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Essay Available:
Pages:
2 pages/β‰ˆ550 words
Sources:
6 Sources
Style:
Chicago
Subject:
Literature & Language
Type:
Essay
Language:
English (U.S.)
Document:
MS Word
Date:
Total cost:
$ 7.2
Topic:

Disco Scene And Its Cultural Significance

Essay Instructions:

MUSIC CREATIVITY & CONSUMPTION
MUSIC JOURNALISM PROJECT
Our next class will be on Nov 5. Until then, you should be working on this project...
Write or create a piece of music journalism that deals with the intersection of musical culture and a social / cultural context or theme. Imagine the piece would be for a music magazine, news publication, news media outlet, or website (e.g. Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Vice, etc.) This assignment is due posted to this Google Drive folder for this class by Sunday Nov 4:
https://drive(dot)google(dot)com/drive/u/1/folders/1ea_8051HVWrpFMBqygXIsR92iMeWt936
Your piece should include some element of the following...
- THINK PIECE: this shows the music critic’s perspective, and takes the form of a review (of a band, song, album, venue, topic, theme, etc.) emphasizing your take on the subject.
- ETHNOGRAPHY: this tries to capture, record, document, or collect data on the community’s (e.g. fans, members of a music scene, members of a social group) or artist’s perspective, and takes the form of documenting footage, interviews, etc. It emphasizes capturing the artist or community’s take on the subject.
[depending on the way you frame your piece, there may an integration of both approaches]
Some topics to think about...
• a musical “scene” and its cultural significance
• social / cultural history of a particular genre or music-related theme (e.g. technology, clubs etc.)
• ethical or political issues relating to the context
• technical or musical issues relating to the context
• underground subcultures & DIY scenes vs. mass produced popular art
• safe spaces for marginalized or underground communities / practices
• mainstream culture and counter-culture
• power structures shaping a context
• dynamics of empowerment / oppression
• appropriation, fetishization
• depth (deep diving into one case) vs. breadth (showing the wider arc or landscape over time/place)
• tone of the piece... optimistic, pessimistic, neutral?
Sources:
• Adorno & Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry” (example of a pessimistic think piece)
• BBC, “The Joy of Disco” (example of an ethnography showing the arc of a scene)
Supplementary Readings:
• Baraka, “The Modern Scene” (Jazz & Race)
• Gracyk, extract from “Rock Music & The Politics of Identity” (Pop & Appropriation)
• Dyer, “In Defense of Disco” (Queer Disco Scene)
• Mogul et al. “The Ghosts of Stonewall” (Queer Activism)

Essay Sample Content Preview:

Disco ‘Scene’ and its Cultural Significance
Name
Institution
Disco ‘Scene’ and its Cultural Significance
Disco is a music genre that gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s (The Rise, n.d.). Disco scene refers to music that is made of various musical traditions that include soul, Motown, meringue, funk, and even salsa. Disco music was meant to be danced to and for most part, it is the precursor to club music, hip-hop, and trance that developed in the 1990s onwards. The term disco emerged from a French word discotheque, which was used to describe the dance nightclubs that people frequented in the 1960s and 70s (Estrella, 2017).
The disco musical style was unique. Disco ‘scene’ had a unique time signature of 4/4, as well as a fast tempo. Disco music main feature was then commonly known as “four on the floor” style of rhythm (Estrella, 2017). The four of the floor represented drum plays “on” the beats, as well as hi-hat cymbal plays that were “off” beats. Disco also involved a reverb or echo effect that was used in the vocal tracks in the disco scene. Most disco songs were trailed by the traditional pop verse, as well as a chorus structure. Early on, disco music was found in nightclubs with disc jockeys and mixing songs but soon enough, the disco scene made it into the mainstream music industry.
The disco music had a cultural significance. In its early days, disco was largely ignored by radio. Mattera (2012) argues that disco gained a following in the deejay-based underground nightclubs that were predominately frequented by black, gay, and Latino dancers. The disco music was a safe and popular genre for LGBT people (mainly African-American and white gay men), as well as psychedelic hippies mostly in Philadelphia and New York City (Haider, 2018). This genre of music was viewed as a response to the supremacy of rock music and also the stigmatization of dance music by the counterculture of the time. In this way, blacks, gay people, and Latinos used this music to defy such stereotypes in music (Haider, 2018). They developed various dance styles that included the Bump and also the Hustle. Deejays p...
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