women with
huge like church gospel vocals, like house music is at home.
It's a safe space, and it's a place where um,
it's consistent work and they know that people will listen
to it, they'll get paid for it, and their voices
will be appreciated. One of the things that it's often
(27:50):
overlooked I feel is, uh, lesbian's. Back in the good
old days when I would go clubbing at things, they
were like lesbians who would just out being themselves and
finding places because it's hard for especially you know, black
and brown women two be queer um in public, and
(28:13):
I feel like they are often relegated to the at
the bottom when in reality at that time particularly there
were a lot of uh female DJs running like coming
to the store and buy things for you know, the
Paris Club and all these other places that were going
on at the time that just catered more specifically towards women.
(28:38):
So there was a place that existed for them in
this sort of pantheona, this uh hierarchy of um black
and queer. Like, it wasn't just men, you know, there
were a lot of women. There are a lot of
trans people, um a new queens that kept raizor blades
(28:58):
in their cheek because as they couldn't get home unless
they have some protection. Keep it raised way in between
your toes. So you gotta do is kick your shoe
off and you can kick somebody in the face if
they try to, you know, mess with you like these
like but you know these are like hard bitches, like
you know, just ain't playing with you and you're and
you're gonna know it. You could learn a lot from
them though. I've learned a lot of self protection, a
(29:21):
lot of self protection things that I know from trans
women back in the day. Keep fifty dollars in your
shoes you get arrested, the ibon like all the all
the good, all the good street stuff, like the street
knowledge came from you know, trans girls, especially the ones
who were see this one. We can get the CRT
(29:43):
in schools. We need this knowledge in the in the textbooks.
I mean. And if you had somebody and if you
had like you know, a trans woman, you know that
had your back like that, oh baby, she would go
to town spe kind of inclusion. After the break, I
want to talk about the way that Europe played a
(30:04):
role into the evolution of house music and what many
would argue is the pushing out any eratier of black
and gay faces within the craft and how that affected
the evolution of house music. We're going to get into
that after the break. This is beyond the scenes. Beyond
the scenes, we are back. We are talking house music. Now.
We have discussed the foundation of it. We've discussed the
(30:26):
base of it, the origins of it. But let's talk
a little bit more about how it evolved beyond America
and how that led to what I suspect would be
some of the eraser of black and LGBTQ folks from
the historical context of the music. Why do you all
think the eraser started and what role did the global
evolution of house music playing that well. I don't have
(30:49):
anything against Europe in the eraser, because Europe is responsible
for house music gaining its international popularity. When house music started,
nobody in the States in terms of music journalism, in
terms of anything, cared one small bit. It was the
(31:10):
European journalists who came over here and wrote about house music.
It was the licensing deals UM from the small independent
Chicago labels that they licensed and took over to UM
Britain and in the UK. These records became like number
(31:31):
one records, Jack your Body, the house music anthem. They
became number one records when over here nobody was trying
for them. I remember one of the best, one of
the most important house groups of all time, Ten City.
They were signed to Atlantic Records here, but their record
was blowing up overseas. Do you think that Atlantic Records
(31:52):
gave them money to tour overseas? No. The lead singer Byron,
he had to ask his grandmother for the money. She
gave him a ray are blade, told him to slit
underneath the curtain where she hit her money. Ten thousand
dollars dropped out on the floor and that was his
touring budget. They went over there and toward it, and
I believe it was That's the way Love Love Is
(32:15):
became a top ten UK pop record, but not because
of any support of the US labels. And also all
of the old house music legends can go overseas now
and still get a check and still perform, and they
get performed like rock stars. What really happened is that
(32:35):
And we haven't talked about this yet, but we can
never underestimate the power, the just the loss that happened
with AIDS that decimated the black gay community at every
single level. So that affected the people that were making
the music, that affected the people that were in the
clubs listening to the music. Those clubs began to close
(32:58):
because there wasn't enough of audience. We're talking about estimates
where some black A clubs feel like between the eighties
and the nineties they lost forty and fifty of their
audience more or more. And so as the music is
getting popular, it starts getting played in the white clubs
(33:19):
and these big white clubs. It started be calling the
big rooms. So the music started to be couldn't be
made for these big rooms that were mostly white. It
wasn't being made for a black gay audience anymore, and
it lost many of the It lost the soulfulness, the
(33:40):
rootedness and R and B, and it lost the sense
of social responsibility that was so much a part of
the early house. So to me, that's where the eraser
comes from. I don't blame a UK kid who grew
up with you know, ten City and Steve Silk Curlely
in the Top ten trying to create their own version
(34:02):
of that. I mean, that's just something people are going
to try to do. I think it was because so
many black creators and audiences died out because of AIDS
that made it very easy for the erasure to happen.
