Dance yourself free: the birth of house music

Plus, remembering Wayne Shorter and listening (finally) to De La Soul.

View this email online March 4, 2023 by Marissa Lorusso This week, we’re sharing an episode of the NPR podcast Throughline, about the history of house music; plus, a remembrance of influential saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter. John M Lund Photography Inc/Getty Images “Euphoric.” “An experience to forget about your problems.” “Empowered, amazing, loved.” When the producers of the NPR podcast Throughline asked patrons at a Chicago venue how listening to house music made them feel, those were some of their answers. Lots of people have been talking about house music recently given its influence on Beyoncé’s multi-Grammy-winning 2022 album Renaissance. Throughline recently released an episode all about the history of the genre, from its roots to disco to its earliest days in underground Chicago parties to the explosion of EDM music across the globe. “The deeper you dig into the origins of house music,” the team writes, “the more clear it becomes that the history of house, like the history of rock and roll, is a complicated tale of Black cultural resistance.” Throughline also shared a collection of quotes about what it was like to be in Chicago in the moments when house music was being created from DJs, dancers, promoters and musicians who were at the basement parties and clubs where it happened. I asked Throughline producer Cristina Kim to tell me about putting together this episode, and she told me about one especially interesting detail from her research process. In conducting research for the episode, Cristina spoke to Lynnée Denise, a DJ, scholar and writer who focuses on house music. Denise coined the term “DJ Scholarship,” which Cristina says “repositions the role of the DJ as both an archivist and cultural custodian,” since DJs “preserve music in their collections and share them with larger audiences in the same way that an archivist might curate an exhibit.”  This idea “made me reimagine early house DJs as archivists preserving disco records and gospel records, who created a brand-new sound through the vestiges of the past,” Cristina says. Though the idea didn’t end up making it into the episode, Cristina says it changed the way she listens to live DJ sets. “Now when I listen and dance, I think about how the dance floor is like a time machine,” she says, “and I get to listen to the past, the present and sometimes even the future.” Newsletter continues after sponsor message More to read, watch and hear Saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who shaped the sound of contemporary jazz for over half a century, died on Thursday at age 89. His career spanned decades: He came to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers; in the 1960s, he joined Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet and released a number of now-classic solo recordings. He then helped pioneer jazz fusion and co-founded the band Weather Report. At the start of the new millennium, he formed the Wayne Shorter Quartet, featuring a handpicked group of much younger musicians whose recordings showcased intense improvisations on Shorter compositions old and new. For all the millions of songs on streaming platforms, available to anyone anywhere 24/7, the NPR Music team often finds ourselves talking about the gaps in the platforms’ discographies — and a major one that has come up again and again is the work of De La Soul, the giants of “golden era” hip-hop. This week, that changed. The group’s catalog is finally available to stream, and in honor of the occasion, we asked writer, scholar and DJ Oliver Wang to write a guided tour through the group’s discography, to help new fans get familiar with the singular arc of its career and give veteran listeners a reintroduction to its most influential recordings. And writer Matthew Ritchie wrote about how it feels to listen to these albums with fresh ears — especially if you’re part of the literal generations who have never had access to the group’s music — and why De La Soul’s output still feels prescient and rejuvenating, even decades after its initial release. Who would have thought Curtis Mayfield would pair nicely with the hardcore subgenre powerviolence? According to Anaiah Lei — the founder, vocalist and songwriter for Zulu, whose debut record A New Tomorrow came out this week — powerviolence is a perfect conduit for classic soul samples. Zulu’s music uses carefully curated samples to acknowledge past freedom fighters, speak to moments of social protest and provide windows of hope — without sacrificing the savage riffs, disembodied screams and pummeling bass you might expect from the genre. In Senegal, a cultural center is creating a safe space where artists can use their platform to speak about climate change while also finding opportunities in the art and music scene. “I'm fighting the system, but I don't fight it alone,” says Babacar Niang, a hip-hop artist who founded the center in 2006. How do you make the expected unexpected? That’s the challenge director Edward Berger faced in his recent adaptation of the 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front. He got a substantial lift from the film's score by composer Volker Bertelmann, better known as Hauschka, who told my colleague Robin Hilton that he focused on one primary aim: He wanted his score to "destroy the film.” He explains what that means in a recent conversation on All Songs Considered. This week, our friends at KUTX shared a video of the long-running indie duo Quasi performing live in the station’s Studio 1A. Tiny Desk NPR The Afro-fusion singer and songwriter Omah Lay rose to prominence during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — a bittersweet and extraordinary feat, considering that clubs were closed at the time. He recently made a special trip from Nigeria to Washington, D.C., just to perform a Tiny Desk concert — and though the Tiny Desk is about as far from a club atmosphere as you can get, his performance proved how much his songs resonate even when they aren’t booming in the big speakers. Also this week: Jazz drummer Antonio Sánchez and his pals in Bad Hombre performed a set of songs that explore the rhythm of language.  One More Thing The deep psychological themes of the now half-century-old Dark Side of the Moon Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WMFE (edit station). Need a new playlist? Follow NPR Music on Spotify and Apple Music What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: nprmusic@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Books, Pop Culture, Health and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to NPR Music emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy