Young Hearts Run Free

You can hardly miss the current re-ignited interest in disco, following Daft Punk roping in uber disco heavy weights Giorgio Moroder and Nile Rogers for their much talked about album Random Access Memories, Nile co-writing the infectious single Get Lucky. It’s stirred up a wave of interest in the sources and history of disco. For some disco was glorious feelgood music to lose yourself in, and for others, it reflected a shallow and meaningless temporal hedonism. I feel that disco was more complex than given credit for, both musically and in the way it connected, and is why its influence has endured decades on.

Disco’s heritage was steeped in late 60’s soul, and in NYC and Philadelphia it converged with underground black and gay club culture. As DJ’s began to mix records together they produced a new hypnotic dancefloor sound. Technical production with sound and lighting in nightclubs helped create a new exciting, enveloping, high energy atmosphere that became the template for modern club culture. The clubs of New York may have been it’s Ninevah, but in the world of small town England dancefloors and nightclubs, this underground ethos was all but lost. In the UK, it was Top of the Pops that provided the key transmission of disco through its glitter and satin clad performances, mostly mimed, and the faux demure dance troupe Legs and Co. Disco filtered to and dominated our youth clubs and school discos, carrying awkward aspirations to glamour of ‘Chelsea Girl’ fashion,  resulting more in dancing round handbags and an over abundance of bright lip gloss and eyeliner.

In the mid to late 70s disco had filtered down from an underground culture into mainstream to become the most ubiquitous soundtrack to the 70s.  When Donna Summer died a little over a year ago, I posted a song on facebook in tribute. My sister, Vanda, teased me  ‘I was the disco fan. You were the punk!’ I was actually more of a new wave kid than punk,  and my big sis Vanda was very much the disco queen with her shiny satin leggings, cheesecloth tops  and big gorgeous Farah Fawcett flicked fair hair.  I had no hope of cutting it, and my tomboy rebellious streak was far more attracted by punk spirit and its anti fashion stylee. But, it still played a huge part of my music culture because it was everywhere around me.  I did especially love one of her first albums, an amazing 1976 compilation album called Don’t Walk Boogie, featuring the top disco hits of the time.  Its influence has carried over. I still have that record. The cover depicted a New York street sign. New York and disco were synonymous and although that was slightly over our heads then, it was a lure to some other exotic world of urban street glamour filled with infectious rhythms and feelgood sounds. It captured a moment in time.

 

Throughout my early teens, one of disco’s real connecting points were the power women, whose  songs of heartbreak and redemption uplifted and fed the soul and aspirations of young girls. Here was a fiery strand of stand up and be counted disco – the female empowerment song. These songs were tales of broken hearts, longing, survival and self affirmation. Women came out strong, dynamic, powerful and phoenix-like from their woes.  In this disco, women transformed from victim to survivor, from passive to assertive divas, with big voices, big hair and power parading while still bemoaning sorrows of ‘man done me wrong’. It connected to our pre-teenage and teenage world, like some pre-emptive strike that would help us not get burned by love and life. In the endless social navigation of growing up, unification on the dancefloor, was through a take no shit aspiration.

Candi Staton’s Young Hearts Run Free is pure poignancy. Hers is  the voice of a woman whose disappointment at a wasted life, is a compelling urge for others not to follow in her steps. ‘Young Hearts, to yourself be true. Don’t be no fool, when love really don’t love you..!” Live life to the full, like I didn’t.  The Crusaders’ Randy Crawford voice exudes a worldly, seen-it-all quality, contrasting a glamorous facade with careworn resignation in Street Life.  Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 I Will Survive became a global anthem for women – a perceived survival kit of assertive attitude. Here were the divas regaling personal stories to the soulful uplift of disco release,  continuing a thread that runs from the soul and black American culture music of Aretha, right through disco and ever onward in the evolving revolving door. I can still see threads of it in Beyonce, though the terms have shifted.

 

Alongside these rootsy heartfelt soulful songs, disco also evolved towards a more impersonal electronic sound. Donna Summer’s Love to Love You Baby was  a sexually charged extended disco mix, mostly ignored by radio because of its siren like  content, but loved on dancefloors. Debate stirred around the sexualisation of women in disco, and if that reflected empowerment or puppetry, pandering to male fantasy or a liberation for sexually independent woman. The sexuality portrayed seemed both liberating and problematic, assertive and yet stereotyped. A slightly wonder woman caricature, nodding to the future , yet so locked in its own moment of an emerging libertarianism not yet found.

Further into 1977, Saturday Night Fever and the Bee Gees became a global phenomenon. In its transition to mainstream music, disco became increasingly seen to be lacking in authenticity,  and lacking depth. It’s focus largely on hedonism and shallow cool, meant it was no surprise then that it became surpassed by music like punk and new wave, that reflected the gathering social discontent of the late 70s.

Yet is influence has endured through various decades and music threads. There is something so fabulous and primal about the collective experience of dancing like a goon, losing yourself in music and singing along to an anthemic song.  I was doing exactly that only last week! There is nothing shallow about heartfelt hopes and collective aspiration, even in love and sorrow. No, especially in love and sorrow. Then survival. That’s why we’re still listening to Donna, Candi, Randy and Gloria alongside  the Brothers Gibb, Sylvester and Michael.

This one’s for Vanda…

• 1970s
• Candi Staton
• Daft Punk
• Disco
• Gloria Gaynor
• New York