Because once you got these big rooms, these white gay
spaces doing their version of house music, then those DJs
(34:26):
became to prominence and they came to set the aesthetic,
and it actually became the first time, I think, in
the history of music. I'm gonna go this far to
say when dance music in general was not connected to
the priorities of black people. Like every from the blues
to jazz, to R and B, motown to disco to
(34:51):
original house, all of those were um the aesthetics of
those were found died by black people and were rooted
and black culture. But once you started getting the music
playing in these white venues and the circuit parties and
all of that kind of stuff, dance raves, all that,
(35:12):
thank you, id m all that that was no longer
rooted in anything black, and that, to me, is what
led to the erasure. I feel like part of this
also exists on a level that has a lot to
do with socio economics. So I knew growing up thirty
(35:37):
DJs fifteen of whom I would easily say could kick
my ass and the dj W in the battle. They
were great, great, great, but you know you have to
get a job and you know, you what, you just
go DJ all the time. UM people particularly um black
(35:58):
and brown people off then don't have a parent or
a family structure that allows them to be independent muso's
to you know, chase their dreams. And you know, like
I knew people that wanted to keep Djan, but somebody
mama got sick and he had to go get a job.
(36:19):
I knew people who d Jan uh broke, you know,
got to a motorcycle accident and couldn't keep Djan because
you know it didn't have insurance. And you know, all
these sorts of stories that I feel are particularly tethered
to black and brown and often queer spaces because of
(36:41):
associo economic position. Oftentimes, particularly with black and brown queer people,
they were excised from the homes, you know, when someone
found out that they were gay or queer, or transgender,
or you know, just not not right, whatever it is.
And so they were they of it on the street.
They are, you know, doing these things and trying to
(37:02):
cobble together a sense of expression from whatever they can,
however they can, whenever they can. That's hard. And then
that's also why a lot of the the aids when
it came in, um, I remember people just disappearing, you know,
just not there anymore. You know, you would like even
(37:25):
at the record store, you know, what happened so and so,
and then somebody come in with a little spot on
their face and something something looked a little different about them.
And then the next thing you hear is that they're
in the hospital. But you know, it's still a shame
attached to it, so no one really would say the
real cause would be you know, we called it the
package back then. You know, she's got the package um,
(37:49):
and people would make you know, working me to my
last t sale. Honey, you try to find the humor
even in tragedy, but uh, I can, like when greatest something.
But I felt like, man, I remember just so many
people who are just just disappeared that I no longer
(38:11):
see that like aren't around. And it kind of like
made me, you know, like in a better world where
people have been able to be recognized and be seen
and not treated as outcasts and not um sort of
stuck on the side on these margins that could have
been more. But I also feel like if that was
(38:32):
the case, then these marginalized people wouldn't have been so
eager to live for today and live for now and
have this enthusiasm, have this like strive and drive to
create and do these things because tomorrow is not promised
or you know, like you better get it now because
you never know. It's so much deeper to not deeper.
But I mean there's another layer in that you have
(38:55):
to talk about the business owners and the socio economics
of black club ownership. Once black club owners were losing
their audiences, they couldn't always afford to pick up and
start a new venue. Somewhere else just because of the
sociogonomic conditions that affect black businesses, you know. So that's
(39:19):
why you had the white owned big clubs. And what
do white owned big clubs want is their customers. They
want white people, They want white DJs. So that's why
I don't quite I'm not so quite as quick to
blame it on Europeans because if you think about a
lot of dance acts like Daft Punk on their first album,
they don't do anything but like they have a song
(39:40):
called Teachers where they just throw out people's names. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
right right exactly after the break, we're gonna take it
home and we're gonna talk about where house music can go.
They're gonna talk about Beyonce and Drake is beyond the Scenes.
We'll be right back on beyond the scenes, bringing it home.
