Gay Black Men Helped Create EDM. Why Do Straight White Men Dominate It?
Gay Black Men Helped Create EDM. Why Do Straight White Men Dominate It?
by Katie Bain
June 14, 2018, 2:47pm EDT
Frankie Knuckles -- who would come to be known as the godfather of the genre -- played there, grafting gospel and soul vocals over kick drums made with the era’s emerging drum machine technology and played at 120-130 beats per minute. With a thrilling soundtrack, the gay men populating the dancefloor could freely express themselves.
“Being ostracized as black, gay kids,” says Dunson, founder/president of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation, which works to preserve Knuckles’ legacy and support his causes, “this felt like a place where we could be who we were while being protected from the judgments of society.”
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“Chicago was kind of a racist town,” adds Warehouse founder Robert Williams, who relocated to the Midwest from New York in the early ’70s. He recruited Knuckles to be the resident DJ at his new club. The Warehouse “was a haven for the gay community, which also turned into the heterosexual community, because the gay kids were inviting their heterosexual friends who were dying to come in.”
From Knuckles and company in Chicago to fellow house innovators David Mancuso and Larry Levan in New York, dance music’s roots in the gay club scenes of the late ’70s and early ’80s are well documented. Gay men, and particularly gay men of color, are widely credited with creating house music and planting the seeds of the many genres that have evolved from it.
Walk into a Las Vegas club today, and you’ll hear music -- mainly, what’s known as EDM -- that draws on this earlier sound. Like the blues and other genres before it, it is music forged by a marginalized community that is now dominated by the heteronormative mainstream, with straight, white, cisgender men populating label boardrooms and festival lineups. While underground LGBTQ-oriented clubs continue trendsetting in major cities, in the most visible and lucrative incarnations of the scene they created, gay and black artists are in the minority.
Gay Black Men Helped Create EDM. Why Do Straight White Men Dominate It?
by Katie Bain
June 14, 2018, 2:47pm EDT
Frankie Knuckles -- who would come to be known as the godfather of the genre -- played there, grafting gospel and soul vocals over kick drums made with the era’s emerging drum machine technology and played at 120-130 beats per minute. With a thrilling soundtrack, the gay men populating the dancefloor could freely express themselves.
“Being ostracized as black, gay kids,” says Dunson, founder/president of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation, which works to preserve Knuckles’ legacy and support his causes, “this felt like a place where we could be who we were while being protected from the judgments of society.”
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“Chicago was kind of a racist town,” adds Warehouse founder Robert Williams, who relocated to the Midwest from New York in the early ’70s. He recruited Knuckles to be the resident DJ at his new club. The Warehouse “was a haven for the gay community, which also turned into the heterosexual community, because the gay kids were inviting their heterosexual friends who were dying to come in.”
From Knuckles and company in Chicago to fellow house innovators David Mancuso and Larry Levan in New York, dance music’s roots in the gay club scenes of the late ’70s and early ’80s are well documented. Gay men, and particularly gay men of color, are widely credited with creating house music and planting the seeds of the many genres that have evolved from it.
Walk into a Las Vegas club today, and you’ll hear music -- mainly, what’s known as EDM -- that draws on this earlier sound. Like the blues and other genres before it, it is music forged by a marginalized community that is now dominated by the heteronormative mainstream, with straight, white, cisgender men populating label boardrooms and festival lineups. While underground LGBTQ-oriented clubs continue trendsetting in major cities, in the most visible and lucrative incarnations of the scene they created, gay and black artists are in the minority.
