And on the 7th day, God said, “Let there be house music!”

House music will set you free! If you aren’t familiar, house music is a genre of electronic dance music. The term refers to a lot of things these days, but it was initially coined to describe a new kind of music being played in Chicago loft and warehouse parties during the late 1970s and early 1980s. So yeah, Chicago beat New York in creating something new for once.

This Chicago house music was a blend of soul, jazz, disco, funk, European electronic pop, Latin salsa and even post-punk. It redefined dance music as we know it. The repeating drums were intended to get people on their feet, and it worked. Thousands of people came to dance at “The Warehouse,” a building in Chicago’s south loop, close to union station (the phrase “house music” comes from this name.) The warehouse was a refuge for gay and black youth in the city. They were able to meet and network with each other, and also dance away the horrors of Reagan-era politics.   

The creator of and one the most popular DJs at the Warehouse was Frankie Knuckles. He is known as the “godfather of house music” and was the life of the party. His music was radically experimental. He could take inspiration from anything - from disco to post-punk. He was constantly mixing genres and including strange samples, like recordings of Martin Luther King speeches. He was the life of the warehouse, often playing for up to eight hours a night.

Knuckle’s music was also radically independent. He disdained major labels and instead promoted a Do-It-Yourself ethic to the creation and publication of house music. Even the “Warehouse” as a venue was fundamentally independent. When this type of music and these types of people were denied entrance to the dominant, traditional nightclubs, they created spaces of their own. In this way, the music Knuckles made for the Warehouse was both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated. He had a natural inclination to create groundbreaking music, but he also wanted to create a meaningful space for other people. In one interview he says, “I used to think that what I did was create a poor man’s paradise on the dancefloor. It gives them the opportunity to escape the rigors of reality.”

Knuckles process for creating music is very unique. In one interview, he says that he used to turn on the radio and “sketch out” the look of the music he was hearing. He was an obsessive record collector and constantly learning about different types of music.  

One of the ways we have talked about in class on how to identify a creative product is to see whether it has been recreated by other individuals. Using this quantifier, we see that house music was extremely unique and creative. After it’s creation in Chicago, house music quickly spread around the world - with new house music communities growing in Detroit, New York, London and Berlin. House music was also growing not only a genre, but also a philosophy. With it’s roots in Chicago’s black and gay warehouses, house music aimed to be radically inclusive. This inclusivity changed the way that nightlife looks like in many cities.

If anyone is interested in learning more about house music or experiencing it for themselves, check out the annual House Music Festival. It’s hosted every June in Millennium Park.

Sources:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/frankie-knuckles-godfather-of-house-music-dead-at-59-20140401

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_vgKgoHmVQ&t=1145s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNxejwG5sPg

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2014/04/02/297733684/where-love-lives-frankie-knuckles-and-the-dance-floor