(40:01):
We are talking house music. Now, we've talked about the
de evolution of it in terms of black and gay
creators being able to still be at the forefront of
the creative evolution of it. So Dereck and Craig, I
want to pose this question you all before we talk
Beyonce and Drake. Do you think y'all's working contributions to
(40:22):
the industry helped keep the history, the black history, and
the gay history of house music alive. Let's just talk
a little bit about the work that you do now
to make sure that this genre still remains as relevant
as it was, you know, back in the day. Because
you know, Derek, I feel to some degree with what
happened in the nineties with the eighth Epidemic, what happened
(40:42):
with poverty and just the you know, and we really
could even blame crack and jail and drugs sentencing as
well as part of that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, all
of that losing some degree of your autonomy and being
able to control this genre like you lost some of
your autonomy. So talk a little bit about the things
(41:03):
that you all are doing now to try and get
some of that back. There's a lot, there's really a lot.
I mean I I travel a lot for work for deejaying,
playing clubs, doing um various events and things like that,
and I always try to make sure that there is
(41:25):
a heavy dose of blackness and something that represents me
and my upbringing and my people and my feelings in
what I do. I don't play hits, I don't play
the latest um whoever the new girl is song? I mean,
you know I Chopper a Sap, whoever dog, you know, Billy,
(41:52):
Somebody's anybody. I don't because that that doesn't represent me
or speak to me. So I played records with jazz,
I played records with funk, I play records with blues keys.
I play records um with women who are telling telling you,
(42:14):
selling you the story like you're gonna hear this right quick.
I feel that one of the best parts about being
able to still be here and still have a platform
is that you should use it. You know, you should
take that platform and make it so that it has
(42:38):
some sort of relevance to what it is you're trying
to say, Like I I have people that you know,
DJ friends who I don't want to say sell out,
but you know that, Oh it's about the music. It's
about there. I mean, yeah, it's about the music, but
it's about the voice. You know. Um, I always say
(42:58):
the voice was the first instrum it h and people
who don't understand that can't quite relate to a lot
of things. I do. You play a lot of vocals,
you do this, you do that. I'm like the voices,
the first instrument people you know they made I didn't
see any dinosaurs, didn't hit on rocks and you know
(43:20):
have rhythm, but they did holler, you know, all animals,
even going back. That's that's how you gotta mate. You
sing your little song in the tree or whatever, you
make your call in the fourth google. That's that's how
you That's how you got some. So I mean, and
(43:42):
that's what we do with music and with instruments. We
do these things because there's also like level of I
have something to say, or I'm trying to get some
or you know, there's a story I want to tell,
you know, communication, all these sorts of things. And so
I still feature heavily um black and brown people singing
(44:03):
and playing and um music that suits and sits within
that wheelhouse. I mean, my parents are from MSS Sippy
like MS Like. I called my dad yesterday to make
sure they had water because Jackson, Misissippi ain't got no warter.
(44:23):
So I was like, y'all got water dot there? And
he's like yeah, but you know, and I was like, well,
I mean, you know, my parents not Stephen Fetcher. I
don't want to sound like that like my parents had
just in a tin roof shot. My mom's side is
from Clarksdale, so I'm not offended in the least. I know,
you know, you know at the end of the road
where the road stopped, you know, that's where my grandmother's house.
(44:46):
So I am of this kind of like people who really,
really really had it. I won't say I don't want
to like, I don't want to make it sound like,
you know, these are victims, because they've never we consider
themselves victims. They don't play like their victims. My parents
are not victims of anything, but they their conditions and
(45:07):
and and their situations weren't always the best. They weren't
geared for success. And the fact that you know, they
made it out. My mom's a teacher, my dad engineer,
Like you know, they raised their kids in the suburbs
and said we had enough of this cold, we're moving back,
and allowed me to go to private school and this
sort of thing. Um, I find that and all that
(45:31):
and and all the like whiteness that I was often
the blackness, and I was the blackness in the whiteness
as a child a lot. You know, I always had
my roots to keep me strong. If if that's another analogy,
(45:54):
you know, like a good foundation of things. You know,
my my roots kept me upright, My roots kept me
from doing some things because there's always like you know,
I asked us to hear or like you know, my
my mother still sits on my shoulder and corrects my English,
you know, and and this sort of thing. So, Um,
I feel like being able to still be the blackness
(46:19):
in the whiteness is part of my very platform in
general and the way I approach a lot of this
and go through it. Beautiful Craig, talk a little bit
about your writing. Yeah, As for me, Um, one of
the most perplexing questions that I'm dealing with in my
writing is, like I think a lot about the brothers
(46:39):
who aren't here, Like the brothers who like might have
become superstars but past of aid, the brothers who might
have been a great producer but just didn't get that chance.
That haunts me all the time, and I don't know
quite how to get it that but I know I do, right,
you know, So much of my work is about preserving
(47:00):
the stories and the names of um, black gay men
that have contributed to pop music throughout you know, from
seeing the Sissy Man's blues too, Saucy Santana, Booty, you know, Stewart,
So you know, it's all the way, and you know,
I just wanted to call some names. I mean, I
(47:20):
think we do have to talk about the people that
were out during the period, like the Robert Evans, you know,
one of the greatest vocalists, um you know house music vocalists,
um ever like and David Cole using his church piano playing,
you know, became part of CE and C Music Factory
and then remixed the Whitneys and stuff. But just these men,
I think it's important to tell those stories. I just
(47:43):
kind of tried to record the stories of people who
I feel haven't been given they're due, and also to
sort of share my stories of how it felt literally
to be a black gay man in their twenties in
the eighties dealing with this kind of stuff in real time.
To that point, with the Saucy Santana's of the world
(48:05):
and the more present day artist Chelsea, give us some
of those genres that have been influenced by house since
its rise through the seventies and eighties. Yeah, I feel
like houses um ever present an omnipresent actually, which is
so crazy because a lot of people don't necessarily equate
it with a lot, but it's had so many influences.
(48:26):
So I think you have Acid House, which is kind
of like known for like more like squelching noises. It
sounds a little bits, it sounds different, and Ron Hardy
was actually one of the ones who helped to kind
of bring it to the forefront pre techno, It's right.
So then you had, you know, you kind of started
Acid House. You know two Live Crew, two of the
members and they're actually started Miami Bass, which is huge
(48:50):
and it's also part of the House family. They also
helped to start you know, Baltimore club music, which we
still here to this day. Um, you know, I will
say for people if maybe you're not as familiar, I'd
say one of the latest ish ones that you've heard
more mainstream is probably like and Rake's album Sticky is
like a Baltimore club influence, but also wop Sam samples,
(49:11):
you know, early Baltimore club song. You know, horns in
this House. So, um, you know, we hear that one
a lot. You have I'm a Piano, which is like
a South African house, you know, a genre like deep house,
gospel house, hip hop, house, ghetto house like houses like everywhere,
gospel house were go into Jesus. Yeah, yeah, gospel houses
(49:37):
every might not every Sunday morning. I listened DJ spin
who's a Baltimore person, and he has his Sunday service gospel.
You know, because of the thing is the pianos like
that Marshall Jefferson brought in through the house music anthem.
(49:57):
That's not the church piano. And they you've got people
like David Cole who were used to the church. So
all that piano you hear in house music house remixes,
that's all from the church. And that the singers were
all from the church. So it's like that's the most
that's the most natural thing in the world. If you
had to sit in church eight hours on a Sunday
(50:20):
and couldn't leave except to you know, you get some
food and then come back to church again and then
you do all the things that if that was your life,
you know, especially for a lot of black men and women,
that was your life for the first sixteen seventeen years
of you being on this earth. Like you, it's in
(50:41):
your bone and how you hear music, it's in how
you approach uh people, getting getting happy, and it's the
release you want from it that you expect from she
don't got happy and you got a fantom and like
put it. You know all that, you know the church
fan and and you because that's that's like a club.
(51:05):
You know, that's what the club as you get there
and people get the holy ghost churches churches the club
with better chairs if you're lucky. Breaky Knuckles used to
call the club the haven for the children falling from grace,
so he was. He was very much aware that a
lot of the gay people that came to his club
were people that were grown up in the church experience
(51:28):
but were then outcast because they were gay. So yeah,
you need to get on the gospel house wave. Now
come on, now, this has been a wonderful discussion. I
will end on a simple question we can answer as
quickly as we can. Chelsea, you'll go first. We'll end
with Derek Drake and Beyonce's House influence albums that came
out in good or bad, Chelsea go. I will say
(51:53):
that I think that anytime somebody black mainstream artists taking
back a black genre overall, I will say is a
good thing. I think Also, they're two completely different types
of house, which I think is another part of it.
But um, you know Beyonce's ballroom House, Drake is more
i'd say, like tropical, a little bit more UK on
(52:15):
a piano ish but yeah, afrobeats it like it's it's
a little bit different. But um, I enjoyed both both
go up in the club and that's what matters to me.
So um, that's what I'll say. Yeah, I agree that totally.
There's just two different albums. I mean, Drake is very
much as House has a cross the Black Atlantic, as
I said, you know, as house has moved its way
(52:37):
through the UK, through South Africa back up through Toronto
first exactly. Really I think that's what it is and
and it's you know, so it has that kind of
modern feel where Beyonce I think, even when she's not
making house tracks on the record, she incorporates a lot
of the sort of bravado and self love and perseverance,
(52:59):
those themes that are so um particular the house music.
She really embodies those in the album. Even though you
could say like break my Soul and that let the
last song, the samples Kevin ab and Rene like those
are the most housey songs I feel even on tracks
like he did and stuff like that, you get the
feeling of house and so yeah, I love that. I
(53:22):
think it's I think it's fantastic. All right, Derek, what
say you? Final word? Well, uh, I I don't like it.
Here's the thing. Two of my absolute best friends in
the entire world, one of whom I started label with
(53:42):
and one of whom I've been best friends with since
I was seventeen, wrote and produced some of the things
on the Beyonce album Honey, and my ex Classic Classic
Music Company partner Luke Solomon. Uh did Alien Superstar and
then they did that other one of the other songs
as I forgot the name of it. So I give
them credit for um entree into this kind of uh
(54:08):
this this different world being present and being um seen,
being in these places, presenting this music and having something
to do with a large amount of shine. Honey is
my is my best friends since we were you know, forever.
It's great for them, I think, and it's good for
(54:32):
a community to see black people be black people unabashedly
and deal with um black producers and have a sense
of this pipeline of this music. It's it's started here
and it's come through I think there's a place for it. Um.
(54:56):
I find that often it's not to my taste because
it's it's created and made for someone who isn't me. Apparently,
you know, it's made for someone who listens to the
radio or has a uh much uh. They're incursion into
(55:17):
music is a lighter and often, um, it doesn't come
fraught with the kinds of issues and problems that I
have had to go through and currently deal with regarding music.
My music experience is it's heavy a lot um And
(55:37):
so what you say, it's essentially like taking if we're
gonna go back to food again as an analogy, if
you cook this the home way, and you've used everything
in your kitchen and it's a home cooked meal and
you see a more mass produced version of it that
is still flavorful and decent and does the job. I mean, yeah,
it is. But if you grew vegetable, then raise the animals,
(56:03):
and then you know all these sorts of things like
I grew the vegetables, I've helped to raise these animals.
You know, I I feel like I have Maybe I'm
a bit precious about it, but I can be a
bit precious about it if I want to, you know,
and that's my place in that. And I respect them,
and I I am happy that you know, they're putting
(56:23):
a little shine on things and that they're able to
cast uh some of the music in a different light,
particularly as you know, Retro and oh be honest, spring
by House Music and Drake spring House Music. I mean
the Drake album has had a large part of the
production by Black Coffee, who, like you know, I've worked
with DJ with we did a party here at Chicago
(56:44):
a couple months ago. Uh. These are these are people
who are in the community, So I like that they
are also getting shine. It gives you a a you know,
if you could see it, you can be it kind
of thing that positives these people in a place that
offers you know, this is something available to you too, honey.
(57:08):
Being trans is you know, one of the absolute first
trans people to ever be on like the Billboard Top ten.
Uh as like you know, a producer or something like
these sorts of things. So there's a place for my
appreciation for it is not in a critical place. I
(57:36):
feel like the corona of it, the corona of it
is is amazing. Yeah, it's net positive for the genre.
It's net positive for the people who have been tintoes
down in that culture, even if it's not something that
you would run with. This is a terrible analogy, but
it's the way a lot of stand up comedians feel
about tiktoker's and internet comedians and they going land that
(57:58):
ain't comedic. Hey, if it's bringing asses to the seats
and these people are going to comedy clubs and helping
keep comedy clubs open, I see them as net positive
for the genre. We could talk for years about this,
but I thank you all for giving me almost an
hour on this topic. Thank you all so much for
going beyond the scenes with us today about house music.
(58:20):
Thank you, thank you for having us nice watch The
Daily Show weeknights and eleven ten Central on Comedy Central
and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has
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